BTS - Ty 3: Night of the Quinkan (119) (Patreon)

G'day! Let's discuss what went into the making of Episode 4 of the Ty Series Review. This episode might be the longest any review has stood in production, spanning 6 MONTHS from the start of writing up until release. Why did it take so long? Well let me show you!

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Square Eyed Jak Cinematic Universe!
This was the episode where the entire series transformed from a harmless video game review, into a narrative driven piece. But not only is this one the most heavy on story, but the game review portion is also textbook SEJ with the anger over a bad game, which Ty 3 is certainly a bad game. I knew that this episode was going to be the introduction of the real Thylacine into the storyline but I wasn't sure how the transition into that was going to work. It wasn't until I actually played the game and realised how bad it was, I was legitimately sick of looking at the thing. So this made for plenty of easy ways to have the real world effected by what was happening in the game. I wanted Ty dead so I didn't have to play anymore, SEJ has gone from optimistically searching for a tiger to prove they're still alive, to making sure he kills any he can find. It's quite dark really, that someone could feel so strongly about. But of course, a lot of the character emotion comes from the creepy stranger met in the pub finale of the previous episode.

Shitty Jokes:
Before we get into the serious story stuff, let's talk about the Legend of Spyro real quick!

I knew that I wanted to make the comparison between the Legend of Spyro series and Ty 3, given the connection with developers and in gameplay styles. I also knew that I wanted to find some Tassie Tiger shit, as a sign that one was nearby (think Jurassic Park or any other kind of movie where an animal or creature is being tracked, you'll usually find some shit) and it seemed like the perfect segue. This was actually the very first scene filmed for the episode WAY back in early May of 2019, roughly 3 months after the video was written. As far as physical toilet jokes go, AVGN certainly run them into the ground over the years, so as a fan, this is certainly a tribute. But I've also put my own spin on it. The first shit joke I did was for the Midas Games Episode in 2018, which stood apart from AVGN for a few reasons:

• The shit appeared at the start in the video not at the end
• The game was shit on BEFORE it was played
• I was in direct contact with the shit holding it in my hand

The latter of those you can see, I repeated here. But this shit is technically from an animal so again, it's a fresh twist on a tired gag (well I like to think so anyway). The recipe for the shit if you're interested is a classic poo cocktail with an Aussie twist, made up of:

• Peanut Butter
• BBQ Sauce (Because I didn't have any chocolate syrup)
• The Aussie Classic: VEGEMITE!

The Vegemite really helped to thicken it to look more sticky, though in retrospect, I wish I'd used less of the Peanut Butter. For animal scat, it would have looked more realistic if it was darker but oh well. Working with shit is tricky business!

The NIGHTMARE Shoot!
On the day this poo was filmed, I spent about 3 hours in total out filming. The first hour went great which was all of the scat scenes. But I was working some different audio equipment than I'd used previously for Ty 1 and I thought everything was under control. Unfortunately, the settings got altered at some point during filming, which totally RUINED ALL OF THE FUCKING AUDIO for many of the generic walking shots prior to finding the scat, including the boomerang hitting me in the face. That alone was like 45 minutes so I was totally pissed when I realised that I'd essentially lost a full day of filming. All really good stuff too. So having to go back and redo a lot of that was incredibly heart breaking. As a result, this video went on the shelf until the very end of July AFTER the trailer for the series went up on the channel.

Tiger Scenes!
Ok so please keep in mind that because the series is still ongoing as of writing this, I don't want to reveal too much before the other episodes are finished. So I won't be going into the building process of the tiger here. But YES, I actually had a to-scale Thylacine made specifically for this series review!

So I knew from the moment the idea for this series review hit me, that I wanted an actual Tasmanian Tiger in the episode. I was going to build it myself. However I put it off for the entirety of 2018 because I really didn't know where to begin. But then out of nowhere, I had a friend who is an incredibly talented artist in many different mediums... ask me if I needed anything built. So I said "Yeah... can you build me a life sized, realistic Tasmanian Tiger that I can mount onto a board, that looks like it was stolen from a museum?" ... And she said "Of course!"
To get accurate measurements, I visited my local museum in the PRE Pre-production phase of the project following Hawktober of 2018 to do some research. I learnt a lot of important information that would later appear in the Thylacine episode at the start of this series. I also stood next to REAL taxidermy Tiger at the museum to get a real world scale, for how big the replica should be. It was made a bit larger just so that it would stand out in shots at a great distance!

