YELLOH?
blog page for mellohyelloh, darktriforcefilms spinoff that makes halo machinimas and doesn't matter
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OH MY GOD IT'S THE HOLIDAYS AND IT'S BUSY!!!!!! Hi everyone I wanted to do a little blog (i love doing these) now that 2025 is wrapping up! Being in the halo community has been so much fun and I wanted to share some of my favorite things from this year with all of you!!! I'll include some videos, music, and whatever other junk i wanna throw in I don't know I'm only starting this RIGHT NOW!!!!
Let's start by looking back on mellohyelloh this year! We had 2 layover videos and 2 full episodes out this year - alongside starting to experiment with some (not pictured) shorts! I'm honestly very happy with every video we put out this year, Yelloh Refrigeration and Mangler Horse are both really dumb ideas that I think came out really funny and we've been referencing both a lot behind the scenes since we made them.
Episodes 7 and 8 of Flying By Wire were both big labors of love and a TON of work went into both, and I personally think paid off really well! Episode 7 even got featured in the Halo Spotlight alongside our Last Stand short which was very very cool!!! I think that it's also my favorite video of the year, shooting the action sequences was so much work that really really came together in a way that worked perfectly. Also I got to use a ska song in that episode so Now being critical of myself, I would've loved to have uploaded more this year. 4 videos and 4 shorts really doesn't seem like a lot, but I appreciate that you all stick around despite our non consistent upload schedule! I struggled with a lot of writer's block this year and just overall scheduling, but I'm starting to hit a bit of a stride with Flying By Wire's main episodes and hopefully we can get a few more videos out next year! We also got up to almost 1500 subscribers this year, which was a really nice surprise! As we don't upload often, I never really expect the subs to go up that much, but we've been kind of steadily growing all year which is REALLY COOL!!! THANK YOU!!!! We have also been continuing our somewhat consistent livestreams over on Twitch! It's been super fun to have a place where it's so easy to chat and connect with the community, and often get them involved by either joining the game and playing alongside them or having them throw their own custom games at us to make us all scream. We also had the big Ranked Squad Battle stream this year with a bunch of other Infinite creators, and it was a LOT OF TALKING OVER EACH OTHER! But also very FUN!!!!
Featured here are a few of my favorite clips from the year - this above one being from that very Ranked Squad Battle Stream!! I think you get a pretty good idea of how it went just from watching that.
Most of the time it's just me, but you'll occasionally see appearances from our other mellohyelloh cast members and other friends!! If you're interested in checking the streams out - mellohyelloh was taken on twitch so go to www.twitch.tv/yellohmelloh!!!!!!! We got a bit of a story arc going on right now in those streams watch to find out more!!!
OK OK ENOUGH ABOUT ME LET'S TALK SOME MORE ABOUT ME BUT IN A DIFFERENT CATEGORY!!! 
in the spirit of sharing my favorites, I wanted to include a little section of some of my favorite music I've been listening to over the course of 2025! Of course mellohyelloh isn't anywhere near a music channel or anything, but I am CONSTANTLY basing tones and ideas for flying by wire and other things off of music I listen to. DID YOU KNOW WHAT SONG I CONSIDER TO BE THE MELLOHYELLOH THEME SONG???? maybe you do!!! I've played it a lot!! (it's commutilation! by kudrow) So here is a little playlist of the songs that have been stuck in my head for all of 2025! I listen to a BUNCH that isn't on streaming services (cuz i'm cool and underground like that) so I made this on youtube for easy access! There's A LOT of Bomb The Music Industry/Jeff Rosenstock SORRY!!! I LIKE THAT GUY A LOT!!! and also shoutout to HaloBoxStudios for showing me This Modern Love by Bloc Party that one really carried November for me!! There's also a few songs by The Kid Kung Fu, my BROTHER!!! He also played Vorkyis in that one episode of Flying By Wire with the brutes, remember that one? Did you know that Brute could RAP? CHECK OUT THE PLAYLIST HERE (and i embedded it right below here, you see it?) 
OK OK ENOUGH ABOUT ME FOR REAL THIS TIME!!! The REAL reason I wanted to do this blog in the first place was to feature some of my favorite machinimas that came out in 2025! It's VERY VERY awesome to be part of this community, and one of my favorite parts of it is seeing the stuff my friends make, the community makes, or just someone giving it a try for the first time!! It's so so so cool to see people get into this hobby I love so much!!! So here I'm gonna feature some that I really liked!!! I PROMISE I'M NOT IN ALL OF THEM!!!
NEW LEAK - HaloBoxStudios I genuinely can't believe this video came out this year. I'm gonna try and keep this list to one video per creator, so while there were a ton I loved from HaloBoxStudios, I had to go with this one. Making this video I feel like really solidified our little Infinite creator group, and it was just a really fun way to play a little joke on the wider Halo Community. I remember the lead up to this coming out people were DMing Box begging him to tell them what the leak was after he tweeted something cryptic about it.
Being in the live chat for this premiere was such a treat and for the most part people found it very funny and played along with the bit after realizing what was happening. Others were VERY MAD!! But let's be honest that only made it funnier!!! L.E.N.S - CHAPTER 1 - SPYLENS It will never not be CRAZY to see how fast Spy was able to catch onto Blender and start doing insane things like this. Starting off L.E.N.S with this twist on The Arbiter scene was so cool and it looks INCREDIBLE the entire time. Not to mention how it tied in Retcon from HaloBoxStudios, it was just a taste of the universe that was about to launch off and I HAD to feature it because of that. Another video I can't believe came out this year!
NINE TO FIVE E1: SHEP OF THESEUS - SPITE BOX STUDIOS Now, I could've chosen so many videos from Spite Box, who were really on top of uploads this year!!! So many cool things to choose from like RED LINE or GUARD DUTY but I had to go with the first episode of their newest series NINE TO FIVE!!! The animated opening sequence is one of the coolest things I've seen for a Halo Machinima, and the show really carves it's own tone and atmosphere right from the start. I also screamed really loud for this one! Very excited to see where the rest of the series goes!!!
THE HALO SHOW | EPISODE 4 - ZERO_GLITCHES I was loving these Halo Show episodes Zero Glitches was doing in the early part of 2025, The animation mixed with machinima is so much fun, and I love the Eric Andre type bits and random killing as well as trying to adhere to the Talk Show format. Bringing in so many guests from the Machinima sphere is always fun, even when they seem to not exactly be there willingly. Episode 4 started to introduce a deeper story arc, that was implemented really well and hopefully we'll see a continuation one day!
MACHINIMA NEWS EPISODE 3 - STERBEN STUDIOS What a cool idea Machinima News is! It's really nice to see someone rounding up all sorts of Halo Machinimas and giving them some more exposure in a fun, chaotic, loud, and entertaining video. Going so far as to even spoof some of the videos included really shows the amount of effort they put into making what could've been a very simple video listing other machinimas into it's own thing. They also include some videos from the spanish speaking side of the machinima community, which is very cool to see as someone who never sees those videos since I don't speak spanish! (yeah i know i'm not a very good puerto rican but at least my mom speaks it!)
HIGH GROUND, NEW HEIGHTS - COUCH COMBAT A short but sweet video from Couch Combat, this is just picking a good bit and pushing it all the way. I love the various games we see him jump through and the little B plot of the Grunt singing is just a nice little extra joke to throw on right at the end. Proud of that Grunt for going to Therapy and working on himself!!!
