documentary

research-

pre-production-

this is my begining documentary proposal that establishes the narrative of my documentary.

I used this as more of an ideas board. I used this to brain storm the different ways I can shoot my gameplay to best coincide with the documentarys theme.

with an over all narrative, theme and documentary style chosen. it was time to gather footage.

The first step to gathering footage was to decide what footage I wanted to actually gather. I needed interviews of different people to help build a back bone for my over all narratives and points that I wanted to make. I then contacted each interviewee to schedule times and dates that these interviews could take place. After organising all ‘shoots’. I also needed to take note of anything that could potentially get in the way of a shoot with along side any dangers that could result in damage to any equipment used.

I created this document as a result.

By following this document all footage was able to be gathered that was needed to start editing.

After importing the footage into premiere pro The first issues started to rise. issues such as I did not prepare for how short a 5-10 minute cap really is. I did not have enough time to talk about quite as many games as I would have liked. this had an impact on my imagined end product. another issue seemed to be that the interviewees talked about other games that I was not expecting so I did not have the footage to follow the shot list perfectly. I also did not have a fleshed out twist to end my documentary my original idea for a twist was that gamers don’t want innovation but more something to complain about when it comes to games but this formed into an overall narrative. This new twist/theme formed was that if the players will pay for a game regardless wether they are expecting to complain about the game or not the company already wins because they have sold their product. so why should they make innovative changes when the evidence proves that game sales are at an old time high.

This changed the way in which the interview footage was used. Instead of supporting the niche issues that all these interviewees have I can gather all there opinions positive and negative about games overall to support my over all narrative that developers/companies are not to blame for the current state of some games but is more so the players themselves.

footage gathered-

These are all the interviews in full. These show how i filmed each interview and what i cut out due to either irrelevance or stuff that just didn’t fit in with the over all narrative and documentary. I recorded each interview with the mic on the camera but also with a second mic as a back up. In most of the interviews the audio is perfectly fine aparts from jakes. Which would have been fine if i remembered to make sure the mic was recording which i didn’t. this was the only interview in which this was the case. because of this i was stuck with terrible audio for that interview.

gameplay-

This is a trailer that i created to an unrealised map that i created on fortnights creative mode on the 1st of august 2019.

all these videos are what i recorded and used in my documentary as back ground footage. In titan fall 2’s case to make a more pin pointed argument where i used the games sound to show how immersive the game really can be. I then lightly compared this to Respawn’s most resent release in the franchise. That being Apex Legends. Then i tried to make the point that competitiveness in games hurts the overall product in a-lot of players eyes because things like immersion and art design seem to be pushed to the side to make the game as competitive as it can be.

Editing-

When it came to editing i planned to use premier pro and after affects. in premier pro i uploaded all the footage that i was going to be editing from and started editing out any unneeded or unprofessional footage from the interviews upon doing this I realised that the clips that I still had to use were perfect as they were because they do great to portray an un-bias view of a small group of gamers. This worked great as a back bone for me to take elements of points that they had made and or said. I flesh them out a little bit more while also catering it to my overall narrative. I had also started to build up to my twist from these interviews alone. But i couldn’t just stick all of these interviews together there was no context for the questions being asked nor was there a smooth edit from shot to shot. I fixed this by adding voice over to add context but i couldn’t just speak over them and it seemed really dull to have a black background while I provided context. I fixed this by using an old gameplay video that i had put quite a bit of effort in to editing so i cut this together and spoke over this background. I provided context by putting these clips before and in-between interviews.

with interviews done and concluded i could then write a script based off off my overall narrative, the interview opinions and the twist that i was hoping to build towards and execute.

Script
Games used to be so cool didn’t they?, it used to feel like something new was coming out every year and franchises brought something new and interesting In every installment where as now, i can’t help but feel like games are turning into basic platforms with no innovation to sell microtransactions.
I
can just say this so let’s explore why. Because developers seem to be putting out less and asking more for it.

This could be nostalgia, it could also be because I’ve developed more of a critical eye when it comes to media as a whole so it could just be me.

So let’s ask a few other people all from different experiences and backgrounds with games and see if any of them have the same consensus.

I asked them what type and genre of game they play and for how long. I asked them to label the type of gamer they are

I then asked them to describe all the games they play in one word.

To see if nostalgia has an impact on how we look at games now I asked them if they enjoyed games more when they was younger.

To then see what they wanted out of playing games I asked if they had any unpopular opinions, they replied with this.

