Here’s the full transcript of Mark talking Darkiplier in the livestream
(Time approx. 3 hours, 52 minutes to 4 hours, 4 minutes into the stream. And, yes, this took forever). Thought you’d like this, maybe.
I’ve bolded stuff I find especially interesting.
Mark: Long ago, a long time ago, I liked to do these scary edits because I just felt like doing scary edits and this is how Darkiplier got born. And then what happened was over time Darkiplier became less and less about the scary figure and more about this romantic figure, and it always rubbed me the wrong way. And I kind of shied away from Darkiplier for a while. And I really really really- if I was going to bring Darkiplier, and when we thought about this, we thought, okay there should be a Darkiplier route. And that was there from the beginning, and so when I wanted to do it I wanted to do it my way, and I wanted to do it right, and I wanted to have this unending level of creepiness. And at the same time, I didn’t want to step on the toes of Antisepticeye because I know there’s a big fan base of that, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that at all and I really don’t care that there’s more than one dark personalities of people. But when I saw the opportunity to have this character here, I spent like 8 hours editing this, like just meticulously every single RBG. This is a layer, we green screened this one, I color corrected it, I separated the RBG layers I added the shakes and glitchiness every frame. I worked on the voice, too. The voice took me the longest to figure out. Like the shakes! And my computer was dying this whole time cause I put my effects on here.
Tyler: The amount of time you had to spend rendering this.
Mark: And so, the audio’s actually three separate layers. It would have been two, but Kathryn helped me out on that one to make it more clear. It’s a normal pitched layer that’s edited, echoed, reverbed, mastered, and convoluted which means it’s just thrown off to the left and right, and then it’s a deep layer of that. But then to make it really come together- it didn’t live without this center channel that wasn’t convoluted but was centered. But getting that voice right was so pinnacle, so paramount to what I wanted to come out of this. And we did like thirty minutes of shooting various versions of me talking to the camera and I wanted to pick the exact dialogue that really kind of gave away my idea of what Dark is in not a terribly obvious way.
Tyler: The other thing, this was supposed to all be one video.
Mark: But YouTube annotations, this new version doesn’t allow you to link the same video multiple times, so these are literally the old videos that I first did when Darkiplier first came about, like, these are the ones, especially this one here, and then this is my cheap knockoff Darkiplier.
Mark: Canon Darkiplier. And I’m going to readily admit something. I joked about Darkiplier because it didn’t seem like something people wanted to take seriously, and I’m okay with that on certain aspects but it had diverged into multiple different facets and multiple different personalities, and everyone had their own version of Darkiplier, and I thought it was hilarious that, “Hey, here’s my version of Darkiplier, and he’s an idiot.” Like, he’s just this weird emo kid. And then I stepped back from that, like, I stepped back. And you can even- in that time, when I was doing those videos, in this era, I was not very happy. I was kind of… I was pessimistic about a lot of things. And I felt like that bled through in a lot of things I did. And that’s why even October of last year I literally made Darkiplier an emo character. And then when we were getting to this, I thought about it like very carefully and I thought back to why I did it originally, and I did it originally because, well, Darkiplier wasn’t even a thing. Darkiplier was not a thing when I was making those videos. I just wanted to make some creepy stuff. And then I thought about that, and I was like if I want to make a statement about who this is, I need to own that and I need to put something out there that is not ambiguous, because I realize that’s where I went wrong. I didn’t have a solid character so obviously, people would come up with their own versions, they would fill in the gaps where they saw fit. So, when I made this I had to embrace it fully and fine-tune it down to exactly where I wanted. When you choose the “fake” choice carrying through to this one, I really wanted that to come through, except at the end to this video, where it gets silly, but that’s because the real me comes in and the real me’s an idiot. And I’ve actually watched this over and over again because I’m listening to the takes I put in here and I’m listening to my inflection and my tone, my demeanor and I’m imagining like how to refine it better next time when I bring him back, like how to do it better.
Tyler: I remember now, I set up the table.
