I'm considering asking one of my groups to allow me to when I GM. The reason is to watch myself. Sort of like how a sporting athelete will watch film of their game.

Has anyone here done this, participated in it, or known someone that has done this? What were the results? Any other thoughts on the topic? Thanks.

Quote from: blakkieI'm considering asking one of my groups to allow me to when I GM. The reason is to watch myself. Sort of like how a sporting athelete will watch film of their game.

Has anyone here done this, participated in it, or known someone that has done this? What were the results? Any other thoughts on the topic? Thanks.

So you like to watch eh?  

But on a serious note I never have video taped a game session but its an interesting idea.  I have heard podcasts of games that people have recorded and I get lost easily.   Video taping may be better and would be able to follow the action better.

I've been listening to Hal and his group at RPGMP3 for a while now, and I think they have a fairly sizeable following.

My advice to you would be -- even if you only think it's for yourself, make sure you get a good mic so you can hear everyone at the table...

Quote from: StuartMy advice to you would be -- even if you only think it's for yourself, make sure you get a good mic so you can hear everyone at the table...

Well I do need context, so I'll need to record everyone's voice and having everyone in frame to see body language reactions is going to be important too.

No way this would be for public consumption. To start with I don't see getting the OK for that as not everyone at the table is an internet exibitionist....as far as I know.

QuoteNo way this would be for public consumption. To start with I don't see getting the OK for that as not everyone at the table is an internet exibitionist....as far as I know.

Just put it online, I'm sure they'll never see it.

Christ, I can think of nothing worse.

Watching a bunch of out of shape guys in Dirty Pair Tshirts sitting around in someone's ugly-arsed dining room talking about hitpoints.

I'd rather watch horseporn.

I think the old RPGMP3 thing is a real issue of balance.  I think it works for quite short adventures but things like their unending crawl through the world's most huge and boring dungeon is utterly soul-destroying.

Compare that to some of their Cthulhu games or their My Life with Santa one and it's a world of difference.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalWatching a bunch of out of shape guys in Dirty Pair Tshirts sitting around in someone's ugly-arsed dining room talking about hitpoints.

1) I don't recall anyone ever wearing an anime, muchless a softpr0n anime, t-shirt to the game. Although occationly a Black Flag or a Rebublicans for Voldemort shirt.
2) I'm by far the closest to out of shape, and I like to think that is more age related than anything :gnome:  (I play soccer once/week).
3) They aren't all guys.
4) My wife would definately take issue with describing our diningroom as butt ugly.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI'd rather watch horseporn.

Er.  *phones in a tip on Mr. Analytical to SPCA's Animal Welfare line*

P.S. The motivation isn't to be able to stare at the cute woman's breasts without her brother kicking me in the nuts and my wife telling me to put my pants back on. :kjtw:

I've taped role-playing...
I can't say they were role playing *games* though.

I've been planning to do this, and wracking my brains on how to make it an experience worth watching.  The technical difficulties get ... hairy.

First off ... I'm enough of a cinematography buff that I just can't imagine doing the whole damn thing like Hitchcock's Rope, with no cuts, from a single camera.  Especially since, really, I don't expect to have a volunteer moving the camera around to focus on individual faces.  Sounds hugely boring.

No, IMHO a minimum pre-requisite is multiple video cameras and a damn fine job of post-production editing.  At a minimum, I'd like a face-cam on every player.

How to convey the interplay of individual players with each other is another thing I've been thinking about.  The hardware-heavy answer is to have a lot of cameras with wider focus, capturing more than one player in frame, so that you can just put up the shot of the players reacting to each other.

But, lest I have a combinatorial explosion of video cameras, I've also been considering the cinematic technique Ang Lee used in the Incredible Hulk movie (say what you will about the plot and I'll probably agree with you ... but the cinematography is worth paying attention to) where individual close-up shots are tiled against each other in various ways that present the emotional content of a scene without presenting any single point-of-view.  