RECRUITMENT - COBALTTUX This one's SERIOUS! I typically watch more comedic focused machinimas, but it's always really cool to see one that really matches the tone of the Halo Universe like this one did. Just a simple story of a solider being recruited into the Spartan program, it really uses every second of it's short runtime to the fullest. Reach really is such a great game for these types of tones, and the cut to Infinite right at the end really is the cherry on top!!
RESPAWN EPISODE 2 - DUAL WIELD Something cool about Halo Machinima, is despite everyone using the same exact medium and having the same limitations, there's really no stopping anybody from making something of any genre - and Dual Wield proves this with their series Respawn! Episode 2 really starts to unfold the overarching plot with lots of cool, interesting characters and interesting superpowers that are very fun to see how they portray using Halo Reach. Check it out if you like superhero stuff!
VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER - THAT COBALT SPARTAN Always fun to see who from the community will end up in a Cobalt Spartan video, I just loved the simple idea of hearing the vehicle's perspectives - the punchline of the Spartans just hearing a ton of honking is a great bit and the cut just works really well! Another short and sweet one that uses it's premise to the fullest. Also M4RKM4DNESS' singing in the outro is beautiful.
There's so many more great videos that came out this year, but this is just a few I could think of and find quickly while writing up this little blog post. I'm just one mellow guy, there are a few community people out there who gather MUCH MORE comprehensive lists of machinimas, so don't feel afraid to go explore! Go out and watch a video from someone you haven't seen before, I try and search around YouTube occasionally just to find new creators and see what the wider community has cooking up! With Infinite wrapping up and no confirmation of the next multiplayer game, it seems like a great time for machinima makers to really stretch their creative muscles in 2026, and I hope to see more cool stuff just like these videos above!!! I LOVE HALO MACHINIMA!!! (and also I fear having anymore videos on one blog post will break the website WE'LL SEE!!!) 
MESSY SKETCHES BY ME! MELLOHYELLOH!
Finally, I'd just like to feature some really really cool fan art we've gotten over the year! We don't get a lot, but it really does mean the world whenever I see a new one pop up and I just wanted to feature a few here. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH THIS IS LITERALLY THE COOLEST THING IN THE WORLD I AM SO GRATEFUL TO GET TO INCLUDE THIS SECTION!!!!!!!!
BY @JAXBEETLE!!!!! THANKS!!
I simply MUST start with this insane one by JaxBeetle, it makes me laugh literally every single time I look at it and I have been thinking about it since it was first sent. Yelloh devouring his son, Excelled.
BY @SYPSART THANK YOU!!!!!!!
We complete the Spite Box side of things where I join the honorable Box Studios' of Halo Machinima YouTube like Spite Box Studios and HaloBoxStudios. 2026 presents an opportunity for YellohBoxStudios to exist - and we have the perfect logo thanks to Syp!
BY @THATCOBALTSPARTAN THANK YA THANK YA!!!!!
Next, we have a fancy little logo design by That Cobalt Spartan! In another universe, you open up YouTube and see this starting off all our videos! And I probably wear a little top hat or something too.
BY @SPYLENS THANKS SPY!!!!
Spy continues to make me look cooler than I ever have been in real life in this very cool render of us back to back!! One day I'll try to learn Blender but for now I'll leave it to people like Spy!!!
Next, we have a few by Zero Glitches featuring a whole bunch of other creators from the Machinima Community! Yet another person I'll leave Blender to I got no idea how you guys do this!!!! I'M DUMB!!!
BY @ZERO_GLITCHES AGAIN THANKS!!!!!!
I also wanted to include this one separate from the slideshow because I love it, Zero recreating a shot from Episode 7 of Excelled dead on the ground! Also the TECHNICALLY the first Dr. Petalbrook fanart which my girlfriend was very happy about!
BY @EXCELLEDNOVA THANKS... I GUESS?
Speaking of Excelled, next we have this very.. avant-garde picture that Excelled himself made. I'm just happy he's being creative. Please tell him you liked it. He also gave me one more piece of art he did that he really wanted me to include in this. It's not Flying By Wire related, but his birthday is in January so I figured I'd include it for him.
BY @EXCELLEDNOVA HOPE YOU'RE PROUD
Again, I told him this was like a Flying By Wire/MellohYelloh fanart section, but he was VERY adamant that I include this. So here is fan art of his favorite character, Big Chungus, by Excelled. He told me to include a caption he wrote as well.
"67" - Excelled 
OOOOOOOOOOOKAYYYYYYYYYY!!!!! I THINK THAT'S ALL I GOT FOR THIS ONE!!!! Time to get all ready for the incoming holiday season!!! I wanted to try to get a Christmas video or something out to wrap up the year, but honestly I have just been too ENDLESSLY BUSY recently!!! So I decided to do this little blog to at least have some version of a little end of year thank you thing for the community. Next year should be very exciting for everyone! I'm hoping to get a bit more of a lock on getting some sort of videos out more consistently, whether that be episodes, layovers, or shorts - and then we have the CE Remake to look forward to as well. And if you ask ME, PERSONALLY, NO BASIS AT ALL, I think we'll get an announcement for at least the next Multiplayer game next year at some point. Whether that be Halo 7 or something else I DON'T KNOW I JUST MAKE YOUTUBE VIDEOS!!!! And I've said this an annoying amount already but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to all of you who have been watching our stuff, the videos, shorts, or livestreams - it's super super cool to have our own little community. Next year I hope to use our discord a bit more and plan out some actual not last minute game nights and other things, so if you want in before those start happening make sure to join here - MELLOHYELLOH NATION DISCORD!!!!!!!! - AND WE'LL MAKE SURE TO SAY HI SOMETIME!!! OK FOR REAL THIS TIME I THINK THAT'S IT!!! Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc, etc! Hope to see you all in 2026!! LOVE AND PEACE!!! - YELLOH // LOGAN
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render by @HaloBoxStudios
Well folks, we finally made it. The final (major) update for Halo Infinite is just a few days away now, marking the end of an era when Operation: Infinite drops on November 18th. So I figured I'd do a little sort of retrospective on Infinite and my thoughts on the game and my time with it. So prepare for me to get REALLY into 343 shill mode because I LOVE Halo Infinite.
To this day, Infinite has a bad rep due to it's less than stellar launch. But as someone who has literally been playing (and never even took any sort of breaks) since the flights, Infinite has fought tooth and nail and climbed it's way all the way up my rankings of the Halo games. Sure, this is due in part to getting into the machinima community and making a lot of memories that way, but the gameplay in Infinite really made sure I'd want to stick around to get to that point. I'll try breaking this into sections like I did with my last blog, but also like that one, this is gonna be very stream of consciousness. REVEAL AND EARLY DAYS Let's start ALL the way at the beginning - E3 2018. I was streaming for DarkTriforceFilms alongside some of my friends (the one in the red was originally supposed to play Eagle in Flying By Wire but couldn't due to scheduling conflicts! The other one I do NOT associate with anymore!) and was fully prepared to not get ANYTHING Halo related. At this point, I was a bit burnt out on Halo. I was (and am) not a big fan of Halo 5: Guardians. Everyone kind of dislikes the campaign, and I think I might be in a bit of a minority that doesn't really like the multiplayer either?
