Can I... talk to you about something?

[Cooly568]

This is going to be a very heartfelt thing for me to talk about, so sorry if I stammer a lot.

As many of you might know, at least the old timers on here might, I had tried to make a movie project by the name of "Kerbal Space Program - Rise of the Kraken", back in the Summer of 2013, man it's been a while. But the project, fell under, I never finished it and gave up, deleting the original files. But before that, I had tried back in the era of 0.17, obviously I gave up on that too. Making it about two and a half years since I originally came up with the idea. And since then, things have changed.

It was back in February of 2014, I hit that punch of inspiration again, and I wanted to finish ROTK out-right. In the next three months, I worked myself hard, recording about two and a half hours of video, about enough for an hour and a half movie. But again, I've lost motivation. The project is still on my Hard Drive, just sitting there. Two and a half hours of perfectly good video shot back in 0.22, just, collecting dust. I've slowly been working on it a bit since then, but I only have two of the twenty-six scenes edited, making progress slow, but I could so do it, I just don't have that passion I once had. But the sad thing is, I still do. ROTK is such a huge part of my life now, I've spent three years thinking about a dream movie I could make, but I just can't drive myself to do it. I've put heart and soul into the story, and at this point, I've planned an entire trilogy's story out, I have story material for three movies, but I can't be motivated to fulfil my wishes. To make the movie about the game I love so much, for the community I hold so dear.

My old shots I spent months on at the time are now, outdated. From a relical version without the Strategy Center, from a version without volumetric clouds, from a version without asteroids or ARM's, or anything we hold true to KSP now. This old footage may not even be new enough if I edited it. And I don't want to start again. ROTK's third attempt is going to be the last one I try. It's story needs no more revision, no more changes, no new footage, no new anything. It's me vs. myself. And I want to deliver the movie I always wanted to you.

My Magnum Opus, my true work, is being held back by myself.

So I want to ask you all something, I really do. More than ever, I want an answer to my problem. Should I...

1. Finish the movie with it's current footage, at the risk of it being outdated, old, and without current features.

2. Reshoot the entire movie, a fate I may not be able to go through with.

3. End it all, and let the Kraken stay unrisen. Never finish the movie.

I'm sorry for asking this, just, I've never been in this much of a slump.

[Yukon0009]

1. Go do it.

[Fel]

1. Finish the movie with it's current footage, at the risk of it being outdated, old, and without current features.

Seriously, what does "outdated" mean anyways... it's a film not a game!

Besides, you will NEVER finish it if you obsess about restarting from the beginning; inspiration/motivation only lasts so long.

[Columbia]

Well.. My suggestion would be..

It's become a part of your life. Finishing it would mean a success of a big life goal of yours. Who cares if it's old? With the passion and dedication you have, I believe it could become truly amazing. If it's old, then edit it if you want. It's up to you. It's been started, and it might as well be finished. You know you worked hard on that movie, so go for it!

[Sandworm]

Either do it or release the material under a GPL to let someone else possibly finish the job. Don't let good footage die.

[Fearlessjames118]

1.Do it,you should never give up.

No matter what

[razark]

My old shots I spent months on at the time are now, outdated. From a relical version without the Strategy Center, from a version without volumetric clouds, from a version without asteroids or ARM's, or anything we hold true to KSP now. This old footage may not even be new enough if I edited it.

Crazy idea here, but hear me out.

It may just be the bourbon talking, but does the older footage need to be current? (I have no idea what the movie you're doing is about.) Instead of scrapping the already created footage, is there some way you can reframe it into a flashback, or a dream sequence, or use it in some other way that having a different look to it would not break the movie? You could give it a black and white or washed out look and use it behind a voice-over, etc. to fit it in between newer footage. Turn it into 1940s newsreel style stock footage or an artist's impression. That would give you a chance without needing to reshoot everything.

[Tw1]

If you don't need any of the new features, and you're satisfied with the existing footage, I say stick with that.

A movie is a big thing to make. And risky- on the net, shorter means more clicks.

Perhaps you should work out what's holding you back. Is it fear? Is it available time? Is it the amount of work that it will take.

Maybe you could set aside some time to bash out a rough cut, and then refine later? Do a quick, dodgy edit, then come back to add and correct things later, if your editing program will allow it. Don't try and make it perfect, Almost nothing is perfect, and everything starts out pretty rubbish at first. A first edit should be made will little effort, - just enough so you've actually got something you can work on.

