B-Mask

March Update (Big news)

 Hi everyone!

 Okay so, usual business out of the way first- quite a bit of writing and planning done on some of the larger video essays, though nothing that was ready to hit the edit bay. There’s one short video I’m smoothing out and another I’ve been gathering footage on, just trying to see which of those projects might be coming together the fastest. I also have finally completed the Timeline Tour for the Return to Monkey Island video for my Usher tier patrons and above- not hugely extensive, but enough insight in there to give you a better idea of my thought process putting it together physically. 

 What’s been taking quite a bit of my attention this month, however, is quite exciting. 

 I’ve finally begun production on the Marvel project.

 It was this month that I decided enough was enough- I had the vast majority of writing complete for my planned multi episode series bringing yet another comic book to life, with the exception of the final video, and figured it was time to just get the ball rolling. I have contacted half the cast, some from the previous project, some brand new, and been absolutely swamped sending emails and making connections, while formatting scripts so that everyone has the correct material. The process is a little different than last time, in a really cool way, so I’m documenting as much as I can to also make sure you’ll see how this is coming together when it finally launches, and really, I think it’ll be even better than what I did with the Fantastic Four.

 Now, as a result, I’m in need of some serious funding. Not a huge amount, but enough that I’m going to be making some efforts to stay on top of that. I’ll have to start pushing forward on those smaller projects, maybe do some streaming, make an announcement publicly that production has begun to potentially boost some interest in the Patreon and other methods. Before any of that, I’m obviously very grateful for everyone contributing here first and foremost- you’re the reason I’m able to get as far as I can at the moment and you’ll hopefully be able to see exactly where the funding’s going for this particular project. I’m currently doing some number crunching to see what the budget for this ultimately amounts to beyond the actors- and I figure, if some questionably spiteful 18 year old can get funding of almost 100k for his Spider-Man fan film while others are making easy money off of AI generated messes, I can probably ask for a lot, LOT less to make this come to fruition, and pay the artists involved fairly. 

 I’m still reluctant to say what it is out loud- one reason being that I don’t want people to pre-empt the effort. There’s been a hard trend recently of people running with other people’s ideas on Twitter and YouTube without credit for who started the conversation, if not outright plagiarism, often changing the shape of people’s perception of the topic rapidly in quite a dangerous way (Like, ‘B Mask just started talking about X, but look at what happens on this page in X, wow how craaazzyyyyy give me lots of likes as I’m the first person who ever thought to say this and now it’s all anyone will ever say!’ Etc etc) and I don’t want to risk that happening here, I’d like to be in control of my own thoughts on something I care a lot about before people start altering the conversation around it for good, a conversation I don’t want to have to address until it actually exists. When the FF video came out, nobody was talking about it in that way, if really at all, and I’d like the same to be true here. When enough work has been done, you will absolutely see a trailer emerge- there’ll be no going back after that. 

 And that’s all I have for you this month- should be back next time with a few more goodies and news to share. Thanks again for helping me pull all this together- I’ll keep you all posted as to how things are going. S’gonna be big. 

 - B

Timeline Tour: The Secret Meaning of Return to Monkey Island

Once again we round out the month for Usher contributors and above with yet another Timline Tour- this time concerning the Secret meaning of Return to Monkey Island.

A little shorter than usual, this one goes through some of the more detailed thought processes behind the video's creation, especially concerning the way the video's shaped changed and how other sources affected how it came together.

Let us know what you think, and I'll be back with another once the next major video essay has been released!

- B

Behind the Return to Monkey Island video

Hey Gang! Back again with another Patreon blog post on how the latest video, The Secret meaning of Return to Monkey Island, came together. This one was a real head scratcher for a long, long time and hopefully this illustrates a lot of why it took so damn long. Enjoy!

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 The idea

 I think it’s worth mentioning that, when I made my first Monkey Island video, I had no plans of ever talking about it again. It was 2020, the first major Covid year, where I was putting out as much content as I could while housebound and going through a bunch of games I hadn’t properly been through in years, resulting in my rediscovery of what the series was and realising how I actually felt about each game in that context. The video ends on a very suspensory note- recreating the feeling I had of the second game’s ending, the one I’d loved the most, that there was an interpretation yet to be discovered and that my feelings on the matter would never be resolved.

 Well, turns out that was the same year they were making a new one.

 In 2022 they came out with the absolutely insane announcement that there would not only be a new Monkey Island game, but one made by Ron Gilbert, something we just assumed would never take place, and almost immediately based on how people had reacted to my video and this announcement I knew exactly what I wanted to say. You saw that happen when I released my extremely timely video on the subject, discussing what I felt this game was going to be in comparison to what people seemed to assume, and that also got a very interesting set of reactions which made me feel like, whatever happened, I would definitely have something to say when the game finally released. I was mentally prepared, as a result, for a video when that game finally arrived.

 The preparation overall was weirdly well served. I wasn’t exaggerating when I mentioned being on Pirates of the Caribbean the week before it’s release- it literally occurred to me on the last day of my trip, the first I’d taken since the pandemic, and I made a mental note to carry that with me once I returned home. Already I was getting messages from people who’d completed the game (one that stuck out was ‘the cat’s out of the bag!’) so I knew I needed to get into it pretty damn quick- and set aside a few days to really dive in. I went through as thoroughly as I could, I tested every bit of dialogue, I made it to the end and had a VERY strong, positive emotional reaction, and then went ahead and typed up an absolute tonne of notes.

 And realised I had no clue where to begin.

Notes and iterations

 The good news was that I had a lot of paragraphs very quickly drummed up based on how jazzed I was about what I saw it was saying, doing a lot of research on other people’s takes as well to see how people had taken it in the usual monkey island spaces as well anything I could find from the creators, who kept their silence for quite some time. You’ll be interested to know a lot of what was in the final video was written in that first draft at the tail end of 2022 into 2023, especially the pieces about Elaine and LeChuck specifically. I knew I had something workable pretty quickly.

 However, what kept bothering me was how to set it all up. I wanted to talk about the narrative, but felt if I started at the beginning I’d end up getting side tracked into immediately discussing the ending. And every time I did that I felt like I was taking too long to get to the other points and to keep the video moving. I also knew I needed to set up my past videos in the context of all that and kept getting tongue tied every time I went ahead and did so. It was a weirdly difficult video to structure even knowing it wasn’t going to be particularly long- in fact I felt myself over-explaining and over-writing constantly, which made me feel like I really needed to step back and consider if there was a better way to write this.

 On top of all that, a few things kept pushing it away from a serious deadline. I’d been working on other larger projects, first Jak and then Frasier, both of which took more attention away than I planned and lead to me further doubting how it was going to play out. Worse still, just before then, I’d watched the Zero Punctuation review, and immediately been alerted to the almost insurmountable number of fans who seem to have taken to the ending even more aggressively than the art style. These weren’t all just internet angry people either- many had convinced themselves of what they felt the game was saying who otherwise seemed as though they might have considered the alternative if suggested, ZP included. It felt so wrong that people had mischaracterised it that way, and unfortunately I got caught up in trying to deal with that as well, to try and bring the points of view together while figuring out how the hell I was going to structure it.

 I just couldn’t force it all together, though I kept making attempts. In 2023 I had a full script drafted and recorded, which allowed me to start a strong basis, but was compounded on by a rent hike that priced me out of my apartment, caught up in moving and trying to finish the Frasier video after that disruption. Giving up my custom recording spot was a huge loss- I’m more comfortable with my setup now than I was but it isn’t the same, and something I’m still hoping to rectify soon. Just felt like the momentum kept getting kicked out from under me, and in the meantime people were still sending comments to the other videos which, honestly, weren’t always particularly constructive, making it seem even more difficult.

 However, there were good things that came out of waiting.

Very Late editions

 The first thing is that the original video I created, as well as the Sam and Max video, picked up the attention of a couple of former telltale contributors who were willing to share their thoughts on the projects. They really wanted to know what I thought of Return and had enjoyed it a lot themselves, feeling very grateful to Ron for actually bothering to include their work as part of the larger story. They’d worked under Dave Grossman as well in that time and wanted to share some perspective on what he’d done for them. It all just helped to firm up some details and the focus of the actual good the game had done, reminding me that the point I wanted to make wasn’t totally out of bounds. Jake’s excitement in talking about their desire to capture the truth of the secret- something always out of reach- really finalised how I was going to end the video from that point on.