The art style of course too wasn't my cup of tea for what I think Halo should look like and then of course 5 had other issues like no split screen (which I used to use a lot to play with my siblings) and terrible armor customization. I was BEGGING for a new Halo game and one that would fix all these problems I had with 5. I had become accustom to not seeing Halo at these big events at this point (funny because it still kind of happens now), so from the second the E3 presentation started I was in denial of anything Halo related despite how much I wanted it. Then the countdown ended and this trailer started playing. It gave so many feelings of Halo, so many familiar sights but ones that didn't exactly look the way they did in 5, and the music was so clearly Halo. But as you can see in the above clip, I just couldn't believe it. Then BOOM - Master Chief's helmet looking way closer to the classic Mark VI than it had in years with that classic Halo motif playing behind it. I was quite literally shaking with excitement (only to not be told ANYTHING else about the game for the rest of the E3 presentation). My mind was racing for the next couple of years, just buzzing with excitement from each new thing we slowly learned about the game. I remember when they first confirmed split screen and "reach style customization" and I was practically doing backflips in my basement. They showed off the cutscene of The Pilot finding Chief and I watched it 100 times, and I even was obsessed with the gameplay reveal (despite a lot of people having problems with it at the time). I really was on board from the very start of Infinite. The most iffy I got was when they did the multiplayer reveal and talked about armor cores for the first time. I was like "there's NO way they're locking armor pieces to specific cores, right? haha??" and while I wasn't a big fan of that it EVENTUALLY changed. I was too excited to really care about it at the time honestly. I just wanted to play the game... and then finally the flights began. 
My first ever look in the first Halo Infinite flight
FLIGHTS I thought the game had already won me over just watching the promotional videos, but MAN did I get hooked even more once the flights came out. From the jump, the gameplay was exactly what I wanted from a Halo game. I know a lot of people are so set on saying Halo needs "classic gameplay" but it's 2025 and I think "modern" gameplay elements are to be expected, and in my opinion, preferred! Sure, there are elements from the original trilogy that stand the test of time, and from the start I felt (and still feel) like Infinite combines both modern and classic gameplay in the best way possible. Now, I'm just a casual gamer so I'm sure someone who knows mor about development and gameplay mechanics might have a different opinion, but that's not me!
Even things like the removal of red vs blue was something I was honestly excited about! As you all know, I LOVE being yellow. So every Halo game up until Infinite I'd always be like "mannnnn" whenever I'd load into a match and I'd have to be red or blue. I can't go taking screenshots in that environment! How is anyone supposed to know that dumb blue guy is me? He's not yellow!!! But now here's Infinite saying I can be yellow ALL THE TIME??? SIGN ME UP! I couldn't get enough of the flights, I wanted to play as much as I could. I would go to work and be mad that I wasn't home playing Infinite. The flights would only open matchmaking up at certain times, so I would just open them to go into the training mode and do anything else like flying around the map with a grappling hook just so I could keep playing!!! If I'm remembering correctly, I think the first flights only had bot bootcamp? But that was more than enough for me to enjoy. And the MAPS?? What a strong selection right out the gate for these flights. Recharge was great, and I was introduced to what has become one of my favorite Halo maps of all time - Live Fire!!! I LOVE LIVE FIRE!!! It got me hooked on the Academy aesthetic, and I've been obsessed with it ever since (clearly). Also sorry that clip is so low quality it's hard finding any footage I had from 2021!!!
The flights would continue and I'd do my best to play every single one. Sometimes even accidentally messing up plans I had with my girlfriend (sorry kristina i stil feel bad about that)! We got to try out BTB and even the new BTB 2.0 (or whatever they called it I don't remember) I was hooked on! The flights were a VERY VERY good first impression on Infinite for me, and is honestly probably part of why I had some leniency for the game going forward. I was just buzzing with excitement I wanted to play Infinite right NOW!!! Throughout all this we were getting our glimpses of the campaign and I was just as excited for that as I was multiplayer. As I said I didn't like H5's campaign, and it looked like a lot of issues I had would be fixed with Infinite's. The flight's finished and I spent every day rolling around on the floor in pain as I waited for the release. And then, something happened...
A screenshot from Day 1 of Infinite's launch, where I used the Zvezda set so I looked different than everyone else
LAUNCH ALRIGHT.... let's talk about Infinite's launch since it seems EVERYONE on twitter still likes bringing it up!!! First of all, I want to talk about some things I liked about Infinite's launch. First of all, dropping it early was so cool!!! I couldn't believe the news, I remember being at work and telling literally all my coworkers that it was coming out the next day. Nobody else cared about Halo at the Target Guest Services desk, but they were hearing allllll about it from me. This was technically a "beta" but not really? I honestly don't really remember how it worked but I was just excited that I could play Infinite earlier than I was expecting to.
And now here's a HOT TAKE about Infinite: I, mellohyelloh, like that Infinite is Free to Play. NOW HOLD ON HEAR ME OUT!!!! Sure, there are some downsides to the Free to Play model, the shop is annoying and especially at launch really needed some ironing out to get it to a spot that was more fair to players, but at the same time Infinite being Free allowed me to play and share this game with so many more friends, family, and others that I would've never gotten the chance to do so before. I remember barely having anybody to play Halo 5 with, nobody wanted to pay 60 bucks for it when it was kind of known as a "bad" Halo game, and with no split screen I couldn't even let people have a chance to try it out with me. But Infinite? They could just download it themselves and hop in! Not to mention split screen was back which meant a lot of at home multiplayer sessions connecting any controller we could find to the Xbox. I really really appreciate getting to share my favorite game with the people I love and make new friends that way. Even the spartan on my left in the above image was a coworker who I had never played any game with but he wanted to try out Infinite with me since I had been talking about it non stop! And I'd take that and having to buy armor or battle passes because to be honest I knew from the start I'd do that any way. I love Halo!! Of course I'll be spending money on Halo!!! The gameplay was fixed up a bit and I loved it as much as the flights (despite missing a few funny glitches like the incredibly fast punching you could do with the sidekick). I was so happy to be playing Infinite that it helped me deal with its.... issues. Look, there's a LOT of things that could've been better at launch for Infinite. No team slayer playlist, no match xp, challenges, no forge or infection, etc, etc. But to be honest, it's been so long and the game has changed so much that I don't even really remember everything I had issues with? I remember justifying no team slayer to myself at launch like "well, this means I get to play something new every time and not stay stuck in slayer like I have been in the other games" which was kind of true! I really stayed in slayer playlists in all the other Halos, and Infinite really had me go out of my comfort zone and start playing and enjoying more objective game modes. And this continued on even past launch. I love modes like Assault, CTF, Husky Raid, and more now because Infinite really made me try and start liking them. I wasn't too upset about no forge or infection at launch honestly, but probably just because 5 didn't launch with either of those modes too. With the update 5's forge got, I figured Infinite was getting something along those lines and could understand it needing more time to cook. Infection's exclusion I didn't really get but it was whatever. Customization I was incredibly happy with besides a few things - armor cores and coatings. To this day, I think this was one of the worst decisions they made in terms of customization, locking armor pieces to cores was something I don't know how they thought people wouldn't be mad about, and coatings COULD'VE been really cool!! Imagine if we got to choose the patterns and grime levels on our colors, or even applied different coatings to each armor piece. Next game maybe!!! Challenges being the ONLY way to get XP was such a headache too, it made it so that you couldn't play the game how you wanted in order to progress your battle pass. With no career ranks, that was the only progression to go for, so I was suffering through ranked matches because I needed to and I HATE playing ranked!!! But all of this I was able to sit through because of how much fun I think Infinite was and is. The core gameplay is so satisfying to me and I want every Halo to keep feeling like Infinite. It really really carried the game through all these issues and even the unfortunate 6 month seasons we were stuck in at launch. Remember seasons by the way? Those were neat! There were a lot of ideas that got tossed around early in Infinite's life - the fractures, operations, drop pods... and I think there really was a lot of missed potential with those ideas. I think that potential also kept me going through Infinite's first years. Imagine if we had regular seasons with these intermittent events like the fractures or operations that dropped even more new stuff into the game! Despite everything, I kept playing Infinite and really enjoying it as much as I could. I loved the art, the gameplay, the maps, everything else I could about the game. I used Mark VII because I never really liked Mark V B in Infinite, which was weird for me because at the time it meant I couldn't use the Mark VI helmet which as been my go to every halo game! But I still was having fun unlocking armor and trying out new combos on all these new maps that FELT so much like Halo to me. I could barely name any map from Halo 5 that I liked, but with Infinite it was hard to name ones I didn't like! So I persisted through this "beta" to get to the next big thing I was excited about. 