I also suggest making a trailer, if you haven't already, to gauge interest. Perhaps getting some 'beta views' 'pre readers'

- other people, possibly from this forum, who'd be willing to read through your scripts, plans and whatever- feedback can help boost confidence.

It can help you make decisions where you're not confident, help you get an idea of how people will respond, correct flaws... even if you disagree with some of the feedback, it can help you be more confident with where you've decided the move should go.

[problemecium]

I vote 1. Afterward, if you feel like you could do better using the new version, feel free to make a sequel.

[boostme]

Completing a project like this is always very rewarding, but if working on it is not bringing you joy then let it be. The project isn't going anywhere and you don't have a deadline to finish it. Take what you've learned from this project so far and do something else. Something that interests you right now.

When the time is right you'll know what to do with ROTK.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

1 + 2

I would love to see it.

[jarmund]

This is going to be a very heartfelt thing for me to talk about, so sorry if I stammer a lot.

As many of you might know, at least the old timers on here might, I had tried to make a movie project by the name of "Kerbal Space Program - Rise of the Kraken", back in the Summer of 2013, man it's been a while. But the project, fell under, I never finished it and gave up, deleting the original files. But before that, I had tried back in the era of 0.17, obviously I gave up on that too. Making it about two and a half years since I originally came up with the idea. And since then, things have changed.

It was back in February of 2014, I hit that punch of inspiration again, and I wanted to finish ROTK out-right. In the next three months, I worked myself hard, recording about two and a half hours of video, about enough for an hour and a half movie. But again, I've lost motivation. The project is still on my Hard Drive, just sitting there. Two and a half hours of perfectly good video shot back in 0.22, just, collecting dust. I've slowly been working on it a bit since then, but I only have two of the twenty-six scenes edited, making progress slow, but I could so do it, I just don't have that passion I once had. But the sad thing is, I still do. ROTK is such a huge part of my life now, I've spent three years thinking about a dream movie I could make, but I just can't drive myself to do it. I've put heart and soul into the story, and at this point, I've planned an entire trilogy's story out, I have story material for three movies, but I can't be motivated to fulfil my wishes. To make the movie about the game I love so much, for the community I hold so dear.

My old shots I spent months on at the time are now, outdated. From a relical version without the Strategy Center, from a version without volumetric clouds, from a version without asteroids or ARM's, or anything we hold true to KSP now. This old footage may not even be new enough if I edited it. And I don't want to start again. ROTK's third attempt is going to be the last one I try. It's story needs no more revision, no more changes, no new footage, no new anything. It's me vs. myself. And I want to deliver the movie I always wanted to you.

My Magnum Opus, my true work, is being held back by myself.

So I want to ask you all something, I really do. More than ever, I want an answer to my problem. Should I...

1. Finish the movie with it's current footage, at the risk of it being outdated, old, and without current features.

2. Reshoot the entire movie, a fate I may not be able to go through with.

3. End it all, and let the Kraken stay unrisen. Never finish the movie.

I'm sorry for asking this, just, I've never been in this much of a slump.

1. Get'r'done!

Because a good video is good regardless of outdated effects.

I for one love the original The Time Machine (can't stand the newer one).

I think the same of old KSP videos, they're still entertaining

[Hotblack Desiato]

1.

go do it.

if it is in an old version, everyone will appreciate that you did a lot with all those bugs. of course, the kraken is still available in 0.90, even more if you don't install kerbal joint reinforcement...

[Richy teh space man]

4. Go with what you have already but do it in parts. An hour and a half video is quite long, and daunting to do all at once.

By breaking it up into pieces you'll find it easier to fine tune and edit, and if you release it slowly over time you'll also be able to get feedback from people about what they think is good or bad about it.

[LostOblivion]

I understand the position you're in, I've had a few projects of my own that I never got finished, even though I'd love to see them finished. However, I've also had a few projects that I was happy with, and they all had the same solution; I had to set aside a lot of time to work hard on them, even though it's not so fun right there and then.

I think the important idea about passion projects like yours, no matter which alternative you go for, it is important to remember that all projects will at some point become work, a lot of work, and that, as you've experienced, might lose that drive to keep working on it because it's not so fun and rewarding right there and then. You may choose not to do it, and that's fine too, but either you have to choose to put in really hard work and time to get it done to reach your plans for it, or you have to lessen the effort required and lower your expectations for the final product. Besides, who says you won't ignite that spark again after that hard work put you over that proverbial hill? :-)

[eddiew]

1.

