May Update (Video progress and changes)

Heya folks! Another month, another update, with lots of good news to share about the video roadmap, extra content, and Patreon tier changes, so let’s get to it!

First off, the Patreon drive has been an enormous help. As many of you here know I’ve always had videos planned, but would often race to try and finish one inside of a month, leading to constant crunch and panicking over whether or not I should switch focus from a large project to something that might be easier to complete in that timeframe, simply to make ends meet and not disappoint my followers. Now I’m just focusing on the video at hand in my own time to try and deliver the best possible result, and this has definitely made my life and process a million times better.

For one, the audio for the next video- the one about all the musical movies of a famous director- has been recorded and edited. This is one of the longest recording sessions I’ve done yet for a very comprehensive video, and while I don’t know if that translates to being one of my longest works, it’s definitely a big, hopefully evergreen video to add to the B catalogue that I hope you’ll enjoy. Had a lot of fun putting this together and I hope that translates to the final edit.

Now, as some of you may remember from last month’s update, I’m actually not at my workstation at the moment- I was invited to complete a play I started work on in 2019 with my semi-professional dramatics group in London, which died when Covid struck and then was brought back a few months ago. I wanted to finish what I started and help these folks out, so after a couple trips back and forth I’m now living down there for the next couple weeks until the run of the show’s complete. Obviously I planned for this and used that time to complete the audio, do some writing and such, but it means that I won’t be able to edit this bad boy until I return.

However, you may have also noticed the video I posted on Sunday- after doing the Monkey Island video I kind of realised I’m more okay than I used to be at the idea of making short form, relevant content that doesn’t require as much time, while not interrupting the work on my big projects, just getting thoughts on my mind into video form. This was edited on my laptop which also allowed me to see how much I’d be able to do with videos while on the go. I’ve been trying to do this for a long time, but always felt I had to box it up in some kind of format or brand to separate it from my ‘main videos’, and all that did was make me freeze up and ask myself what constitutes as a main video. I think my second Saul video worked as a small update, but my Villainous video isn’t that far off of being a beyond pictures piece, and I think I hurt those projects by trying to separate them into categories.

So, for the time being, I’m just making videos without putting too much pressure on how I define them. I think the added job security from your support as well as telling people my plans publicly has made me feel better about just getting my thoughts out there between the bigger projects. Everyone knows that stuff is being worked on so it doesn’t feel like I’m taking away from that while also not censoring my own creative process. It just means more content for you guys rather than less.

This has of course got me thinking about how I can repay my patrons without stretching myself too thin. I’ve had some good suggestions thrown my way by you guys and I’m still working on what I want to offer, with hopes to implement these changes by the next video. One thing I want to do, starting from here, is to let Audience patrons see all the blog posts, and for the upper tiers to get exclusive videos and voting rights on future projects. Of course I’ve promised things before and not delivered the way I wanted to, as a result I’m taking my time to really consider what it is I can make consistently. Was even thinking of throwing a poll your way to get the best idea of what you might want to see. Please bear with me as I figure out what’s best and start to get these things implemented, I’ll hopefully get there eventually.

Either way it’s been an extremely productive month, and I’m very keen to get back to editing the next project as soon as I can. The groundswell of support blew me away last month and put a fire under me to deliver what I hope are some long lasting videos covering all the subjects I love most, I am beyond grateful for you all helping out and for the opportunity to do this. Absolutely cannot wait to show you what I’m doing in this next huge project.

We’ll make music together.

- B