Blog: The Finish Line (08/13/21 - 08/17/21)

Friday, August 13th - I Hate This SD Card

This is the SD card I use for recording b-roll. I'm not too fond of it, until now. The reason I was not too fond of this memory card was that the lock slider was loose. Every time I inserted it into my camera, the slider would move to locked, preventing me from recording. I'd say I wasted about 10 minutes a day messing with this stupid thing.

But I came up with an ingenious solution: I taped the slider into place. No more locked memory cards for me!

Anyways, I recorded a lot of b-roll today for Part 2. It was a slow day, but I made important progress.

Saturday, August 14th - Finishing Part 2

Part 2 is mostly done! All the visuals are now in place. I still need to re-record a few lines of narration. I made a slight error and had to re-word a few paragraphs as a result. I also need to add background music and adjust for pacing. That should get done tomorrow. 

Part 3 is the shortest section, and I can almost see the finish line! Get pumped!

Sunday, August 15th - Rerecording and Music

Welcome to my studio! Here is where I record all my narration. It's a tiny room on the 2nd floor of my house. All the walls are covered in blankets, foam, etc., to keep the echo down. 

I use a standing desk when I record the narration. This is because I have found that standing gives you a richer, fuller sound. 

Today I had to re-record about 4 paragraphs of narration due to an error in the script. Unfortunately, this also meant I would have to make minor adjustments to the timeline to fit in the new recordings. No big deal, but it can take some time.

I also added background music to the rest of part 2 and matched it up with the visuals. I think it sounds great! Today was mostly a maintenance day, but Part 2 is officially done, and I can move on to the final section: Part 3. 

Monday, August 16th - Special Guest Quote!

Y'all, I have some great news. There will be an extraordinary guest recording a quote for this episode! 

James Rolfe, aka Angry Video Game Nerd, was kind enough to lend his voice for a quote in the U-Force episode. This is the first time James has contributed to a Gaming Historian episode. AVGN helped inspire me to start this show, so this is a huge honor. 

Tuesday, August 17th - Why a Black Background?

I've gotten a few comments about why the background of my shots is black. So I thought I'd give a little insight into my thought process. 

A few years ago, I wanted to find ways to improve my video and watched many documentaries to get some inspiration. One thing a lot of directors do is recreate scenes. So if they are, say, talking about something that happened in a bar, the director films shots in a bar. 

Now with my budgetary constraints, I can't recreate all the environments from video game history. Let's face it, most of my stuff would need to be filmed in an office or engineering setting. 

I knew for certain that I didn't want my set (games, shelves, knick-knacks, etc.) to be in the background. It makes it feel like "this is a guy just filming stuff in his room." But I couldn't recreate every setting. So my compromise was a plain black background. It doesn't put the viewer in a certain place but focuses on what is being filmed. 

Sometimes I do get to recreate scenes. For example, for the Mario Paint video, I tried to give the illusion of a child's room (poster on the wall, lamp on desk). Looking back, I don't think a kid would have a PVM monitor, though! 

Anyways, I just thought I would share that with you. I've started editing Part 3. I believe by Monday or Tuesday, I'll be sharing a rough cut of this documentary with you all. I can't wait for you to see it!

- Norm