There seems to be a couple of reacuring answers. Overall from these interviews I think I have a base to be able to argue that games are too competitive and games like call of duty and fifa are copy and paste reskins with more effort put into the store than there is in the gameplay for the players.

Titanfall 2 what a time to be apart of the gaming world, although Titanfall 2 got over shadowed by being in the middle of 2 huge realeses, call of duty infinite warfare and battlefield 1. It was the better game of the three in my opinion. It was perfect from every angle, gameplay was better due to the advanced movement that made call of duty pale in comparison. With 2 whole unique ways to play with out and in titans and both had huge skill gaps. So gameplay was always fresh and different from game to game. Titan fall implemented grunts into the main game modes. These grunts acted to fill out the war zone and give players either aim training or give worse players a chance to contribute to a win. Progression was just smooth aswell there was unlimited prestigeing and the levels never felt too grindy because you always had the option to wait to prestige as you had to confirm that you wanted to. So you never felt locked out of content. No death ever felt cheep in this game as if you was killed it was due to better players that took the time git gud And damn I mean just listen to this sound design……

Now compare all that to apex legends the latest release in the franchise,

no not that one

Ahh yes a over competitive snore fest where 80% of the game is looting till you encounter ability spam from a whole team sat on the highest point they could get to and if you do manage to kill these hal-imperial wannabes you get a second team full of acu wannabes shooting yo in the back while your healing yeah fun woooo.

Call of duty used to be globally hyped with each realese. Remember when the communities biggest consern was loot boxes and boots on the ground gameplay? Yeah I’d rather take that than these uninspired reskin cash grabs of the resent call of duties instead of loot boxes you can bye what you want straight out the store most of these skins are at least £20 that isn’t an improvement if you ask me. Because there is no advanced movement other than sliding I guess, there is little skill gap outside of aim. This just results in most matches feeling very samy and after you play a couple of matches you’ve seen it all even without unlocking most of the guns. it’s just the same game every year I mean let’s look at a different call of duty from another developer.

If you take the hud off both these games they look nearly identical. Ad you can say the exact same for the fifa franchise

going back to the over competitiveness call of duty is over the top with head glitches and camping more than ever before.

But why are games like this now?

There are a couple of realeses that could have helped reinforce this over the top try hard play style but the one I want to talk about is Tom clancys rainbow six siege.
This game aims to have a competitive player base and this works really well for the replayablity of this game. There is always something you can improve on in this game and this has resulted in a mass amount of players to take away this over the top try hard playstyle. Especially with alot of games going for operators with abilities. siege was the main inspiration for this gameplay style in most online multiplayer games

Overall, multiplyer games are just mostly dull now. I feel like developers are giving less for more.

With this said, I still can’t help but feel like the developers are not to blame because sales are higher than ever so this must be what gamers want. Why should they make huge changes when the players vote with there wallets and these gaming companies wallets are fat. While players thinner than ever. Alot of the time developers are warey to make huge innovative changes because they aren’t 100% sure that it will sell. So they just go with what people are already paying the most for.

So the problem is you well the player bases if you are bored of games stop paying for them. Give your money to indie developers that are realising new ideas. And the bigger games like call of duty, apex, siege and fifa will have no choice but to make innovative changes.

But I dunno maybe that’s just me.

As i recored the script to use it as voice over i realised that i was stuttering a-lot and missing whole words that i didn’t notice while recording. Because of this i decided to use the script as a reminder of structure, what to talk about and how. The script helped a-lot more using it like this. although i was still stuttering and fumbling over a few words i just re-recorded that line. doing this and editing out any errors in post production made the script a-lot easier to execute. This also saved a significant amount of time.

Now that i had an edited and finished version of the script it was time to add the gameplay of which games i used as examples to form my narrative. After finding and editing the clips i wanted to use. It was simply just a matter of dropping the footage where it needed to be. This was the case for all the gameplay except from Titan fall 2. This was because i wanted to show case the sound design. To do this I kept the games original sound file. I saved a section at the end of Titan fall 2s segment to have all game audio. I moved my voice over to start again as i cut to black for dramatic affect. before The Apex legends segment started.

Evaluation

I started my documentary planning to have an expository style. However, arguing both sides (observational) added more to the point that I was trying to portray. This being an overall message of nothing will change in gaming if both sides are not willing to evolve with the future of gaming. This narrative also worked well with the twist that I implemented. 

This being players are more to blame than they initially think. Naturally this also means players have more power than initially thought. Player power comes in numbers both in the number of players that can give a game a terrible reputation, but also in numbers through money. If less people are paying for a repetitive product in this case a game, developers are forced to innovate. 

