Hey folks, welcome to the Summer Of Slug!
On this non-Friday, we’re breaking the fourth wall! For years I’ve received questions on how I make certain aspects of my videos; hopefully this video will help to answer those questions!
If you want in on the fun and want to join the Summer Of Slug 2023 Patreon/Discord, here’s the link to get you started: https://www.patreon.com/SummerOfSlug2023
If you like these videos and want to help me create more of them, a small donation can be made here using PayPal or Stripe: https://ko-fi.com/rrslugger
The original music in these videos can be found for free on my Bandcamp page:
https://rrslugger.bandcamp.com/
If you haven’t already, check out Manic Miners, a heartfelt recreation of the Lego Rock Raiders PC game: https://manicminers.baraklava.com/
For quality retro Lego conversation in the best online community I have ever been a part of, you can join the discussion on the Manic Miners Discord: https://discord.gg/na3rQmv
Interested in the history and research that goes into videos just like this one? You can join the discussion in the Lego Research Realm Discord: https://discord.gg/VtD99kYvUj
I created the photography, stop motion animation, and music in this video. Original artwork by Brett Halland. Thanks for watching!
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For years now, I’ve received questions on how I create videos for this channel; hopefully, this video will help answer some of those questions!
We are officially into the second half of The Summer Of Slug! Unfortunately, and predictably, time is running out faster than my ideas for videos, so I’m having to make some tough decisions on which to prioritize for the rest of the month. I was just at The LEGO Store picking up some DreamZzz sets, so I will likely want to give them a bit of the spotlight soon. Whether that means this Friday or not, we’ll just have to see!
Hi slug!
For a while I've been working on my own video. Idk when it is going to come out, it took almost two entire weeks to get a decent rough draft for the first 3 minutes, and I want the video to be anywhere from 30 minutes to half an hour long. I've had a lot of doubts about my own skill, but funnily enough, you saying that you are just a novice but putting a ton of effort into your videos has actually given me confidence, since I hold your videos in high regard. Thank you, slug. I can't really support you financially, but I hope this comment helps 🙂
SLUGGER I used the T3i for YEARS before upgrading to the T5i for photography work, The T3I is a fantastically robust camera, but honestly the T5i is an upgrade in every single way and the improvement in color reproduction is wild, I cannot recommend it enough.
Love this video!! I loved my film class and high school, maybe I should do editing again
Oh wow, regarding writing scripts, we have a similar style! I also like to write paragraphs between 3-4 lines. Works well for me! The actual recording though… goodness, no. Worst part of the video making process, takes me legit at least 3-4 attempts to get even a somewhat acceptable version. Hate it to death, wish it was something I could just make someone else do, but… that's obviously impossible 😀
As for video editing, I also start with the audio, but what I like to do during that is add little bits of text in Vegas Pro that later tell me which image or video clip belongs there. The text is a quick abbreviation of a few letters and a number, that then gets added to a text file, which explains what they mean. So I talk about a game's title screen, then I add text in Vegas that says "i0" to the part of the audio, and write into a text document "i0 = Image of the game's title screen". Obviously it's a lot simpler in practice, because I don't need to understand the context as much as a stranger might, but I can really only recommend doing this! Makes it easier to stay in the "zone" of editing audio AND prepares me for later so I don't have to wonder what kind of clip or image goes where. It's basically like putting bookmarks in a book that's not even written yet.
Trying to make every Lego brick I can in Blender so I can start making 3D images and even videos of my own. Sometimes the results fail my expectations and I get very discouraged and erase everything and start over again. Now, after over five-six years, while working full-time at a real job, I'm finally almost at the point where I can start creating content soon. It's not at all easy, but I encourage you to experiment and carry on your fine work.
People will list their scores of editing equipment and their high tech gear, meanwhile I’m over here making stopmotion using my built in microphone with a cheap digital camera and a default editing program just like I did all the way back in 2007. I’ve seen some improvement over the years, sure, but 16 years will always see improvement. Doesn’t matter though, I just enjoy telling stories, I don’t really care about competing.
Youtube deleted my original channel five years ago and I lost all monetization, but I keep putting my videos up, because I like sharing my work, even if my techniques are 16 years old
You have a very beautiful and arguably iconic visual style. It’s cool to see the BTS!
DAY 11! GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 11 OF THE SUMMER OF SLUG!
Slugger, there's a person that walks through Ottawa singing "iiiit's the summer of slug!" at least once a day.
That person is me, and I cannot get this theme song out of my head.
Oh, great content, too! The Scorpion palace was high on the 'wish list' 20 years ago; thanks to you, I feel like I've built it vicariously.
This advice is actually not bad! Lots of things I can learn from to improve my future videos!
This is a moment where "pulling back the curtain" makes things seem even cooler than they already were. I always figured you were a scripted channel, but had no idea about the specifics of actually doing so (actually now I'm curious how your DAW allows you to edit "ahead" of the playback head? audacity forces me to pause playback before making ANY changes, but usually all I ever do with the audio is a few cleanup-filter passes and save trimming for the video editing phase), and changing the pacing of the paragraphs in editing to match the music is a subtle touch that somehow +1s the Slug-O-Meter all by itself.
As a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants letsplayer, most of this advice doesn't apply to me (the furthest extent of "scripting" I ever do is pre-playing a game and taking notes of things I want to ensure I do), but it's still cool to learn this kinda stuff! And who knows, maybe someday I might have to try out some kinda stop motion stuff myself and see what happens 👀
As a hobbyist creator, I always love to see people’s workflows! Thanks for sharing this, there was a lot of advice here I hadn’t thought of, mainly the audio editing part. It doesn’t directly apply to my videos since I don’t usually have a voiceover the whole video, but it was something I hadn’t really put much thought into and I probably should. Thanks for sharing!
