OVE Project 3 – Sketch 6

Select a highlight and upload it to Vine or another online service, does it work better as a micro-video than a short Facebook/youtube video?

https://youtu.be/6PluduRIO1A

compared to

For this sketch i’m looking at the same footage on different platforms, this is to see which online platform would best suit our concept and the basis of this sketch was to get an understanding of what would be best suit the type of video we want to put out.

Most of our sketches are made as a gaming montage and a video game montage is a collection of recorded footage from any video game and edited into a video. Generally, video game montages are intended to portray particular skill of a particular game or any accomplishments that could be considered uncommon for average players. Video game montages are a product of user-generated content where fans broadcast their individual experiences of in-game playing to other fans

Overall I think that using YouTube as a means of uploading content is a better choice compared to other sites, as it is within the context of the genre and concept we’re exploring – gaming montage. A Montage in particular tends to revolve around the idea that something specific wishes to be showcased to as many people as possible who find it interesting.

 

 

 

OVE Project 3 – Sketch 5

How does changing the context of a highlight effect it?

https://youtu.be/16xer0K2QJg

For this sketch I’ve selected a highlight of the game and added royalty free music  to it. As you’ve watched, the solemn music changes the concept of the game it longer feel light hearted anymore, the music dampens the whole mood of the game and made it into a very serious video.

Essentially the clip by itself is made to be a funny, joke like video. However, it’s easy to manipulate the mood and context just by adding a song on top of it. Of course it depends on the genre of music, but it is interesting how you can manipulate found footage so much just through the simplest things.

So for this sketch we can further explore how different types of genres of music can be used to ultimately change the context of a gaming video.

OVE Project 3 – Sketch 4

Try making a ‘highlights reel’ using the Vine app, how does the 6 second constraint effect the creative process?

For this sketch I made a relatively quick  highlight reel of the main moment of the game.  Here I am simply exploring what kind of styles are suitable for certain online services. This sketch in particular is short, given the time limit of a Vine.

The space between each scene is left to our imagination to fill up as vine takes two scenes and join them together, that bigger then time gap, the more audience will think about what happened next and then join it all to form a single idea.

In my opinion something like this affects the moments i want to highlight in the game due to the time constraint and i have to cut up the video making it choppy. This way of making a “highlight reel” might be similar to the GIF sketch however, unlike the GIF sketch, it’s not as smooth.

OVE Project 3 – Sketch 3

ezgif.com-video-to-gif-2

For this sketch, instead of video, we use gif, which is a type of photo format however it plays about 24 frames per second so runs like a video on an endless loop.

These GIFs are structured like jokes on the internet today, with the barest minimum of set-up e.g.: An old man on a robbing a bank, two dolphins arc graciously from the ocean’s surface—until a clumsy third dolphin arcs directly into the second; a man pushes a stalled van off of train tracks right before a train blasts past.  GIFs get to the point instantaneously, and at the exact moment when one feels the impulse to rewind and watch the climax again, the loop restarts right where it should.

Hence, by having a highlight reel as a GIF, it loses it’s essence after a while, just like how a joke loses it’s punch line if it’s being repeated too many times. On online platforms such as 9GAG, 4chan etc, you can further manipulate the context of the GIF, by the title you give it: http://9gag.com/gag/azE4GNp

Due to constraints of file size, my gif is not able to be uploaded onto 9gag or 4chan.

OVE Project 3 – Sketch 2

Screen Shot 2015-04-24 at 7.27.40 am

https://twitter.com/Apple_tyh

For this sketch, I used twitter, to upload screenshots of the game and place them together in a sequence to see if I could create a highlights reel out of nothing but images. Highlights reel are parts of footage in a game that showcase certain events or moments within that session that viewers may find entertaining.

By using just images from found footage, we are dissecting the game, however, we’re trying to put the puzzle pieces together to form a type of narrative out of it by structuring a  highlights reel from the screenshots. As Basset said in her reading of “ANTI-NARRATIVE: GAMES, BLOGS & OTHER NON-LINEAR FORMS”, Games typically do not have a narrative to it but when you try to add form, like what Bordwell and Thompson’s define ‘narrative’ as in regards to how relations are organised between shots then organising the screenshots together to create a highlight reel is a narrative.

The only downside to this concept of a highlight reel is that it’s difficult when you want to screenshot the moment during the game.

OVE Project 3 – Sketch 1

 

In most games, we’re limited by the amount and type of content we observe, hence we’ve decided to move from the linearity of games such as Counter Strike and onto a much more diverse, open world game – Grand Theft Auto V.

In this sketch playing with our theme ‘manipulation’, I did a voice over for a silent game video

This sketch is a simple one, I’ve tried to use the environment in the game and see how i could manipulate the video by adding a voice over to it. This sketch also looks at the idea on how we look at ‘planning’ within a gaming video, how we can utilise the way the game is made to be played and see if we can create something else rather than what is given to us.

OVE Project 3 sketch ideas

  1. Select a highlight and upload it to Vine or another online service, does it work better as a microvideo than a short facebook/youtube video?.
  2. Try making a ‘highlights reel’ using the Vine app, how does the 6 second constraint effect the creative process?
  3. Convert a short highlight to a .gif file and upload it to a website such as 9gag that supports .gif files – how does this change the way the video feels? are .gifs more suitable for showcasing this online video example?
  4. Using twitter, take screenshots of the game and place them together in a sequence, see if you can create a highlights reel out of nothing but images? 
  5. How does changing the context of a highlight effect it? Select a highlight and see if you can add music or change anything about it that could potentially make it something completely different – if you can, explain what the video has become if not a highlight?
  6. Experimenting with sound on how the context of the video will be changed by it.

OVE Project 3 Concept ideas

Our idea involves the concept of ‘observation’ – to experiment with footage that we don’t necessarily create but rather manipulate.

  • Experimenting with a ‘time-lapse’ style of video, similar to the sketch created by Apple which involves a Vine video taken over a 24 hour period – highlighting certain moments. What if we were to narrow it down even further and focus on a particular area with short shots taken at different times of days. What if we could incorporate this idea within a game time cycle? Such as Grand Theft Auto.
  • Most Vines that are centred around ‘observation’ tend to showcase an area or an event – things that aren’t staged/scripted. We could probably relate this to gaming whereby we simply take a 6 second piece of footage and just let it play out – see how it can be interpreted.
  • In terms of manipulation – how can we manipulate an observation of an event? What if we were to record something entirely random and place a voice over, e.g. record 2 random couples chatting in the distance and replace the audio with our own voice over – creating an observational Vine but at the same time give it a narrative. Works from YouTuber ‘Sparkles’ tends to use footage from other people and manipulate them into his own videos – showcasing highlights and extraordinary moments. In terms of how we can expand on this is experimenting with how he does it – to what extent can we manipulate found footage to change the context or to even enforce the context of which the video is based upon.

Working from a case study that examined an example of online video practice that Steve and I refer to as a ‘gaming highlight’, which is basically a short clip showcasing a moment during the session that sparks interest. Our group plan to explore how a gaming highlight can be altered when it is produced in different online services and tools such as YouTube, Vine and Twitter to name a few. furthermore we’re looking a bit into how we can expand on this notion of a ‘highlight’, where can this lead into?

How is the narrative or non-narrative structure of a gaming highlight altered when it is produced in varying online services and tools?

Our group through this inquiry are making a contribution to the development of a ‘highlight’ online video practice and gaming videos more broadly on the Web.

Case Study can be found in an earlier blog post here.