CAMPAIGN I haven't talked about it too much in this blog so far, but trust me, I was just as excited if not more about Infinite's Campaign as I was the multiplayer. I have been obsessed with Halo's story for years and I am always waiting to see how it continues!! After 5's campaign, I was really hoping for something that would course correct and deliver something that would leave a better taste in my mouth than 5 did. And in my opinion, Infinite did just that. Sure, there were somethings I think they kind of overcorrected on - starting the story months after Halo 5 and kind of skipping over a lot of those plot threads kind of sucked, but the story that was told in Infinite I really did enjoy.
The new characters like The Pilot and The Weapon I really liked and the dynamic between all 3 of them was so much fun. I really can't wait to see more of them in the future. The Banished were exciting new enemies despite KIND OF being a recolor of The Covenant gameplay wise in this game. I am not an RTS gamer so I was never really formally introduced to them in Halo Wars 2, so it was exciting to finally fight them. Escharum was an incredible leader for them, and I loved the way he was so obsessed with his and Chief's legends tying together and what it would mean for both of them. It was a really cool motivation that added on to this mythic status Chief has that is kind of broken with his story in this game. The way he comforts and confides with The Pilot shows us he really is a human underneath all that armor, and goes against this legendary and above everyone else status that Escharum is throwing onto him. The dynamics between all the characters in this game really are so cool and I should replay it now that I'm sitting here writing this!!! Jega 'Rdomnai and the other Spartan Killers were fun bosses to fight and Jega himself is a very interesting character that I hope we get to see more of in the future (no WAY he's dead), and running into and hearing about all these dead Spartans really felt like it expanded the world in a way - knowing so much had happened without us here. Then the addition of whatever The Endless could be and The Harbinger was spooky and I really wanted to find out what it would lead to. I had some disappointment there, with her dying at the end of the game and The Endless not being revealed in this campaign, but I still found them interesting. Overall, I thought Escharum was a much more interesting boss and character than The Harbinger though. Now, I'll be honest, as fun as it was to explore and navigate on my first playthrough, I don't think I really liked the Open World for Halo. My favorite moments of the campaign were when it was a more linear mission and felt like a classic Halo campaign. Sometimes the open world would just feel boring or like a list of chores I had to do before getting to the next mission. It was fun to go around looking for things like the armor lockers (but I WISH they would've unlocked actual armor instead of emblems and such), and new upgrades but after my first playthrough all that stuff was just kind of useless on other playthroughs. Part of what's stopped me from doing any actual replays is that I'd have to do all this open world stuff again and I really don't want to. But when you'd start a mission and get locked into the linear path I thought every mission was very fun and the environments were very pretty. I really really love the way Infinite looks, even if there weren't multiple biomes! The other thing I hope changes for the next game is no more One Shot cutscenes. I think they were neat and worked for Infinite specifically, building on that very personal and self reflective feel the story has, but I miss the grand cinematic cutscenes and interesting shots that the other games had. The opening cutscene for Infinite is SO cool and I wish the rest of them were similar, even if they wouldn't have been in engine. Overall, I'd give Infinite's campaign like a 7.5 out of 10! I really do want to go back and replay it, especially now that co-op has been added and I never got to do a proper co-op playthrough of it. (Yeah it didn't have Co-Op at first but I didn't mind none of my friends bought the campaign).
THE GRIND Infinite went through a LOT of changes over the years. After the campaign, all there was to do was stick it out and make our way through the live service the multiplayer had. Which to be completely honest, Infinite wasn't very good at being a live service game for a while! Getting hit with 2 6 month seasons right at the start and then a lot of back and forth on when seasons came out, how long battle passes were, when fractures or operations would drop was a bit frustrating!
But through those updates more and more of the issues the game had slowly started being fixed. We got new modes, a slayer playlist, match xp, less reliance on challenges, etc, etc. We even got the completely free winter update that added a ton of the missing Reach armor players had been asking for. Sure, Infinite was in a rough spot but it seemed like 343 was doing their best to listen to player feedback during this time. Not to mention that this was the time the multiplayer narrative was at it's peak, with new cutscenes and story beats being dropped with each new season. And MAN out of everything in Infinite, I have to say I think that was the biggest missed opportunity the game had. Of course, with Microsoft and higher management laying people off, it wasn't exactly 343's fault that this got dropped. But it was so cool getting to see your Spartan in cutscenes like this again. I would replay Reach all the time just to see my Spartan in the cutscenes, it makes me all giddy! I really wish we could've gotten more of this, especially seeing the ways the story could've gone with Infection incorporating Iratus and that narrative - going on to when we would eventually get the Battle For The Academy missions. I would've loved if we were apart of that fully every step of the way. Getting to see my Spartan's look evolve with each season in these cutscenes would've been amazing! I'm happy we were able to get the little bit we did, and PLEASE HALO STUDIOS IF ANYBODY THERE IS READING THIS ADD THE OLD ONES BACK IN THE GAME FOR US TO WATCH WITH OUR CURRENT ARMORS PLEASE!!!!
During all this, it was easy to say I liked Infinite a lot, but it still wasn't beating Halo 2 out for my favorite Halo game. It had it's issues but it was nice to see there was hope for things to get better. And little did I know, I'd be getting MUCH more involved with the game than I ever expected soon enough, alongside what I think is one of the game's best ever updates - Season 5: Reckoning. 
SEASON 5 Season 5 changed EVERYTHING about Infinite for me. I remember seeing the trailer and reading the blog posts and feeling the same sort of excitement I had for the game before it released. Cross Core??? Mark V and Mark VI GEN 3 attainable??? Flood armor??Firefight?? FORGABLE AI??? It was stuff I never even thought could really make it to the game! Knowing I could finally wear the Mark VI without needing to also wear Mark V B was enough to make me backflip alone!
