Nathaniel Hoover | Guy Whose Website You're Viewing
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Series Opinions
    • Mega Man >
      • Mega Man Classic >
        • Mega Man 1-6
        • Mega Man 7-11
        • Mega Man Game Boy Games
        • Mega Man Spinoffs
        • Mega Man Remakes
        • Mega Man Sports & Arcade Games
      • Mega Man Sequel Series >
        • Mega Man X1-5
        • Mega Man X6-8 + Command Mission
        • Mega Man X Portable Games
        • Mega Man Zero Series
        • Mega Man ZX Series
        • Mega Man Legends Series
      • Mega Man Spinoff Series >
        • Mega Man Battle Network 1-3 + Network Transmission
        • Mega Man Battle Network 4-6 + Battle Chip Challenge
        • Mega Man Star Force Series
    • Star Trek >
      • Star Trek TV Series >
        • The Original Series (TOS)
        • The Animated Series (TAS)
        • The Next Generation (TNG)
        • Deep Space Nine (DS9)
        • Voyager (VOY)
        • Enterprise (ENT)
      • TOS Films >
        • Star Trek: The Motion Picture
        • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
        • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
        • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
        • Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
        • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
      • TNG Films >
        • Star Trek: Generations
        • Star Trek: First Contact
        • Star Trek: Insurrection
        • Star Trek: Nemesis
      • Ones That Don't Count >
        • Star Trek (2009)
        • Star Trek Into Darkness
        • Star Trek Beyond
        • Discovery
        • Picard
  • Games
    • Mega Man Fangame Tracker
    • OH JOES! (A Proto Man Adventure)
  • Presentations
  • Writing Samples

Burning the Camera at Both Ends

11/24/2013

0 Comments

 
My wife told me a story about a study that was performed where one group of artists was told to produce one work of art in a certain time frame, and another group was told to produce as many works as possible in the same time frame. The result was a bunch of stressed-out artists in the first group with gorgeous art and a bunch of contented artists in the second group with a broad range of successes and failures. I've been thinking about this story lately as I've been recording videos at a faster rate than usual.

In the last month, I've recorded more footage for YouTube than I have in the last year: a full playthrough of the Game Boy Color adaptation of Crystalis, the first third of my next Mega Man 7 video, and two hours now of an impromptu playthrough of Mega Pony. At the same time, I've released more material of dubious entertainment value in the last month than ever before. It's been both refreshing and disheartening to crank out new videos at the speed the rest of the Internet does.

My original plan for Crystalis was to play it on The END DAY as is my yearly custom, but to livestream it and post it to the GameCola YouTube channel.
After extensive research and testing, I determined that my current setup was unsuitable for livestreaming, so I fell back on my usual method of recording video footage and adding retrospective commentary. Having learned from my Space Quest 0 playthrough that was supposed to last a weekend and turned into a few months, I made a commitment to myself to record each video's commentary in a single take, unless I said something so catastrophically stupid that only a re-take could salvage it.

For the most part, I was able to keep my vow, though one or two videos required a couple takes or a few breaks while I came up with anything to say. Overall, I think everything turned out fine, but I don't have the sense of satisfaction that I had after completing Space Quest 0 or Deja Vu before that. There are funny moments, and I think I bring up some interesting points every now and again, but the gameplay is neither hilarious nor impressive enough to be all that interesting on its own. It's really the commentary that drives my Crystalis videos, and there are large swaths of it that I'd re-record in a heartbeat. Overall, I think the video series is entertaining enough, but as the only full playthrough of this version currently available on YouTube, I think the viewing community deserves better.

Speeding through Crystalis allowed me to get back to Mega Man 7 before too much time had passed, however. It took me more than a year to release the teaser trailer for the video series, so I've been trying my hardest to get at least one new video per month to my fans—because it's my favorite video game series and because my viewers have come to expect a certainly level of quality from the gameplay and commentary, it takes me a long time to get my Mega Man videos to a point where I'm satisfied with them.

I was on fire with the commentary after Crystalis wrapped up; it normally takes me about one hour to generate and perfect one minute of commentary, and I'm usually only good for an hour or two before recording fatigue sets in, but I breezed through the first 3-1/2 minutes in a single sitting. Since then, it's been almost impossible to get back to it—I can think of things to say for the section I'm in, but nothing feels even remotely interesting. It doesn't help that I feel like I need to deliver extra-perfect commentary to make up for rushing through Crystalis, another one of my all-time favorite games (the NES version, at least), which didn't receive the recording attention I would've given it if I weren't so far behind on MM7.

Then, on a whim, I started recording Mega Pony with my wife. The short version is that one of my fellow GameCola staff members alerted me to the existence of a Mega Man / My Little Pony crossover fangame, and when my wife learned about it as well, she got excited and begged me to play it for her, as platformers are not her strong suit. About 30 seconds into the game, we both decided this would be too good a recording opportunity to pass up, so I set things up to record my first-ever honest-to-goodness blind "Let's Play"
video. Both of us are tremendously pleased with the result—the commentary is frequently informative and funny, and some of the gameplay is downright hysterical.

We sat down to record Part 2 tonight, and neither one of us is feeling all that great about it. Sure, I beat several stages, but I also died repeatedly in the same few spots. Sure, we both made a few funnies, but most of what I remember about the commentary is me trying to form a deep thought about one of the other Mega Man games I've played, getting so distracted by my thought process that I fell into a spike pit, and my wife groaning about how I died again.
The shame is that this is supposed to be a live, blind playthrough, so any editing or re-recording would defeat the whole purpose of the video.

Crystalis, Mega Man 7, and Mega Pony represent three different kinds of recording styles, and it's odd for me to be bouncing between them. I feel like an artist who was assigned to both groups at once from my wife's story, and because I can't focus on succeeding at one or the other, I'm failing at both. I'm probably being too harsh on myself, as is my tendency when it comes to creative projects, but then it's easier to accept rejection if it turns out my self-criticism isn't unfounded after all.

I've said many times before that my videos don't need to be perfect; they just need to be entertaining. With all the recording I've done in the last month, it's hard to tell anymore what qualifies as entertaining. I'm deliberating over every word for Mega Man 7 and spouting whatever comes to mind for everything else; can I really expect to keep a sense of perspective when I'm yo-yoing between two radically different
approaches?
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    See what my wife's up to!
    Things I Put In My Husband's Lunch

    Archives

    April 2022
    November 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    August 2020
    July 2020
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    Anime
    Art
    Books
    Collecting And Collectables
    Conventions And Events
    Exfanding Your Horizons
    Fantasy
    Food
    Gamecola
    Holidays
    Internet
    MaGMML
    Marriage
    Mega Man
    Movies
    Music
    News
    OH JOES!
    Opinion
    Philosophy
    Politics
    Religion
    Retrospective
    Sci Fi
    Social Media
    Star Trek
    Star Wars
    Stories
    Television
    Video Games
    Videos
    Writing

    Creative Commons License
    This work by Nathaniel Hoover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.