One of the major reasons this episode was delayed in production so long was trying to coordinate a helper to pull the thing along, to help spread out the workload. Unfortunately, it just didn't come to that and I had to do everything on my own... it was a lot of work BUT it was also a lot of fun (until the front wheels fell off before I finished dragging the thing around).

Night Time Scenes:
Given the game featured is Night of the Quinkan, to insert some added variety into the environment across the episodes, it seemed only fitting to have a night episode and introduce it here. Filming at night for real is a disaster to try and do so I opted instead to film these scenes during the day time. Blasting a whole bunch of effects and filters etc. onto the footage can really transform it. Obviously the sky is a dead a giveaway that it was done this way, HOWEVER, I actually ended up liking how it looked. It really fit in with the weird supernatural, nightmare theme and night levels in games always have blue skies so I don't know. I think the unrealistic element of it helped to sell the storyline.

Now onto an effect that people questioned a lot: my stock campfire. Many questioned how I can have a real location, real gun, physical Tiger, but then go and do the cheapest, fakest looking campfire I could possibly have done. Well honestly, it's just a logistics thing. originally, I did want to film with a real fire. Problem is that where I'm filming this, I've technically hopped a fence onto land owned by someone I don't know (it used to be a public space back in the day) so obviously, I'm not going to start lighting fires and draw attention to me being there. On top of that, a real fire simply won't work when I'm applying night filters onto everything. I was going to do it on my OWN property after this, but simply due to time constraints, I just decided to do it with various stock effects. I spent some time to get it looking the best I could but yeah... that answers the mystery of the fake fire.

Hypnotic Nightmare Shots:
After meeting the mysterious stranger at the pub, SEJ starts to have is mind invaded by demented, evil thoughts, triggering him to only see the evil path as a way of life. I was trying to figure out... how in the actual FUCK am I supposed to translate that in the videos? In the end, we went with the quick cutaways to my covered in blood like a weird horror movie, literally showing the poisoned visions that the character is experiencing that makes him want to hurt the tiger, instead of save it. This was simply me stood in my bathroom alone, wearing nothing, with a serving of fake blood I prepared. And I just stood there trying to create the most twisted visuals I could and while it started off quite tame, it eventually turned very sinister and I got some awesome shots. The blood consists of:

• Glucose Syrup
• Cocoa Powder
• Red Food Colouring (with a drop of blue)

Classic fake blood and much like the poo earlier, it is entirely safe to consume. So I wasted no time putting it in my mouth, spitting it out, dribbling, rubbing it all over myself face and ultimately dumping it on my head. This final step was CRUCIAL to getting some of the best psycho shots! I filmed in front of the same small blue board I used for the Croc series review, which limited the space I had to work with. But after about 15-20 minutes and getting the shit in my eyes, I had A LOT of fun getting super messy and I love the end result. What better way to show visions of a psychotic perspective (for all the fun, I was so happy to shower and get that shit off me).

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That's a WRAP!
Without going over some of the finer details, that's the Ty 3 episode incredibly condensed. But hopefully you can start to understand why this review was in production for SO LONG. With all of the pre-production, script writing, shooting the thing and having my equipment fail me. Then finally smashing out the final days of filming on my own, with all of the complicated and time consuming editing to follow... this is a video I honestly don't know how I even managed. It's an epic beast but I am seriously happy and proud of the end result. And while I absolutely HATED it at certain points, it was still immensely fun and satisfyingly challenging to produce, so I'm glad that people appreciated the effort!

And that about does it so I hope you learned something from that and found it interesting at least. Special thanks to Petronious for helping me out with the logo on this episode (as well as providing plenty of emotional support along the way) and until next time, I hope you have a great fucking day. Cheers guys! :D