Game:

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet (2022)

Duration: 3:52

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Area Zero - Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (Metal Cover) Arranged and Performed by Chris Hmieleski
Originally Composed by Toby Fox and Go Ichinose
Footage shot by Michaela Hmieleski and Trajon Neal

So here is the fun part where I get to use every bit of this 5000 character limit explaining what happened to the past 8 month since Lufia. For starters, I actually came out of that video with a ton of motivation and actually wrote a bass jam that, admittedly, had too ambitious of a video idea for me to pull off at the time. You see a pattern anywhere? Anyways I was trying to figure out how to pull it off when my priorities changed drastically and without warning. Around November, my family experienced a tragic loss. I needed to be there for my wife and her family and, frankly nothing else really felt important at the time. That loss happened the day before the new pokemon games dropped and while my original plan was to make a whole thing of streaming my playthrough, I needed to just play it at my own pace so I could be present at the same time.

And for all its faults, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The glitches made me laugh, the new mons are awesome (my personal favorites being Maushold, Meowscarada, and Houndstone), and Terastalizing is a fun competitive mechanic. And I LOVED THE MUSIC!!! Can't overstate what an amazing soundtrack those games have and one song in particular, reeeeeeally got stuck in my head and yours as well I imagine.

So early December, I set out to arrange a cover of Area Zero. It was more an excuse to get myself back in a "normal" routine than anything at the time. As I was arranging and specifically writing guitars, I thought the song reminded me a lot of some songs off of Devin Townsends "Z2" album. There were quite a few sort of slower chugging type riffs set to big choirs on that album and I really wanted to bring something with that energy to the table. It came together structurally after only about a week and a half which was a far cry better than I expected. Even managed to get it done before getting a root canal which also put me off of doing anything for several days. The mixing faze was far less frictionless however.

Everything was going great, felt like I was making progress, and then I put my efforts into video making. We're in January at this point. I've got the green screen and lights set up, its time to record footage. I get through recording performance shots for guitars and bass and I'm pretty stoked about it. Until I look at the footage. I looked like hot garbage, the performance was lackluster, and the lighting was strangely all over place which wouldn't have been nearly as big a deal if I wasn't using a green screen.

Still with me? You're awesome. Just thought you deserved to know that. Anyways, so at this point I'm frustrated that a whole bunch of work is in the toilet and I now have to figure out what I'm gonna do instead. At the same time, I'm realizing my mix was not good. Guitars were super muddy, you straight up couldn't hear the kick drum even with sidechaining, it was just a mess and when I went to master it, it sounded even worse. So I got to educating myself more and put some new mixing techniques into practice on some other songs, figured out what worked for me, and mixed and mastered the whole thing. I actually think it might be my best mix to date actually.

Now we're in March and I'm sick of not having a video out in months. I already had everything in order, I needed a backdrop that wouldn't be nearly as finicky. Something where I could actually say "good enough" and mean it. What I was far more concerned about, was adding enough dynamics to the footage, both from having a camera operator to get the good angles, and an editor who isn't wasting brain power fixing chroma. On that note, this was the first video I used multicam editing for the bulk of the clipping work and while my computer reeeeeeally hates it, it saves so much time and I'll never do it any other way.

If you can't tell, a lots happened. I've been using the time to learn and improve and I think (I hope at least) it shows. I'm immensely proud of how it came out and if anything, it's a good proof of concept for a lot of different things. I hope you all enjoy it!!! Also as soon as the soundtrack becomes licensable, this one will for sure be going up on streaming services so look out for that.


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Equipment Used:
Schecter Reaper MS 7 String Guitar
Jackson Soloist 8 String Guitar
Ibanez SRMS 806 Bass
Novation Bass Station II
Roland Juno DS Keyboard
Darkglass ADAM Pedal
Synth sounds from Spectrasonic Omnisphere and Native instruments Massive X
Mixing Plugins by Neural DSP and Native Instruments

#vgm #metal #pokemon

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