Speedrun Explained 53 (Update 3); Speedrun Explained 54 (Announcement)

Hey all! Been a bit since the last update, and I apologize for that. Moving forward I'm going to try and make at least one update a month for you all, regardless of where projects are at. This past month has also been a bit hectic for me as I moved across the country (yes, again), but I'm all settled in and back to a routine now!

The first video that's in production currently is the Any% run of Alien: Isolation. This is the run that was voted on to be covered in the most recent Patron's Choice poll (more on when the next one will be later in the post)! After releasing the Super Mario Odyssey video, I pretty much had to drop everything work related to pack up and move across the country (completing a 15 hour drive twice in a week!), and overall, was offline for around two weeks when accounting for packing, moving, and unpacking. I hit the ground running with this AI video, with me writing pretty much the entirety of the script last week between Monday and Friday. I have both the runner and another community member helping me with this script and proof-reading it, and they were able to get notes to me super quickly. Thanks to that, I was able to film the intro and some bit parts on Monday and start editing then, with the past two days being more editing and recording. It's coming along pretty slowly to be honest, which is a bit worrying since there's a tight deadline on this video with the sponsor. Looking forward though, I think the video is still in a great place deadline-wise as once I get through everything I have planned to work on this week (more recording and editing today, filming and editing tomorrow), then the rest of the video should be a breeze. It's a very interesting run that has some MAJOR sequence breaks, so I'm really enjoying getting to focus on the sequence breaks and how they affect the route and game. As of right now, I have the first 7.5 minutes of the video completed, and I expect the video to end up being around 25-30 minutes long. I've been reading all the feedback people left on my SMO video regarding the filmed segments, and I believe that I've really fine-tuned it for this video. The pacing for the live-segments feels much faster, and I'm really trying to focus on getting right into the speedrun from the start of the video, which is something that I've talked extensively about in the Retrospective series I do for the $6 tier and up. Overall, super happy with how these first 7-or-so minutes are shaping up, and excited to hear what you all think of it. As long as everything goes according to plan, I think that the video should be up on Patreon for you all to watch no later than August 25th, but likely more towards the start of that week than the end.

The second video in production right now is one that I myself chose to cover, which was much needed considering the past three videos I've made have all been from the Patron's Choice. This video will be covering an Any% speedrun of Tony Hawk's Underground, a game that I've wanted to cover for awhile. This is the first sports game to be covered on the channel, and it's one of my favorite games of all time. I cannot wait to make the video for it, since the speedrun is incredibly fast paced. I contacted the runner for the video last month, and they're currently wrapping up putting the run together. Hopefully we should have a call scheduled sometime in the next two weeks to go over the run.

That's all in terms of updates on videos right now since those are the only ones planned at the moment. I'm thinking that after THUG, I'll likely cover one more run of my choosing, then do another Patron's Choice where you all can suggest and vote on a run to be covered. After that one, I'm thinking that I'll either alternate between doing videos of my choosing and Patron's Choices, or do a Patron's Choice every third video. I'm leaning towards the former though, I love the engagement and interaction with you all. I'll let you all know the plans once they're concretely made though! Hope you're all doing well, and have an above average day :)