[Announcement] Lunar

[kurosawa]

Longtime lurker, first time poster.

Last year on a business trip, I discovered Inferno - Canto I & II randomly on PornHub. I subsequently got stoned off my ass and had the most phenomenal two hours of masturbation I've ever had. From then on I was hooked with CH videos.

Earlier this year I embarked on making my very own RPG CH video. There were a number of thrown away "rounds" and stories since then. Fast forward to July, I've really hit a stride on a story and editing. This project is starting to come together now with several completed scenes and I wanted to announce mainly to use this as development journal of sorts to stay accountable to you all and myself and possibly recruit a couple of beta testers for feedback as the project matures.

Lunar.jpg (145.56 KiB) Viewed 11057 times

Premise:
You are The Captain. As an agent in the Intelligence Unit of the Earth Defence Force on Earth's moon, you've been given a new assignment: find out what has happened at a nearby aluminum mine. IU scientists were sent in to investigate a report of a strange archaeological finding and neither mine nor the scientists have responded to any communications.

Thanks, everyone! I hope to share more about this project very soon...

[kurosawa]

Dev Log


Log #001: Creative decisions & Progress

Spoiler: show

• The video is presented in Cinemascope (er, Sinemascope ) and has a resolution of 1920x817! While a little weird and yes, you lose a bit of video information, it gives it an anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.35:1. This serves two purposes: One, it looks more "cinematic" like my favorite sci-fi epics and more importantly, I wanted to hide logos that are burned into every porn scene. Logos are distracting and when you edit between scenes, it's a really breaks immersion. I **really** wanted to make this 4K but HD let me use the scenes I couldn't find in 4K and I could employ digital zooms on the 4K scenes I had to preserve detail.

• There are no beat meters. Again, I personally find this distracting and prefer a visual & audio cues.

• At the moment, it's one stand-alone story. Initially I considered making this episodic, but this is a lot of work and I wanted it to feel finished when you... you know, **finish**. That being said, if you guys like it and want a sequel, I do plan to "leave the door cracked" in a sense.

• I found that when "playing" Canto that a cannabis wax vaporizer (among other substances) let me disconnect and really feel immersed. I and many others live in place where cannabis (and psylocibin) is legal, dec. It's completely optional and encourage you to read/follow the laws in your country, talk to your doctor, do what feels right, etc.. blah, blah, disclaimer. [Mods please let me know if this is inappropriate, I'll remove it.]

• I initially had a bunch of gameplay elements I wanted to add, including a wax vape cue, but removed it since I felt the "incidental" nature of this one was tapped. Interestingly, I read an article from a game designer whom analyzed CH videos and one of the things he pointed out was something he described as "ant-farming" (http://www.zenofdesign.com/academics-and-ant-farming/) and I wanted to avoid that as much as possible.

• Current status is 3 beginning scenes completed, which is roughly 10%. I have rough story outline that I need to be flexible with (sourced scenes/b-roll need to fit like puzzle pieces) and will still need to spend a bunch of time polishing at the end. I once read someone say that they had a tough time doing a Canto-like video because of false starts, I wrote it off at the time, but boy were they right. It takes much more planning that I initially thought.

Log #002: Sound

Spoiler: show

First of all, I was not expecting this many wonderful and encouraging comments at this stage. Thank you all for your support! And thank you to those offering to help. At the moment, I haven't progressed enough to determine anything too specific aside from some polling in these posts, but will let you all know. This is the most public facing creative thing I've done and it has me excited. I'll try to address some questions in this post.

I'd like to get some suggestions or examples of good beat sound cues. If you have preferences or thoughts about it, let me know. I'm personally a fan of mid to low tone styles like bass drum hits instead of clap sounds, but even within that there's a lot variety. Since I use MIDI to generate the beatmeter, I've been experimenting with different bass drums, even trying to craft things with Logic's synthesizers. I haven't found anything I love yet. The ideal thing should be invisible to you, but be present enough to keep tempo.

I'll be releasing the beat track separately for e-stim. I'm very curious about it, if you have links to a beginner's guide and/or equipment recommendations, please pass that along!

The music used in the project will likely vary a little bit, I want it to flow naturally together like the narrative. Not like a DJ mix, with the waves of the story tone and pace.

There are 5 tracks so far committed to Lunar. Their genres could described as electronic, a couple of them are synthwave. While I'm open to other genres/subgenres and constantly adding to and picking from a scratch Spotify playlist, there will be no rock, hip-hop, or reggaeton. I love all of those, they just would not fit at all here.

Lunar is mostly a linear experience and that's all I'll say. I don't want to spoil it.

