Hi everyone,
Quick update for the next video - "What if The Phantom Menace came out in 1987?"
As the project began to take shape, I realized that because I had to explain and justify all the changes to the story, it was starting to impact the telling of the story itself. So I decided that instead of one video, each What-If would be split into two - one video that's just the story of the alternate version of the film, and one that has the full breakdown of all the changes.
And with this month being the 25th anniversary of The Phantom Menace, I wanted to make sure I had at least the story-only version done by the end of May.
However, I think the "main event" is the full video, with the shorter version being a bonus that people can check out if they want to see how the story works on its own, or if the full video's stops-and-starts make the narrative difficult to follow.
So rather than putting the story-only version up publicly on its own and potentially confusing people with what is essentially contextless fanfiction, I've made it available over at the Patreon (www.patreon.com/empirewreckers) for anyone who's interested in getting a preview of the story until it's ready to release along with the full version.
And for everyone else, hopefully you won't have to wait too much longer for the full video. I'm aiming to get it done by the end of June, which seems doable now that I just need to fill in the gaps between the 187 storyboard frames I spent the last three months making.
Hi!
I'm still a couple of months away from the next video, but in the mean time I wanted to make a Channel Update to talk about some other stuff that's going on.
The short version is that the lingering effects of last year's Hollywood strikes means that me (and many other people) are currently a stiff breeze away from being laid off from our jobs in the VFX industry - which isn't an environment that's super conducive to making hobby youtube videos.
So if you've been enjoying the videos so far and are in a position to help the channel stay on its feet, check out the Empire Wrecker patreon, which has about 3 years of bonus content that you might enjoy.
www.patreon.com/empirewreckers
In the last post about upcoming videos, I mentioned a What-If video about an alternate version of the Star Wars prequels released in the 1980's.
I realized that would probably be a pretty lengthy undertaking so I decided to make something shorter and simpler instead... and that ended up taking 6 months!
Anyway, our new video chronicling the design history of a bunch of Star Wars aliens is now available for our $4CAD+ patrons (over at patreon.com/empirewreckers), and will be released to the public on Friday.
Hi everyone,
As some of you may know, this channel started out as a place to put some extra content for my Star Wars RPG actual play podcast.
In that spirit, I'm going to be playing in a charity game of Force and Destiny to raise money for Extra Life at GoatCon 2023 this weekend.
If you'd like to come watch, the game will be streaming live at www.twitch.tv/goatcon on Saturday November 4 at 3:30pm PT.
And if you'd like to donate & help us enable some in-game cheats, you can find the GM's fundraising page here:
www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive…
Just wanted a to drop quick thanks to everyone for helping the channel hit 10,000 subscribers! It's been great to see the response to the videos, and I'm really looking forward to making more. The Rise of Skywalker video is also creeping up to a million views, which is pretty amazing as well.
For the next video, I'm jumping back over to Star Wars, with an in-depth look at what the Prequel Trilogy might have looked like if George Lucas had made them immediately after the original movies back in the 80's. There's a lot of historical and creative context that went into the Prequels as we know them, and some of the things Lucas said about the Prequels back in the 80's are pretty different from what he decided later on.
I'm about halfway through the outline for that video, but there's a lot of visual stuff that will need to go into it as well, since I want to show these what-if versions of the movies in a somewhat cinematic way, so It'll probably be a while before it'll be released.
So thanks again for subscribing to the channel - and since we got a bunch of subscribers off the back of the Transformers video, I'd absolutely recommend subscribing to Gavin over at TRDQ (who's also within spitting distance of 10k subscribers) - some of you caught my Thew reference in the video, and if you're watching him and not TRDQ, you're definitely missing out.
The next video, about Michael Bay's Transformers movies, is now available for Patrons and will be going public on June 23!
In other news, my partner and I have just welcomed a newborn to the family, so I'm taking the summer off from work to help take care of the baby and get used to being a dad. And since I won't be working full time for a few months, I'm hoping that I'll be able to use some of those sleepless nights between diaper changes to spend more time on videos than I've had previously, which will likely mean more frequent content.
If you'd like to support us and get early access to videos like this one (plus a couple years worth of other bonus content), you can join us over at www.patreon.com/empirewreckers
Our next video, a deep dive into the VFX of Attack of the Clones, will be going live on April 14, and is available now on our Patreon at www.patreon.com/empirewreckers
The next video will be an extended look at Michael Bay's Transformers movies, and the secret genius contained within.
Our next video essay will be going live on Friday December 9, but if you're interested you can check it out now on our Patreon at www.patreon.com/empirewreckers
We're planning to do these more frequently to try and stay in the algorithm, hopefully every couple of months depending on how big each project is.
We'll also be alternating between Star Wars content and videos about other stuff, so next up I'll be looking at the much maligned visual effects of the Star Wars prequels from the perspective of someone who's spent several years working in the VFX industry.