Not to mention this update also brought more amazing maps, I think some of the prettiest ones in Infinite with Forbidden and Prism, the first new weapon added to the game with the Bandit (which is CLEARLY the DMR I will never understand the name change), and I THINK (not fact checking this) the first battle pass to have credits earnable in the pass!!! It really felt like this update revitalized the game in a way it desperately needed at the time. I remember this era of the game being some of the most fun I had during it's entire lifespan up until that point. Forgeable AI meant custom campaign missions, something I was incredibly excited for and I downloaded every single one I could get my grubby little paws on! I'd bring my brothers and sister in and give everyone controllers or invite and direct them on how to join over FaceTime and we'd all blast our way through these custom made campaign missions. It really changed the custom games experience for Infinite and people to this day are still making incredible new gametypes and modes using it. Survive The Undead was even added to matchmaking (AND NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED WITH THAT)! But Season 5 didn't just revitalize the game, it also revitalized something within ME, that would make Infinite much more personal to me over the years. I've said this many many times, but I had wanted to make Halo machinima since I was a kid and never could figure out how to do it, how to crack the code and make it work for me. My sister and I had been jumping in custom games and telling stories just to ourselves since Halo 2. I had kind of given up on the idea though with Halo 5 because the lack of split screen made it a LOT harder to do machinima when I didn't have any sort of community that I could get help from like I do now. 
Me looking at Keith from FBW Episode 1
It was probably like a day after they announced Forge AI that I wrote what would become Flying By Wire episode 1. After being burnt out on DarkTriforceFilms stuff, I had created a spam channel named mellohyelloh to throw whatever I wanted on. Since we didn't really do gaming stuff on DarkTriforceFilms at the time, I was like oh I can put this up on mellohyelloh! Then after I finished the script, I had so much fun writing it that I just wrote like 6 or 7 entire scripts all at once. I grabbed good ol' Kippers to be in the first one since we were playing a lot of Infinite together at the time, and then uploaded it on November 1st, just a couple weeks after Season 5's release.
What I thought would be a video for me and Kip to watch and get 5 views suddenly BLEW UP!!! I couldn't believe how fast this video went up in views back then. I think it took a week or something before it did, so it was really unexpected. From there, we were thrown into the wider Halo Community and have continued onto where we are now. From there, Infinite really started to improve alongside me getting more and more involved with the community. We quickly started work on the other scripts I had written and started connecting dots to make our little videos into a series that would eventually be named Flying By Wire. 
A screenshot of me testing things for FBW Ep 2 before S5 even came out
FULL SPEED AHEAD Infinite would go onto get more and more updates, bringing new modes, old modes, new armors, new cores (MARK IV MY BELOVED), and more fixes. I'd start to meet more members of the community who have become great friends now (shoutout the Kre8tor Corn3r), be invited to join in on a bunch of different collabs and voice characters in other people's things (shoutout RED LINE from SpiteBoxStudios!) and it's been just a big blur alongside chatting with everyone all about whatever the next update coming to the game was. Even when we'd get a somewhat lackluster update, there was so much fun to be had discussing it with my friends or getting everyone to hop in on the day the new one came out. There's been so many it's hard to cover or remember them all so I wanna just highlight a few of my favorite additions to the game.
I would love start with a big shoutout to when Headhunter was added, I cannot tell you what update it was but MAN was I having fun with that. I loved Headhunter so much in Reach and now Headhunter has become a running joke in our group (partially due to the announcer repeating HEADHUNTER over and over when you'd start a match). And while I think Infinite should've had and would've greatly benefitted from new sandbox items being added with all these updates, it did make it a lot bigger of a deal when they finally started making their way in. We'd get the MA5K Avenger, which despite being a kind of kitbashed version of the Assault Rifle (which I do not mind at all), really added a whole new element to the game. I remember being so excited to try this out and honestly it's become one of my favorite guns in the game. I remember HaloBoxStudios got it in a video like a day early before the update and I was like WHAT!!! HOW!!! I think around that time, maybe the same update we got the Delta Arena playlist, which brought a classic style gameplay into Infinite. Now, I know I was saying I prefer Halo having the modern elements, but I can't deny this playlist was SO fun. It felt a lot more casual than other modes in Infinite and was so much fun to just jump into for some short matches. RUINED when they added BR starts, I'll say it!! Thank god we at least have the option to play Delta Slayer without them now!! Sentry Defense was another big one, I think that was added close to when I was first kind of making my way into meeting people in the community after the first few Flying By Wire episodes, and it really served as a great way to hop in and get to know people. It was a great mix of objective/slayer type action and I'll never forget flying through maps on a Warthog trying to spin the turret to lay into the enemy's sentry. Such a cool idea and way to implement the Forge AI and I wish we got more modes like it in matchmaking. Shoutout BB12 for being the worlds best (worst) driver. Assault being added felt just like when Sentry Defense did. It just WORKED in Infinite, and every single match I played was so much fun. Everyone was hopping on to play more Assault and it never got old screaming at each other as we slowly, body by body, dragged the bomb over to the point. This was another mode I wasn't a big fan of in previous games that Infinite made me love. I miss this and Sentry Defense being the featured playlists!!! Bring them back for a week or something!!! Of course there's a whole slew of other sandbox items that eventually got added, the Fuel Rod SPNKR was a great compromise for getting a new weapon in with a skeleton team, The Falcon finally made it's return with another one of the best modes Infinite has had, Famished Famished Falcons, The Vestige Carbine came along with that to blow our ears out with it's incredibly loud sound effects, and of COURSE one of the best weapons ever to be added to a Halo game IMO, The Mutilator! What an awesome weapon that really feels HALO, you know? I remember that map that was going around with the unfinished version of the gun on it and just running around thinking "This is gonna be amazing when it finally gets added" and WOW was I right! Infinite at the end of the day was really carried by the community. They were making new maps, modes, content, and a bunch of that even made it's way into matchmaking! Where Halo Studios sometimes couldn't carry all the weight, so many amazing community members stepped up. Infinite Machinima really seemed to be flourishing alongside the game, but maybe that was just because I was so involved in that community. I made countless (infinite) memories with everyone over the years, and it's hard to believe I only got into this at Season 5! There is so much Infinite related stuff out there to see and explore, and it really makes it feel like there IS love for the game, you just gotta get out of the ol' twitter echo chamber sometimes.
While I do love Infinite and it's gameplay and story and yadda yadda yadda, this is what really has made it become my favorite Halo game. I'll never be able to disconnect it from all the wonderful memories I've made, leading up to even attending HCS Worlds 2025 and working an actual Infinite Machinima booth with the friends I met through this very game!!! Such a dream to be able to make it to the final Infinite one, and it felt like a great way to start off the kind of send off era we're entering in as the final update rears it's head. 
A pic from the photoshoot we did when we decided to name our show Flying By Wire
SEND ME OUT WITH A BANG With that, we're kind of caught up on Infinite. Tuesday will bring Operation: Infinite to the game and leave us in what will assumedly be the game's final state. It has changed SO much from it's initial release in 2021, so much so that the studio has a whole different name and a ton of different staff! If you're reading this and haven't played in a while because you were disappointed, I urge you to give it another go now. There's so much content you won't even know where to begin, and if you're looking for people to play with, you'll be able to easily find someone in the community willing to hop on with you.
