59.Bonus-Interview with Mary Shelby

 

Announcing our second contestant: Mary Shelby! Find out more about her in this exclusive interview!

Mary: "Good afternoon. Thanks for having me."

Interviewer: "Good afternoon Mary. Shall we introduce you to the audience?"

Mary: "My name is Mary Shelby. I work as a management consultant at Young & Peters. I'm currently 35 years old."

Interviewer: "What's a fun fact about you?"

Mary: "I was born on New Year's Eve."

Interviewer: "Ooh, that's very fun. I'm sure a capable woman as you has many accomplishments. What's your biggest one?"

Mary: "Without going into detail, I successfully led a major corporate restructuring that saved the company approximately 56.7 million Simoleons."

Interviewer: "Impressive. I also heard that your parents are quite the accomplished duo."

Mary: "Yes. My father Robert was a senator while my mother Eleanor works at NASA.'

Interviewer: "Do you have any other relatives? A spouse perhaps?"

Mary: "Today isn't about any of them, is it?"

Interviewer: "You're right; today is all about you. Let's hear more about what you like to do in your free time."

Mary: "I do a bit of yoga on Tuesdays and Saturdays. In my spare time I like to read. Psychological thrillers are my favourite. I also used to play the piano but not any more."

Interviewer: "I can see why you're on the Smole."

Mary: "I believe I can succeed here. It's all about challenging myself."

Interviewer: "And adding to your resume."

Mary: "What was that?"

Interviewer: "I was just saying what makes you think you can succeed?"

Mary: "I'm very charismatic and persuasive. I can break it down to others why doing things in certain ways would benefit both of us."

Interviewer: "What's your strategy?"

Mary: "To observe. It would be good to take a backseat in this situation and only take control where needed."

Interviewer: "Back to the topic of what you like, let's move on to our next segment about what you like most. Favourite food?"

Mary: "Sushi. I appreciate the precision in technique and the variety of flavours."

Interviewer: "Favourite colour?"

Mary: "Navy blue. It's very elegant and versatile."

Interviewer: "Favourite music genre?"

Mary: "I don't really have one."

Interviewer: "No problem. How about you list three of your favourite songs?"

Mary: "Rolling in the Deep by Adele, Stronger by Kelly Clarkson, and Bad Blood by Taylor Swift."

Interviewer: "You must like pop."

Mary: "I suppose I do. But what I like more is women supporting women. These are 3 talented singers."

Interviewer: "How about movie genre? I presume psychological thriller?"

Mary: "Good guess. I do like Gone Girl, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and Black Swan."

Interviewer: "Favourite season?"

Mary: "Summer."

Interviewer: "Favourite Smole season?"

Mary: "Season 53. Maybe it's recency bias but I admired how capable so many of the contestants on that season were."

Interviewer: "And favourite Mole?"

Mary: "Bonita Perez. She is such a strong-willed woman and serves as an inspiration to women everywhere."

Interviewer: "Final question: Mary, are you the Mole?"

Mary: "No, I'm not the Mole."

Interviewer: "We'll see if that's true. Thanks for tuning in to this interview. If you want to find out more about Mary and whether she's the Mole, do catch Season 59 when it airs!"

59.Bonus-Interview with Peter de De

Are you ready for Season 59? Our contestants have been shortlisted. This season, let's get to know each of them before embarking on this journey together.

We have an exclusive interview with our first contestant: Peter de De!

Interviewer: "Hi Peter, let's start with introductions, shall we?"

Peter: "Certainly. My name is Peter. I am 65 years old this year. I'm currently retired and enjoying my life working out and reading."

Interviewer: "What kind of books do you read?"

Peter: "Mainly mystery novels, but I also read whatever catches my attention."

Interviewer: "Why did you come to join the Smole and what's your strategy?"

Peter: "I have loads of free time and I liked the mystery aspect of it, so why not? I have nothing to lose. My strategy would be to try my best. I'm nothing if not determined."

Interviewer: "How does your wife feel about you joining at 65?"

Peter: "I don't have a wife."

Interviewer: "Apologies. Husband? Partner?"

Peter: "I'm single."

Interviewer: "Do you have any relatives?"

Peter: "Only my parents Maria and Thomas, and they're dead."

Interviewer: "Okayyyy....Let's get to know you a bit more personally now. Which month were you born in? We understand some Sims are sensitive towards revealing their exact birthday, so we'll just ask you for the month."

Peter: "January."

Interviewer: "What is your lifetime wish?"

Peter: "To start a family of my own."

Interviewer: "Good luck with that. How about any secrets? Are you harbouring any deep, dark secrets?"

Peter: "I killed a man."

Interviewer: "You? No offence, but you look small and frail. Like the wind will blow you away."

Peter: "I'm just kidding. Of course I didn't kill a man. But I could kick your ass."

Interviewer: "Sure..."

Peter: "I mean it."

Interviewer: "We'll now move into the next segment: your favourites! Favourite food?"

Peter: "Stu surprise."

Interviewer: "Favourite colour?"

Peter: "Yellow."

Interviewer: "3 of your favourite songs?"

Peter: "Debussy's Clair de Lune, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons: Spring."

Interviewer: "A man of culture."

Peter: "My taste in music changed greatly over the years."

Interviewer: "How about favourite movies?"

