BTS - Hawktober 2019 (Part Two) (Patreon)

 Hello! This will be the SECOND of TWO Behind the Scenes posts. Here we'll be covering Week Two of Hawktober 2019, CLICK HERE to check out Part One of this coverage! (coming soon!)

If you haven't seen it yet, you can also click here to watch the Making-of video episode that is on the channel for further information on the project!

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Day Six: Proving Ground on NDS & Project 8 on PSP!
What is there to honestly say about this episode? As I mentioned in the Making-of video episode, this was a mere 5 hours of work (excluding time spent playing the game) and was the worst AND worst performing episode of the special. It's a shame but really, all this video was ever going to be was "just get through it" pains in prep for the Every Level Ranked episode. The only thing to note here was the filming spot. I wanted more episodes in the actual skatepark, however all the angles I wanted to use didn't look the best and also conflicted with lighting. The sun was extremely hot and the contrast of shade made things look a bit shit, so I moved away to a cooler spot in total shade and filmed in front of the tiger mural.

That is honestly all there is to mention about this episode, but don't worry, we got some whoppers coming up! 😄

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Day Seven: Tony Hawk's Motion!
Now THIS episode has a lot to say... where do I even begin?
It's no secret at this point that the production of the event this year has been surrounded by bad life stuff, Motion was written DEEP within the middle of the worst of this. In the end, I feel like that actually helped the video quite a lot, as I was able to just go full force and not hold anything back, in the classic ranty, shit talking zone. Motion includes so many great moments that I'm incredibly happy with. It was also aided by having a lot of opportunity to get shots of the game, devices I was using and the setup process it took to make this video possible. I always loved AVGN episodes that had some tedious setup process like the SEGA 32X or the Atari 5200, so any chance I can do my own takes on that format is always a lot of fun.
The one part of the video I'm not keen on is the ending. Destroying the game to a poorly synced music montage just felt quite tonally off from everything else. The only reason it came to that was due to not really knowing how to transition from the final words, into a game break, then back to the outro. One of the visual gags I was very happy with was the "try playing a game while some asshole is moving the TV around" bit. This was just a random idea that came to me in my weird state of mind during the writing phase, that I realised would be a super easy joke to make and I knew people would enjoy it too. Visual humour and taking the piss out of myself that way I feel, is one of my strongest areas as far as making entertainment.

For the title card graphics in this episode, it was impossible to find any high quality renders of any of the assets, mainly Hue. So I actually dew him myself along with replicating the unique DS motion symbol found in the logo. For people who didn't know about this game, I wanted Hue to be the first thing you see in the episode, mixed with the original THPS neversoft music as a way to say "oh boy, we are in for quite the episode today."

Filming this episode was easily the longest of all the episodes of Hawktober, about 6 hours all up... yes, more than all the work COMBINED for Proving Ground on DS, just to get this filmed. All the extra shots and setup, cleanup, as well as a long time to get my speaking parts done on camera. Since I needed this episode to be absolutely perfect, I was being incredibly fussy with my performance and the long rant about "Tony Hawk should be ashamed his name is attached to this" at the end of the Motion portion prior to starting on Hue, was an hour ALONE to get done.
For me, this was the most important episode to get right behind the Levels episode, purely because this game has never been fully covered before. The few people who have talked about it pointed their camera at the DS screen to try and record the gameplay, which is headache inducing and just shit. So since I was going to be the first reviewer channel to properly cover the game with full gameplay footage, I REALLY needed to make this fucking good ahaha. I made a very conscious effort to give this game the treatment and care that I also gave to Enter the Dragonfly, Crash and Spyro Mobile games, Tony Hawk RIDE and the Croc series.

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Day Eight: Tony Hawk's Mobile Games!
Mobile Games was another episode that I felt like I needed to do justice, but the big problem here was compatibility for a lot of the games simply being lost to time and not working. The goal quickly became "just mention it so that it's included and move on" which makes for a messy episode, but it still turned out ok I think.

Since there were no Neversoft games featured this year, I really tried to experiment with the Hawktober logo wherever I could. The N-Gage logo is definitely my favourite of these; super simple, futuristic and I love the minimal eyeball "O" in there. When I realized the "O" would still  look good despite the lack of detail while making the Game Boy logos, it was like a lightbulb moment for me, opening up Hawktober to be compatible with so many more styles in the future, if I needed them.
This episode was a last minute nightmare, only sourcing the N-Gage at the very last minute in October. The script had a large hole in there for a long time, as everything else was written, then I had to come back and insert my thoughts on the game which led to the episode getting quite lengthy. Then on top of that, my brief insert edit to correct a mistake I'd made WHILE during the upload phase for that. Thank god I caught it though because even though it was a minor mistake, I DO NOT want to have to come back to these episodes in the future and make corrections. Again, just a result of being forced to rush some of these out and being spread so thin mentally.

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Day Nine: Tony Hawk's Skate Jam!
The Skate Jam episode might be the most disappointing episode this year, as far as performance goes. I was really expecting this one to be a hit like Pro Skater 5, given it's a current game released within the last 12 months and still notoriously shit... but no. Nobody seemed to care that much which was a massive shame, as it's easily one of the better episodes of the event this year.

