Random Stuff

After Effects Journey

While both the ‘Sam’s Room’ and ‘SevenWebheads’ channels were incredibly successful, they were originally created with no intention of chasing fame, approval, or revenue. The same applies to many other channels I’ve created; one of those notable mentions is my channel called ‘Drew Belmor.’ As a huge Game of Thrones fan, I decided to create a bunch of short, satirical parody videos, and while doing so, I learned yet another new piece of software: Adobe After Effects. My short series is called ‘Game of Thrones: WTF Edition,’ where I merge a bunch of clips from the show’s episodes, replace dialogue and facial expressions, add sound effects, and most importantly, attempt new tricks using After Effects, i.e., add a lightsaber or laser beam instead of a sword or do a face replacement technique. It’s reached over 5,8 million views in total.

Laughs and Praise from Star Wars Fans

By the time season 8 of Game of Thrones aired, people would ask me to create a parody of each episode. So, while I intended to edit only the first episode, I eventually had to cover an entire season. After each episode, I had about a week to edit it before the next one came out. The whole six weeks, while being incredibly exhausting and, to a point, unhealthy (some episodes took from 12 to 16 hours a day to edit), turned out to be incredibly popular and, above all, very productive for me; this is because with each scene, each short clip, or effect, I was getting better and better with Adobe After Effects. After a while, I also created a parody of Disney’s Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker movie, which has over 670 thousand views, lots of praise, and many laughs from Star Wars fans.

Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, After Effects, and Imagination

The best part about creating satirical, burlesque content, especially for adult shows such as Game of Thrones, is that there are no limits: not only can I implement my very own sense of humor, but dark humor is also acceptable and well received, so I can go full throttle and reimagine entire scenes and subplots, without any restrictions. My most incredible parody video, though, came out some years later, in 2019, called ‘YTP: Spider-Man Is Not Responsible.’ Using my love for Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie, which came out in 2002, my newly acquired experience with Adobe After Effects and various other video editing techniques, and finally, my long-time love for Spider-Man, I attempted to re-imagine the entire movie and make Spider-Man not a hero he’s known to be, but a villain. Implementing some of the best video editing techniques I’ve ever done, such as incredibly complicating and time-consuming ‘masking’ tricks (cutting a person out from the scene, replacing objects, and so on), having no limits in terms of various humor styles and using my imagination to its fullest, the Spider-Man video turned out to be one of the most successful YTP parody videos of the decade, with some people dubbing it the greatest one on YouTube. Reaching over 7.3 million views in less than three years and amassing over 7,000 comments about praise, effects, jokes, timing, laughs, and my unique sense of humor, the video also spawned dozens of reaction videos on YouTube, with viewers even recording their reactions in real-time while watching the parody.

Merging Real and Virtual Worlds in the Desert Dunes

The story of my creative life is pretty much that, without sounding presumptuous: catching lightning in a bottle without even being aware of it. If there is an idea, it usually comes to me in an instant, and I seem to know exactly how to execute it in a matter of seconds. Let’s talk examples. Last summer, during my vacation across the globe, I found myself in Morocco. I was staying in a lovely hotel in Merzouga, a small village about 50km from the Algerian border, located at the edge of the Sahara Desert. As an avid gamer, I had my laptop with a bunch of games on it; one of them was called ‘Black Desert Online.’ It’s an online RPG game that offers a variety of different locations. One such location is a giant, seemingly endless desert, where you can run around and explore it with your character. One of the sweltering evenings while I was in Merzouga, I decided to stay in my hotel room and play said game, and the particular ‘quests’ I was doing required me to explore the desert. So, I’m running around in the game and realizing this place looks exactly like the dunes I’m currently settled in. Then, as usual, there was this click in my brain. The next day, the plan was about to come into action: I charged my laptop, ensured my 4G internet connection was stable enough, placed it in my backpack, and explored the dunes. Once I found a location that satisfied my idea’s vision, I set my laptop on my backpack (going so far as to risk the sand getting into it and damaging it), launched ‘Black Desert Online,’ and placed my character on top of a giant dune. The idea was simple: I would pretend to make random gameplay footage recorded on the phone with a character stuck in a desert, but as the camera pans out further, it is revealed that I, in real life, am at the exact same place, at the exact same time, also stuck in the dunes.

From Twitter to TikTok and Beyond

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Later that evening, I returned to my room and uploaded the video to Reddit (a network of communities where people talk and share about random things) into the ‘Black Desert Online’ sub-forum. I titled it ‘Guys, is that the correct Nouver spot?’ (Nouver is a boss located in the game’s desert) and went to sleep. I woke up late the next day and realized my phone had over a hundred notifications. Once I checked them all, I realized what happened. According to Reddit’s post insight, the clip of my laptop in the dunes got over 250 thousand views in less than 12 hours.

It became the trending and most viewed topic in this game’s section, from over 800 upvotes and lots of comments from people making jokes about a gamer finally being outside to being impressed at the phone recording’s screen bait into the big reveal and the location. Not only that, but I also received a DM from one of the ‘Black Desert Online’ employees who mentioned how amazing the clip was and then asked my permission to upload it to the company’s official Twitter account. Of course, I said yes. Little did I know that the clip would also be uploaded to the company’s official Facebook account, TikTok, and spread to many other websites.

What started as a random idea about making a short clip, merging both virtual worlds and reality, became one of the most viewed ‘Black Desert Online’ videos of all time. Maybe I should have asked for some sort of payment… after all, it was eventually an incredible advertisement for both ‘Black Desert Online’ and the Alienware laptop brand. You can see the clip and other links and images down below.

500K Views and 7.3K Upvotes

Another click of mine would be yet another Reddit post. On one of the weekends I spent with my little brother Alex, we sat on the sofa playing ‘Pokemon GO’ on my phone. The game offers a unique VR experience-- you can place your Pokemon anywhere you want using your phone’s camera, be it a living room, park, garage, and so on, and it would appear as if the creature was there, in reality. So, I’m playing the game and realizing my Gengar (Pokemon) is currently sitting on my living room floor as Alex’s cat is walking around. Click I want to pretend to summon my Pokemon on top of the cat and make the cat disappear by combining two clips: (1) the living room with the cat on the floor and (2) the next shot with the cat gone. I wanted to merge them so that it would look seamless. The clip, called ‘I’ve sacrificed my cat for 2 hyper potions’, was uploaded to the official ‘Pokemon Go’ subreddit and accumulated over 500 thousand views and 7,300 thousand upvotes, and my Reddit profile got many awards from users worldwide. You can see the post below.

A Fun Journey Unfolding

For many years, I’ve had success creating projects simply for fun (and for myself), be it a video or a picture, a post, or a vlog. A new space game came out in September called ‘Starfield’ from Bethesda Studios, and I immediately thought, “Hmm, let’s make some funny clip.” I made numerous gameplay recordings and edited them, with one of them becoming the most viewed ‘Starfield' game video on Steam’s platform. At this point, I’m convinced it’s not accidental viral occasions but a pretty special knack for creating unique, funny, and random yet purposeful works. This process is always with me, even to this day, like when:

Always Discovering Something New

The best part about fashioning new and unique creations, whether just for the sake of a crazy new idea I have or helping others, is that I always learn something fresh, like the latest function in a video editor, an unexplored trick in Photoshop, or a new experience dealing with an unknown audience and gathering people’s reactions.