 I also made the, as it turned out, simple fix of moving everything to do with the actual secret to the middle of the video. This included the intro, and the setup of the previous games and the ending on 2 in particular, right through Ron’s manifesto. That way the first half of the video would read like a normal review with hints of getting into something more meaningful, before really getting into the philosophical discussion around the ending and what I felt it was trying to do.

 A lot of what I’d written about the actual theory-work of the game at this point was what I felt was an educated guess- trying my hardest as usual to get to the root of what the designers were going for- but then something kinda wild happened. After an unexpected second trip to a Disney Park for my birthday in 2023, I’d decided to put together a video on that to mirror my 2022 trip, which again came out much later due to my other commitments. I figured in the end it’d be a good idea to start with that in January, once I finally had everything together, and then go into February with the Monkey Island video that had now been completely retooled and rewritten to something I felt more satisfied about.

 And then the Noclip documentary dropped.

 It felt good and bad for a lot of reasons. Good because I could finally find out what it was they were thinking, whether or not I was right about what I felt they might be doing as well as suddenly getting everyone talking about the game again after a year of nothing. But there was a pretty selfish sense of frustration that I’d taken so long that the developers had finally come out and said the things I was about to beat them to the punch on- suddenly not looking quite as clever as I thought I might!

 But this is absolutely what needed to happen. It’s a fantastic documentary that says so much of what needed to be said by the people who deserved to say it all first, and having it ended up improving what I wanted to say in the video and not have me shooting in the dark for every note. I felt real good going into another final draft on the back of it, and while a few changes still arose in trying to firm up what I wanted to say by the end, I still felt like I just about got where I needed to with its help.

The result

 I won’t lie to you, this one doesn’t feel quite as triumphant as some of my other recent releases. Jak felt incredibly complete and had a strong and positive reaction, Frasier was a runaway success, but my own return to this subject was always, I think, going to have a hollow ring to it, especially having sat on it for so long. The comments have been incredibly insightful and positive for the most part, but there are still a few who just didn’t quite get it or came back with the same five talking points that seemed to not engage with the video at all. From my glass half full perspective, that’s always going to feel like a loss, even knowing this business is not about changing everyone’s mind.

 But I think that’s appropriate. One of the things that really changed the original feel of the video was Ron’s seeming contentment at the end of the documentary. He’d made a very divisive game and been hurt online, but he was clearly so happy and at peace with what he’d done, no regrets because he’d made exactly what he hoped to make. For as long as I tinkered on this video and happy enough I am with how it came out, in the end I don’t know that I could ever have made anything else or anything that would have made me happier. There was always one viewpoint I was coming into the process with that was going to come through by the end, and perhaps I was simply delaying the inevitable.

 I never mean to take as long as I do on these projects. It’s just me, it’s just my perspective on whether or not I’ve said enough, and sadly I find it very difficult to find the confidence others seem to in just pumping out words and getting the videos out there. I am trying to get less into my head to make that happen because it really shouldn’t take this long, and because the rewards of just getting my voice heard should really take precedence now over trying to make it perfect. Every video’s a learning curve, and this feels like it taught me a lot about setting expectations for exactly that kind of thing.

And I got one really cool response from Guybrush himself. So that’s not too bad either.

 One thing I will say is that I think the video is what I always wanted it to be in the very end- you’ll have noticed a reversal of the ending of the original, returning to the fairground carousel horse and going back through the eye into the world of Monkey Island. To me this is what the game was all about, finding a way back into the fiction, and after such an unresolved video, I hope that really brings closure to my thoughts on the series at last. Until they make another one, to which I will probably make a two second video that goes ‘good stuff fam.’

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 Thanks for checking in and seeing how this video came together. I’ll have a little more on this on the way, but until then I’ll see you all in the next Patreon post!

- B

February Update (Monkey Island rewards + Next steps)

 Hey everyone!

 Thank you all for the patience on the Return to Monkey Island video. I know it was promised over and over, and went through so many revisions, but I think I’m happy with how it ended up, especially judging by the reactions. It was a huge piece of unfinished business that I was very nervous about so I decided it needed at a certain point to just exist and be out there in the world. Hopefully it lived up to the promise on some level, though like the game, I suspect there will always be an element of having to let go of whatever perfect vision of it I might have expected. Certainly felt good to get it off my chest. There will of course be rewards to follow- a write up will hit the page tomorrow for all tiers, and a timeline tour not too far in the future for Ushers and ASM’s.

 As for what’s next, the focus is as planned- the final major video on my roadmap. It’s a big one and I don’t know that I can announce a date yet, but I am closing in on a completed draft. Better Call Saul is also my next piece of unfinished business, in terms of slightly smaller videos, lots of material to work with there, and there’s a few scattered drafts magically starting to take shape now Monkey Island has been done. I’m ticking off a lot of stuff from my lists and starting to look ahead again which is a pretty good feeling, especially once the long held dream of a Frasier video was in the can.

 But, at the end of April, I hope, oh good lord do I hope, I have an announcement to make. Don’t take this promise too strongly, just because if you know my track record my promises tend to take a lot longer than planned, but I’m gunning for something in that timeframe. So, fingers crossed, we’ll be hitting a long, long awaited project’s first real steps. BOY I hope this paragraph ages decently.

 ANYWAY.

 Thanks once again for the support and sticking around for the content promised in the jurassic age. As you might have noticed I’m trying to rapidly speed up my schedule and hit videos in a faster timeframe- we’ve had two proper videos out in the first two months of this year already, and I’m working hard to ensure there’s at least one every month going forward. Really motivated to pay back your generosity with the work I’ve been focusing on for so long, and I feel it’s finally taking shape the way I wanted.

 I’ll be back next time with those rewards, so until then, take care and keep watching my FF video to boost it into Matt Shakman’s algorithm. And Pedro Pascal’s. He looks like he uses Youtube.

- B

The Secret Meaning of Return to Monkey Island

 It's done! Another long awaited promise has been fulfilled- my video on Return to Monkey Island, discussing how the game shook out and, given the varied reactions, what it really means. Thanks to everyone who has been patiently waiting for this one to come out, hopefully it was worth the wait!

 I'll be back at the end of the month with an update on what's next as well as starting to put together the behind the scenes write up and Timeline Tour rewards on this video for Patrons. Until then, keep on sailin', gang!

 - B

January Update (Next video and 2024 plans)

Hey everyone!

 The last month, after a few weeks of Holiday rest, have been about me preparing for all the videos I want to put forward this year. You’ve already seen one finally released as part of a birthday trip I mentioned a while back, and now it’s time for me to finish the next major project, which is the long promised Return to Monkey Island video. I decided in the end it would be better to release a theme park video, specifically Disney related, before I got into the final edit. Hopefully that will make sense when it’s finally completed this month.

 My plans for TV related content haven’t changed either. The last major roadmap video essay is going to be my main priority after Return, with most of the draft coming along nicely, but in the meantime I’ve been rewatching all of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul between work in preparation for a video on Saul’s final season. I had some notes and the major feel of what I wanted to say, but I wanted to experience the whole picture of both shows together now they’d fully wrapped the story, which was extremely useful. That’s not going to be a long video but I’m excited about getting it done as I think I have some unspoken and interesting things to put forward. The Venture Bros finale discussion would hopefully follow after that. A few other things are on the boil, including an old draft I rediscovered that I think might be worth putting out there, but I won’t promise any more than I’ve already presented and am attempting to get finished at the moment.

 However, the thing this year I am pushing like hell to get out there is the Marvel project, and the good news is that I think I’m very close, closer than ever before. I have a list of actors and artists I’m ready to email, I have almost all of the material I want adapted chosen and typed up, I have full drafts of all the videos in the series. But one thing is kicking me in the ass in the final video that I can’t talk about and I am struggling to find a way to resolve it, and not having that is really going to make things difficult to commit to long term. It’s something I’m now reaching out to people to try and help with, and my hope is, once this issue is dealt with, I can finally enter production. I know it might seem strange that a Marvel series that’s already laid out before me when I’m just presenting it via a YouTube retrospective should cause me that kind of trouble, but all will make sense when everything is finally out there. I apologise again for it taking so long, but I just need to get this right, and I am pushing to get there without sacrificing the amount of stuff I’m still making for the channel.