It's been a couple of days, but progress is a tiny amount further along. Mainly it's things like tightening edits, rewriting dialog, and organizing the workflow. I work on these smaller pieces during weekdays and progress is much slower with my day job. It's Friday night and I'll be working on the next segment this weekend!

Stay safe out there, kind internet strangers!

Log #003: Infinite Polish

Spoiler: show

It's been roughly a week since I've lasted updated. I've been rewriting and reediting scene 3 all week. I've really liked 1 and 2, and while I go back and polish every so often, 3 never got to place where I liked it in execution. The core concept remains, but I'm really happy with it now. There's a moment it starts with that pushes the bounds of one of the more popular kinks in porn, which made (what I think is) a good Idea difficult to execute.

Ultimately, I want to make something I'd play many, many times, but I'm curious what the thoughts of you all on all kinks outside of just "standard" porn. Different body types (BBW), trans, fucking machines, etc.. And if that's something you would power through in a CH video or turn off immediately?

Looking at the overall product so far and the dust settling on scenes 1 and 2, I've started playing with shinier edits, effects, and color correcting some of the finalized clips in Final Cut. I want to use effects very tactfully and add to the immersion and story, so it takes time to find the balance. With color correcting, I'm attempting to color match all the clips and grade them so it feels closer to one film.

I'm moving onto scene 4 now, a straight forward but crucial piece of our hero's journey. This has been an interesting experience, so far I'm surprised how writing and building the edit is 20% of the work while polishing is 80%.

Log #004: Starting over...

Spoiler: show

It's been awhile and not the update I wanted to give... The COVID-19 pandemic has been very tough on me personally in the latter half of 2020, so it's been slow going in this project as life has been throwing curveballs. That being said, things are turning around and in the next month, I can start working again in earnest.

A change I had to make was switching from Final Cut to Premiere Pro. I have very current Apple hardware, but by the 5th scene, working with 4K files is extremely taxing on even the latest 16" Macbook Pro. I've built a PC with a much more capable Ryzen CPU, was able to land a 3090(!!!) and am awaiting SSDs. I'll then be rebuilding what I have in there. I plan on making more than just this project, so this was a worthy investment (plus, gaming).

When I'm back up to speed and scenes rebuilt, I'll post another update with more visuals since all of you have been very patient. Also, thank you to the beta testers that reached out! The feedback given was very helpful.

[Van Owen]

Looking forward to this one. Fantastic Blade runner avatar BTW.

[Liquidorus]

Nice to hear :)
You got my attention

Count me in as beta tester!

[TheElephantMan]

You got my attention as well.

I'll gladly beta test it if needed.

[RedLighter]

This sounds very promising! I would love to beta test it

[BoundSquirrel]

This sounds amazing! I love the sci-fi approach and can't wait to see what you come up with.

If you're at all interested in an e-Stim file for the video, can you please also post an audio 'beat' file that just has the stroke beats? It is a lot easier to make an e-Stim file if the beats are separated, particularly if there's no beat ,eter. Without a beat track or a beat bar in the video, stim files become more effort than I've got time to put into them.

Can't wait!

[kurosawa]

This sounds amazing! I love the sci-fi approach and can't wait to see what you come up with.

If you're at all interested in an e-Stim file for the video, can you please also post an audio 'beat' file that just has the stroke beats? It is a lot easier to make an e-Stim file if the beats are separated, particularly if there's no beat ,eter. Without a beat track or a beat bar in the video, stim files become more effort than I've got time to put into them.

Can't wait!

I can definitely do that!

[doremi]

I wanted to announce mainly to use this as development journal of sorts to stay accountable to you all and myself

Well, if you like to work under pressure, this is the right thing to do because there are one or two members that will post just to ask how far along you are.

Welcome to Milovana, kurosawa. I'm also interested to beta test your production. And depending on how your story is spread throughout the video, I could write a custom video player so we are automatically redirected to the right timetag jump. I did one for Canto I.

[CantoFan123]

Wow this sounds great! Totally agree weed makes the experience even more immersive and pleasurable. Canto I & II were also two works that hooked me on cock heroes (hence my user handle). I will never look at connie carter the same afterward! Would love to beta test and can't wait to see what you put together!

[Frantzo]

Woooh! It sounds very interesting. I can’t wait to see the final result. Your cinematic approach will be, i’m sure, very refreshing and in my opinion cock hero videos need this approach.

Do we will have a dev diairies about your music selection ? Or it will be a suprise ? Like it’s in space, will you use some electro songs ?

[candii]

need any help?

[kurosawa]

Log #002 posted above.

[danoldlib]

This sounds great! Looking forward to it.

[doremi]

Sounds like:

Captain's Log twenty o eight o eight ...