First 35 minutes of the Adobe video, an update, and two tiny car accidents

Hello darlings,

First off, please find enclosed the first 35 minutes of the Adobe video. A lot more is done than that, the video is shaping up to be much, much longer (the script is telling me it’s 46,000 words, which feels wrong but there we go) but, minor spoilers, a lot of the back four fifths or so of the video are being shot on an actual location (which we’re driving out to in like 12 hours! wow!) and this is about as much of the video that makes any sense without any of those shots in there. After the shoot, the rest of the video should be ready to go pretty fast we hope.

There’s an animated segment in the opening which is still being worked on by Allie and Joe, but what they have so far is so cool so I wanted to show it off in this draft. I’m still messing around with the whole thing of course, there’s a ton of stuff to redo once I have the rest of the video finalized, so please treat this as a rough draft and let me know what you think!

Ok go watch the video now and come back and read the rest of this post with the apology for how long it’s been and other stuff!! GO NOW!!!

Welcome back!

We’re putting a lot of effort into the live-action video segments for this one. As you might have seen, in addition to helping with research and giving copious notes on the script and the edit, Kat has somehow also spent much of the last few months making puppets:

"Michael! Michael! Don't leave me here!"

If you can somehow guess which real life person the second puppet is of, you get twenty points. Kat showed a picture of the completed puppet to Adam Savage and he correctly guessed who it was, which was astounding.

You know, when I made the videos all by myself I was never sure they were good until they were done and other people said they were ok. I can look back and think ‘this was good,’ but in the moment it was just me doing what I thought worked, and second guessing myself the whole time. Now I can see physical work someone else is putting into the video, and now I’m getting feedback on my own work in real time from another person, I can see it for what it is. I think this is the first time I’ve thought ‘this video is going to be good!’ before it was actually finished and released. It’s a nice feeling! I’m so excited that I’ll probably forget to sleep before we have to film it tomorrow, lol.

Anyway, now for the fun part of the patron post, the excuses.

I kept meaning to write this post sooner, but then thinking 'I should get a piece of the video finished first so it's not just a text update' and then getting distracted by editing, or just going back to working on the video and forgetting people might be wondering if I’m still alive. And then it would have been longer since my last post, so I wanted to make sure I had more to show, and that spiral continued for a while. Silly. Expect more frequent updates from now on, even if I have less to show. You’re keeping me alive by supporting me, you should expect to know what I’m doing at all times.

The other main delay has been the visa process.

Since a lot of this video is being filmed in the USA, I needed a work visa to legally do it without getting arrested or deported or barred from the country forever. The process of getting one is exactly as complicated and time-consuming as people say it is. Also, given the current situation in America, this seriously messed with my life for a while. I was advised by a lawyer to be extremely careful what I said on social media about the country (and some of its allies) for a while (and sent a list of old tweets to consider deleting) so I had a chance of being approved. I also called in a lot of favors with internet celebrities to get them to write letters of recommendation for me. So if I appear on Adam Conover’s podcast any time soon, please understand I owe him big time.

It’s been annoying not being allowed to tweet ‘Death 2 Amerikkka’ and 'stop killing people' for a while but it’s also helped me focus on the work more. I certainly didn't miss posting on the rotting husk of twitter for a few months, at least. Plus, now the visa is approved, a lot of other videos I want to do in future will benefit from being permitted to do actual work here! But this does mean this project got delayed a lot more than I'd like. Sorry about that.

The other minor source of delay was the car accidents (Kat’s note: “THEY WEREN’T MY FAULT”). Let me explain in more detail so you feel sympathy for us:

Doing prep work for the video, getting props and equipment and stuff, Kat and I got rear-ended by a driver who was distracted by some kids on bikes. The damage wasn’t super bad (dealing with whiplash, car got scuffed up) but we decided to delay the big shoot until after we got it fixed and recovered a bit.

Anyway about a week later, before we had got the previous damage fixed, a car smashed into the side of Kat’s car on the freeway. We weren’t seriously injured, but the passenger-side door was completely crushed in. It can’t physically open any more, I had to climb out through the driver’s side to leave the car.

The other car then drove away very very fast. I managed to get a picture of the license plate before it disappeared at least, so Kat can do whatever Americans are supposed to do when this sort of thing happens. There’s a billboard ad for an injury lawyer every twelve feet so I’m sure there’s a healthy system figured out for all this.

Once we got back Kat’s car was leaking mysterious fluids from somewhere. Cumulatively the poor thing was a little more damaged than we were comfortable driving for hours to get to the location, so part of planning the shoot became renting a series of cars to finish getting stuff together, and later to actually get to the shoot. If this wasn’t already the most expensive and logistically annoying video I’ve ever done, it certainly is now. Kat is also looking for car recommendations.

Since I was stuck in America and I’d been invited, and we had needed to delay the shoot anyway, I did a panel at Open Sauce in San Francisco last month (this is also how Kat ran into Adam Savage and started showing off the puppet pictures). I’ve been advised not to get on a plane unless it’s to leave the country, so we rode with some friends who happened to be driving there. Those of you who attended Open Sauce have probably heard most of this story already from me, it’s certainly a fun story to tell.

It was nice meeting those of you who went! Hanging out with other people, and creators who do similar stuff, instead of sitting in the woods talking to myself, is pretty cool! I can see why people live near other people now. Since I’m stuck in the US for a bit, I might plan a meetup at some point in California if anybody’s interested!

Basically, this video has taken a long time for a wide variety of extremely trivial reasons, mostly me being slow and doing far more research and rewriting than I had planned to do (Remember the proposed title Adobe Must Die: The Rise of Open Source? The entire open source part is now a separate video), but for once I have reasons outside of my own incompetence. Thank you for being, well, the best audience ever. You’re better than I deserve. If you were meaner maybe I’d’ve had to work harder.

I’ll let you know how the shoot went asap! I want to taunt you with more cryptic puppet pictures before the video is done.

Sincerely,

Harry