 Last but not least there’s a new commentary for ASM’s now available in the previous post. More rewards are on the way as the year goes along, and it’s been nice making sure there’s a stash of B-Extras for folks to enjoy. I really want to continue that trend and try to give back to you folks for your patience and support. I know there’s been a lot of stall’s but I’m really hoping once this Marvel thing is licked I’ll be much more able to just start getting things moving. In the meantime I hope you're all well and got a kick out of the last video. We're getting into the serious stuff now- and I really hope you feel it's worth the wait. 

 Until next time, gang!

- B

Commentary: Winners! (2012 College Film)

 A commentary to accompany the recently uploaded Winners! film I made in my foundation course at college. As you'll hear this was my first stepping stone into getting into the Arts University course in animation production I've spoken of in the past to produce my first proper short film, Screwball, and I speak on all the circumstances around its production and point out all the terrible flaws I can't unsee. A one for the hardcore B-Heads. Enjoy!

 - B

We Visited Eisner's Disney

 Heya folks! 

 Welcome back with the first video of the year- covering my Birthday trip to Disneyland Paris last year. I alluded to this quite some time back, but finally managed to get myself together to get this one out there. Really had fun putting together the one on California, so when I made this surprise trip I kind of knew going in I'd probably end up doing something similar. 

 After this we'll be rolling out the planned video essays I've been promising for a bit, as well as another commentary, all of which I'll get into here just before the month ends. Thank you again for the support in 2023, and hope you enjoy this little piece to kick off my thoughts and feelings going into 2024. 

 Til next time!

 - B

Winners! (2012 College Film)

 Hey everyone- to ring out 2023, I wanted to throw in my now over a decade old film Winners, my first ever attempt at directing a project outside of my room at home. As you can tell this is absolutely the product of an 18/19 year old mind who didn't know what he was doing, but had I not made it, I wouldn't have gotten to direct my 2015 University/College film Screwball, which I am still immensely proud of. I've been thinking a lot about personal projects and opportunities this year going into the next, and thought this would be a fun one to share with Patrons curious to know where I've come from creatively- and where I may venture one day again.

 Thank you for all the support and here's to more opportunities in the future.

- B

Commentary: The Sly Trilogy Retrospective (part 3)

 The last of the Sly Trilogy commentaries is finally here! This one as it turns out makes up for the lack of post-video writeup produced at the time, which allows me to expand on the idea of the video and the difficulties in trying to get this to come together in the drafting phase, coming up with a pretty mad solution to figure things out from there. Take a listen and enjoy the final trip through the Sly franchise- for now, at least!

 - B

October/November Update (End of year work)

 Hey everyone!

 I decided not to update until the end of this month because I wanted a couple of last month’s obligations dealt with- the Timeline tour ran a little over my planned schedule and I wanted the Q&A done after that, and now both are complete I feel better about moving forward with plans for the next couple videos. This month, being Christmas, isn’t going to see much action, certainly not for big content, but I’ll be working on a number of projects and promises as per usual.

 There’s the long standing expectations which are now my top priority. Return to Monkey Island is on the way, ideally the first vid I bounce in with next month, currently in need of a minor rewrite and general re-polish now that new info has come to light (the already recorded audio provided a decent baseline to work with so this isn’t too bad a change.) Better Call Saul and The Venture Bros are also on the cards- with Frasier doing so well I want to continue to ride the TV wave a little and make sure those are complete. Oh, and I had promised a little Birthday related video a few months back right? Believe it or not that’s been looked at on occasion and I’m sliding into a final draft of that soon. It’s only a short one, might be a good vid to ring out or begin the next year with, we shall see. And yes, The Marvel Project and The last major planned video essay continue to exist in the writing phase too.

 One thing I can get sooner is some more Patreon rewards- I have another video from the vault to release for the Usher tier, and there'll be commentary for it for the ASM's. They’ll also be receiving another commentary before the year is out, for the final video in the Sly Trilogy retrospective. Keep your eyes open for that and anything else I can dig up. Hope the collections have made things easier to navigate, still a few things I need to add to each section but it’s looking a lot healthier in terms of tangible rewards than before. I think I might have to abandon the additional behind the scenes videos after really trying to make them feel a bit more rewarding- you’ve seen a lot of what I took in the Timeline Tour already, for both videos so far, so it just felt a little redundant. If I figure out what else to offer, I’ll let you know here first.

 Alright, that’s all from me for now. Speak to you soon, friends!

- B

Timeline Tour: A History of Frasier on Cheers

 A little belated, but once again we're back with another treat for Usher contributors and above- the Timeline Tour for the Frasier on Cheers video!

 Going a little further than the blog post detailing how the video came to be, this gets into the nuts and bolts of my thought process concerning my approach to more of the individual choices in the edit as well as showing some behind the scenes operations concerning writing, constructing and completing the video overall. As you may be aware this one was quite tough to wrestle under control, and I hope the specifics of that become more apparent as you go through this one.

 I think I'm getting a handle on this format and hopefully you'll be seeing more of it when the next project rolls around. As usual feedback is appreciated, and I once again thank you for the support to this point, has been terrific seeing the Frasier project take off and I couldn't have put in the work you'll see in this video without your help!

 Hope this makes for good viewing- I'll have to catch you all in the next update. TTFN fam

- B

September Update (Patreon rewards and new projects)

 Hey everyone!

 First of all, thanks once again for your support as I was working on the Frasier video. I know the timeline got very skewed, and I really never mean to have months go by without videos, but both real life and the nature of the work just seems to get away from me when I least want. However, judging by the response I think we did okay! It was a long held hope to make this one possible and now that it’s finally realised I can at last tick that one off the list for good. Like I said, couldn’t have done it without you.

Naturally there are more Patreon specific rewards to follow as a result. There’s a Behind the scenes write up for all Patrons that you’ll have seen already posted, and a Timeline Tour for Usher and ASM tiers in the works. On top of that I’ll be doing a little Q and A update video around it like the Fantastic Four one- if it seems like I’m doing a lot around the subject at once, it’s simply because the revival is coming out in under 2 weeks. I’d like to say as much on this as possible before it comes out, to best maximise my position on the video before the situation changes. I don’t know if I’ll succeed in doing all this on time but I’ll definitely have it all done within this month, and all will feature unique talking points from one another. I also as I keep promising am holding onto some more behind the scenes footage, which I now have time to do something with. I’m gonna give em a whirl and see if I can put together something, because I really want to make more of this idea on some later videos.

 There’s also the matter of my planned future videos. With Frasier dealt with, that leaves one last video on my roadmap, another tv show project though not as comprehensive, as well as the promised Return to Monkey Island review and then, of course, the Marvel project. Monkey’s already had the most work done so that’ll be the first to get worked on, and the last video in the roadmap has been halfway drafted. However, the Marvel project is calling to me now that I’m focusing on the final script in what became a five part series. All the others have been drafted, some multiple times, and this one is halfway to completion. After a few years of working it out it feels like that’s begging for me to begin production, and I imagine once this is done that will occupy most of my time in the coming year. All my roadblocks in front of that are finally coming away, so that’s a bit exciting.

 I know I’m still juggling a lot of disparate subjects and there’s still some unfinished business, like Better Call Saul or Sly 4. I can promise you that all these things are always being looked at or thought about, and I wish I could work on them faster or more efficiently or even knew how best to tackle them to begin with, but my time is primarily drawn to whatever is taking the most of my enthusiasm in the moment, as that seems to be what leads to better videos and more active work. Leaving my apartment did make things difficult, and I still need to adjust my internet package and recording setup, but I’m glad enough was done when I had that space to continue working, and steps have been made to ensure I can pick that up again after this, too.

 That’s all I can think of for now. Again, as above, thank you all for the support and for ensuring I can make these crazy projects. But of course there’s no rest for the wicked as I have yet more to create. Til then!

 - B

Behind the Frasier Video

Hey gang!

Back with another behind the scenes overview on how the latest video came together. This time we’re looking at the extremely troubled production process on my two and a bit hour long Frasier video, which very nearly didn’t work at all. Very funny given I said this wouldn’t be as technical as the last video in my previous behind the scenes post. Ah well. Read on!

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A History of Frasier on Cheers

The idea

 Since I started, I knew I wanted to do a Frasier video.

