Take That! - A Halo 3 Ninjatage
Gameplay: thestrangestick/Koggy Edit: thestrangestick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPDosbQalnY&feature=youtu.be
1080p download
ATTENTION: I put way too much time into this. There are a lot of stylistic choices and little easter eggs that YouTube's incredibly modern 3mbit encoding does not even begin to do justice to. If you think you might enjoy this even a little bit, I strongly recommend downloading the original file. It's a little big, but it's worth it.
Boring write-up:
Whew. I'm so relieved to be typing this. I head off for a 2 week holiday tomorrow (ending after the competition deadline, annoyingly) and I have been working my hairy arse off for about 12 hours a day for too many days in the last few weeks to get where I am now.
This was originally an ambitious project I started with Koggy back in late 2014. I was really pleased with where it was heading, but as always I just lost motivation to work on it. I picked it up occasionally, and always knew I needed to finish it, but I felt no urgency about it until I saw (sadly later than I would have liked) that there was another comp here. I'm actually trying to break out into the scary world of editing stuff I didn't capture on an ancient console and maybe get paid for it, so this was pretty much perfect timing as far as giving maybe one last thing to the Halo community, a community I still have a secret, nerdy love for to this day. Although I somehow haven't played in many months, I still watch videos from time to time, and will always value the creativity and sheer entertainment still being pumped out by our frail community. I have all these clips I've been saving for my actual final, but honestly who knows if that will ever happen, so at least I am putting out something that I think will hold up, if it is my last contribution.
Vaguely sentimental waffle aside, a little bit about the montage itself: I had always wanted to edit a ninja only tage, mostly in general because I still get giddy about ninjas to this day, but specifically ever since I first heard this song, probably back in 2009. It had to be a ninjatage set to this exact music, and that's exactly what this is. 18 year old me would be so proud, but also like 'hey why the fuck are you still editing Halo videos? Don't you have a job?' I was glad to add Koggy to the clip roster, because although I'm proud of the clips I have, this type of unique montage can only benefit from a bigger pool, and Koggy also happens to ninja like it's the most casual shit in the whole world. I always sort of thought a ninjatage would just have to suck it up and find a way to present endless epitaph clips in a manner that didn't make you want to rub your eyeballs against a fork, so I'm especially pleased that we have enough variety in our clips to keep your eyeballs fork free.
I've honestly put potentially more time into this than the Animatage, and have sacrificed any kind of human or even hamster type sleeping pattern to get it done in time, so although it feels like I should write more to justify to myself why I happily waved goodbye to whole groups of emotions and little fluffy bits of my soul to finish it when I did, the best thing is to probably wrap this bollocks up, and probably delete it tomorrow morning when my brain is slightly less completely melted.
As a final note, thanks to everyone in this community. I was never the most involved on a social level in the scene (partly because I suck at interacting online even with people I know and love or who pushed me out of their vagina) but I've still met a lot of cool, talented people, as well as consuming endless hours of quality entertainment, and discovering a potential career choice that doesn't make me want to slither off my chair and die on the ground at the thought of actually doing it. A huge thanks also to the staff at THF for organising this competition - it always brings people back into the fold and delivers some brilliant content. Congratulations and good luck to everyone who was submitted so far - I haven't had any time to watch anything yet, but you bet I will be doing that when I get back.
Hope you enjoy,
thestrangestick