Muppet Monster Adventure Review - Behind The Scenes (Patreon)

Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed the video! As usual here's the rundown on some of the stuff I had to get done to make the final video in the month-or-so it took to make it!

How the video happened:

This game was originally suggested to me by someone on the Petronious Discord Server a few months ago (along with several others) and I very much payed attention to some of those suggestions!

I did ORIGINALLY have another game entirely in mind. Nothing on the PlayStation and not one of the "usual suspects" most people with my tastes would consider reviewing... but it would have fell into the same "spooky but not scary" games I look for at this time of year but due to some potential technical limitations later down the line I was on the prowl for another game anyway...
So the timing of that suggestion couldn't have been more perfect.
I obviously played it cool enough for nobody to notice... but yeah, I looked into it that day and then found a copy going for fairly cheap and in decent condition on eBay, so I went for it and the game must have arrived around two months ago!
When this situation arises I find it best to have a quick glance at some gameplay and make a decision based on my first impressions. There's no point watching loads of reviews about the game in question because... the whole point is I'll be reviewing it myself... so I basically saw a lot of running around, jumping and collecting things in a colorful environment and figured it was worth a shot!
The fact the game turned out to be a pile of shite is neither here or there, as I was mainly looking for material and... I think I found enough to work with even after the first lot of levels!

A total coincidence...

Another thing I like to do when reviewing a game is to have a look and see how well known (or obscure) the game is, and get a look at the different names of the channels that have covered it are and I was pleased to see a familiar name appear at the very top of the page!

Jamez Kelly! (for everyone else who isn't aware Jamez has been backing me on Patreon here for quite some time now!)
(Jamez, I did have a look at the video by the way. But like I mentioned above I tend not to watch entire reviews on upcoming games to ensure I'm not copying anyones wording etc!)
But yeah, I just thought that was a neat little coincidence. Hopefully the surprise is worth it!

How the video changed during production:

Straight away one of the first things that changed from the moment I went to start filming was the hooded skeleton that appears in the opening skit thing.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, the skit was essentially a shot for shot remake of a popular and heavily meme'd scene from Muppets Most Wanted.

From this shot alone I was hoping it would be a perfect teaser image for the entire video. When I first showed my friend TomatoGhost this image he straight away guessed what I was doing, which means I must have got it close enough!
Originally this other character was going to be another version of Petronious, wearing a dark hood. Very much in the same vein as the scene the whole thing is based on. An evil doppelganger!
But I ran into a problem of not having a suitable cloak or shroud to wear that wouldn't fall off if I moved about... and when rummaging around to look for one I found this Skeleton prop.
I did a quick video and posted it on Twitter but yeah, I literally did quite literally stumble across the Skeleton puppet by accident and it's one of those things I've not seen in... at least 10 years... but it was sat at the back of a cupboard and ended up being just what I needed as a replacement!

So I just used one of my T-shirts and stuck the puppet head through the sleeve, and filmed a few shot of him moving around and opening his mouth so I could sync it up with the audio from the Muppets Most Wanted scene.
This thing being a puppet in and of itself ended up working pretty well in my favor, given the source material of this skit, I think. Puppets are awesome.

(here's a selection of the various poses I considered using for the thumbnail, as well as some of the green screen shots that made it into the video!)
My other alternative would have been literally getting a Kermit puppet but those are either WAAAYY too expensive... or some cheaply made thing from overseas that wouldn't have arrived in time anyway.
(Now I think about it Kermit being green, and then filming him on a green screen would have caused havoc during editing too so it's probably for the best I went with Skeleton Head, here...)
But yeah, I'm actually gutted I only found this puppet on the actual LAST day of filming, otherwise he would have been in the video a lot more! I've put him (and his pumpkin friend which didn't get used) away somewhere I'll easily find them again in the future, though.
I did manage to find a large enough loose fitting T-shirt to use as a cloak, but as I suspected it wouldn't have worked if I was moving around so the only time it was used was in the thumbnail, which originally looked like this...

After a little bit of feedback from a friend (and another Patreon backer) PauseBreakAlex I went with the other option as... it's kinda hard to see who it actually is in this version.
So yeah, the makeshift cloak worked well enough for the thumbnail, but wouldn't have been suitable at all for moving around. I still have the totally face-covering hood from two years ago, but I wanted my face to be shown in the video from time to time so I wrote that off as an option fairly early into production.
The only other real change was cutting out a short list of example "spooky games"at the start of the video. The idea was to only list 3 and then fall back on how little I actually know about horror games but... It didn't flow very well and I... forgot to film one line that would link the voice-over to the camera shot properly... so I just cut it out. I think the flow of that section ended up being better for it anyway, so it's no big loss.

Other Trivia and Info:

I'm not really sure what else to say about this one as most of the interesting stuff I've already discussed up above.
All of the lighting behind me in the camera segments are remnants of my last two years of Halloween specials... all still running on the same batteries, surprisingly.

For giggles I did put Dead Rising Chop Till You Drop on full display right behind me during the main part of the camera sections, for the sake on an archaic channel-specific meme that will forever haunt me until I eventually re-review that game.
But in general, for some reason this video just took an age to film... Literally.
I must have had about 45 minute of camera footage of me redoing my lines over and over again, to end up only using around 2 minutes of it in total throughout the video.
Just goes to show how selective you can be, I suppose. I'm not super keen into making outtake videos as most of mine aren't even that funny. It's just me stopping mid-sentence, pausing and then starting over again... so there was a lot of pointless fluff.
Camera segments are easily my least favorite part to do as a person as I don;t usually like being on camera, but I know it's needed to give my videos more personality :)

Finished!

I know it isn't much but I always like to post the finished timeline on here as a memento to what the final thing physically looks like... but yeah.

What comes next:

The next main Petronious video is more than likely going to be about the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and as that isn't out until mid-November... I have a fair amount of wiggle room to work towards some other videos I'd like to make before and in the new year.

Right now that means a potential Christmas themed review, along with several other regular episodes I'd like to publish in the new year...
But right now I'm not sure if I'll have time for making essentially 5-6 full videos in 3 months, so something may have to give.

If I'm being honest with myself, as good as Spyro Reignited will be for the channel as it's an easy target for someone like me... it's honestly the one I'm least interested in at the moment so I might scale that video down so it's a shorter one.

As for the extra projects... more details on that closer to the time, as it's all stuff that'll require a lot of actually playing games first and foremost... so I best get going!

Thanks for the support everyone, this game was partly funded by your kind donations towards my work on the channel!
- Pete