[In the making]

I have a bad history with projects. The first bad project I could remember was a programming assignment. When I was still a freshman in college, we were asked to make anything with the knowledge we've gained throughout the semester. At first, I thought it would be easy. After all, I was doing quite good in the subject. How hard could it possibly be?

Turns out, being good at a thing does not translate to being good at completing a project with said thing. I ended up spending all my time thinking about the project. It never got past that. I'd come up with a rough idea for what I wanted to do, then kept on thinking about how I can incorporate everything I learned into that idea. I never wrote a plan nor did I look at examples. I just had a vague idea faintly swimming in my head. 

If there was a picture depicting what my plan looked like, it would probably be this 

 

 

With no clear plan, I ended up waiting until the last moment to start actually working on my assignment; ultimately failing to submit it because I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. 

For the rest of the projects I worked on over the next years, I solely relied on my teammates to come up with the plan. Usually things would go way smoother since we actually had an idea of what we were supposed to be doing, and I was assigned a specific role to play.

 

So, now that I've given you a general idea on how I operate; Here's the story of how I completed my first ever solo project (A 36 second-long edit)

It all started a few days after I published "My Castle Town". After rereading it a couple times post-publish, I began to feel that it wasn't good enough. Especially so, given that I enjoyed a game without knowing anything about said game. Initially, though, I never did plan on picking up "Deltarune". I thought the game was over-hyped and it was far from complete. 

What made me change my mind?

My brother brought up that new content for the game has released. More importantly, he mentioned that a new mentor character is introduced. I am a sucker for old mentor character archetypes, so I started budging in. 

Now, the true plan begins. For those interested, here's a step-by-step guide to following in my footsteps.

 

THE PLAN

 

Step 1:

Download Davinci Resolve because you want to try something called a "Gaslight edit".

Step 2: 

Go in debt... Nothing much to it. I just owe a friend like 12 bucks, since he bought me the game. 

Step 3:

Binge the game for a week. Yes. I spent an entire week playing through the game. Here is one of the many moments I captured during my play-through.

 

Step 4:

Fan Content. After completing Chapter 4 of the game, I was left awe-struck. I had a soul-shaped hole in my heart that needed to be filled. So I took to binging Instagram. There, I would consume lots of animations, art and edits.

 

Step 5:

I found a really good edit on Instagram. The edit was so good, I teared up while watching it. It basically took two things I like and mashed them really well. The two things were "Gravity Falls", a Disney mystery show I enjoyed as a kid and the game. Here's the edit in question.

 

Step 6: 

Notice flaws. While I really liked the edit, the more I watched it the more the cracks started to show. Nothing is perfect, after all. I found myself thinking of little things to add to the edit to make it better or more aligned with the audio it used. Eventually, I decided that this is exactly the moment I should do something about it. Moving from consuming content to creating it. Making the things I want to see. So I downloaded the edit and went into-

 

Step 7: 

Research. This was the longest and hardest step. Not only did I have to search the internet for the clips used for the edit, I also had to learn how to use the editing software! I spent an entire day, looking for a single visual effect. Only to find that it is gated behind a premium subscription service.

 

 

 

 

Step 8:

Go Insane. So, for the first few days of the project I spent all my time replicating an effect known as The Mirror Rabbit-hole. Wanna know how I learned its' name??????????????????????? 

 

 

 

 If you haven't gotten the gist from reading the screenshots—I tried contacting the author of the video I liked. Only problem is he's exclusively active on Tiktok. I tried tracking him elsewhere bit he wasn't active. So I made a TikTok account and I still couldn't reach out to him. Because he wouldn't respond to a stranger.. I did scroll to his video though, and that's when I found a little box at the cornet that said "Made with Capcut". And that's where I headed next. I say this in a small paragraph, but this took me a whole day.

Two major takeaways..  One. TikTok is not as bad as I initially thought it was. As a matter of fact, I find it way easier to put down than Instagram (Not that I use my phone as often nowadays). 

Two. Always look for answers from the source first.  

 

After going insane that day, I left the effect for last and decided I'm going to work on the rest of the video first. Shouldn't be long. Just a couple days...

 

Step 9: 

Become Lost. The project started at the same time I was preparing for my first competition. So, there were days I was not doing anything about it at all. Then I had to prepare for my trip to my parents. I also got distracted. It's not all serious business, as much as I wish it would be.

Step 10:

Just wing it. A week after I settled in with my parents, my brain reactivated. So I opened up Davinci Resolve once more and I stared at the screen. This time I decided I'll give myself a proper target. My goal was to complete the edit by the end of the week. 

First few days were not really productive. I worked on the clips that I already had. Then, I learned how to zoom, crop and change the speed of a video. Then, I learned that I was using the wrong menu to edit my video timeline. Using the correct one made things waaay easier but it took me a bit to get there.

On the last few days, I picked up the pace. I ended up looking for more videos to add; I even learned how to edit green screen videos! 

Step 11: 

Completion. Last Thursday, I finished the project. I removed all the extra resources I didn't need from my timeline. Focused on finalising the parts I wanted to keep. Worked on timings and transitions. Then, in a matter of moments, I was done.

You can find the finished product here. 

Is it any good? It's alright, really. The more I worked on it, the more it deviated from the original plan. What was supposed to be a replica of the original edit, ended up becoming an entirely new thing as I mixed and matched ideas. I also recognise that I really did not use any transition effects in the edit. I don't know how to use them. When I did try to use them, my laptop ran into issues when rendering the video.  

Final thoughts

This was the most fun I had in a while. My laptop is a mess of  unorganised test renders, green screen videos and sprite animations. And yet, I've been feeling quite fulfilled for a few days now and I want to do more. I think it's called "The Joy Of Creation".

The project is far from perfect, but it is complete. Completion feels waay better than perfection. Besides, the more you try, the more you learn. Maybe in the future I could revisit this video and do it better. But for now, I'm quite content with going to step 12.

 

 

Step 12:

Start a new project.

See you in the next one, 

Salman :)