Because I've been writing a novel for the past 7 years due to constantly going back to chapter 1 and fixing it xD

[John FX]

Sometimes you only want to want to do something, you don't actually want to do it. In this case, you want to have the desire to finish the movie but you don't. You find yourself just not doing it and doing other things instead.

Accept how you feel about the project.

My suggestion would be to have a go with what you already have, if you find it fun it may ignite a desire to finish or improve it. If not at least you have made something from all your work to date.

[allmhuran]

Fellow video maker here including some very long ones. I know them feels.

In my opinion the game version doesn't matter at all. If you have the ideas and the inspiration then keep going and definitely use the footage you have.

[treejoe4]

i dont care lol

[Red Iron Crown]

#1. Should have been a poll.

[katateochi]

Cooly568 I understand how you feel, I too have unfinished projects (some KSP, some other things) that I've really wanted to complete but just lost the ability to. I've dropped some projects because I felt they were now "out of date" and wouldn't be well received, but I think that was a mistake on my part. This community actually appreciates art and effort even when out of date; my most viewed vid is now well over a year old (made in KSP 0.19) and people still watch it and still like it, so I'd say go with option 1 and don't worry about it having out-of-date footage.

[Scoundrel]

I'm imbedding my full response in a spoiler because it's a wall of text that the OP (or whoever) may or may not want to read, and it's pretty extensive as this is a subject that is quite personal for me too.

As a graduate of the Vancouver Film School (back when it was a two year course crammed into 8 months) and having had extensive experience in all aspects of production (I've since moved on but still play with after affects for fun), I can say that you are going through the exact same thing every single filmmaker goes through on a big project. Most simply self-medicate to keep their energy up, but a bunch of us (who aren't insane) who have shot and edited huge projects use music (and sometimes a second pair of eyes and hands) to keep us motivated to see the project to the end.

Allow me to expand on that a bit further...

I suspect that the burnout you have is because you've spent 90ish days setting up and getting your shots, know the footage inside and out, but have realized that there's a lot more work yet to be done. Now you're into the grind of post. Done right, post production is just as fun (sometimes funner) than shooting... but the problem is that you're messing with stuff you've already seen and have already figured out how is going to be strung together, so the editing portion isn't as "creative" as it could be to keep your interest going... and it is hard to stay motivated when the bulk of the workload is yet to come.

Furthermore, once the burnout comes on there is a bit of depression - one of my directing instructors, in an obvious pun, used to call it 'postpartum depression' because the baby's been made (the fun part), but now you have to raise it and teach it not to pee on the carpet or play in traffic (the lots of work part). From that daunting realization that the job is far from over stems our self-doubt and rationalizations to quit or restart the project (this pops up because directors/producers fear the finished project won't be worth the large effort put into post and start second-guessing their decisions); most of the productions I've worked on have ended up in freezers because the director lost interest or the producer ran out of money... but the ones that were finished were projects where the creative force pushed through the rationalizations to quit and simply stayed focused on the end goal: tell a story they want to share.

But that's easier said than done, right?

Well, we non-insane sober types have developed a strategy to keep us motivated when staring at the huge EDL we need to generate: we step back and work on our soundtrack instead. The simple act of hunting down music and listening to it - seeing what scores works with the theme of various scenes, or working out the climax or the intro or the denouement - allows us to be productive, take a break from staring at scenes we know inside and out, and when we finally go back to editing we get to look at the footage from a new, creative angle because we're looking to edit to the music.

Furthermore, editing to music allows us to break down large projects into small, bite sized chunks that don't require weeks of commitment to work on (let alone revealing pacing issues in the story itself, another big bonus). This lets us take breaks when we need to so we can stay motivated long enough to see the project to completion.

After all, that's the whole point of starting a project, isn't it? To finish?

Anyways, it's long winded and rambling, but that's my take on filmmaker burnout. Hopefully this helps someone, somewhere.

That said, if the OP is simply soliciting opinions, then I'll say the same thing I say to anyone who is working on a project and is having second thoughts:

Finish your damned movie! Everything else is just an excuse to quit!

[Starwhip]

If the old idea didn't requore the new features then, it doesn't need them now. Go and finish it. We'll be here, ready and waiting.

[ShadowZone]

Finish it! No matter the version, the parts or the effects. You need that closure, trust me

[Roxette]

Certainly finish and release it with the present material, but maybe release it in black and white with film damage effects to emphasize its historical perspective