FAILED Skate Jam Sponsor Deal!
YES you read that correctly. I often get contacted by annoying garbage app companies, asking me to review their worthless trash... Maple Media and Skate Jam seems to be no exception ahaha 😂
I was originally asked back in July of 2019 if I would participate and create content on the monthly events, which I declined because I didn't yet have a phone to play and record the game, as well as I was saving my video for October. By the time they had followed up for a second time, I'd learned that all the levels in that game had been recycled from a previous series purchased by the studio so after inquiring, they cut ties hilariously. It's a real shame though as I could have REALLY used their promise of in game boosters and currency to get through the game more thoroughly and easily but alas, it just wasn't to be.

It was actually very satisfying to take the effort going through all of the Skateboard Party games to "expose" Skate Jam.
One of the other better moments of the episode was taking the piss out of the ridiculous mobile phone ads. Originally I was planning to have actual YouTube ad breaks in there all in a row, however my friends convinced me not to go that route for obvious reasons. It could be viewed as a cash grab thing by a lot of people, but also in hindsight, YouTube doesn't play mid-roll ads if they're set to appear to close together. So that, combined with ad-block AND YouTube premium, it made a lot more sense to make my own shitty advert, which became a perfect opportunity to plug the Hawktober merch within an episode.

The gameplay animation was whipped together in Photoshop in the space of an hour, colour coded to keep track of everything (first time I've ever had to do that) and then I used the green screen for the first time in FOREVER. That felt so good to use a bit of that, since it's become such a major tool in my arsenal the past few years. Fun fact: while I was filming this segment, several people arrived at my house while I was saying "invite your friends to come get FUCKED in the ass" which is... interesting ahaha!
This is a segment like the Motion TV moving around, that I'm really happy with the end result. As for working on the Skate Jam episode, everything was played and mostly written prior to my trip to Melbourne for PAX AUS, so it all came together with much ease filming and editing.

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Day Ten: Every Tony Hawk Level RANKED!
I covered most of this in the Making-of episode, but there are a few extra bits I left out just for you guys to get here. Given time was a major factor on getting this episode out, the quality of the presentation was affected by that unfortunately. The fan mod THUG Pro has an amazing free cam mode which is great for getting scenic shots of the game. The original plan was to do this for many of the levels, just to get a simplified, establishing set of shots for some of the levels, to help break things up. Constant gameplay for 2.5 hours is brutal so it would have been really nice to be take a moment to zoom out and give a more complete look at some of these, both to appreciate them and also help people understand who are less familiar.

I did end up doing this to get some tidy shots for use in the thumbnail, but I'm upset I couldn't get any into the actual episode due to time constraints.
The video portion of the levels episode was filmed the day prior to filming Motion, which as I mentioned, was a stacked day. But after filming 6 hours of motion, I spent 2 hours that night doing the first half of the voiceover work, up until spot number 100. My voice was killing me by the end and the other 3 hours of voiceover work was done the following morning. There is a clear difference in the quality of my voice and tone between Number 101 and 100, The Berrics from Pro Skater 5.

Eligible levels and the positions of certain stages changed multiple times throughout making the episode. When I had the idea in 2018 prior to working on Year Two, I did a rough count of levels looking online and came to the conclusion that there were 102 levels, and I was going to cheat and talk about all of the handheld maps together at the absolute beginning of the video at spot 103. That was pure ignorance. Once I actually started covering the handheld games and playing them (thank god I did), I realized that there are many exclusive levels that needed to be counted, but also... some of them were actually better than console levels, such as The Zone from THPS 3 on GBA. The number quickly grew from 103 up to a staggering 170. But during the rule clarification, I wrestled with the idea that the 5 different coloured environments in the first Game Boy Color titles did NOT need seperate spots on the list. Then the final level excluded was China in Downhill Jam on mobile. Many of the poor mobile levels were already "grouped with their original console versions or not eligible because they're too basic" so on top of that, I felt that only including one of these would raise the question WHERE ARE THE OTHERS? So by the idea that many of the mobile titles are either lost or not up to par, I simply ignored them in the episode.

I knew going in that the video was going to hit 2.5 hours so I was looking for any way I possibly could to shrink the runtime, as well as establish the rules future series would be graded against, in future levels ranked episodes.

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That's a WRAP!
Well that about covers it I think, as much as I can remember because honestly, the entire project from start to finish has been a complete blur for me. To think about the hell Hawktober has endured this year is kind of hard to believe looking back but I'm glad it's done. It may not have performed as well as I would have liked over all, but sticking with it and completing the job at hand feels good. I'm currently sitting on roughly 310GB worth of Tony Hawktober files and I've got no space left, so now that this blog, the FINAL Hawktober 2019 I have left to finish. I can start the big task of clearing and deleting all of that up (the MOST satisfying part)!
Thank you as always for reading and supporting the even and the channel, I'm happy to answer further questions anyone has. And until next time, I hope you have a great fucking day. Cheers guys! 😊