Of course, this isn't the END of Infinite, we still haven't even gotten an announcement of what the next multiplayer title will be. Just like always, I know the community is cooking up some very cool things that'll hold us over as everyone decides their final looks and finishes up the Hero Rank grind. I know that I'm nowhere near done with Infinite yet - I'm sad to know we're wrapping up with the game but I'm not ready to go just yet! There's so many stories to tell, Wires to fly by, and Collabs to hop in on in the future, and I don't think those'll be going away any time soon. I don't know if this was REALLY a good retrospective on the game, those aren't exactly my cup of tea when it comes to writing, but I just wanted to go back and reflect on my Infinite journey. This game means a whole lot to me now as I've said, and I'm going to be sad when we move on to whatever the next game is. (Not counting the CE Remake). I also just wanted to emphasize how much the game has changed, so many people online STILL complain about the launch of the game - and clearly haven't played it since. So many of their issues have been fixed and there is a great Halo game waiting to be played. I want to share the love! 
Photo of the old S1 menu with Me, Synergy, and our friend Sean (dressed as Carter)
I will see you all in the Delta Arena, Headhunter, and Gruntpocalypse lobbies on Tuesday, I'm ready to get Hero Rank and close the era of Infinite out on top. More Flying By Wire soon - and I hope to see some creations from all of you soon too. Whether that be your own machinimas, art, montages, whatever! PLAY HALO!! PLAY HALO INFINITE!!! - YELLOH // LOGAN 
render by @BB12_fx on Twitter!
Back when we were regularly doing DarkTriforceFilms stuff, I would write little blog posts either about what work we were up to at a given time or going in to the behind the scenes of our most recent videos. I really liked doing that but since we haven't done much live action stuff recently, I haven't had a reason to be writing any new ones. What I HAVE been doing during that time though is a whole bunch of Halo Machinima on mellohyelloh - a channel I originally made just to spam post on, but then kind of stumbled into being a Halo channel when I made "New Friend", the first episode of our series Flying By Wire.
Halo machinima is what originally inspired me to make any sort of content online (shoutout to the Halo 2 Tricks movies), and I had been trying to make a series even since BEFORE the start of DarkTriforceFilms. So it's been a dream come true that Flying By Wire has been a hit with so many people! Last night Episode 8 came out, and it was a WHOLE process trying to get this episode done. Mix together multiple drafts and rewrites of the episode, balancing schedules for voice acting and body acting, all sorts of visual effects, cameos, AND a deadline of getting it out before flying to Seattle for HCS Worlds 2025 and you get a lot of late nights and stress that eventually led to this existing! I'll break stuff down into sections below for easier reading, but here is my little write up on the behind the scenes for Data Recovery - Flying By Wire Episode 8! WRITING
A big thing to know about Flying By Wire is that when the first like 3ish episodes came out, it wasn't REALLY intended to be a series. My original idea was just to make a bunch of little Halo shorts that starred me and my friends who played Halo with me. Then we started getting an audience and that ever burning desire inside me to make a Halo Machinima series was reignited and I started connecting the dots and figuring out what this could be. That means that a lot of Flying By Wire's plot has been written kind of retroactively - and I'm HONESTLY kind of making it up as I go along. That part means that every episode has like 100 drafts before I finally decide I like it. And honestly, episode 8 was really giving me trouble. I had no idea how to go about it, what exactly it should be about, or how to make it funny! We had a few plot threads that were kind of coming to a head, like our villain Eagle making his way to The Academy. 
Above are just the drafts that show up when I search "FBW 8" in my Google Drive, I don't know how many I wrote that I didn't bother labelling with that. Some were written pre Episode 7 coming out so ideas were shifted and changed after figuring out that episode, but ultimately the thing that decided what Episode 8 would be is a deadline! I wanted to get a video out before HCS Worlds this coming October 24-26th so I could talk about it at the event, so a decision had to be made!
I kept having this idea of Excelled in the medbay and bringing Dr. Petalbrook back, originally I was just going to have it be a small scene in a larger episode (or at one point even was almost Episode 9 instead), but then I was like well - this is the idea I actually have and like so let's just develop that! With that I also had this idea of a scene of Eagle dumping Sgt. Anderson's body to the song "Green Bird" from Cowboy Bebop which ended up being the intro to this video to kind of establish where that story was going. But THEN due to some issues trying to film in Halo Infinite I had to edit that opening a bit. That led to me using Halo 2 for the sort of flashback scene that Eagle has. It was kind of just to pad time but I think ended up being a much better opening that tied that little scene to the rest of the episode despite technically being entirely disconnected. After that the video kind of flowed naturally writing wise- the only other thing to mention is that this video has had like 3 different endings over the course of writing it to getting it out. There was an ending where Synergy came and broke up the whole lab scene, one where Emily accidentally opened a portal to where Sgt. Wolf was being held, and one where Yelloh DIDN'T get disintegrated and instead the explosion just happens without that wrinkle. Ultimately, I wanted the scene to show something (no spoilers) about Emily and I think the explosion alone didn't get it across as well as I wanted to and so Yelloh getting disintegrated and then re-integrated (?) was added and boy do I think that was the best decision I made in the entire script! 
MACHINIMATING
It feels a bit weird to type about body acting because it's such a visual thing but I'll do my best and provide photos where I can! Flying By Wire has a very nice advantage in that there's never really more than like 3 characters on screen at once, which makes it very easy to do most of the body acting myself or with one other person. That's kind of entirely how this episode was made. Usually, I'd be pulling Ethan and Kip (who play Excelled and Synergy respectively) to body act as themselves but for this since Synergy only had a brief appearance, Ethan body acted for Excelled and then I played everyone else. For Flying By Wire unless I need to go in and refilm something, we do all our filming live and in Custom Games instead of using Theater Mode. Machinima tools make it very easy to do everything live and not have to rely on watching the game back and trying to remember if this was a good take or not (and not to mention you don't have to deal with all the Theater Mode bugs like raised weapons or wrong coatings on armor). Technically, the first thing was build the various sets for each scene in this video. I love getting to film stuff in areas of maps that you usually can't access, and this video was a bunch of that. The medbay is in the storage room on Live Fire, you can open the door in Forge mode and once I did that I knew I needed a scene in there eventually. Throw up some decoration and it becomes a pretty convincing Medbay! Then, Petalbrook's lab was made in the little Overshield testing room on Illusion - getting in by placing teleporters. Nothing in there has collision since you AREN'T SUPPOSED to be in there, so in Forge I just added a bunch of blocks right underneath or behind walls in order to be able to stand in there without falling to our deaths. Then to show more about Dr. Petalbrook and her interests, I added a lot of hardlight/forerunner weapons and props - all coincidentally having lots of pink which fits Petalbrook perfectly.
Going in chronological order, the Halo 2 scenes were filmed by using Halo MCC on my PC as the camera (by starting a custom game with the Blind skull on), and then connecting 4 controllers to my Xbox and doing all the body acting myself with those. That's why nobody really moves in that scene! The next one with Eagle in the Pelican was also just all me, switching from Eagle's setup to Sgt. Anderson's and just trying many, many, MANY ways to throw myself out of the ship.
I had the Pelican set up on a version of Ecliptic, which I had used for the shots of the ship flying in space, and added some lights to match the red lighting from the interior we saw at the end of Episode 7. I tried multiple ways to show Anderson's body falling: - Putting a killzone directly outside the Pelican and jumping out backwards
- Putting a gravity slide to propel myself out of the Pelican and into a killzone - Changing teams and punching the dead body out But none of them really worked out like I wanted to and for the first few the shield pop really was taking away from the effect. What finally ended up working was loading in with 2 controllers and no shields, and killing the Anderson body with a sword, launching him into a gravity slide that propelled him out of the pelican. It's honestly a very funny shot that I really like and I think got the point across the best of any of them.
