Post Trauma

PortsCenter 1.22 is uploaded, I’ve created and queued the pages for Retroware (today, just after 1pm PST) and PortsCenter.TV (tomorrow, twenty-four hours later), and I’ve also queued up the post for the PortsCenter Tumblr on Friday at 1:01pm.

I need to get more organized with my post-production process. Shooting the couch segments of an episode only takes, at most, two hours, which includes setting up and tearing down the lights. Post, however, takes the better part of a day. I have to:

  • Record the voiceover,
  • prepare overlays for things like game captions, credits, etc.,
  • capture any game footage I might not have yet,
  • get the bones of the edit in – voiceover and shot material,
  • curate game footage and drop it in,
  • realize I’ve forgotten to capture footage of some other game I mention within the episode, so set up to do that,
  • add the background blur effect so it’s not just game footage on a black background,
  • select my music,
  • rebalance the audio tracks,
  • prepare the end credits, including game footage and footage from last week’s episode and footage from the next episode
  • (which usually involves capturing about 30 seconds worth of gameplay of next week’s game, unless I can’t be bothered like last week),
  • give it a watch-through, tweak any parts I think need tweaking,
  • re-record any voiceover I think needs to be redone or rewritten,
  • watch it again,
  • render the video,
  • prepare web assets such as YouTube thumbnails, featured images for PortsCenter.TV and Retrowaretv.com,
  • watch an episode of Futurama while the rest of the episode renders,
  • upload the episode,
  • prepare posts for PortsCenter.TV, Retrowaretv.com, and the PortsCenter Tumblr,
  • add annotations once the upload is complete,
  • and update the annotations for the previous episode.

That’s a lot of work. Today it took me ten hours to get it all done. If I did color correction or any particularly intensive visual effects I’d probably never get any sleep. Is it any wonder I haven’t had time to do much behind-the-scenes stuff?

Still, I am exceptionally proud of all 22 episodes so far. There’s two left to do, then I’m taking January off to rest, recuperate, and get ready for season 2 in February.