BTS - Hulk 2003 (161) (Patreon)

G'day true believers, sorry there has been a lack of BTS exclusives the past few months. It's mostly been the mess of moving house and adjusting to my new schedule that's been a trick. Promise I'll try my best to be a lot more consistent with it now! 😅
But anyway, let's not waste any time and dive into this return to form for me!

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How did this video come to be?
Combining the format of a movie and video game review into a single video is something I've wanted to introduce for a long time now. I've had a few BIG titles I've really wanted to do this for packed away in my brain, Hulk from 2003 being one of them. This is a game that's been on my list for the longest time given as a kid, I had a demo disc with a trailer for the game AND I did at one point own it as a trade in. But I was only very young and didn't make it past the first stealth area in the second level. So the video was a great excuse to finally check that one off of the list!

It come to me in a DREAM!
While visiting Melbourne and staying at our new house prior to moving in, I had a dream one night legit just about me making this video. This is where I got inspired to be painted green and do my little Hulk rampage scene. I woke up in the early morning while it was still dark and took notes into my phone. Definitely recommend if you're a creative person, don't rely on your brain no matter how big it might be!

Playing the games!
Before starting the game, I sat and watched the movie which I procrastinated on for about a week or so after settling in to the new place. Finally I did it and it was a brutal afternoon. I was excited to play the game though but that was even more infuriating with an abundance of tech issues. Despite looking brand new, my Hulk disc is an ex-rental and about halfway through the game was just refusing to load. It was such a problem that I decided to open up my PS2 and fully deep clean it and still... it refused to work. Thankfully the game has a simple cheat code to unlock all of the levels, so I was able to continue where I'd been stuck via an Emulator but after a day or so of that drama, I wasn't compelled to suffer more than necessary. I'd like to point out that it takes A LOT for me to quit on a game, so this was one of the very examples on the channel where I didn't technically beat anything all the way through. If I spent 20 minutes on a level just to get taken all the way back, I would just move on.

As for the Genesis game... that was kind of a happy little accident! While doing research I noticed there was not too many Hulk games prior in comparison to other Marvel properties, so I thought it might be fun to include the first home console game exclusively featuring him. Just as a quick breather, classic AVGN style. I saw it was only a short game and I found one for a cheap price and nabbed it, unbeknownst to me that it was going to be virtually unplayable and the perfect segue into HULK JAK!

Logo stuff:
The Hulk logo was a simple one in all honesty but I broke out the 3D tools in Photoshop to help make the effect look a bit better. As for the eyes, you'll see I took a random picture of myself and just slapped it on there! 😄

Pre-production work!
It's been a while since I had a project with any kind of extensive prep work... it's been too damn long. But I was inspired and determined to see my full idea through. I found an old pair of shorts I'd planned to donate, I still have ALL of my purple paints from the Macho Man outfit forever ago (5 years now 😳)!

And the same green paint from Croc in 2018!

I painted them while procrastinating even starting the film and they were shredded prior to filming. But while I've done a lot of greenscreen stuff in my time, that wasn't going to work here because Hulk is also green. So I went shopping and purchased a bunch of blue fabric ($50aud) and got some friends to sew it all together for me. It's perfect for the space in my garage and my god... I can't describe how excited I got seeing it setup, knowing I was back to my old tricks. It felt REALLY good!

FILMING HULK AND OUTTAKES!!!
The video shoot was smashed out in an afternoon, doing my normal Jak parts first, then getting painted green. My boyfriend helped me out with that part of the project and it was a good laugh!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW EXCLUSIVE OUTTAKES! 

We had so much fun doing this and it's nice having another creative person around as Donnie contributed some solid ideas, like the twerking which took the entire scene to another level imo!

Finally in the editing room once it was all done... the project came together perfectly!

This is a video that I'm super proud of because it really sells why the movie/video game format works so well. You get to see both sides of the coin and not only does that make for a more informative video, but it gives me a lot more to work with in terms of crafting the narrative of the episode, as well as explore more stuff. I like to be thorough of course! For a 25 minute video, editing was also a breeze with the first half of the video being completed in one sitting, the Hulk Jak scene took a day on it's own and then the game review was another session of editing.
It honestly flew and I'm so proud of the work I did in this! 💚

The Hulk scene was blocked out with all of the blue screen shots first, so that timing could be confirmed and shots could be framed... kind of like a storyboard. Then I went back through each shot adding in backgrounds and effects. Then a final pass filling in any missing sound effects and voice clips, which I recorded myself. Some of the backgrounds were taken from my phone but I had to download others due to the rainy weather in the area at the time of filming.

You can see I threw a box while filming just to help me act out throwing the car a bit better. 

One final trick I'm super proud of was the lighting during the transformation into Hulk Jak. We have some RGB smart lights in our house that let you adjust colours but the one in my game room wasn't strong enough and didn't look good at all. I'd ordered some basic coloured light sheets for my LED studio lights but they hadn't arrived yet. So to achieve a yellow-ish/green flashing... we used an empty Xbox 360 case over the light while Donnie messed with the intensity dial.

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That's a WRAP!
Guys... I am SO fucking happy with the end result here!

It's one the videos I'm most proud of in the last 5 years, but also what it represents is my freedom, finally having my own space to create again. And I'm happy to report that since being back in business full time, the channel is very gradually starting to pick up some steam again and that the response to Hulk was incredibly supportive! So thank you all so much! 😊

If you have any further questions, don't be shy but I hope that was an interesting read. Thanks so much everyone and I hope you all have a great fucking day. Cheers!

GO WATCH THE OUTTAKES!!!