RETURNING TO VIDEO PRODUCTION: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Crates.
   My world revolves around plastic crates. This is a lie. My world revolves around bookcases. Twice, I was almost trapped in my own library. Okay, once I was trapped in my own library as I moved bookcases. Tetris, with consequences.
   Recently, I was semi-nearly almost kinda-sorta maybe not quite trapped, but…trapped-adjacent. That’s twice, now. Third time’s the charm. If you never hear from me again, I’m behind a bookcase that’s in a jaunty diagonal position.
   You’ll hear the crunch of chocolate and the slurp of coffee. I’ll be okay.
   Bookcases. The world of books.
   Meanwhile, the world of the boardgame and the roleplaying game also revolves around bookcases packed with books. And there are crates, too. Plastic crates. See-through plastic crates. These contain props I use in videos about gaming.
   There’s a crate full of gloves. Of course there is. I wear gloves in these videos to hide massive continuity errors. As much as I can, I record video footage all in one day. On occasion, I must return to the field of battle and film additional shots later in the week.
   These snippets end up scattered throughout the main body of the work. If I didn’t wear gloves, you’d see an unmarked hand in the first scene, a bruised hand in the second, and the same unmarked hand in the third sequence – all scattered across twenty seconds of footage.
   And that’s distracting. Nail-length, cuts, scrapes, bruises, daubs of paint, and smears of chocolate. Not to mention the blood from killing, er, yes, smears of chocolate. These are all covered by gloves. Gloves wear out. If you are making videos, make sure you have spares for just about everything.
   Yes, I have a box of gloves. I don’t have a glove of boxes. Sounds like a magic item you’d pick up in Dungeons & Dragons.
   The Glove of Boxes at first appears to be an ordinary boxing glove. On further inspection the glove is neither right- nor left-handed, having two thumbs. The wearer instantly develops a second thumb on donning the mandritic mitten.
   And so on.
   If you must invent magic items for D&D, remember your description has to feature two components. The least vital ingredient is the game stuff: statistics that plug into the rules. And the more important addition is the flavour, written in the ancient script known as High Gygaxian.
   That language is a cross between deep levels of Tolkienry and a tax spreadsheet providing arcane description and words torn from invented dictionaries. Yes, you only realise the boxing glove has two thumbs on further inspection.
   I’ve decided to release my written blog post as a video on the same day. Normally, I deliver a blog post within the first week of the month, but I’ve been eyebrow-deep in preparations for a return to video production.
   Delays are often delayed by delays, leading to further delays.
   When I started the video channel, I resolved to make a video a week. And I managed that, on average, month by month and year by year. Then Covid came, and I had other priorities. I always have other priorities, but those were squeezed flat by Covid and its world-altering supervillainous powers.
   So I took a break from publishing videos. When things settled down, I returned to putting out videos. But a lot changed. Away from the grind of editing, I worked on the video studio itself. I made the place safer, for a start. Cables snaked into the foreground for the most part. Safer now.
   I eliminated or repositioned overhead lighting, and moved tripod-mounted lights out to the fringes where I wouldn’t, couldn’t, stumble over anything. There was the small matter of shifting the entire studio from one wall to another, for convenience.
   Been there, done that, and worn out the T-shirt.
   And then.
   I had a rethink about making and editing videos. After two breaks, it’s time to return. I still made a bunch of videos on my second break, but pressure of time didn’t leave any room for editing. Sometimes the best thing to do is realise that you should walk away. And then walk away.
   There were modest collaborations on the channel. But so much stood in the way of a collaboration I’d announced back when the dinosaurs ruled the earth…
   Finally, I’m in a position to collaborate with idranktheseawater on projects about boardgaming with Tourette Syndrome. This may be the start of a series on boardgaming with neurodiversity in general. We shall see.
   What else changed? I accidentally helped found yet another roleplaying group. This one is online and risk-free when it comes to disease. If the players want to give me Covid, well, they don’t want to give me Covid.
   They are self-described soft eggs and great noodles. They’d only give me Covid if they named a pet dragon Covid, pronounced Cov-id. If the players want to give me Cov-id the pet dragon, they have to travel the wilds of Scotland, bypass the unicorn herd guarding my castle, and wrestle a sixteen-point haggis into submission. Then they’d feel awful if they allowed midgies to swarm in through the portcullis.
