Behind the Scenes: Belladonna Cove | Episode 10.3

Tara busy stargazing ...

You know, when I'm recording a video, I have no idea how long I've been playing. I only know that I want to play for a full sim day (the first, introductory episode) or for two full sim days (the episodes after the introductory one). I love this game, I love creating stories, and I love unexpected events, so of course I lose track of time. When I'm done recording, I save the game, immediately make a backup of the neighbourhood* and then I select all the footage I've just recorded. I right-click on the footage, select Properties and then Details - then I basically go hmm when I see the total length of the footage. 

For episode 6.2, I also had two hours of footage, for the Tuesday morning and then Kimberly's solo vacation in Three Lakes. I remember thinking that the episode would be entirely too long if I would keep all that footage in one episode, and I had that same thought with episode 10.3. I recently tweeted that I was going to split the episode, but honestly, I needed to split it because I couldn't continue editing. The plan was to edit for a bit on Sunday (the 18th of August, today's the 19th of August) and then I'd eventually, in the week of the 19th of August, release a video.

But I don't want more than a week between episodes. Also, earlier I mentioned that I couldn't continue editing - I couldn't spend more time editing on that day because I needed to prepare for work. I also don't want to spend an entire day editing from sunrise to sunset because it's going to make me feel weird in the head. And then I'll feel weird the next day as well. I don't want that. So, for my sanity and because of real life priorities, I decided to split episode 10.3.

But let's talk about the recording process once again. I mentioned before that Tara and Armand's biographies are open, that I was afraid that nothing interesting would happen, but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed recording this episode. I didn't even notice time passing! I now have so many ideas for the next round of the DeBateau family, and I didn't think I'd enjoy Tara and Armand so much. It will be a long while before we can visit them again, but we still have episode 10.4, which will be the last episode in their first round. There's two (maybe three) big surprises in the next episode!

And then we have the Baldwin family, the last family in the round! After that, we're going to visit some of the apartment residents in Belladonna Cove - Maria Marsh, Dylan Morgan, and so on. I'm excited!

*I have so many backups, one for the end of every episode. I even have backups stored online!