 It’s not an exaggeration when I say I love this guy. I saw him by chance on tv in a hotel in New York, aged 11, and my parents explained it was a show they had already watched and loved, having grown up with Cheers as well. I watched, I came back home to England and kept watching, and slowly realised this person was so incredibly close to what I already saw myself as compared to my class-mates, explaining why my folks had been fans, too. This was the Sondheim/operetta loving, self destructive, pompous copy of all my existing traits as an odd, outsider teenager on the screen, and it got to the point where the friends I made much later in life would watch the show and turn to each other and say ‘oh my god, it’s /just/ Will’.

 So it was inevitable I’d eventually get to him. You’ve seen me make constant cutaways and references to him in my other videos, or talk about the talents involved when discussing other projects, or probably, if you were ever aware of him already, felt the vibes coming through me talking on and on about stuff anyway. It was never a question of if, only when, but I was never sure exactly how to do it.

 When I make a video on a subject, especially something already quite popular or well-discussed, I like to pick a particular angle, something I think will make for a specifically interesting video, to try to push myself and stand apart from the competition. It’s worth remembering when I started doing this kind of thing a lot less people were talking about every subject under the sun- so when I did an hour long piece on Hill Street Blues, nobody else was even close to doing old ass tv retrospectives, and the audience who remembered it weren’t really scouring YouTube for this kind of stuff. But, now that everyone’s doing video essays on everything, and more people of different generations are accessing YouTube, I’ve noticed those topics start to appear with increased viewership, things i thought only I would ever cover, including Frasier and Cheers, which both got the big video essay treatment (with nearly 800k views each, blimey.)

 In a way this wasn’t so bad. I was miffed to not be the first video essayist to do a big piece on my favourite character, but when it came to Cheers- a show I really love - I knew I only really wanted to talk about Frasier, knowing where his future went. And then it occurred to me that this still hadn’t really been dealt with. This other person who made these videos had discussed the shows, but hadn’t really gotten into the nitty gritty of analysing the character dynamics outside of their cultural contexts or the effect of the writing (in truth, I’m not a fan of what they created, for oh so many reasons) and I decided there might be room for me to offer something to the discussion after all.

 I had also heard a revival was taking place, after years of rumours and talks with 2022 finally seeing some confirmation. So, when I began my roadmap, I decided to make Frasier a high priority to tackle, and wouldn’t you know it, this year they started talking about its debut, with the trailer dropping halfway through my progress. By that point, I knew I had until October 12th to really hit peak Frasier interest- because if that show sucked, it very well might taint the conversation.

Time was of the essence.

Planning

 Now, I’d already watched both shows in their entirety over the years and knew Frasier off by heart, to the point where I can remember which scenes happened in which seasons- but Cheers I had only watched in full once during the Pandemic with my family, wanting to finally get to grips with his entire history. When Frasier showed up, I actually began to take a few notes, getting a better picture of how the character came to be and noticing things that seemed to bleed into his spin off. That started to be what got me excited about making a video, wanting to bring all of those connections together. For years I’d been told the frasier of cheers was very different to the Frasier of, well, Frasier, but I felt I could see the same traits I loved about the character from the very beginning, as well as the influences in the creation of Cheers at large that would be refined on his own sitcom, and a possible video began to brew, later realised in the events detailed above. 

 However, when I finally sat down to make it happen, starting in earnest around the end of last year, I wanted to obviously go further, go through every episode and make note of whatever might be of use, as well as things that I found personally interesting or funny. This resulted in a ‘Cheers Cheat Sheet’ I created where I made short hand notes that actually helped me keep track of everything I needed later when editing, really rough notes that had certain actions, lines and funny observations hastily written down so I could hang onto the feeling of when I wrote them. If I wanted footage of a certain event, scene or even a simple action that would look good in the video, I just needed to consult the sheet and get that episodes clip edited into the timeline. This made the editing process way less frustrating than it had been when I did the Hill Street video, not having to hunt down stuff from episodes I only half remembered.

 Research was also started around the same time. Cheers was made before people made an industry out of behind the scenes content, so a lot of the material I had to gather from obscure news pieces, old editorials uploaded to YouTube, individual interviews with the writers and actors, tv biographies, all that good stuff. As mentioned Ken Levine, one of the writer-producers of the show, ran a blog where he uploaded answers to thousands of questions about the show, and then graduated to making a podcast which he still runs today, talking to many people from both shows history and talking about the art of comedy and storytelling in Hollywood. It helped fill in so many gaps and more notes were made to decide which would be most relevant, and where to put all that information. I was after all the information relevant to either Kelsey Grammer or Frasier as a character, and that included any of the characters I felt were directly adjacent to his development- Sam, Lilith, and of course, the person I discovered was his blueprint- Diane. 

I  have always been fascinated with Diane Chambers and knew the video would have to feature her heavily, but I don’t think I appreciated how integral she was to actually defining Frasier. It was also true that Shelley Long’s time on the show was the subject of huge debate, as discussed in the video, with people either saying she was wronged by a frat boy cast, or that she was difficult to work with. Well, frankly, I fell down a rabbit hole when committing to research, discovering reports about Shelley and her career that could make for an entire video. The fact of the matter is, though, that a lot of this was strictly about her personal life, and while much of it suggested what was really going on, in the end I decided it was better to stick to mostly talking about the character and making sure the sensationalised parts of the story were dealt with responsibly, while also stressing her importance to the show. Some of this I will talk about later down the line, some I won't- Either way, trust me when I say the Diane section, when writing the video, really came from the heart. I relate to Frasier, and boy, by proxy, do I relate to Diane.

The basic script came together relatively quickly and all the information and story was assembled in what I initially thought was a well structured version of everything I needed on the page- but, as passionate as I had been in putting that all together so far, I realised I was running into problems that made me severely doubt myself. There was a point where I had a redrafted, finished script, totally voiced and edited, inserted into a timeline with a bunch of clips already settled in- but I realised very quickly something wasn’t right.

ZZZZZZZZ

 You might remember I originally promised a month turnaround, then announced at the end of that month that I had a problem with the script and doubled back to fix it. Well that problem was that I didn’t really feel the video flowed very well. It was really, really dull.

 I had a couple issues here- Number one, I was going through season by season, telling the story as it happened and sprinkling in analysis where I thought possible, feeling it was the best way to show the characters development. I hadn’t made allowances for every single cut I would need to explain parts of the story, and in a lot of places I’d over-explained it instead of letting the footage do the talking, and let the actual analysis take a back seat. This only became apparent when I put the audio in the timeline and was confronted with the actual length of the clips and the amount of them, as well as how it all actually flowed in the edit.

 Number two, I was talking about Frasier’s own show at the same time as talking about Cheers. I suddenly realised that might be very confusing- to hop back and forth between the future and the past, almost like the Godfather Part 2, in a video that was supposed to be just about Frasier’s time on Cheers. In the very first section I was talking about the future appearance of his mother and his dad and brothers opinion on that. But I hadn’t really established he had a dad and a brother yet. Hell, I was still establishing that he’d even dated Diane. Was that going to seem too messy?

 And number Three, each season’s section felt aimless. I found myself going ‘and then this happened, and then this happened, and now here’s a tangent about something else unrelated’, and it seemed like the video was just listing things going on without any great idea tying the video or individual sections together in any interesting way. Some of the clips went on way too long, I had far too many cutaways, and worried the video was becoming a pure clips show rather than a proper analysis. The final section originally didn’t have a Lilith or girlfriend section- it was just me talking about the final season as a sequence of things that happened all the way until the finale. I was deep into editing, I was also deep into losing the apartment after a price-hike, meaning anything I added or did would sound significantly different in my old recording space at my family home. I felt awful about how the video had developed, and had no idea how I was going to solve this quickly.

 Around the same time, I’d also been re-watching my old Sly videos for the patreon commentaries and was marvelling at how I’d managed to tell the stories of those games while making every section interesting, creating one heck of a sense of flow. One of the ways I’d done that was by making sure every section of the video was about an aspect of the overarching theme. In one section I’d talk about gameplay, then about the characters, then about the dynamics, the environment, all while telling the story through those compacted ideas that started small and built on from each other. That’s what the Frasier video was missing- the big theme, the concept of what the whole thing was *really* about, and each section needed to reflect a different idea. It was late, but I was finally hit with a sense of how to make it work, something I’d clearly done before.

