Patreon Monthly Update: October 2015

Greetings, Patrons! This is going to be a long one.

So, last month, I said I was going to shoot for September 9th for my second Sonic Boom video, a deadline I very clearly missed. But there's a reason for that!

As I was in the process of creating artwork for the video, I noticed Jontron retweeted that Did You Know Gaming was looking to hire more editors. Well, gosh, I'm an editor, right? I know my way around Sony Vegas!

So, even though I was already past my September 9th deadline at this point, I put the Sonic Boom video on hold and applied.

And, for a time, it seemed like I had the job in the bag. I was sent a very positive response, about how they had weeded out all of the other applicants and how much they liked my work. I was told that I would be spread around to other DYKG shows like VGfacts. Praise to the point where the email might as well have said, "Welcome aboard!"

My mind was reeling. I don't think I'm allowed to say what they were going to pay me, but it was significant enough that I started thinking about whether or not it would make sense to close this Patreon. This was a job.

In their praise they said they wanted to test me in the DYKG style. I was sent some basic materials for a Twilight Princess video and was told to scavenge the rest from Youtube. If I remember properly, this was on a Wednesday morning.

I spent all day Wednesday downloading a Twilight Princess Longplay from longplays.org (all told, 6gb+). Thursday, I was out of the house running errands so I did not have a chance to do any video work, and I spent Friday tracking down a good quality version of the Twilight Princess soundtrack to use for backing. By the time I had what I needed, it was well after midnight, and I stayed up in to early Saturday morning putting the above video together.

It really is amazing how quickly videos can be turned around when you don't have to spend multiple weeks capturing and laboriously processing the video you personally shot.  Once I had the material I needed, that 2 and a half minutes there came together in about four hours. It makes me excited to build my new PC.

(If Patreon's not showing the video embed for some reason, you can click here.)

I ran it by some friends before firing my response off, and they all confirmed: this looks and sounds like a real DYKG video. Great, awesome, they're going to love it.

Saturday passes. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday rolls around and...

"We're sorry, but we can only hire so many applicants. We regret to inform you that we haven’t chosen you for the position. Thank you for taking time out of your day to participate in our test."

The more I think about this, the more I start to realize it could have been a dream job. What I would have been doing for them would have been an extension of what I'm already doing on my own channel, but for considerably more money. I was in the right place at the right time...

And didn't get the job.

Needless to say, after that, I did not feel much like messing around in Sony Vegas for a while, so I buried myself in Super Mario Maker and wrote my review.

I can only speculate why they passed me over. Was I too slow? Did I do something else they found off-putting? Friends have tried to comfort me by airing their distaste for DYKG's methods of delivering information, and its easy to understand why a lot of people might not like them. You'll note in my video, I did actually include source information on things where it made sense. Did that upset them somehow? Did they think I was going to cause them unwanted trouble?

I want to stress that the initial email they sent me really made it sound like I'd already been hired. I was told what kind of work I'd be doing and for whom, I was given per-video pay rates, everything except the actual "Welcome to DYKG" handshake.

Perhaps it is for the best I did not get the job with them, but I was willing to put aside disagreements with their methods in order to get my foot in the door. This could have been a gateway to even bigger and better things.

I could look for other editor jobs, but most of those require skills or technology that I don't yet have. I've never touched Adobe Premiere, for example. Again, DYKG was right place, right time.

In more cheerful news, there's going to be a lot of things going up on my Youtube channel this month. And that isn't some kind of empty, "Yeah, when I get it done" promise. The first seven episodes of "Let's Narcissism: Super Mario Blue Twilight DX" have been recorded, rendered, uploaded and scheduled. It starts tomorrow at 9am, and will run all the way until November 1st. Or, at least, that's how much I have recorded. I did not 100% finish everything I want to do with that game, but I have a month's worth of stuff queued up and ready to go, every 4-6 days. It covers the relevant levels.

In the interim, I am at my cousin's, house sitting for him again while he's in Seattle on vacation. I won't be back at home until October 11th. I did bring video editing stuff with me, including my capture gear, microphone, and all of my Sonic Boom footage, but I'm not sure how well if at all Sony Vegas will run on this laptop. While I'm out here I might try putting together that Super Mario Maker video I mentioned a week or two ago, and/or the Sonic Boom video I've been promising LITERALLY SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME ITSELF

But I make even fewer guarantees here than I normally do.

Anyway, that's it for now. See you when I see you guys.