Gatowag

We've actually had 3 episodes not work out well enough that we never cut them together, 2 of them were only partially filmed and 1 was a full episode.

As Jason said, we might come back to some of them, but I can talk about the full ep we shot. That was our first jiu jitsu episode, and we just weren't satisfied with the messaging and how it came together, so we essentially re-shot it as the blocking a haymaker (the last episode we shot on that day, but the first of the series we posted).

In vague terms, the other two were about cars and personal endurance.

It's currently at 14 days, due to our sword-fighting episode.

The weird thing about that is that it doesn't count from when it actually happened, but when the injuries aired, just so it's easier to track for the viewers.

I can't speak much for pre-production, that's mostly Jason putting in the research, but sometimes I'll add to our episode outline beforehand to make sure we're hitting all of the right beats.

Production lasts anywhere from 3 to 8 hours, depending on how many episodes we shoot on that day.

As far as post-production goes, it typically takes ~15 hours to edit, but there's a lot of variability in that. Realistically that range is 8-25 hours (haven't been blessed with an 8 hour edit in some time though). Time can rely on whether we have an ad or not, how in-depth the episode is, how clear the narrative is, how many guests are in the episode, how much research needs to go into clarifying what Brian and Jason said, etc.

Editor here, I can handle a couple of these.

• We don't do any scripting for Modern Rogue / Scam School. For Scam School Brian (usually) practices the routine for a trick once or twice before the shoot, and everything during the actual filming is improvised. For Modern Rogue Brian and Jason will kind of go over the major talking points with each other and then improvise their way through those big points. A lot of times they'll get through a chunk of dialog and adjust/repeat if something doesn't flow just right.
• For recording: a simple episode of Scam School will take 20 minutes of footage and compress into 4 or 5 minutes, a more complex one might stretch as far as 45-60 minutes and compress into an 8-15 minute episode. Modern Rogue averages a little longer but is pretty comparable in record time : total runtime.
• The amount of takes vary, some days everybody's firing on all cylinders and some days nobody is. So it's pretty situational, but very rarely does it all come together in a single take--there's always some degree of massaging.
• I don't think any of us can accurately describe work/minute of final video since work is split up among people. Jason does a lot of the in-depth research, Brian does some preliminary brushing up, I do editing and brand management to a degree, Bryce and I do camera operation and sound engineering.
• I'll be working on a comprehensive behind the scenes look at our millwall brick episode soon, you might find a little insight into how informal and sloppy these come together sometimes. That'll go up on our secondary channel if you're interested.
• Grain of salt on this advice, since I showed up right about when scam school started really blowing up, but here's what I would have to say about starting up a channel. Believe in what you're making, understand how your perspective offers something that isn't readily available elsewhere. If you can land on a weekly schedule, that helps, but if you have ambitious videos that take time to put together then that's fine too, consistency is what's important. Also understand that you can't be good at something until after you're bad at it. The most important step is just getting it done, don't wait, just get to making things and it will naturally improve in time.

What's good, Austin? Are there any future plans for video features on Waypoint besides the podcast?

Love the work you're doing! It makes me really happy to get a little dose of Miss You every week with some good people talking video games.

Bonus Q: Have you been watching Atlanta? I feel like you would appreciate the tone and conversation surrounding that show.