Crash Bandicoot: N Sane Trilogy - Behind the Scenes (Patreon)

Well, this video finally happened. I guess it hasn't been that long since the game was released but in terms of "internet time" and the matter of it still being a relevant subject...

It was tough balancing my ideas and usual amount of production quality with actually getting everything done in decent time for a video this length but... I think  I did it? Only time will tell if I've managed to ride whatever Crash hype is still floating around YouTube...

Anyway, as usual I'll run through some of things that changed throughout the last couple weeks of putting this together!

Oh and also, welcome to everyone else! I've opened this post up to EVERYONE in order to show people what I get up to

How the video came about:

This is a pretty easy one but... this was 100% going to happen after I put the effort into doing 3 separate Crash videos on the run up to this.

So yeah, there was no sudden inspiration, it's just been a thing I was going to do anyway!

How the video changed during production:

This one's no so easy. Basically the entire video in it's current form is totally different from how it started. I was really struggling with how to word things, and even go about presenting the video which lead to me re-writing the video 3 times in the space of a week.

I was having a serious dose of writers block, which I think is mainly down to the fact I'd already spent a solid 6 weeks writing and editing videos about the Crash trilogy, and was about to do it all over again...

Things started out with this as a "Quick Look" video, similar to the one I did on Titanfall 2. However, I felt I had more to say, and it also seemed a waste going through all 3 of the originals to then end things with a quick 5 minute summary on this game I'd been waiting for all year.

This is what the video looked like towards the end of production:

The other thing which didn't just affect this video, but will also affect the rest of my videos from this point on is that I've decided to stay away from any substantial narrative carrying my videos forward.

There's many reasons for this, the main one being that I'm usually stuck in the house with nobody to help me with filming, so going outside to new locations just isn't something I can do. So making some sort of on-going narrative seems redundant.

This could be seen a giving up, but honestly... I don't think I'm very good at writing with a narrative in mind, and I feel much happier and more free being able to open and close each video however I want to, and go nuts with editing.

Just look at the opening to this one! Dramatic shots of the shelves with my empty chair from my absence, a stupid reference to a certain Wii game, live action cartoon effects and a time portal coming out of my ceiling!

The thumbnail has also had a bit of a change in that regard too... I have this habit of cluttering my thumbnails and forgetting that they don't actually appear that big when viewed as a thumbnail. Here's what it looked like before.

After a little advice from my friend Square Eyed Jak, I changed it to what it looks like now to help with that stuff I mentioned before. I'm pretty late to the party on this one so I need people to know exactly what I'm offering here straight away!

Also, that PNG of Crash in the new thumbnail I had to make myself, so having a unique image of Crash that not many other people are using should help it stand out.

Everything else is fairly small stuff that got changed at the last minute. 

The on screen line where I say "thanks for not being greedy bastards, Activision" was originally voice-over done over a shot of the game case, which would zoom out to reveal my stood in the corner of the room holding it up into the air... Yeah it was dumb, so it became one of the many takes of me doing the line sat down like usual.

Ironically, it's the take that went wrong that ended up in the final video. Hitting the camera tripod wasn't some editing guff, aside from me de-saturating the image. I just happened to catch the tripod leg and thought it looked funny enough to keep in during editing!

The other shot that got cut, for no other reason than me forgetting to film it was when the video cuts off to show an example of the music in Crash 1, there was going to be a shot of me miming the drum beats to that particular music track that plays.

Maybe it's for the best I forgot to do that...

Other trivia and info:

I actually managed to do this entire thing, and render it just the once! I know it doesn't sound like a big deal but since changing my videos over to 50FPS.

I've had some serious fuck-ups during the final stages of editing of late... but I know what I was doing wrong and rendering at 50FPS doesn't seem to take much longer than 25FPS, so it's a win-win situation for everyone!

And, while I was using it for the previous 3 Crash videos... I think the quality of my new camera shows much better here. And it's so much easier to set up shots now I can actually see what I'm supposed to be doing... so that's going pretty well!

(Which reminds me, one of my goals on here was to buy a new camera, I'll be changing that to a green screen as I'd one day love to have one of those!)

And that's a wrap!

That's it! I'm done with Crash... for now!

While I plan on coming back to him before the year is out, I'm pretty much done playing any Crash games for the sake of videos for a while now.

I shan't say exactly whats next, as I haven't fully made up my mind and I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone...

But, I do have at least one video I'd like to do and time it right to be relevant for some cheeky extra views! It's a game I've been playing a fair bit recently and I think it'll be fun to speak out about what I feel about it given it's popularity.

Other than that, I have no idea! Probably back to talking about games people forgot or don't care about! :)

If you're not already a Patron, then know I do posts like this for each video I make, and have been getting more and more in-depth over time :)

 Thanks for your support! 

- Pete