Hamster: The Story of Richard Hammond

Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/alextgrf62537 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=67242317 Twitter: @GearknobAlex The story of Top Gear's beloved Hamster. So many rewrites, as I just wasn't happy with this video for a long time. Again, my profoundest apologies. I really thought I'd ironed all the kinks by March at the latest, and had just committed to my final render. Hours, possibly even just minutes in, there was a disconcerting click, some crunching, and everything going black. The video had killed my motherboard. Further deconstruction revealed all four of the flimsy plastic bolts holding the CPU fan in place had suffered heat-related fatigue and finally failed. How I didn't lose everything at that moment honestly confounds me. By the time I looked at it again a couple weeks later with the new parts having arrived and been fitted, I realised it was mediocre. Not terrible, but not as good as it could have been. I rushed through large chunks of time, glossing over a lot of key things, and it notably under-ran to just 90 minutes instead of the 2 hours I was aiming for. So throughout March and into April, I scripted, recorded, and inserted new dialogue. Yet even after all my additions, the video still only ran up to a total of about 107 minutes. Finally, come late April, I had the script I was looking for. By now the video was over 140 minutes long and needed a fair bit of cutting. Sadly, right at the end, I lost two renders thanks to the stupid way in which Vegas works. Among many flaws that have been left unpatched since the Sony days, a video file requires way more than what it says it needs. It basically requires twice the space, because if I'm correct, the way Vegas renders video is it slowly renders a hidden copy, then outputs the finished file. Because I only had 31 GB for an 18 GB video, I lost the final 40 minutes as Vegas ran out of bytes to write to. So I had to start all over again after clearing up as much space as I possibly could. Anyway, about the video itself. This documentary chronicles the history of Top Gear's short bloke in an audiovisual manner for what I believe to be the very first time. I thoroughly cover Richard Hammond's early years as a mere boy growing up in the heart of Britain's troubled automotive history, his first forays into media production, promotion to TV and landing his dream job on Top Gear, only for things to go rather pear-shaped just 4 years in. But through sheer determination and an unkillable passion for the automobile, Hammond bounced back and established himself as the necessary contrast between the larger, blokier Clarkson and May, triumphantly rounding off Top Gear's Holy Trinity. Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 03:08 - Chapter 1: The Pup 12:35 - Chapter 2: Men, Motors & Multimedia 24:44 - Chapter 3: Getting Into (Top) Gear 30:33 - Chapter 4: Dawn of The Driving God 45:22 - Chapter 5: For Want of a Dodge... 59:53 - Chapter 6: A Dare Too Far... 1:16:57 - Chapter 7: Hammond's Lost Year, A Win For Top Gear? 1:34:07 - Chapter 8: Outside The Hamster's Cage 1:46:32 - Chapter 9: Hopping The Pond, Growing The Beard 2:02:18 - Chapter 10: Epilogue and Closing Statements