Event Orr Else Announcement

First and foremost I want to apologize for taking so long, but, Event Orr Else Episode 22: Crisis on Infinite Earths #9 is finished.

However, in order to get this episode completed I had to make a tough decision, and so here is the actual Event Orr Else Announcement I alluded to in the title of this post:

Going forward, Event Orr Else will be an audio podcast ONLY. I will no longer be making videos.

With that said, I need to confess something.

When I said that Event Orr Else Episode 22: Crisis on Infinite Earths #9 is finished, I lied.

It's recorded. I just need to edit it. Which I'll do tonight. Once that's done, I'll make it available to the folks over on my Patreon. Everyone else is going to have to wait a bit.

I'll get into all that a little later in the post.

Before I do, however, if you will indulge me, I'd like to explain why I decided to stop doing the videos.

While I do go into it a bit in the episode, which you'll get later today, let me break it down for you here in text.

When it comes to putting together a video episode, the two processes that take up most of my time are script writing and video production.

Let me expand upon those a bit

1 - Writing the script.

The types of videos I have made thus far for Event Orr Else are about 15-20 minutes long. In that time I try to get all the information in there about the issue along with my thoughts regarding the story and the art. At the same time I try to do all of that and be somewhat entertaining so that people might want to come back for the next video.

Whether or not I pulled any of that off we can debate later, the point I'm trying to make here is that I can't just start recording and make a video like that happen without any preparation.

It takes time, it takes planning, and more importantly, it takes a script.

2 - Making the actual video.

Once the script is written, I go over it a few times, make changes, tighten it up, read it out loud to make sure it sounds as naturally as a written script can sound, make more changes, and then record the audio around which I will create the video.

The audio part, once I have the script, is fairly quick. Maybe an hour (at the most) to record. Of course that's going to depend on how many takes I have to do, but on average, we're looking at about 30 minutes to an hour.

Then there comes the edit of the audio. The average time it takes me to edit one of these is about two to three hours. Again, it's going to depend on how many takes I had. I mean, the more I have to fix, the longer it takes.

But in the end, we're talking about an average of two to three hours to both record and edit the audio.

Once the audio is complete, it's time to make the video.

That can take anywhere from five to ten hours. At least.

I'm often spending three to four evenings in a row putting a single video together.

Add that all up and I'm looking at about anywhere from six to twelve hours, or more, in total, and that's after I've written the script.

I can't even get into how long it takes to write up a script because, if I'm being honest, it really depends on how creative I might feel at any given time.

If I happen to be feeling especially creative and motivated at a time that I'm actually free to write, then I could start and finish the first draft of a script in an hour.

What I've often found, however, is that feeling creative, feeling motivated, and having free time to sit in front of the computer to write, don't always fall into place at the same time. And, of course, the knowledge that I still have twelve hours or more of recording, editing, and video production ahead of me can often tamp down the fires of motivation.

It's so much easier to put off Event Orr Else and record an episode for another podcast where, in most cases, I'm just tapping record and talking from my heart and head with very little preperation.

So, last night, as I was at the computer, wrapping up some various podcasting tasks, I got to thinking about Event Orr Else and how much I wanted to get back to it. I mean, I'm only four issues away from finishing Crisis on Infinite Earths. Then there's Secret Wars II, and Legends from DC after that. Then Infinity Gauntlet, Millennium, and so on and so on and so on. I really want to get into that stuff! I'm tired of putting it off!

So I pulled up the script I'd already started for Crisis #9 and stared at it for 15 minutes or so. By this point I had already written the introduction to the episode and the first draft of the synopsis. I still needed the Top Three Things to Dwell On and the Outro.

Writing up the Top Three Things to Dwell On, by the way, can often be more of a bear than writing a synopsis.

Eventually, after writing nothing for 15 minutes I was ready to close the file and move on to something else.

That's when that little voice in my brain that sometimes throws a bit of logic out there for the rest of my brain to discover, suddenly spoke up and changed the game for me:

"You know, you'd be ready to record this episode right now if you were just doing an audio podcast instead of a video."

Now, I'm gonna let you in on a little something. I've been zipping through the creation of Just Another Fanboy Presents: The Death of Superman episodes because of the way I decided to record and format that show.

The format is pretty simple: Intro - Issue Credits - Issue Synopsis - My thoughts on the issue as a whole and various story bits that popped out at me while reading - Outro - End.

The only real preparation I do for those episodes is to read the issue, grab the publication date and credits from Mike's Amazing World of Comics, and then the issue synopsis from DC Fandom, copy and past all that into a Google Doc, read the comic one more time to make a quick list of bullet points to highlight the stuff I want to make sure I get to, and that's it.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

And so, last night, as I was sitting there staring at that script for the next episode of Event Orr Else, I decided that if I really wanted to move forward and create more episodes, I had to make a sacrifice.

The video part of it had to go.

No video, no script, no video production, and now I'm feeling some real motivation.

Now, that being said, I'd already written an intro and a full synopsis for Issue 9 of Crisis on Infinite Earths, so when I recorded the episode, I still used all of that. I mean, why let all that hard work got to waste? But for the rest of the episode, it was just me talking about a few moments in the book that popped out at me. I can do that all day!

I mean sure, I spend an additional hour reading the issue through once more and making a list of bullet-point notes of various story bits to talk about, but again, that's the easy stuff.

So, now that the audio is done, why can't I make a video with it?

Well, looking at the unedited audio file for this next episode, it's over 47 minutes long. Once I finish editing I'll probably get that down to a little over 30, but really, the idea of then making a video to that just exhausts me.

Instead, I'm going to get it edited tonight, and then before I go to bed, I'm going to give it to my patrons.

For those who aren't Patrons, I've also made the decision to hold on to this episode and not release any of the following Crisis episodes to the public until all four of them are in the can. That will not only finish up Crisis on Infinite Earths, it will put me three weeks ahead and I can use that time to start working on Season 3: Secret Wars II.

So yeah, going forward, no more videos.

For now.

I reserve the right to create Event Orr Else videos at my own speed, but they are the lowest of low in the priority chain. I mean, there's a good chance that the audio podcast will be on one of the many events from the 2000s before I make a video for Crisis #9.

The audio podcast will be it's own thing, and the videos will be there if I feel like it.

I hope y'all are excited for this, because I sure am!

I'll keep everyone updated as I finished up the episodes for Crisis 10, 11, and 12.

As I finish them, I will be releasing them to the good folks on my Patreon, but again, they will not go public until all four are finished.

Bye!