2022 // Personal (Dragyn) // Design
A highly edited video for the Dares of Eternity mode, that incorporates TV game show references. This video for Dragyn was the first that featured Cinema4D renders and edits.
– Objective –
Create a video that leans into the game show motive like Dares of Eternity does, but include creative edits and references to create a comedy video for the Dragyn YouTube channel. The video should include new techniques learned in school and use visual stylings consistent with the channel’s identity and brand.
– Approach –
In the previous video for Dragyn, I began using more of the pre-production techniques that I learned in order to streamline the creative process. I wanted to practice more of those techniques, so I wanted to make more detailed thumbnails and storyboards in order to get my ideas onto paper before getting started with the project.
I planned for this video to be more ambitious than some of the others on Dragyn. I wanted to do more 3D renders and individual sequences, like cutting to a commercial break, TV bumpers, and a title sequence for DoE. Given the number of edits, the video will also be one of my longest videos that features highly edited content.
– Work Completed –
As stated above, I wanted to practice more story boarding in order to have a established intention of what I was creating. Below is what I made for a basic outline of what the video will feature.
I began working in Cinema4D to create the 3D motion pieces. I focused on the title sequence first, since I felt that would be the most striking and compelling piece of the video. I created the scene and rendered a few test frames of the ring spinning animation.
I was happy with the composition, but the felt that it could’ve been framed better and lacked the intense lighting and glitzy visuals that I was going for, after recreating the scene and the lighting, I rendered some new test frames, and those were directly turned into the video below.
Next up was the Up Next bumper. I wanted to take inspiration from Cartoon network and had planned to just create something in After Effects, so I decided to create a render that could serve as a background of that sequence. I created a scene that featured every class’s logo floating around in frame. Below is a test of that render.
While I think this fits the aesthetic that I had panned for originally, I wasn’t really happy with it. If the bumper was going to be the first thing people see in the video I wanted it to be more interesting. I did some brainstorming and eventually came up with the idea of an engram cracking open to reveal the DestinyTV logo. Something that could be created rather easily with the shatter tool in C4D. Below is the DestinyTV logo (heavily referencing MTV’s) and a test frame of the engram.
Given that I wanted to have the show title revealed in the bumper, I framed the engram to have room on the left side to include the Dares of Eternity ‘up next’ part. Below are some shots from the finished scene, and the final sequence.
With these two completed, I began collecting footage and creating the overall structure of the video, but I wasn’t done with C4D yet. After getting some clean plates for the Wheel of Fortune spin, I began working on renders for the wheel. This was one of my favorite parts of the video; referencing the wheel and updating it to make it fit within Destiny’s world was great. Swapping the dollar symbols for glimmer and ‘1/2 a car’ turning into ‘1/2 a sparrow are two of my favorite touches. Below are the renders of the wheel and the game board intended for overlaying on top of footage.
There are a few sequences in the video that feature rotoscoping. I knew that I wanted to include the viral Hole in the Wall clip since it fit really well for the obstacle course jump and the boss door section as a call back. After my experience cutting Gjallarhorn footage out for the previous video, I had a lot more confidence in working with masking and even the roto brush tool. Below are some examples from the rotoscoping work I did.
Since it’s become a norm on the channel and one of my favorite edits to do, I did a few UI edits. The first being reminiscent of the one in the Gjallarhorn video and the other being a UI replacement from Destiny 1. The D1 UI replacement is one of my favorite edits I’ve done. It’s super simple and just required proper planning. I did simple fade from footage that had the UI active to some that had it turned off. After that, I just cut out the elements from D1 and dropped them into the frame.
There’s more that went into making this project behind the scenes, and I’ll cover that in the retrospective, but below is the official video that I uploaded to YouTube.
– Retrospective –
This is one of my favorite videos on my channel. It could be recency bias, since this is the latest video uploaded to the channel, but I think it’s more than that. This video feels the most complete out of any that I had made up until this point. This video did have pivots and cuts during production, like many others, but I feel like they were of service to the overall video as a whole.
Storyboarding this was extremely helpful, and I plan on implementing more preproduction planning when making videos. Still allowing opportunities for changes and improvisations while making this video though made for a better video, because of that I’m still planning for some wiggle room when in development. One of the best examples was in the commercial segment, I started running into time constraints and getting this video out in time, so I ultimately had to cut those segments. I’m super grateful that I made that decision though, because it allowed me to focus more on the DoE content as a whole and kept the pacing of the video more consistent. Referencing DVR recordings for the timeline after the cut to commercial break helped make it feel even more natural.
3D rendered elements fit right at home with my editing style, being able to add objects to the world and make them feel legitimate is something that I’ve always had fun doing ever since the Edge Transit video. The 3D renders just felt like the next step. The Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy podiums some of my favorite examples of where these edits shine.
This being the first video that had C4D elements meant that I had to do more sound design. The SFX for the bumper, title intro, and even the UI replacement made the video feel complete, and definitely something I will bring forward to the next video.
ALEX VERKEST 