Revision

 So the first fix was to go through each section, look at the points being made, and ask myself if there was a common word or idea that brought them altogether, and then rewrite the paragraphs to tie them into that idea, allowing me to keep most of the hard work that was already done if possible. The first section was about setting up his character but also showing he had more to say, so that became about ‘potential.’ The Karaoke bar happened in a season where I found myself talking a lot about tricks Kelsey Grammer was pulling off as an actor, so that became about ‘performance’. The second with his first wife was also about other interesting sitcom plots he got involved in and culminated in the fantastic wedding farce, so that became about ‘situations.’ And, amazingly, that went a long long way to making the video more interesting, without necessarily changing what was already there too drastically.

(At one point I tried to take all these words that married everything together and liken them to freudian concepts, but it was a meta-step too far as I could never find categories of Freudian or even Jungian theories that fit all the ideas I knew I wanted in there. Perhaps with a few more months, eh?)

 Those definitions immediately improved each section and soon I was able to weave in more of the analysis and research to match, as well as improve the style of editing. The cheat sheet I made helped the initial draft of the video, but there was still a lot of time spent figuring out which clips would be best for vaguer points I was making, where I didn’t know exactly what I was going to show on screen. In those moments I tend to pick a variety of examples from various episodes to prove that these things happen more than once, have the visuals truly match up to what I’m trying to say rather than just slapping in something that looks like it might be true and calling it a day. I had a separate timeline open where any clips I couldn’t immediately find a place for but wanted in the video could go, as well as cutaway clips I might want to use, spending ages debating which bits worked best in spots I didn’t initially plan to cut away from.

 Obviously there was a lot I knew would be in since the start and had written the script around, and needed to figure out how to avoid a pure clip-show feel. There’s also, because it’s YouTube, the decision on how to edit those clips either down to not take too much time, cutting out certain lines or audience laughter, and also how to edit around them so as to not get picked up by YouTube copyright bots. A lot of them did, but one trick I stumbled on was intercutting other shots or clips from other episodes, which as it turned out suited the style and message of the video better. Rather than let a clip from Frasier play out uninterrupted, it was better to cut back to cheers to show what they were talking about, either literally or emotionally, to demonstrate the points being made without necessarily saying a lot and also to deepen the connection between the two shows.

 Essentially, I reasoned with myself that the video needed to become a mosaic of Frasier’s life on Cheers. I knew in the end that I could never fully avoid the feeling of a clip show and in some ways that was okay, figuring there would be fans of both who just wanted someone to collect all the information about Frasier and put it in one easily accessible place, very different to a lot of my other videos. That said I also wanted to use those clips to say things I otherwise couldn’t in the script. I think for a lot of fans there are things said on Cheers or Frasier that feel connected to this greater idea of the character but aren’t often brought together in the same place, and I really wanted to create that, something where the impact of characters like Lilith or Diane were constantly present in his life, where people who only knew them through Frasier could see the history that had always been there, right under their nose.

 It also helped to choose music that gave each section a unified sound where possible. I originally had absolutely no idea what I was going to pick to underscore, originally looking for songs that had been mentioned or featured on either show, a couple of which made it into the video- but then I realised I had a full library of ragtime and standards that fit the feel of an old pub and matched some of the picks i'd already made. Made things a lot more fun after that, sometimes using the music to comment on the situations, too. 

 Doing all of that was what helped me better realise that it needed one last section before the end. Having spoken about Frasier’s relationships with Diane, Lilith and Nanette, I realised the stage had been set for Frasier’s flaws as a character. I was also, while picking out music, looking at some Sondheim tracks, with Frasier and myself both being fans, and while listening to Company’s ‘Drive a person crazy’ got a mad image of Frasier’s three Cheers Girlfriends in the singing roles, feeling some of the lyrics near the end could easily apply to Frasier. I told my sister and she goes ‘well, you have to put that in the video now’. It was the piece I’d been missing, and I realised in the end it actually fed into the ultimate truth of Frasier, as someone who was extremely lonely. That was when everything I’d written clicked into place, and I made one last re-draft of the final speech in the video to express that. It finally felt complete.

 Ultimately this was as much about me and my life and failings as much as it was about Frasier. It’s no accident I begin it talking about how alike we are because it’s really an excuse to open up, without outright saying anything, about my own issues and relationships I’ve experienced in my life. Loneliness is obviously a huge angle, not in a simplistic way of having no friends but finding it difficult to relate to people outside of your experience or to best understand yourself, and yet not wanting to let go of what you think makes you, well, you. I felt people could just watch it as a straight retrospective, but if they paid attention to that intro, could read more of the video as saying something else, realising that this was about myself and my own relationships and friendships, and hopefully feel a more real, empathetic pull towards the subject than someone simply talking about the history of a great sitcom character.

  I think all of this worked for the best. This was a character I really wanted to do justice to, and I worried there was a better video than the one I had come up with still in my brain somewhere. In the end, I can’t think of another video that would have worked, and this one seems to be getting good reviews anyway- so maybe this was the best possible video to have made after all.

-----------------------------------------

And that’s all I got! I hope this was an insightful look into the mad attempts I took trying to get this huge video together. There will be a little more content related to this on the way, so look out for that too. Until next time!

- B

A History of Frasier on Cheers

 All is revealed at last! I hadn't just been working on a video about Frasier Crane, but specifically one about Frasier's history on Cheers, and how it developed and informed one of my favourite shows ever. Apologies once more for the sheer amount of time it took to get this one together, I just hope you all feel it was worth it in the end. 

 Will be back soon with a write up on the video's process as well as with news about my next step on my roadmap for the rest of the year. Until then, enjoy your salad's, and maybe even some scrambled eggs. Mercy.

 - B

August Update (Video progress and rewards)

 As you can see, the Frasier video is very close to a completed timeline, but there's still quite a bit of work to do. I've spent an excruciating amount of time picking between clips, getting the variety and inclusion across the entire series to feel comprehensive while swapping bits around that worked better in other spots. It's helped me to identify some of the problems and what exactly I have to play with for the final pass, where i'll be taking notes on any minor line changes and editing all the final extra details (titles, effects etc). I know I'm being fairly thorough on this one but it feels necessary as I don't know that I'll ever get the chance to focus on this so intensely again.

 Some of you may have also caught wind that the Frasier revival series drops October 12th- I've actually known about it for a while and was always aiming to drop the video before it happened, but I didn't realise I'd be approaching that release quite so soon. I've made promises in the past that have fallen through on this and the Jak vid so I won't promise the video this month for sure in case I jinx it, but I like to think it could be very, very possible.

 Inr other news, the Patreon rewards are finally rolling out. ASM's got another commentary for the Sly Trilogy Retrospective, this time covering Sly 2, which was recorded before the move back to London. I should be recording the third once this video is completed as well as moving onto editing the Return to Monkey Island review. The behind the scenes videos I recorded have all now been organised into an album so I can grapple with how to present those too, once I sort one the rest should be a lot simpler to follow. Patreon has also updated its settings to allow me to better assemble my past posts and rewards via the new collections option, so I'll be making use of that soon. 

 I've settled since the move and unfortunately it's hampered a couple of benefits- i'm back to an atrocious internet speed, going to have to make use of some cafe's and lobbies again- but I am hoping to get that permanently fixed. I've been reconnecting with a lot of old friends, making plans and generally trying to figure out my next move while assembling my continued upcoming video plans. Thanks once again for your patience and support thus far, I apologise for making you wait but really hope I'll have something else for you not that long from now after many, many hours plugging away at my longest video yet. Onwards and upwards!

 - B

Commentary: The Sly Trilogy Retrospective (part 2)

 The second ASM commentary for the Sly Trilogy retrospective, this one covers the trials putting together a video that, of all the things i've made, i'm still extremely proud of. There's a lot of anecdotes in here about how the video was made and my general process but also on bits of trivia about the game and research I wasn't able to get into the video at the time. Hope this provides some extra insight and entertainment for the time being- my next step will be recording the commentary for the final title. 

- B

Link to full playlist-

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvLMYAXgwgWRYTaefy_dhOG_36uv4yhCa

July Update (Video progress)

 Sadly, no new video this month, but a lot of work has been goin' on here at B towers.