Mark: Yeah, you did. You set up the table we had to change it out for clear glasses because the green screen was reflecting through. But yeah, even this, like the intersplices of anger, and this is me getting real deep in the meta of Darkiplier, like if that’s even a thing that can be- let me just pause it here. I don’t read too much into this but if there’s something that I want to take seriously, I want to actually do right. So, in my mind, Darkiplier is an entirely different person from me. But, much like Warfstache, doesn’t obey the laws of physics. He exists in another world entirely and bleeds through into this one. This is sounding really nerdy of me.
Tyler: I remember the Warfstache talk.
Mark: So Completely unironically, Darkiplier is a completely separate entity from who I am. But, he admires what I’ve accomplished, and he’s very much… people picked up on this, and people thought it was really creepy, because it’s what I wanted. He’s a social manipulator. He is literally, 100% manipulative. He leads you into this false sense of security, and he wants you to trust him because he wants to take advantage of you. That is literally what I wanted for Darkiplier. And how creepy and scary that actually is from the surface. Especially in this first bit, where he says, “If dinner is what you want, then I can provide.” And I wanted this to come across in a seductive way while also masking, like, this burning rage inside that breaks through the suave nature of it. That was my clue to reveal he’s not your friend. He’s not here to help you. He’s here to use you. And that also came across when I was thinking about, like, the effects. Like, his image shatters, he separates because he’s not entirely kept together, you know what I mean? So, I wanted like the drastic impacts of the rage pulling back suddenly to the calm nature and the demeanor and this last one, I was thinking was especially telling. It’s not me trying to break through, it’s his shell cracking.
Mark: Yeah? It’s my favorite of all of them.
Kathryn: That’s one’s my favorite. I have legitimately just gone and watched that bit.
Kathryn: It’s really good.
Kathryn: I really like that.
Mark: Yeah. And number 1 the visuals work hard on this one, but nailing the audio- that high-pitched ringing that a lot of people were like wow that really hurts my ears, that was by design. That was supposed to hurt because listening to him- a lot if inspiration for him comes from G-man from Half-life 2 and 1, like this weird interdimensional person that seems human but is obviously not and doesn’t obey the laws of physics, and is just like this shell of a person that’s in a suit. Not a suit, literally a human suit, and is trying to figure out how to puppet it right that you believe him, but he’s really good at it. And that’s where the scariness of Darkiplier, I think, really comes from, is because he seems like someone you can trust, and he will manipulate you, and take advantage of you, and literally use you, and to me that’s terrifying. Like that’s the antithesis of what I want to be and so if I’m going to make an opposite version of me, he’s gonna be the fucking worst. Like worse than any romantic story can ever bring about. He’s fucking awful.
Amy: It was convenient, though, I like the way it goes from Relax to this, like the video “Relax,” because then people were not expecting this. But it’s so nice to have it on Valentine’s Day. It works so well.
Mark: And then came the bullshit transition that we had to do. So, this is comical in a way.
Amy: It doesn’t drag it though.
Mark: Yeah it doesn’t drag. You get the scary. Tyler’s here-
Tyler: In Mark’s suit, which I have fit in, but not the pants.
Mark: He didn’t fit, we forgot to get a tie, like, we printed out a mask, and I looked at this and was like I could try to make this creepy, and then I went, I objectively can’t. Let me throw in some punch sound effects.
Tyler: I have to make sure, cause-
Mark: He couldn’t see shoot.
Tyler: No, I couldn’t, and I had to keep moving the mask cause there was one time we did this that the mask ended up completely on the side of my head and I was just like, hey Mark, you can’t touch my face.
Amy: The convenient thing about this, though, with all the glitches is that you can hide stuff with it.
Tyler: Yeah, and there’s a reason I never let go of Mark I have no clue where anything is.
Mark: Yeah, oh man. Oh, this, oh my god. Oh, and secret Easter egg- you know who Dark is because he doesn’t have a shadow. Totally intentional and by design.
Amy: His toes are missing too, but.
Mark: Shh he doesn’t have toes he’s so scary.
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