The way I executed the style of the documentary could be argued that it is a blend between observational and expository. This is because I kept my opinions on these games in as a driving point for my narrative. 

My initial target audience was the ‘hardcore gamers’ by this I meant people who have played games for 5+ years this included ‘casual gamers’ who have played casually long enough to have a general base knowledge of how games really are after long periods of time. 

I targeted this audience by not talking about the games originally listed in my proposal because most of them have not had enough time to properly sit where they will in the future. I decided to talk about games that have been out for a few years at least. I did this because player bases are more likely to have more of a solid and less bias opinion on a game. 

For example, Titan fall performed worse than it should have done when it came to statistics, but I found that the players that did decide to play this game ended up loving it. The ten-minute cap on the documentary also played a part in this decision because if I executed it how I initially planned I would have run out of time and had to cut whole segments out or not expand on anything enough to be able to reinforce my narrative or twist. 

The game eras were also affected due to running out of time to flesh out things as deeply as initially intended. Instead of talking about the most popular games I decided to talk about the games more fondly remembered and decided to compare them to the latest release in their franchises.

My original intended structure was to present an argument followed by evidence or an example. Ending with how it affected the industry and if it was negative or positive. If negative, I will try to present an idea to help fix the issue. If positive I will point out how it should continue to be a part of the gaming industry and how it could potentially evolve into something negative or into something better. I kept the aspect of presenting each game in their own segments. However, the overall narrative and the twist was harder to get across when sticking to this exact structure. Therefore, I decided to talk more freely with each segment to better reinforce the players opinion. I was able to get the same point and twist across more effectively by quickly talking about the franchise over all instead of specific games. 

Not everything was changed from my proposal though. The interviews resulted in being the easiest part of the whole production. I stuck to the pre-production document and that made a huge positive impact on interview day. I interviewed Jake in-between class hours. I then travelled over to the other interviewees and set up a room where three of the interviews could take place. Getting the interviews done first was always the priority. This was because my whole script and twist could not be written without clear player opinions provided by these four interviews. 

After editing the interviews down to the footage that I needed everything else seemed to just fall into place. This was because I decided to have the interviews all at the start to build a narrative and a group of opinions that I could build off. The interviews took up half of the documentary’s run time because I decided to aim for credibility over my own opinion. I think this helped with my narrative and twist getting across clearer. 

I planned to include clips of other videos that talked about the same topic, However I cut this due to the time cap and upon realising that the interviews were enough alone to build my narrative. 

I intended to talk about a range of games, from FIFA to Elden ring. But again, I would not have enough time to cram all these titles into my documentary. This resulted in me deciding to cover only Titanfall, Apex legends and Call of Duty. This was because the titan fall series is a great example to compare its fun peak and its commercial peak with apex. I decided to talk about call of duty and kick out FIFA because I realised, I was covering a lot of the same points when it came to FIFA and call of duty. This resulted in FIFA having a cameo instead of its own dedicated segment. 

My documentary was initially focused on innovation in games, however even games with innovation can feel dull and feel like they do lack innovation even when they don’t. This resulted on me focusing on the broadest aspect of games that I could. That being the player and the developer, this is where my narrative meets my twist. 

My documentary was missing music. This was due to me not being able to find a non-copyrighted song that fit my documentary well. 

My documentary also had audio way quieter that other parts this was due to the rooms in which I recorded the interviews. 

The version that I showed in class was missing credits, but I decided to go back and create an end credit sequence. 

The overall voice over could have been re-recorded but after already deviating from the script to help my words flow better and numerous stutters that I edited out in post it was proving to be impossible for me to read a script without fumbling over my words somewhere. 

Editing proved easier than first thought it was just a matter of cutting out any error or unwanted footage then lining up the wanted footage to the audio. 

What did I aim to achieve?

My message was that not one side is to blame when it comes to a game being badly received, Players do have an impact on the games they play even when there in production. games are as profitable as they have ever been so if there is going to be change for better games in the future it is more down to the player. Not the individual but the communities that these games are for. I feel like I succeeded in portraying my message. 

Overall, I feel like my planned project and the finished project are vastly different. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I feel like my finished project benefited greatly from changing and evolving from the initial plan. I had a clear narrative and a twist that didn’t feel forced. I also feel like my documentary got the points across that I was hoping to portray. 

I confirm that the attached assessment is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself and sources have been appropriately referenced.