 Turns out the issues I was having with the script for the Frasier video persisted, even after the first re-write, and I decided to lay the entire thing out in the timeline and figure it out with the whole thing realised in front of me, using all the cutaways I wanted and such. I did that, went back to the script for a while, and then re-recorded and edited the audio for that new take. What you're seeing is the current version of the video with all the audio re-laid.

 As you can see, it's just a really big video by the nature of the way I decided structure it. I feel like there was probably a better, more concise way to do it, but I also had so much I wanted to properly cover. My main concern is keeping it well paced and engaging. With Bluth that felt pretty natural because the songs gave it a very different energy, and it's harder to gauge that I'm doing the same with this- but there's a lot of it I do think is working, and I'm persevering to complete it and continue shaping it out as I go. 

 Will probably become more obvious why this is the case when you find out what it's actually covering, but TL:DR, still making this one.

 Because it's been so encompassing it's been difficult to switch gears to my other projects, though the Monkey Island video's audio is done and on standby, as are the commentaries and extras I've been hoarding. Didn't mean for it to all get held up, and part of the reason is I was hoping to get this one done before I leave my apartment of 2 years to head back to London- looks like i'll be finishing it off there instead.

 The long and the short of it is that a lot of rental changes and life changes have forced me to think about moving out and setting up somewhere else. There's a lot i'm going to miss (my buddies up here in particular) but I also feel this is the right time- the plan was always to move back to London eventually in the hope of finding somewhere else, as well as to continue pursuing stage work, and there is a plan in place to start on all that. 

 So I apologise for the delays in content, it's all happening, it's just more protracted than I planned. However I of course have to offer thanks once again for the support in that time, it genuinely does help me keep up my day to day life so I can continue working, and has also been put to use on what I think will help this video out a little on youtube's home page! I'll let you guys have a peek and see you all in the next post. Take care friends. 

- B 

June Update (video progress and new script completed)

Hey gang!

Fairly short update this time around as I crack on with the next couple projects. The Frasier video wasn’t quite coming together. I recorded and edited the audio, from an incredibly long script, and it just came across as boring, and I wasn’t sure if it was just me or if something was inherently wrong. Listening to it I was suddenly able to identify why that had happened and went back in and overhauled it paragraph by paragraph, ultimately cutting the script down by a full five pages. It’ll be a long one, but I think it’ll be a lot better than the version I had before, and to be honest I just really wanted to get the script right before I committed to putting the edit in the timeline this time around, all of which you’ll hear more about when I complete the video and post the behind the scenes writeup. I’ll be heading back in to record in a few minutes from posting this, so the work continues.

I also however can happily announce another script was finished last week- after leaving it alone for a while, I went back to an old draft and finally found a way to put into words what I wanted to say about Return to Monkey Island from what I’d already written. It’s a much shorter video so I’m optimistic work should go smoothly, and will keep you updated on the result.

Patreon rewards are still being organised around that, with the Sly 2 Retrospective commentary already recorded for ASM Patrons, and videos being shot for my progress on the Frasier project for the Usher tier.

That’s all for now. Thanks as always for the support over the last month as I’ve tinkered away at these projects. Itching to get this next one out and show it to you all- got a little more personal than expected, if I’m honest, and now there’s scrambled egg all over my face. What is a boy to do. *jazz*

- B

Commentary: The Sly Trilogy Retrospective (part 1)

 Back again with another commentary for all you ASM's- this time concerning my Sly Trilogy Retrospective. Here you'll get some insights into my thought process behind putting this video together, how i felt about the games at the time and how I feel about things I did I may or may not have done differently. Has been good practice doing these as well as remembering what it was like to make these- I'll be getting onto the second one real soon. Enjoy!

- B

Link to full playlist-

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvLMYAXgwgWRYTaefy_dhOG_36uv4yhCa

After I played Tears of the Kingdom

 Part 2 of my Zelda Journey, this time covering my experience with the newly released Tears of the Kingdom. Apologies again for this coming out a little later than planned, wanted to clean up some thoughts I hadn't fully articulated in the video the way I wanted and get some extra footage. Was a blast to get to this point and I hope you enjoy the follow up thoughts that came from it. Perhaps, later down the line, we'll get to talk about this series again. 

 Time for me to get to work on some Patreon rewards and the next big video. Enjoy the rest of your week and I'll see you later for another update! 

 - B

Commentary: Cortex N Chums

Commentary: Cortex N Chums

So, if you just saw the B-vault post, you'll have seen that I reuploaded a video featuring all episodes of my old animated series I made as a kid, Cortex N Chums. As ASM patrons you get a chance to hear the thoughts that went behind making this as well as how I feel about it now, especially given everything the series has been through. There's still more I could probably say or add about plans I made for this, and maybe that will still be told yet, but for now enjoy hearing a bit more of the story about this project I managed to totally pass off as a GSCE school assignment instead of drawing fruit and stuff.

Will also pass you guys a link to the new playlist, I may use those as the video links above from now on if that works too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnMoZXONNk&list=PLvLMYAXgwgWRYTaefy_dhOG_36uv4yhCa&index=3

Next commentary will be for the first video in the Sly Trilogy Retropective, so will see you in this tag again when it's live!

- B

B-Vault: Cortex N Chums

 As promised, this is a very rare release of my old animated show from when I was a teenager, Cortex N Chums. I've debated for ages whether or not I should make this public again or what I should do to preserve it, and that could still change- for now, I'd rather have it available for those interested in my work and who may want to know more about where I started out on here. There's a few edits to save some people's identities and some words about the project at the start but otherwise you're getting the full series as it was originally seen, including the original music cues- which means this video apparently won't play in Russia. Sorry fellas, I did try.

 I've also decided to make B-Vault videos available to Ushers as well as ASM's, seeing as it seems to even out the amount of content each tier has access to at what I think is the appropriate level, and if you're cool with that I'd like to offer you guys at that level the official link to the Vault Playlist. You can refer to this when you want to get those videos, which I think means they'll stay exclusive to you guys, if that's not the case let me know and i'll get on the case. Commentary will be available for ASM's very shortly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pajO6TIRY0w&list=PLvLMYAXgwgWQQoxDovMnR6ErAOeqT1IJV&index=3

Hopefully that all works, enjoy this trip down memory lane and every so often ask yourself what the bloody hell I was thinking. Til next time!

- B

May Update (Video progress + Rewards)

 Hey everyone! Apologies again for the silence this month, classic case of me doing a lot to try and release something before the month is out and instead delaying everything else in the process, so we’ll go through what’s up bit by bit.

 Real talk- Tears of the Kingdom sucked me in and took WAY more of my time than I planned, even knowing it was going to be a fairly big title. Really wanted to make sure I’d seen all the major events and quests on offer before I committed to writing, and I managed to do that in about 2 weeks, but only just got the audio edited and into the edit bay on Monday. It’s not, thankfully, that long a video compared to the first, the script only being an extra 4 pages, but it’s going to be about combing through a lot of footage and making sure I get the broadest possible window of that experience in video form and making any adjustments where I feel necessary. At the moment it’s a fairly straightforward process to make, about 50 percent of it complete already, so I think you’ll be seeing it fairly soon.

 Other business is still ongoing- The Frasier video is being worked on, that did get pushed back a little but it’s in good shape. I did have a little go at the Birthday related video, though I’m not sure when that will release, and a lot of time has been going into the final episode of my Marvel project while I’m feeling the burn to finish it, so a lot of juggling has been going on to try and keep everything moving.

 However what I really didn’t meant to fall off was my output on Patreon only content which I actually prepped before I left for home, and am in the process of putting back on its feet now. A new commentary on my incredibly old Cortex N Chums series will be available for ASM patrons, in a separate post I’ll make after this one, along with the original version in a B-Vault release. I had some issues with copyright and wanted to deal with that in case it ever became publicly viewed in the future, but that hasn’t happened so I’ll settle for this as it is. A Sly Trilogy commentary for the first video should be popping up next.

 The Behind the scenes videos are undergoing a slight reconsideration- I still have some for the Jak vid to release as well as the upcoming big Frasier vid, but I’m deciding whether or not I want to release them as a full unit or as separate videos as I build up to the project. I’m going to be putting them all in the timeline real soon to figure it out, just want to make sure the rewards for ushers are properly fulfilled, especially when there aren’t as many timeline tours coming out until big videos are complete. I think, to compensate, I’ll give Ushers access to the vault videos and let the commentaries stay as part of the ASM rewards- to my mind that seems like a fair amount of more frequently released rewards between each tier. If you guys have any thoughts on that, don’t hesitate to let me know!

