Behind-The-Scenes: Comfort Games

Here's my thoughts on my Comfort Games video!

Pretty proud of how this turned out. I think I'm starting to nail down the specifics of my videos going forward. Namely my positioning with the couch and camera, and my sort of editing style for green screen videos.

The script itself was sort of a "filler video" idea I had. Unlike horror or stealth games I don't have any strong feelings about anything in the industry, so it was more of a showcase of positivity for some of the games I love, and people commented that they loved too. I also focused on some stronger jokes, and I think a few of them turned out pretty good.

I hope my ending monologue made sense. Rewatching the video 100 times during editing means I can get caught up on specifics or how I worded specific parts of it. Really I just wanted to say that comfort games aren't individually important, but as a whole they're necessary because they're fun. I don't think that fun games aren't being made anymore, but rather that lots of series that used to be fun are now trying to be darker and more serious. I hope that makes sense in the video.

Recording

Recording this I changed the settings on my camera (and by camera I mean I record all my videos with an iPhone 12). I shot in 4k30 instead of 1080p60, since I don't really like the 60fps look when a lot of the footage I find isn't. But 4k lets me zoom in and reframe without losing quality, since I export at 1080p30. I think the outline of my green screen is also sharper because of the added detail.

I also changed up where I sit on the couch, and how I use it, since people were saying that it took up too much space. I think this works better, but I'm always open to suggestions.

Editing

Editing was a little tricky. Just over 3hrs of footage turned into 30 minutes is always time consuming. I do a lot of takes and have lots of reshot segments, so trying to get this out somewhat on time after my fanservice video blew up was a priority, and took a lot of time and energy.

I liked the idea I had with the fanservice video to use animated background for my longer talking bits, so I found a bunch of video game ambience footage on YouTube to put in the backgrounds. There's a surprising amount for every game, so that's probably something I'll continue going forward.

Other than that it was just lots of playing with positioning and finding footage of games to put up. I even grabbed some Katamari Damacy and Mass Effect music to supplement my usual tracks. I wanted the video to have a cozy game feeling if I could.

Thoughts

Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. The video is yet another addition to my video game genres "series" that I've been doing. Don't know what I would cover next for video games, so I'll probably focus on anime for a bit to try and learn more and follow up the success of my fanservice video. If anyone has ideas for videos, feel free to let me know, and I'll add them to the list!