Heyyo Poptropicans, it’s Ultimate iPad Expert here.
Well, as many of you have guessed after seeing our PHV announcement…
The Poptropica Help Vlogs is indeed a prank.
We’ve been conjuring up this idea for a few months now. And there was a lot of work behind the whole thing. So, let me tell you about the making of the PHV.
It all began a few months ago with the PHB staff brainstorming new prank ideas for this year’s April Fools Day. As we discussed, one idea in particular emerged: turning our blogging into vlogging.
First step was to create a backstory. To introduce the new and novel idea of the PHV to the PHB, we decided to have Slanted Fish “leave” the PHB so the leadership would be in new hands. With her “out of the way”, the PHB could be led into becoming the more modern form of YouTube vlogging. There was some speculation that out of her departure and PHV, that perhaps one was a prank but not the other, but that’s not the case. So don’t worry, Slanted Fish isn’t actually leaving.
The second step was filming each portion of the video. We’ll start with the vlog part itself, where HPuterpop, Giant Hawk, and I (UiPE) were talking together in the video. How we met up is a fun story in itself, considering we live in different states. Giant Hawk and I are twin brothers and we live together, but our friend and fellow author HP lives elsewhere.
Back in February, Giant Hawk (Joshua) and I just so happened to be going down to South Carolina to the city HPuterpop (Andrew) lives in, for an event. Of course, we had to meet up! While we were there, we were able to meet up twice, once at the event we were all going to, and the second time, at the hotel we were staying at. It was there at the hotel that we filmed the vlog.
We later found out that then-author Blake had also been at the same event, but none of us had known about it until it was too late to meet up. Fun fact, I guess!
That being said, it was super awesome to meet up with Andrew, with whom we’ve become good friends with over the PHB and other aspects of online community. We figured you guys would enjoy seeing our meetup, so we wanted to share it with you guys! With the exception of me and Joshua, being that we’re siblings, this is the first time a group of PHB authors have ever met up in real life!
Anyway, that’s enough of me rambling about that. 😛 Just about a week ago, the other authors began filming their parts of the video. Cobalt Spinner filmed his comedic drAWihn wiF zPNSr video, Spotted Dragon created a Draw My Life video, Slippery Raptor made a Flipagram intro with the PHB author lineup, and Brave Tomato performed an amazing piano rendition of of the Monster Carnival theme.
Over this past week, I’ve been undertaking the third step, editing. It took me a good 10-12 hours on some of the separate segments of the video (overall at least 50-60 hours of editing) and I’ve been working almost non-stop on editing since last week. I created all sorts of graphics for the prank, as well.
The most time consuming portion of the editing was of the vlog with me, Andrew, and Joshua. Joshua and I still aren’t comfortable with sharing our faces publicly, so we had to edit Poptropican heads on top. While the original vlog was about 8 minutes long, we narrowed it down to about 2 minutes, partly because editing was time-consuming and partly because some of our ramblings were not so relevant.
In fact, the reason we didn’t post our PHV announcement until about 9:30 PM (EST) last night was because of complications with this part of the vlog. Although perhaps the antsy-ness while waiting for the post, expressed by some of our PHB and PHC friends, might even be considered (unintentionally) part of the prank itself!
Anyway, this brings us to the fourth and final step: execution. On March 31, Fishy made her post stating that she’d be taking some time off of the blog and was passing ownership to me, HPuterpop, and Giant Hawk. At the same time, we put up a header to show we were “under construction”.
Between that post and the official PHV announcement, HPuterpop and I were fervently editing the video and preparing for its release. Finally, we finished everything and officially announced the PHV, putting up the new graphics on our YouTube channel. I really love how the whole video turned out, so I hope you guys will watch and enjoy. Welcome to the PHV!
Plus, the PHB (or is it the PHV?) was updated with a new header to reflect our big shift.
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The reaction to the prank was really awesome! We got over 200 comments just on the PHV post.
Of course, there were the few extremely skeptical people. (Honestly, I don’t blame you, I trust no one on April 1st.) But I’m glad some of the more skeptical people tried to play along.
A few people were really confused about the whole ordeal. To some it “seemed so real,” and we even got some comparisons to the PHB’s first prank, the Club Penguin Help Blog.
Among some of the “fooled,” were the saddened, since, as part of the prank, we were “deleting the blog”. And we even fooled Poptropica’s very own Skinny Moon on Twitter!
Also, a group of dedicated PHB readers (WimpyKidFan, Dangerous Eye, Tall Cactus, and Nature Beauty) even began screenshotting every PHB post, so they could be saved forever. XD Really sweet of them! You can check out the project here.
Last but definitely not least were the many comments I saw (not only on the PHB, but on YouTube and the PHC) from people enjoying the video. I really appreciate these comments out of everything that’s happened – it’s really great to see that my hard work and effort has paid off.
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Well, that about wraps up my recap of this year’s April Fools prank. The PHB is not going away anytime soon, Slanted Fish is here to stay, and we’re not actually replacing our blog posts with vlogs. Really hope you guys enjoyed the prank, and especially the video!
Meme King out. 👑
• Ultimate iPad Expert •
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