 That’s all I have for now. We’ll hopefully be back here very soon with the Zelda video, some rewards, and then the Frasier project later on. Thanks for sticking around, should be some exciting stuff arriving through to you shortly. Til then, gang!

-B

April Update (Next major video and beyond)

 Hey everyone!

 Apologies for the slightly delayed update. Last week was my 30th Birthday and I celebrated in a way that you actually might see as a short video. As a result I'm briefly in London where I'll be seeing friends and family while working on some scripts before heading back to the suite to get serious with my next video.

 And what would that video be? I hinted at it before, but I'm now happy to reveal that it's about something I've always joked about doing, something I've always wanted to talk about, something that would naturally follow a bunch of video game content-

 It's Frasier. 

 This has obviously been on the cards for a long time. I had the idea a few years back and finally started putting in the work last year, and given that I'm moving through a finished draft I'm hoping this will finally come together soon as the next major video essay. But this isn't just a Frasier retrospective. There's a slight twist to the way I want to cover this, and I'm hoping it'll still be a nice surprise to see how I've decided to tackle the subject. It's a really fun thing to create and fingers crossed you'll see it at the end of May or just over. He'll be listening.

 But this won't be my only video. I still have some behind the scenes on the Jak video I need to assemble as well as a commentary on a very old project from the vault. I don't think it's bad to reveal that Sly trilogy commentaries are also starting to happen and will slowly make their way out between projects. The possibility of other short videos is also still on the cards so keep an eye out for those too!

 I also just want to put out a very quick word for the sake of posterity and say that I have made some very exciting developments vis-à-vis the Marvel Project.  I know this is taking its time as just a script and I promise to go into more detail soon to explain why that's the case, (it's really about planning for every aspect of production as much as even having a script) but I spent a good chunk of this month getting very serious to completing some huge drafts, and I think I have something approaching the status of 'very special.' I'm really hoping and praying that the bit that needs the most attention right now near the end can be completed sooner rather than later, and that I can finally confirm what you're going to see. It is an incredibly personal, far reaching, experimental thing and I am desperately trying to get the word out before the year is over. So, apologies for making you wait, but know that it's still taking shape, and that you'll all know what it is in the near future. For all those who've been supporting this and are still contributing to make it happen, I want to thank you again. Really hope this does your support justice. 

 That's all I have for now. Have an excellent week and I'll see you all at the next couple of uploads!

 - B

Before I play Tears of the Kingdom

 A quick new video discussing my thoughts on the upcoming Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and the Zelda series as a whole. The hope is that after I'm done with the game I'll come back and do another short video discussing the experience- though it could turn into yet another big essay. I doubt it right now, but it was nice to finally cover one of my favourites.

 There'll be an update at the end of the month and some more Patreon rewards in the near future too! Will be time to lift the curtain on what the next big video essay is on the roadmap which, whatever deity willing, will be done at the end of next month. Will see you all then!

 -B 

Commentary: Old Video Essay (Portal 2)

 Heya ASM's! 

 As promised, you guys get the extra reward promised in the recent updates, commentaries over my old material, as well as a video from the B Mask vault.

 This is a reupload and commentary of my old video on Portal 2, called 'Why GLaDOS is Beautiful', discussing my feelings towards how the characters were presented. The commentary goes into how I feel about that video and the game today and gives you some insight into how I started the process of getting into making these. The reupload can be seen at this link right here. 

https://youtu.be/7Wb-PEpe68U 

 There are already more commentaries on the way! I've also edited together one for Cortex N Chums and have plans for more in the coming months. Some of these B Mask Vault videos will become public rather than only unlisted for the sake of online preservation, but the commentaries will always remain private for Patrons, so hopefully these provide some good insight for those of you wanting to know more about how this all started!

 Excuse the developing Thumbnails as well- I'll be continuing to decide what I want to use for the best as I figure this out, but the format of all this new content I think is working for me. I'll try and finalise those as we create more and see how it all looks together.

 Will also be back with new non-patreon videos/updates very soon. Hang tight everyone, and enjoy this trip to the past. See ya in a bit, gang!

 -B

Timeline Tour: Remembering Jak

 Hey everyone, and welcome to the first of the new Patreon bonus features for Usher contributors and above- the Timeline Tour! 

 In these videos, I essentially go through the timeline of whatever recently completed project I've made and discuss all the various details and decisions that came about while putting it all together. You'll have already read a rundown of how the project came to be and where it ended up, but this gets into more detail about the individual decision made within the edit as well as the processes that got me to that point.

 This time we discuss many of the various decisions made putting together Remembering Jak and why I made certain visual or structural choices over others. I tried to make it a mix of thought processes, individual edits for jokes and pacing, and some of the research and drafts that came before putting these ideas into the timeline. Jak in particular was quite a tough video to create, so I hope this gives you a better idea of why it was difficult on a moment to moment basis, and offer a bit more insight into my brain. 

 Now this is obviously a brand new concept so I'd love to hear what you guys make of it. I've been looking for ways to reward patrons without taking myself away from my other projects and this seems like a good way to do it. I have no idea if it will remain in this format, and spent a little more time trying to establish something I could work with, so any feedback on what else I could do to improve on this without taking too much more time away is appreciated. 

 But wait, there's more! This and various behind the scenes videos will be the norm provided for Usher backers, but if you're an ASM, you also get access to commentaries and secret videos from the B Mask vault that will be announced here soon. These will be the cherry on top to the B Mask experience, if we're calling it that now, I guess we are. 

 Either way, thank you again for the support! I hope this goes some way to offering more to you guys and the way you've been keeping things afloat the past couple years. I don't plan to stop any time soon, so watch this space for more! 

 -B

March Update (Behind the Jak video)

Hey hey hey!

Welcome back folks, for another update to clock out the month. I took a little break after finishing the Jak video and then got back to work on a bunch of other stuff, including some Patreon rewards you’ll be seeing shortly. Next month is going to be a little busy, so I can’t guarantee the next big video will be done in that time, but it’s coming together fairly well and is a lot less technical, so hopefully won’t go through quite as extreme a process as Jak did. To hear more about that, I’ve got another post-mortem post on the subject detailing all the crazy ways this video challenged me. Take a gander below to read all about it!

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Remembering Jak

The idea

Some of you may remember way way back I’d done a video on the ratchet series. It’s not my best work, very haphazardly made and with a few jokes and references I probably wouldn’t make now, but at its core was an idea I was very happy with, finally voicing how I felt the Ratchet series had morphed from the thing I liked, a fun game that turned out to be a smart commentary on consumerism, to a bland Pixar franchise. This ended up being the ball that fellow Youtuber The Gaming Brit (Charlie) grabbed and ran to the end of the finish line with in his own series of Ratchet videos, so I didn’t feel too compelled to revisit the subject in great detail. But I did plan to talk more about the other franchise I brought up in that same video. And it was going to be very different.

Originally it was just going to be a short video talking about all my issues with Jak 3 specifically. Back then I was making videos that were around ten to twenty minutes alone, and had started becoming friendly with Charlie. We’d shoot the breeze about how much we didn’t really care for the game and all the funny ways it bothered us. I felt incentivised to sum up all my issues with the franchise within that video, and as I wrote this, way back in like, 2015, I realised I actually had what I felt was a cool point to make in relating the series to the riddle of the sphinx, and present my own third game pitch. I was very excited about that angle and kept redrafting, telling myself I’d do it over the years. Then Charlie (who had sat on his own ideas long enough) released his excellent Jak video, which raised most of the points I would have, only better than I had in my draft, with many ideas he hadn’t shared that I hadn’t considered, and I decided to file the project away.

But last year, I got thinking about it again. I looked at the draft and realised I still really liked that analogy, and with even more time having passed and more thoughts coming to me now about the rest of the series, that could make for a neat video commenting on the inconsistency of the Franchise and how that actually made for its consistent Legacy, of Jak’s nature as an adventurer. It set me going, going back to dig out my old games and strategy guides, and made me schedule it as part of the next block of videos I wanted to tackle, to finally get it done and out there by the fall of 2022.

And things didn’t quite go according to plan.

