I’m not certain if this can be considered un-biased (I made it after all), but Existence of Mako was a weird point in my Abridged Career (while also the first part). My friend (SirJosbourne) and I had always wanted to be like TeamFourStar and produce an Abridged series, so when #TIBA came around we saw it as an excuse to make an abridged style video… but we didn’t actually want to do a “Legend of Korra Abridged Series” we weren’t sure what we wanted to do. But I knew a lot about the footage of LoK, making trailer mashups for five years, so we went with it.
Honestly this video represents some necessary growing pains, where we slapped together a script we didn’t think out and just ran with it. It gave us our first experience with recording and recording equipment, this is also when we first started recording with Brichouse (who voices Sokka on our Avatar Abridged Series), who sadly didn’t get much to do in EoM.
At the editing stage we ran into immediate problems, our script was too long and some of the scenes just DRAAGGED, we weren’t gonna make the ten minute time limit, so we removed unnecessary scenes, because I played Mako (and could record him last, on my own) we could mold his dialogue to suit all the material we had to drop and mess around with. But it was also a double edged sword, where we inserted new material into scenes that couldn’t sustain it. A good example would be the “Cookout Scene” where our foray into retakes made it worse. Our material with Asami fell flat, and this when a good editor would have just cut her cookout material, but instead we double, triple and quadruple downed on it. While I am a feminist I’m just embarrassed by that material… mainly in that we couldn’t make it funny, we just made it boring.
It was also my first main foray into doing voicework and it shows, my performance as Mako is passable at best. There’s nothing more tedious than an editor who had to edit himself, because he’s gonna keep recording that line until it’s exactly what he wants, but it’s still not enough. With EoM I just lost patience and went with what we recorded. This is a lesson I took to heart when I started voicing Zuko for Avatar Abridged, nothing’s ever gonna be perfect.
That being said, if there’s one part of this video I am proud of… it’s the ending. An ending so ridiculous that it inspired the entire video where Mako reaches complete zen in his understanding of the universe and simply disappears. Because of the ending I’ve had complicated thoughts on remaking this video with a new script, but keeping that ending intact, I suppose I’ll keep having those thoughts… maybe put in some Westworld Jokes for good measure.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed listening to me ramble, I wouldn’t recommend this video, but I can’t stop you, hahah… I’ll see myself out.
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