Production Blog: Rough Cut (Patreon)

In the last 2 days I turned 1 hr 40 mins of footage into an 8-minute rough cut of the episode.

This is simply an edit that decides all the performance takes and timing. Sort of a backbone for the video. There are no effects and everything is very raw and mismatched. But it's a good early indicator of what works and what doesn't. The decisions I make here will affect how the completed video will feel despite all the bells and whistles of the finishing process.

I usually start by assembling all the material in somewhat chronological sequence of the story and sometimes color-code different types of footage for more intuitive navigation. In this case it's:

• Maroon - regular shots in the red room
• Light Green - Lauren's greenscreen shots
• Dark Green - my greenscreen shots
• Purple - 'Million Date Challenge' scenes
• Pink - B-roll cutaways of the 'MDC' set

The gaps in the rough cut are where animated debunking segments will go. I estimated their length by just reading the voiceover lines in the script and playing through the edit to see how much of a gap to leave for each.

As I write this, I just finished recording the voiceovers. After lunch I'll edit them and insert them into the gaps in the edit, to lock the exact final timing. Then it's onto the countless visual effects shots...