"once you have a setup that works, disconnect it from the internet" YES
I love your videos Slugger! they're all very well put together and very informative. I'm hoping that this summer of slug treated you well, and–hopfully–we'll get some summer slug videos again next year! that intro song really gives me a thrill every episode! best of luck slugger.
“Disconnect it from the internet” is so true. I spent a whole day once trying to figure out why my mic suddenly wasn’t working anymore after a windows update. Not fun.
This is going into my “important” playlist.
Awww how demystifying! I like to imagine the videos being one long improvised take that somehow has stop motion in it.
Very cool to see behind the scenes! I always knew there was a ton of love and care put into your videos, but I didn’t realize quite how much!
Also the never updating editing software tip is something I didn’t realize I did until now! I’ve been using the same version of Audacity for like 5 years now. And the same with OBS and Photoshop Elements too tbh 😅
that's odd…I NEVER had a DAW messed up with windows updates, and I used cubase for years, these softs are extremely robust in term of windows updates
I remember fighting with ASIO settings but not win updates
btw, you dont even need cubase for this, audacity would do the job nicely…for free
SLUG SLUG SLUG SLUG
those are great insights and wonderful for inspiration!
Thanks for the reminder. We started by making these videos for ourselves, we should continue to do so.
Yoooo you are a Jeff Vogel fan? His company’s games are exceptional and incredibly underrated, and I wasn’t expecting them to show up here of all places
Hmmmmmmmmmm
SLIZER
once you get everything sorted out with the mold it'd be awesome to see a office tour video we love da slugga
I cannot express how much joy the summer of slug theme song gives me
Awesome to see the shoutout to Nick, those lego retrospectives really were something special!
Please add your stop motions to YouTube shorts
Your work is O U S T A N D I N G, I also do care about music choice <3
I'm surprised you don't seem to use DragonFrame for your stop motion sections
You've encouraged me to put some effort into a project I'm planning, thank you!
Never occurred to me to keep my DAW offline once it was optimized for my workflow, but it's a brilliant suggestion.
6:00 wow I pinned your setup as being higher tech than this that is so doable
I do notice your music! It's awesome
Why would all advice be bad advice, and what makes your advice bad advice?
Slugger grew out his chest hair for Summer of Slug, but will he grow out his beard for No Shave Slugvember?
As somebody who has a film minor, you're right, all this advice is terrible!
All jokes aside, I loved this video so much. The production side of things is my cup of tea, I love hearing about it and seeing it done.
I have to talk about the music. The music is one of the things that really makes you stand out, and now I see why: you're not adding background noise to a YouTube video, you're scoring a short documentary. Scoring it with pre-existing tracks, sure, but still. You're putting definitive work into making the music gel. That's only work that pros do. Or music teachers, apparently!
As someone who knows next to nothing about music, I have to respect the insane levels of work that you put in on it. It might not seem insane to you, but you compose and record your own tracks, arrange them to spoken word narration, and add them to a video. I could never.
People, including myself, call your videos polished, but clearly, that's an understatement! You bring that musical perfectionism to YouTube! You put in the work to make sure every single video is up to your very high standards, and so you feel proud, we enjoy it more, Google gets more money, everybody wins!
I know you love music. I know that's your calling in life. But I still want to say this: you've definitely got the chops to survive in the (documentary) film making world. You could pitch a feature to somebody, I'm sure somebody would see the hard work you do and give you a budget.
As it stands, I'm glad that this channel, which is just a hobby, still gets treated to the same standards as your line of work; it elevates the final product.
If I may give you just one piece of advice: try three-point lighting. It'd just be one more light, and it could eliminate shadows. Your photos already look phenomenal, but there could be potential for them to look even better!
Of course, you'd know better than I; I don't know much about photography.
Thank you so much for this video man! I was making videos for a youtube channel called ImpoliteMTG(look it up if you care) and we were doing audio over visual graphics. I was using DaVinci Resolve on my old PC and I found it so difficult to learn. I'm in the same situation as you, didn't learn this stuff and didn't have it when I was young as well. I got very frustrated with the work flow and eventually gave up on it. Its really encouraging to know that you are using the same program, and seem to have a similar work flow that my cohost and I did. We didn't fully script our videos, but we scripted the intros, and then had bullet points for throughout. I did the audio editing in Audacity though. I can't emphasize how much this gives me motivation to try and get back into it though. The part you mentioned about updates was what ultimately did me in. My old PC was too old for the new update of DR,, and that's when I kinda threw in the towel. But i have a newer PC cause that old one was also too old for Windows 11, and I just had to update. I'll give the video editing thing a try again now and hopefully I have a better time with it. Thanks Slugger!
You gotta stop teasing me with the Insectoids b-roll, i loved that theme as a kid 😅
Humble slugger
My bad advice is if you have no plan your gonna be bad
As someone that maked some bad videos, It was hard . Seeing this video make this easy and good wake me dumb 😂
My writing style and speaking style match primarily in that florid vocabulary comes naturally to me in either, but I tend to be much more terse in speech than in writing. I find written communication more natural and to have a better flow, with fewer misunderstandings.
I think I do better improvising with verbal communication than I would trying to write myself scripts to recite.
I like your videos
You re-recorded the Summer of Slug intro? The bass voice's singing is different…
Slugger I think your content is 10/10. It’s really cool to see your process! The love and care you put into these videos is obvious!
This is horrible advice. I like it. Thanks for the tips.
Awesome advice!
Thanks for this video. Actually, I wanted to ask you to create such a video. I was interested in how you produce your videos.
It's interesting how you focus on what you want to tell instead of what you want to show. Something I will think about when creating my next video.
I'd love to see some more detailed advice on how you create your scripts.
Cheers