Troubles

For a start, I felt like I was kind of working backwards. The new Draft now went into all the games to best represent the point, and I had plenty to say, but I also didn’t want to repeat what everyone else was saying. Charlie in particular had raised points I didn’t want to tread on and I didn’t want it to be an overly long piece, either, as I had made quite a few of those at the time. I also had no clue how I was going to visually represent the pitch outside of drawing it myself or via commissioning another artist, and I didn’t want to tackle it until the video was mostly done, in case I found it wasn’t working and could cut it from the timeline. I was feeling a little insecure about it all of a sudden- but at the same time I wanted to get the video done and I pushed myself to get a final draft I was happy with, record it, put the video on its feet and see what it looked like.

Getting that original final draft was very difficult. I didn’t like how it was flowing, I got kind of twisted and tongue tied on the overall point I wanted to make, and the more research I did the more I felt I needed to add. When I finally felt like it was good enough and made a recording, I kept listening back to it in the edit and felt demoralised at how it just wasn’t coming together for me, dragging my feet in bringing that final edit into being. There were other new technical processes involved- I was making the switch in recording old games through an OSSC to produce the best quality footage of the original copies, and not only was I making strides to do this with the Jak trilogy, I knew I also needed to do the same for Ratchet 1 to Deadlocked, which of course I knew would feature in quite a bit of the video.

Tragically, the Jak 2 and 3 footage I had corrupted on an old disk drive which I had to replace. It meant I couldn’t get the work done to my original deadline and in the end I let other projects that were coming to me faster take control, so I could ensure that more content was made. This is how we got the shorter, more concise Medievil video, another idea I’d sat on for a long time. I’d been hit with inspiration that month on how to word it and felt compelled to put that together out of nowhere, so I figured I should power through with that while I was inspired. Still, I worried about how much further Jak would be pushed back. I didn’t want it to come out at Christmas, it wasn’t really a Christmas video, so I switched to another long held plan. January I wanted to hit because I thought it would be funny to call it Jakuary, but once again it wasn’t coming together fast enough, and I switched over to Oz.

Feb was going to be my time, I thought. Charlie had graciously offered me his Jak 2 and 3 footage which in the end was probably for the best, as he played the game better and had more coverage than I’d ever had in my original files. But as I put the entire video together, I realised it just didn’t seem right. There were things I didn’t explain earlier that would have set up aspects raised later, points that suddenly sounded like nonsense, and a very odd structure where ideas didn’t flow from one place to another. The worst part was that I felt the pitch now felt a bit hollow- I hadn’t drawn it up yet and it seemed to not fit with the rest of the video, which was just me talking about the jak games, ruminating on if it could come back, and then pitching a concept that didn’t really comment properly on anything. At least, that’s how it was coming across to me.

I sat on that edit, feeling like I could release it anyway, but it didn’t feel right, and as showed in a behind the scenes video that edit was abandoned on the last day of Feb so I could completely rewrite the piece around the current edit and try to improve it again.

Jason

Charlie messages me and says hey, have you seen this 2003 speech from Jason? I was like, no, I’d done a lot of research both for the video and over the years as a fan, but hadn’t thought to look at Jason’s interviews specifically outside of the Jak or Crash based searches or content. He sends it my way, and my entire perspective on the matter completely shifted. Partly because it was a very good speech- Jason is a great speaker with a passion for the craft and it was a real intriguing piece of history, but also because it redefined my understanding of the people behind this very odd franchise.

I realised the whole reason Jak works, in spite of all the reasons it shouldn’t, is because his adaptability was inherent to the people who brought him to life. They were playing the market to produce art and promote talent, and while it was messy, it was a passionate fight to stay relevant and to prove they had something to say even without all the conventional wisdom at their disposal, that they were just as good at creating worlds as any marketing department assigned to help them. It was such a clear message that it suddenly recontextualised a lot of what I’d been trying to say anyway and made me commit to having Jason as the major through line, the voice that drove Jak into existence and benefitted the people he brought with him.

This also reaffirmed the pitch at the end as proof that the franchise they changed to adapt to new audiences could continue to do so, but that it would only be half the battle. The ideas were suddenly flowing together a lot better than ever before and I was getting more excited about how that could shape the video and better create something that hadn’t been said. I went on a full binge of every possible interview ever given, I went back to the further reading like the design bibles and strategy guides to see if they cross referenced with that material, and I managed to re-shape the video into a much better draft that final felt like it was aiming for something specific. And I even got to keep my pitch in at the end, which now felt like closure on the idea of Jak as a franchise at the time of recording, rather than a question mark to hang onto until something new came along.

Looking back on it now, it’s probably been one of the more difficult videos to put together, in same way Sly 3 had to be pulled through from almost nothing other than some core ideas I knew I wanted to express to an incredibly lucid video, and one of the things I’m most proud of. I’m not sure if I feel the same way about this video, but I am incredibly happy with what it ended up as. I noticed that so many other creators had produced Jak videos around the same time, and while I didn’t watch them so as to not be tainted further from being able to make a more personal take, it did make me feel like perhaps I was wasting my time. But I knew it was one of those things I’d always wanted to make, and that if I didn’t offer the project up I’d really be kicking myself later on.

Perhaps another thing that gave me extra courage was having Charlie offering both criticism and support on the sidelines, having waited for this video from me for years and wanting to see me get it done. One day a week or so before release, he said something incredibly encouraging- that while I always tend to struggle to pull a video together, in the end I always seem to come through alone and pull off something great out of nowhere, which kind of galvanised me to try and prove that could be the case here, too. The fact that I’d wanted to do this for so long on top of all that really felt like a major confidence boost- with this one finally ticked off, it feels like even more subjects are possible.

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And that, as they say, is that!

As you may be aware, more Patreon offers are on the way for the Usher and ASM tiers who will in addition to this post receive behind the scenes videos, both showing aspects of the process of making the video as it happened, and a video that goes through the timeline of the final edit and gives further commentary on some of the choices made. There will also be commentaries on other, older videos for the ASMs, revealing some stuff hidden in the B Mask vault. I’m still experimenting with the look and level of detail with that stuff going forward, any feedback on what you guys think is or isn’t working is all greatly appreciated.

Oh, and don’t forget that there are still two confirmed videos from my roadmap to get to….

- A video on a beloved sitcom character

- A video on a famous TV show

And of course other, smaller projects will probably emerge around those. Saul and Monkey Island are still in the drafts, as well as the Marvel Project scripts crawling towards completion. Were that there weren’t just one of me, alas, it’s just me. I’m still figuring out how best to approach more frequent, shorter content without taking away from those larger videos, and given I feel good about the Patreon rewards finally getting cracked I’d like to think it’s all possible down the line. 

Will keep you all updated, but til then have a great Start to your April!

Catch ya next time,

-B

Remembering Jak

 Guys, I can't tell you how wild it is to finally have this done. 

 After years of telling myself I'd make this, then putting it off, then finally committing and telling my patrons, then stumbling due to issues beyond my control, then getting nervous about a full edit and constantly having to tell people it's happening while scrambling to try and make it better, finally, here it is- a video covering the entire Jak series with an ending I came up with in 2015. 

 Thank you once again for your patience and support as this finally came together. I hope it lives up to expectations and offers a perspective you might not have yet come across regarding certain aspects of a very messy, but very talented series of games. I think I learnt a lot from what I discovered, and the same may be true for you, too! Let me know how you find it.

 Some of you will remember last month I made an announcement about new Patreon tier rewards, and those will be more formally announced in a short video at some point soon. For now I'll break down what to expect from me in the next couple weeks-

 Audience, Usher and ASM patrons will be able to access a write up on the video process mostly detailing how the video came to be with a few further thoughts, as provided with some of the previous projects. 

 Usher and ASM patrons got a taste of some behind the scenes discussion regarding the moment this video got into a slightly sticky spot at the end of last month, and next they'll receive another little video that includes even more of the process, with the plan from now on being to document aspects of the video making process as they happen from now on. 

 ASM Patrons will also be treated to some extra content in the form of a commentary on an older project as well as access to a couple older videos. Will go through all of this in more detail later this month too. 

 That's all for now! Have a great weekend gang, and enjoy this revisit to the Jak world- I'll be taking a short break to think of what needs to be done for the next couple projects, especially the last two promised videos on my original roadmap. Still more exciting things to come!

 -B