Originally, I had filmed the shots of Eagle looking out on the same map, but the lighting just wasn't really doing it for me. Infinite's lighting can be really weird and wonky sometimes, especially on Forge maps and it just made the shot look kind of "fake" to me. I ended up switching to House Of Reckoning, where I had shot the pelican shots from Episode 7 because that map has VERY good lighting and setting up the same sort of lighting I had on the Ecliptic set. Red for the interior and then a kind of dark blue to show the spacey vibe since he was looking out into the void.
I think it helps too that I just got better shots in general when I did them the second time around. The rest of the video was split into like 3 filming sessions, one by myself for the scenes of Excelled and Synergy or Excelled and Spy, then 2 with Ethan for the rest of the Medbay scene and Petalbrook's Lab scene. Originally my plan was to get someone to body act for Petalbrook and I'd play myself, but ultimately (after making sure my internet at my new place could handle it) I signed in on my 2nd account on my PC and then my main on Xbox to play both myself and Petalbrook.
For the most part this was all a breeze, only split into 2 due to scheduling conflicts. We used the radial menu machinima mode by @_Okom (on twitter) for filming this time around rather than my personal machinima mode and it really really REALLY made things easier. Big shoutout to Okom for that mode, being able to grab whatever weapons, equipment, etc that we needed on the fly really sped things up. We could all get our respective weapons easily, switch to no weapons if needed, and get as many repair fields as we needed for throwing at Excelled's head. 
The hardest parts of filming this scene were probably just getting Excelled's body onto the table for the like SPLIT SECOND shot of Yelloh standing over it - (I would later just film his dead body on a greenscreen and edit it in because man that took FOREVER) - or just making sure the repair field landed correctly on his head. Even that though only took us about 4 attempts before we got one we liked.
There were a LOT of reshoots for the entire video, it's not always easy to exactly see what the video will look like when you're filming, so when I'm editing there tends to be a lot of "oh this shot actually sucks" or "the headbobbing doesn't line up AT ALL with the voice line", so for any of those I would usually just go back in by myself and quickly reshoot it. For the most part, it was either shots with only one person in it or ones I could switch to being 2 people max. Petalbrook's lab also went smoothly, with the only hard part coming up with Yelloh's disintegration and reintegration (again is that a real word? the right word?) Originally, we figured we could just drop shields and health and then shoot me with a heatwave to get the particle effect that the hardlight weapons leave behind. What we didn't think about was that the heatwave BOUNCES and in a room full of explosives, sets them off and completely ruins your view of said disintegration. So we pivoted to shooting Yelloh with a Sentinel Beam, but unlike the heatwave that killed and started the animation in one shot, the sentinel beam had to be held down and shoot through the player for a few seconds before finally killing and starting the animation. This meant a big beam shooting through for kind of no reason in the middle of this explosive moment and it didn't REALLY work. I was going to use it because I couldn't think of any other way until the very last minute. I went back into theater mode to reshoot some parts of the explosion, and I noticed that due to Theater Mode's wackiness and bugginess, it played a slightly different animation for Yelloh's body when the explosion went off than we saw when we were filming - that was LAUNCHING him into the back wall before starting the disintegration animation. 
I saw this and knew I HAD to use it. It works perfectly in motion and in tandem with all the other chaos going around and I think even gives a second of like "wait what did I just see??" which adds to the surprise I wanted from Yelloh getting disintegrated in the first place.
For the reintegration, we just ended up doing the same sentinel beam kill and then I just reversed it in post and cut out a few frames to kind of save us from the few seconds of just big beam hitting Yelloh. The cut is honestly kind of abrupt, but I think it worked really well for the suddenness and awkwardness of his reappearance. It was very nice to have such a smooth go at body acting for this video, it helped that there wasn't any big action stuff like in Episode 7 - but the speed at which we got all of it done really helped me be less stressed about hitting our deadline! 
VOICE ACTING
Honestly, there's not a lot for me to say in regards to voice acting behind the scenes. For my lines and Dr. Petalbrook lines - we just recorded them using Audacity (a free program!) and a Shure SM7B (that Kip bought me, thanks kippers). But don't think you need any sort of fancy mic to do this stuff!! Everyone else's lines (with the exception of Spy's that were done in his car) I just recorded by getting in a discord call and then screen recording it. Kip uses their own SM7B, so their lines sound similar to my own, I cannot tell you what mic Ethan uses but (you can tell him I said this) it sucks! Luckily, as I said before, you don't need a good mic to do this stuff! His mic glitches out and picks up a lot of background noise (and he also likes throwing it around while we are trying to record) so we had to do a few retakes here and there but it all worked out in the end. In post, I add a filter to everyone's lines to kind of make it sound like they are talking through a helmet mic or a radio, and this doubles as a way to kind of even out everyone's lines despite our differences in mic quality. All I do for that filter is a highpass effect on everyone's lines at 600(db? I don't remember the measurement right now but it's at 600 whatever it is). In the past I would try and set everyone's at different ranges to make it sound more even but I've gotten lazy and setting everyone at 600 sounds good enough. A shoutout to everyone who voice acted in this video here below! Getting some other creators in for little cameos is always fun and shoutout to Spy and Corbin for both being down to do this kind of last minute! yelloh - logan gonsalves
excelled - ethan rolfe dr. petalbrook - kristina (my lovely girlfriend <3) synergy - kip raymond spy - @SpylensHalo oni agent - @CorbinBamBeano from @CeCoShortFilms Some other little things about voice acting, Eagle's VA, DarkTriforceFilms Intern Austin, couldn't get lines done in time so that's why he's quiet during the opening scene. I originally wrote some lines there, but honestly I think it works better without him talking so it all worked out.
And then with Emily, who is literally just done with Text To Speech tools, she had to be recasted for this episode. Previously she was done by a bot named Alice but that website updated and started requiring purchases in order to use that TTS voice so I said NO THANKS! The budget for Flying By Wire is however much it costs to commission BB12 for the thumbnail and THAT'S IT! So she was switched for another free website and used a new voice who's name I can NOT currently remember. I should figure that out before I have to recast her again in the next episode. 
EDITING
While every video is kind of mess when it comes to editing, this one added a whole new layer in terms of a ton of different visual effects I had to add on top of just throwing the normal footage together. Lots of glitch effects that weren't too hard to do, there's lots of glitch overlays you can find online and I think the one I grabbed was free from some stock footage website. Toss that on and either do an Ultra Key effect or change the layer style (I THINK that's what it's called?) to screen or something and boom you got a little glitch effect! I'd pair that with a random little thing with the footage for the few frames it's glitching out for - whether that be a flip, overlay, or something else. When Emily would glitch, I'd use the Turbulent Displacement tool and just kinda make her look all wacky (see above). Emily had a whole host of things to do to get her in the video. Firstly, you may have noticed that all of her stuff is filmed in Halo Reach. I have a Green Screen map that I shoot her on and then take that footage into premiere, throw on an Ultra Key, and overlay her with a circle mask to get her to look like a little AI. I COULD technically just film her in Infinite, but I like the kind of uncanniness that comes with her being shot in a different game. I kind of forget every single time I have to edit Emily how I did it before. For this one, I duplicated her footage and put a directional blur on the bottom layer to give her a kind of haze, and then once she was in Recovery Mode, turned down the saturation on her footage to make it visually look like something was wrong with her apart from all the glitching.
