Halo bullshittery - Update #2

Good evening all. It's the end of the first week on Halo bullshittery. And I feel I've completed the cutting phase. And in doing so have made a few discoveries. Here's a shot of the timeline as it currently exists:

First discovery - at the start of the week, I figured I'd try to tag similar looking levels and chain them together. So the visual pallet wouldn't switch so drastically every few seconds. A concern because of how fast paced some of the clips are.

After a few test renders in the midweek, I realised that that was actually a really flawed idea. For the tone that each individual joke sets is important. And something that really started to take greater priority with each daily test render.

A loud excited laugh is best followed up by a calm voice. A sudden intentional hardcut is best followed up by a completely different speaker. That type of thing.

In a fairly short space of time I found myself recutting the clips into an order that simply felt smooth. Rather what felt like a comparatively superfluous property - the level they took place on. It plays much better now.

Second discovery - I felt the same way about chaining the clips depending on whether I was playing as red or blue team. It really doesn't matter. The comedic tone each prior scene set was by far the more important driving factor in cutting decisions.

Thirdly, with the above in mind, the contrast between original Halo 1 footage and Reach footage really wasn't so jarring. Again, especially if the whole level scenery is changing with it.

And lastly, that idea I had to fade in the 'Scarab song' from Halo 2 wasn't as effective as I was hoping it would be. Mainly because the comedic tone struggled to exist alongside what was clearly meant to be action building song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhBWu700g-E

So instead I decided to lean into it. Making the finale overtly action, cutting clips from an energetic game of capture the flag. Marking out the beat of the song and trying to match the game to it for the final 2 minutes.

Basically rather than a smooth transition from comedic to serious, I'll make it overt. A moment of 'this is what we're doing now'

It's a bit of a risk. Usually I find it's better to end on a strong joke. But I'm reasonably confident I can get away with it due to this being Halo. And a group of friends screaming like gibbons over a capture the flag game would provide sufficient nostalgia/vicarious enjoyment to carry the ending. Hopefully it lands.

The text and animation phase starts now. We'll see how smooth it'll go as Halo is a complete unknown when it comes to keyframing. I've created the After Effects templates and will get started. Thank you for your patience all.