Behind the Scenes: Belladonna Cove | Episode 2.3

Chastity taking a seat after her public woohoo with Carlos ...

Editing an episode for this series takes a while. To be honest with you, it takes a few hours to get an episode polished. And it takes so long because I want to make sure that what I'm putting out there, on the internet for everyone to see, is simply decent. Because I don't want to look back at an episode - in a few years, you see - and feel disappointed or even cringe at what past-me had done. Maybe my editing style (frequent jump cuts and sudden close-ups) for this series will change, you never know, but I want to be able to re-watch an old episode without feeling the urge toss my laptop out the window.

The process of editing is interesting, I'll tell you that. Listening to your own voice, watching the (sometimes questionable) footage. Cringing at what you're saying, wondering what on earth you were doing with your lips. Thinking to yourself, now why the heck did you position the camera like that? (I'll always mention the camera even though we're not working with one, and it's really the filmmaker in me that says that.) Yes, things like that. And there's so much that doesn't make the final cut of an episode.

Well, with me, that is. I don't know about other content creators - I'm curious, so let me know what you do! - but for this episode, there was about an hour and forty-five minutes of footage. And I cut it down to under thirty minutes. Some of the deleted footage you get to see in screenshot format when I need an image for a blog post, you see, but most of the deleted footage is, at the end of the day, not that important. And I'm not keeping the deleted footage; screenshots of those unimportant moments will suffice, and I share the screenshots of every household in the end-of-round bio post.

(Also, on a different note, I just know it that my screenshot folder is going to become large. So very large. I'm excited to see it happen!)

But, back to the editing process. I listen to my narration, watch the footage, and decide what's important. I listen carefully because I want to make sure that I'm keeping in the important information and removing everything that isn't that important. I want to make sure that the narration I keep in makes sense - I hope I've been doing a decent job on that part - and so far, I didn't have to re-record sections of my narration.

(Which makes me fist-pump, because I can clearly recall how absolutely terrible my narration was for one of my SimCity 4 episodes. That series is also my baby, and something I want to return to soon, but it was my first real gaming series, and it shows.)

But let me repeat myself: so far, I didn't have to re-record sections of my narration.

Until now. Well, I didn't re-record anything, that is. But in this episode, I decided that it was important enough to interrupt the flow of the story to add a quick disclaimer. Because I had completely forgotten about Chastity and Gabriel's household bio, silly me. That happens when you don't look over the notes you carefully put together. Yeah.

This episode reminded me of the importance of checking my notes, of making sure that I'm keeping the major story in mind. Because I want everything to come together wonderfully - and it has, so far - but this episode had a moment that felt like this: I wasn't looking where I was placing my feet and so I suddenly tripped. I don't like that it happened. I still feel that the disclaimer disrupted the flow. But we all learn from our mistakes. And I hope I'll do better in the future!