The Boatmurdered Video.

I went through a bit of a crunch to finish the video covering the story of Boatmurdered. When I started the project I will still in the negative mood phase. My goal was to try and make something that was super different. I had theorized that the workflow of filming with a camera and than editing it. Would be different enough that I could complete the project regardless of where I was mentally. For the most part my assumption was true. Filming that project was an interesting change of pace from the heavy editing of my normal big projects. As I got deeper into it my thoughts shifted slightly into two different ideas. The first was I had a really hard time motivating myself to edit it. I am happy with the result but it was slow and monotonous to actually cut edit and put together into the finished project. The majority of which was audio and will likely never even be noticed by anyone other than myself. The second thought I had was I really need to find an editor.

The feeling is simple. When I work on my big scale projects. I often have a specific idea in my head of what I want to do with the end project and since I never script my videos working with and editor on such projects would be a logistical nightmare. I would essentially have to sit behind them and dictate what I wanted it too look like. Not even mentioning the fact that they would need to be extremely knowledgeable about Dwarf Fortress. Yet, with this more structured reading a story style video I could easily see myself handing in 9 hours of me reading a story from the lets play archive or the like and hire someone else to edit it. Sadly, it is not that simple. I like to think I am quick when it comes to editing. I don't do anything extremely fancy but I am able to create something that feels somewhat unique and creative. Most of the big projects use fifty to a hundred hours of footage and require an additional fifty odd hours to edit. The video I recently released on Boatmurdered in total took eight and a half hours of recorded footage full of out takes. With an additional 30 hours of editing.

This project did okay. Not amazing, just okay. It still has a slow and steady climb of views coming in and a lot of positive response. However, when I look at how to spend my time I think this video proves that I should simply keep working on the super cut story videos. The screenshot above is the first nine days that my Boatmurdered video has been out.

For full transparency. My most recent major video did really well. For some contrast I also attached the similar video from before. It is a well stated fact that the videos focused on game play with a "theme" or "challenge" perform the best for me. Sometimes a guide here or there can make sense as well. But the shift in style to something with my face at the center does not seem to get as consistent a response.

If I hired an editor that was willing to cut video of me reading what is essentially fan-fiction I would expect those videos to run at a loss. If I assume that I have a budget based on the income of that video then I take the $467 CAD and subtract %24 in income taxes. After that I divide by the approximate number of hours I spent working on it I am left with roughly $12 CAD. Meaning if I wanted to break even on those videos I would have a total of $8.56 USD to hire someone. Otherwise I would operate at a complete loss without even taking into consideration the time it takes me to read the thing.

The best route for me assuming I continue to work completely solo. Would be two "Major" super cut fortress videos for every lore read. The alternative is if I hire an editor I could just focus on the fortress movies and have the editor to help with lore videos on the side. But I would still need to spend a large number of hours working on recording for the reads. It would also make me feel the need to pay for the loss I'd take on the story videos. Unless they substantially grew in popularity. I honestly don't know what the right decision is here. Maybe some of you reading have thoughts.

In short. Hire an editor at a loss and hope to make it up with time or continue my relatively slow upload schedule.

Thanks for reading my rambles.

Gregory.

I have seen significant requests for a refreshed "Getting started guide" I think I agree that it is time. I'm putting a pin in that to prioritize it as a near future project. Since the siege update has released I also want to redo my siege weapons tutorial. I'd like to combine it with some strategies or ideas and a few examples of defenses. For the moment I have a head cold that is slowing me down. Thankfully I was able to complete a chunk of work towards a highlight cut of different sieges. As a mini movie of the changes. That'll take a bit longer to complete but work is underway!

I would like to do a full week of streams. Tuesday - Friday Normal times.