Quite a lot of work goes into the production of Kerbalism. First, I write a draft of the script, based on a general concept I want to highlight. This typically goes through a few rounds of editing before it’s ready for audio recording. After six years of podcast recording for Distilled (distilledradio.com), I’m well accustomed to working with recorded spoken word content. With Distilled, though, everything is recorded live unscripted. This means there’s a lot more preparation that must go into production of Kerbalism.
After the script is recorded, I block out the storyboard with a simple black screen, spanning the full length of the recorded audio. As I listen to the audio track, I create title markers, simple white text words expressing an emotion or concept I want to associate with the narration. These are consolidated together to become recording notes. The notes help guide the screen recording process, so I can be sure the video content supports the script.
Screen recording of in-game content is typically the most significant time investment. Naturally, space is hard, even in a simulator, and sometimes it takes a few attempts to get the shots I want. This also conveniently provides me with ample fodder for Instagram teasers. Once all the filming is complete, I begin the painstaking process of selecting, cropping, and aligning video clips to the audio track. I export the final cut to a file, using 1080p and high quality video encoding. This is uploaded to Vimeo and YouTube, along with episode meta data. Finally, I post the script in its entirety to the website with links to the video.
All told, each minute of final cut video requires about an hour of pre-production planning, copy writing, filming, editing, and producing. It’s a lot of work for this one-man show, and I’m so very proud of the work. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoy creating it. Thanks for watching!
-Aubrey
Kerbalism 