It's a neat technique I've been wanting to experiment with anyway and it also means that I don't need more cameras, which is cool by me.

Another thing I want to figure out is how to present the impact of the rules on the game itself.  Rules are, after all, a communications channel that's relevant the drama going on between the players, and I don't want to make the audience to the video deaf and blind to that channel.  But rules-mechanics are hard to present.

I'm fairly tempted to go CGI on this, using After Effects to whip up something that's going to look a decent amount like a moving Power-Point presentation and keeps tabs on the relevant rules manipulations as they happen.  To do that I'd like to have a reference camera so that I have a video track to tell me what the hell's going on.  I'm not real thrilled with the question of how to get a good view of the table, though.  Suspend the damn thing from the ceiling?  A high, high tripod and long angles?

That one's a puzzler to me, and if there are any folks with more practical filming experience who can say "Oh yeah, this is how we fake a crane-cam on a low budget" I'd be really glad to hear any advice.

So, that's my thinking on the subject.  As for how it works out?  I'll get back to you when I know!

For future reference folks; while TonyLB and beejazz both approach this from an perspective I wasn't intending TonyLB did it in a good way, beejazz did it in a too much freakin' information way.

Anyway Tony, I wasn't really looking to make it good watching.  If that was the case I'd just shot some stuff and then in editting bend the full truth of the actual events to make it watchable ala "reality" TV.

But this is really just for me to try understand what I'm doing well and where I could improve. In the heat of the momment with your head really in the game it is very hard to also be able to have full selfawareness, or even full tableawareness at times.  But I was myself trying to figure out how to get all the important stuff in frame with only one camera, or at most two cameras.  I think from maybe 3 feet above table top looking down is the angle, which is kind of a pain in the room we play in. Even coming at it from the ends of the table you'd have to get back a ways to bring everyone in frame. That would make it really tight in the room we normally play in. At the least I'd have to use some sort of counter-weighted boom at the top of the tripod to get close enough to the walls (I assume such things exist, and if not could be jury-rigged).

I haven't video-taped games, per-se (although I love Tony's idea of showing the rules alongside the video). However:

1. I have some IRC transcripts of games that I think are pretty cool.
2. Some of the Skype gaming we are doing could/should be recorded for playback later. That could be pretty easily merged with a rules-display. It wouldn't be as engaging but would be a lot easier.

I've been thinking about that too. Having some actual-play tapes to look at would be a really interesting way to see how other people play.

-Marco

We taped a session.

The sound was bad.  More action was spent in aside moments and getting snacks that you can't follow the action of the game at all.  At one point someone got up and stood with their back to the camera, taking up the entire frame while the really interesting action took place (the action was so interesting, we didn't notice he was blocking the camera).

It was an utter failure.

I suspect that when I do this I will be grudgingly convinced to do more than one take for at least some sections of the game.

I suppose that will undercut the moral stature that one provides to genuine documentaries and reality television, but I suspect that it may make for a more engrossing end product.  I'm torn.

Quote from: VellorianWe taped a session.

The sound was bad.  More action was spent in aside moments and getting snacks that you can't follow the action of the game at all.  At one point someone got up and stood with their back to the camera, taking up the entire frame while the really interesting action took place (the action was so interesting, we didn't notice he was blocking the camera).

It was an utter failure.

Not for my purposes it wouldn't have been. Although the guy standing up in the way (hello high camera angle ) would be a bit inconvient perhaps, the really important part as far as I'm concerned likely happened before that. What got the boy's blood up so much?! What went right. How can that happen more?

Another example is exactly how much time was spent in aside moments, and what those aside moments were about.  I'm going off the assumption that they not only make it harder to get into the video, but also harder for everyone at the table to get into the game.  So I'd be looking for what triggered that, how much time was spent (both for priority and as a baseline to check for future improvement) and so on.

The goal is better engagement at table.  Just like all that film that athletes go through (which is a superset of the editted version we get on TV) isn't for entertainment but for athletes to improve their future performance.