Since she's just superimposed over the footage I usually try to stop anybody from crossing in front of her, but it does happen a few times in this video. Since it's literally just like a few FRAMES where someone is in front of her, I just kind of poorly cropped her to get the visual across. I wasn't really worried about it looking perfect since if you aren't looking for it you'd never notice.
The next biggest visual effect in the video was probably getting everything in Petalbrook's Lab to glow as we approached the explosion. It's a lot less impressive on an effect than I thought it would be, honestly. 
All I did was make a bunch of pink boxes to overlay over the things I needed to glow. I put a Gaussian Blur on them and kind of MAXED it out so that it looked like a glowy haze, and then used keyframes to slowly increase the glow over time in each shot. I was going crazy trying to figure out how to make something glow like this and was watching tutorial after tutorial. Then I found out about the rectangle tool IN premiere and was like OH I can just use this! It worked perfectly to get across what I needed and I think clicked once I added all the sound effects on top of it.
Other than that, besides a few edits like these files (below) that I edited in photoshop to look like the old Halo 2 customization screens, editing was pretty straightforward. Also shoutout to HaloBoxStudios for telling me about the corner pin tool which REALLY helped all the scenes in this where I had to edit something onto a computer screen. I HATE doing that and I don't know why I keep writing it into videos but that tool helped! I did 2 main sequences in premiere (with a few nested sequences to make Emily's effects easier), and the first I named the Rough Cut. In this one I did the basic putting all the footage in and lining up voice lines, as well as finding background music and adding any key sound effects. When Flying By Wire first started, I would use the native sound to whatever footage I was using unless there was some big sound in the background I didn't need - but nowadays in this rough cut I'll cut out all audio from the footage and just redo it myself after.
With voice lines in the rough cut, I'll take the opportunity to get all the volume levels right as well. I aim for all lines to be between -12 and -6db (I THINK it's db don't quote me) because that's what Woody Hamilton told me they should be at years ago when we were filming our webseries Bacon. I'll just mute all other sounds and listen through only with lines to make sure it's all good and hitting where I'm aiming for. For background music, I honestly switched out all the songs besides the intro with "Green Bird" out a bunch. I had a track from Trigun playing originally during the medbay scene, "Cynical Pink", but it ended up making the scene feel way too fast so I switched it out for the classic "Spokey Dokey" from Cowboy Bebop. I have like a little library of soundtracks I pull from for Flying By Wire - since we can't monetize anything I don't really care about copyright - and shuffle through them to pick songs. I think music wise I'm kind of going for a like blues/jazzy tone for the most part like Cowboy Bebop, but I do like to sneak in stuff like "Hits Set" by Bomb The Music Industry in Episode 7. I had a Halo track originally for the scene in Petalbrook's lab, but I felt like it didn't have enough of a build for what the scene was. Enter Kristina's love of The Hunger Games leading me to use "Snow Lands On Top", which I thought felt very fitting since it was the lab of Kristina's character. She's The Hunger Games' biggest fan, after all. The build is PERFECT for the scene I love how it ended up fitting. All the visual effects I was rambling on about earlier I also got done in this initial rough cut. By the end of the rough cut, the video is basically done except for the fact that it's like empty sound wise. 
Now you might be thinking, the next sequence must've been named "Final Cut" which in hindsight would've made sense, but I went more literal and just named it "Sound Cut". This was where I'd just throw sound effects for EVERY LITTLE THING! Unfortunately HaloBoxStudios cursed me with the knowledge that adding little sounds for quick movements, every footstep, effects in frame, and anything else you can think of, kind of makes the video a whole lot better!
In the first few episodes of Flying By Wire I didn't add sound effects for NOTHING! I'd just use whatever in game sounds were in the footage unless it was something like Emily or the other AI appearing that I was superimposing onto the screen. Now, I have an entire Halo 5 Guardians Sound pack full of like every sound effect from the game AND another smaller pack of Halo 3 sounds that HaloBoxStudios also provided me with. It's a game of adding them all in and then fighting with myself about whether or not the sound effects are too loud or too quiet in comparison to everything else. Literally the last like 2 days of editing this were just adjusting volume levels up and down. Once all those were in the video was done! I went back and added some quick shots and adjusted little bits here and there to help with the overall pacing but that was no problem at all. 
THUMBNAIL
Ever since seeing BB's work I wanted to commission him to do something for Flying By Wire, that started with Episode 6, and now I love getting his work for every main episode of the show! I knew he was as busy with stuff for Worlds as I was, so I had honestly planned on making a temporary thumbnail first, but he locked in and got it to me right as I was exporting the final cut! I sent him the very beautiful above sketch to give him an idea for what I wanted in the thumbnail and he really made it come to life.
I can't speak on the process of making it in blender because of course, I DIDN'T DO THAT! BB killed it though and I've labeled the above two photos so you can tell which is which. I know it's hard.
I love having a consistent thumbnail style on a YouTube channel, I think it's so neat to see everything feel so unified! mellohyelloh has had it's own since before I even started making Halo Machinima on this channel and I've always thought it felt cool and unique - so after getting BB's amazing render I threw on the mellohyelloh border and added the name of the episode (I use a drawing tablet to write the text myself in my own handwriting!) and we ended up with this for the final thumbnail: 
Sure hope you liked seeing the same 2 photos over and over again in that segment! Got that done and then bada bing, bada boom - it's uploaded and premiered! I usually aim for like afternoon on a weekend for uploads, but since this was on a deadline to get out before Worlds and I still wanted to upload on a weekend, it was premiered at 9 PM (EST) on 10/19! Worked out though, lots of folks were able to make it to the live chat which was very fun!
Render by @BB12_fx again!
SPECIAL THANKS AND SEE YOU LATERS
And that about does it for Data Recovery! I got some special thanks for everyone who helped out on this video - of course to Ethan, Kristina, Kip, Spylens, and Corbin for staring in the video and Ethan for helping with body acting - then also to HaloBoxStudios, Spylens, and everyone else in our little Infinite Machinima community that gave me advice and help when I was up at 2 AM editing this in the discord VC. And of course a special thanks to The mellohyelloh nation community and discord for sticking around and being excited for all this flying by wire stuff! Very cool to have our own little community (and I promise I'll TRY to get back to streaming again soon now that I have met this deadline)!!! 
Render by @SpylensHalo (on YouTube/Twitter)
Now, this weekend I'm heading to Seattle for HCS Worlds 2025 as I've said - and I'll be joining a bunch of other Infinite creators and even taking part in an Infinite Machinima booth on Saturday in the Community Spotlight area!! I'll have some stickers and prints to hand out (see below) and am SO excited to see what the future of Halo holds!!! If you see me, don't be afraid to say hi! I'll most likely be wearing a lot of yellow so I won't be hard to spot!
OK THAT'S ALL I GOT SORRY IF IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE MAYBE I'LL UPDATE IT WITH SOME BETTER PHOTOS OF THE EDITING PROCESS IN THE FUTURE I'M DOING THIS AT WORK INSTEAD OF MY JOB AND JUST TYPING WITH MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT OK BYE!!!!!!!! - YELLOH//LOGAN |
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