Why it takes me so long to post a machinima

Let's talk machinima.

It's not simple, I'll tell you that, even if you're not dealing with animation softwares or 3D space building, it's still quite a lengthy process I'd say. Or at least, my process that I use. My process of creating a machinima from start to finish is basically the thought process of a film major that has been slowly grinding inside of my head for more than 2 years now.
For those who are unaware of the stages that it takes to create and produce films, here's an exert from my last post.

Development - Where your idea comes together full circle, you are building the story world from the ground up. Consolidating any questions you may have. Which will stem the creation scripts, storyboards, treatments, etc.
Pre-Production - Scriptwriting, character building, everything that makes a story a story. To mise-en-scene, (whats on screen). Packaging, not packing as in DVD boxes but in the aspect of, people working on the film, gathering your crew and much more
Production - Is where you go out and actual film your film, or in this case fraps is our friend. Or possibly gathering voice actors voice lines, directing is being taken place if actors are involved. Sets, locations, even the look to the feel is being looked over at this stage.
Post-Production - Where everything melds together, the editing stage, sound editing, and even color work, animations and more.

And in short terms, yes, I do all of this. Even way before when becoming a film major, I had this thought process innate because it just felt right for me to do. Now I can say when making machinimas, I can't do Production all in one day, but I try to. I try to record any and footage I can before going into Post-Production. Where I take that footage, and create a scene. Definitely for machinima the lines of Production and Post-Production melds together. The other first 2 it may be best to understand what you're doing before going into the big phases. So have a good script, or good storyline, understand who are you working with and more. 

As I am writing this, my latest machinima is rendering, and rendering should be simple. Right? Wrong. With any sort of software, they are bound to be issues. Rendering is one of them. With just this latest machinima, it took my entire night to fix all the interlacing issues, render scene clip fixes out, and make sure everything look crisp. I had issues with After Effects too which is highly rare (and no I don't pirate it, I have my thoughts on pirating too but thats for later). I am glad that after all these months I have another video to put out. 

They are so much more things I would like to do with my channel besides with machinimating, I see myself in the future posting my short films on there and maybe other things. But that doesn't talk about the elephant in the room
The reason why it takes me such a long time to make machinimas in particular is because of the film process I base the foundations of my work off of, but also. My life is always changing, I am a college student in that phase I am still trying to figure out what I wanna do. Also, to be blunt, I am poor. I mean, not getting into detail, for awhile, when I was away at college, my house didn't have any internet (I know so terrible). But it wasn't just that. My dad tends to worry about my well being, and what I've been eating and doing and won't take care of himself because of it. So the days where I did have time off and went home. I spent helping him, and around the house, and because I had no internet. It was harder for me to work on my school work, and at that time. My mind wasn't on machinimas. It was on my life. 
Another reason as to why it takes me longer (more than a month) is because without any inspiration for a video there is nothing you can develop, write, produce, and edit. You need motivation to see your story through. 
As I mentioned before, rendering is an issue too. 
And also, when I am editing, I want my scenes to look as vibrant and realistic as it can be. I want to follow the law of how environments look in real life, and slowly over time I am. I can say that my machinimas improved immensely. But they are still some gray areas I still don't understand. It's sort of funny looking at this latest machinima, the beginning part is not so great and at that time I didn't quite understand why my chroma keying wasn't working. But lord and behold after taking time off of it because of school and life, I found techiques of my own to fix the issues. My editing improves over time, how I do scenes will change as it does. It's not me being lazy, but me in reality looking at the process from another angle --- thats better. 
Animating, and 3D building isn't everything, it won't make or break your video. Just how giving a model a unique look won't change how things are received on the internet. Your video is. Yes animations and unique character models are amazing, but I've learned not to base my entire machinima endeavors at the fact that I can't do them. I should give myself more credit when it is due. I am still very hard on myself and my videos. Views don't matter, but the video's end product does matter. As much as I owe so much to my viewers and those who really support me through it all. 

Finally, the biggest reason why it takes me such a long time to put out machinimas, is that procrastination is a thing, watching YouTube videos is another thing as well. Oh food, foods pretty big, cause when you get food, it's not I'ma sit down and eat this bowl of cereal as I edit. Nah, I'm gonna watch vine compilations as I eat this bowl of cereal. Also, YouTube isn't forever, it's always changing it's format, and as a small creator, it makes me scared at some point, something might happen to my channel for wrong reasons that are simply untrue or just doesn't align with what I do. For example, in the past YouTube has taken down channels in their purge of making the site more consumer and mainly ad friendly. This has been seen with family channels that are not.. um, really "family" friendly, but in doing so. They take down the accounts that ARE family friendly, mostly by mistake. In doing so, that same thing might happen to me, and I fear my voice might not be big enough to be heard for.

I know this was a long post, but I hope some of you like coming to my blog and reading up on how I've been doing.
Thank you everyone and I love bootiful y'all faces. Stay strong
~Siyu

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