Peter: "Casablanca, The Godfather, To Kill a Mockingbird."

Interviewer: "All the classics. What's your favourite season?"

Peter: "Spring. It signals a new start."

Interviewer: "How about favourite Smole season?"

Peter: "Season 12 because that's the only time I figured out the Mole."

Interviewer: "It must be your greatest accomplishment. And favourite Mole?"

Peter: "Dotty McLottie. I would never have thought it was her."

Interviewer: "Final question: Are you the Mole, Peter?"

Peter: "No. I'm not the Mole."

Interviewer: "We'll come to see. Thank you for tuning in to this interview. If you want to find out more about Peter and whether he's the Mole, tune in to Season 59 when it airs!"

Season 58 Episode 6

 

The final episode of the Smole! Thank you to all that have been watching and see you next season! 

I thought I would also post my reflections having created an entire season solely on video. The Smole Season 58 is supposed to be a movie, split up into 6 episodes on Youtube. (@thesmole). Although I had some prior experience making trailer videos, this was another ball game altogether.

In honesty, I felt that this season is really poor in quality. Everything is bad, ranging from the writing to the pacing to the acting. Life also got in the way, causing this to take 7 whole months to complete! I had to do essentially everything myself too. Let me outline my thoughts in further detail

1. Writing and Pacing

Firstly, the videos I was used to making were 2-3 minutes max. This season, each episode is at least 10 minutes long. I had no experience making long-form videos, which would be quite evident. Because of poor planning and experience, I had a struggle thinking of how to add content to each episode, especially since the typical "mission-execution" format of previous seasons would not work as well. Even more so when it's not just a translation of a typical Smole season to Youtube - it's a whole "movie", with "actors" and a supposedly coherent narrative. I also only had the free version of VSDC and am not too familiar with all its features, so the editing was very basic (you might see a lot of fades). I also forgot to add relevant pauses for emphasis or setting the mood at times, thinking that each scene should have dialogue.

2. Acting

It's the Sims, so it's not that easy to make Sims do what you want them to do as you would in real life. I had to rely on pre-existing poses and animations (which were much rarer) to figure out what I could do for the scene, and sometimes they were not that fluid. It also did not help that EA themselves left many bugs unfixed, resulting in the men smiling whenever they walked, even when it was not appropriate. Because it was a video, I had to set up every actor at the same time to make sure the rest that were on camera weren't idling around while other actors were "acting". Of course, that didn't always work out.

In addition, this season needed voices too. Simlish wasn't going to cut it. I could have had them speak Simlish the whole time and then add captions, but that would affect the viewing experience a lot. So I spent a lot of time sourcing for free realistic AI voices. Most text-to-speech readers sounded very robotic. Those that didn't were paid. Thankfully I managed to find a few, such as Bark Suno, Tortoise-TTS and Serp-AI. But the latter of which could not even be set up on my computer, so I had to give that up. And the first two had their own issues: Bark Suno was based on generative AI, which meant that the dialogue you provided would be guides rather than something they had to strictly read out, so often times the AI would go off-tangent and say random stuff. It took a lot of effort to try and get them to say the right stuff, especially for Tiago's voice as I made use of the Portuguese version to speak English, so he would often lapse into Portuguese. Tortoise-TTS was the best overall, but you were limited in the voices you had (and they all sounded quite British). Not only that, but sometimes the AI would stop reading your script halfway and skip some parts. Both of them also faced problems with emotion, resulting in dialogue that oftentimes did not fit the setting. There were also issues with differing volumes, which were not fixed even when normalising the audio in VSDC. Worst of all, sometimes the voices would change entirely despite being the same speaker! I could have spent more effort running and re-running and re-running and re-running until I got the perfect lines but I didn't have the luxury of time. This already took 7 months, and I was ready for this project to be wrapped up.

On the bright side, at least we now know that AI can't replace human voice actors in the near future!

3. Others

I thought of using the Youtube Audio Library this season to add music. There were issues with that too. Firstly, it wasn't easy finding the right music. Secondly and more importantly, editing the music was a horrible process on Youtube. You could not adjust different parts of the audio clips to have different volumes, or split them up. You couldn't even have more than one of the same clip at the same time! I was disappointed when I realised that, but I decided to just push through anyway and add music once the videos were uploaded to Youtube. I also could not find short audio clips which existed on the library when trying to edit the videos to add audio. I learned now to add the music in the source files themselves than to do it via Youtube, and that was what I did in the final episode - which also made me realise I could have added music to certain scenes to drag it out or make a point.

Storage was also an issue. Each episode comprised over a 100 clips. My computer did not have enough storage space. I had a previous subscription with a lot more storage that I temporarily added the clips to, but then it expired at the end of March, so now I had a hard deadline to work with. I could only import limited clips at a time, mainly only the relevant ones for the episode, before deleting those raw files and downloading the next batch from storage. Not a big issue, but it was tedious.

Overall, I realised how much effort goes into making a movie or even a video, and I respect those who do this even more. I don't think I'll be making a long-form video again, but it was a new experience. I hope that despite all the problems, you still enjoy it overall, but I also understand if you don't. But don't let this season ruin your impression of the Smole! There are always some seasons that are great (and some that are not-so-great).

Season 58 Episode 5

 

Season 58 Episode 4

 

Season 58 Episode 3

 

Season 58 Episode 2