Update on the Next Episode

Hey everyone, just wanted to drop in with a quick update on what's happening over here (don't worry, everything is fine).

The next video, entitled "What Is The Most 80s Movie Ever" is running a little bit behind schedule and will be out in early December. I never intended to have the videos switch to a monthly schedule (it's crazy to think they were once weekly), but I deliberately put the biggest, most complicated ones at the start of the season. Don't expect them all to be as long as the Snyder episode going forward.

Also, this one hit a couple snags. Two weeks ago I was invited out to the Hawaii International Film Festival to give a talk about how to build a career making video essays on the internet. It was a wonderful experience, Hawaii was gorgeous, obviously, but that five-day trip, especially the time spent writing the talk, took some time away from the video. Then I got back, caught a cold, and overdid it recording a podcast and shooting the narrative scenes for the new video...and totally lost my voice. As in, that was last Wednesday and it's still not fully back yet. I basically haven't talked in five days. And now Thanksgiving is about to be here and I still haven't been able to shoot the essay for the new video...it's been frustrating.

So I've been trying to use my no-talking time to polish the script for the 80s video and get ahead on writing the next one. But as soon as I get back from visiting my parents for the holiday, it's full steam ahead on getting this episode done.

Now, an unrelated topic...

As many of you are aware, Twitter seems like it's going to fully die at any moment. Everyone there is panicking, writing emotional final tweets, and trying to figure out which new platform will be their Twitter substitute. I went ahead and made accounts on Mastadon, Hive, even Substack, if nothing else than just to claim the "patrickhwillems" handle.

Not all of you use Twitter, but a lot of you also know that over the past several years, it's the primary place where I interact with my audience, and where I can be reached with questions and comments. It's where I promote the videos and give updates on them. And if it does go down thanks to Elon Musk being one of the lamest, dumbest people on Earth, I honestly don't see myself jumping to some new platform and using it in exactly the same way. If anything, I think it would just mean less social media for me.

So the point of all this is to say that I'm going to use this Patreon to do more of what I used Twitter for, namely giving updates on the videos, posting behind-the-scenes photos, and just generally filling you in on what's going on over here.

To be clear, this is not going to be like a weekly newsletter and it will not be taking valuable time away from working on the videos. I'm just going to post a bit more often here.

Stay tuned, I'll be posting the viewing guide for the new episode here shortly.

Okay, I've gotta go catch a train!