   I’m surprised that midgies aren’t major monsters in D&D. Maybe they are, but…toned down so they don’t upset players.
   Our time is never our own, it is true. Running an RPG group through assorted misadventures took time I invested in willingly. And I realised the grind of editing had to go. To put out videos, or any content, there must be passion.
   The weekly editing grind wasn’t passionate. It rapidly became desperate. Just as rapidly, it ceased. Do things differently if you need to. And so, here I am, returning to the channel to say that I won’t be returning on a weekly basis, grinding pepper into my nostrils for shits and giggles. Thanks, but no thanks.
   Instead, I’ve been lucky enough to connect with Melissa: don’t drink the seawater, kids. She drank it so that you don’t have to. For legal reasons, I feel I must point out that Melissa didn’t drink any seawater. I am still a fugitive, though. It has taken so long just to set up the possibility of a video. And yet, here we are, a million years later, almost nearly maybe ready to go.
   So I am returning to the channel, whenever I feel like it – with content I enjoy putting out after editing that doesn’t feel like washing my face with sandpaper.
   If the videos don’t come out weekly, so what. And if the videos are longer, so what. As long as I enjoy making the content, that’s the main thing. Covid pressure affects the whole world. And possibly the back end of the moon.
   What to expect, then? I have something of a backlog to deal with. And it isn’t a great backlog. I saved space on my boardgaming shelves. It is cheaper by far to create your own boardgame organisers than it is to buy in dedicated equipment. But adding a compartmented plastic box to each game on the shelf really packs those shelves out in no time.
   Through gritted teeth, and paying eye-watering postage, you purchase a game organiser that fits snugly inside the box. Congratulations. You just saved space, and liberated a compartmented box for recycling as a storage container for even more D&D figures.
   I bought game organisers in different materials. They are 3D printed or laser-cut from wood. I even have that mock-polystyrene stuff. Oh, and there’s a wooden crate. And there are videos. Videos unassembled.
   They still need editing. And they also require a narrative. I found it difficult to say anything interesting about the assembly of wooden organisers after assembling loads of wooden organisers. Mind the glue as you wedge these bits together. Don’t build that part the wrong way around, as I did. Watch your fingers.
   I’ll find some way to say something – preferably brief, witty, and entertaining – about the problem of organising game bits and pieces in reasonable order inside boxes. You’d think I wouldn’t bother at all, given the obvious thing.
   This video channel is set up for gaming online. Any players who rock up to the table do so digitally. Game organisers make it easier to set up a game and put it away again. Are game organisers better?
   Quicker. More seductive.
   But here’s the obvious thing. I am not setting up a game for visitors who walk in through the door bringing Covid with them. It doesn’t matter if I spend an age to set a game up. I also take camera layouts and props into consideration. Everything takes more time by video.
   At the other end of the deal, I leave the game on the table once it is done. After filming a session, I might have to go back in and do those pick-up shots. Gloves and all. There’s no crushing need to put a game away quickly. The table is set aside so that a game on it can be left in mid-turn if necessary, and returned to later in the week, after all.
   Still, I hope to play games in person again. One day. Organisers are a handy reminder of memories of old, in the beforedom of where we are now. Where we are now feels as though this is where we will always be.
   One day this, too, shall pass. And if you pass early, you go first next turn. Some games are like that. 

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In the video version, noise reduction clipped the start off my opening. For that reason, a few half-words were brutally edited from the audio track. Otherwise, the text is the same. 

*

List of magic items from the video… 

Cordial of Nitrous Ignition. Ogres of Giant Boots. Phylactery of Periapts. Bigby’s Ignominious Finger of Middlery. Periapt of Phylacteries. Dwoemer of Dreams.

Revelatory Typesetting of .draWmiJ

Johnny Tolkien’s Axe of the Walking Talking Tree-People, renamed for copyright reasons. Wand-of-Hyphenation. Hobbit Stewpot – Hobbit not included: Comes with an Out-of-Court Settlement Scroll and The Tome of Non-Disclosure Agreement.

Gax of Gy.

Contact Lenses of Fire. Ring of Protection from Rings of Protection. Gadriel’s Typo of Copyright-Dispute-Avoidance. Google’s Enchanted Map. Digby’s Rigby of Bigby. Bunny of Bugs. Tenser’s Miracle Window Polish™.

Ring of 500 Wishes: used – one careless owner. Statue of Non-Arse. Ring of Wand of Cloak of Boots of Backpacking. Girdle of Hair-Colour-Change. Sword of Stabbing, Slashing, and Cutting Enemies. Batteries required.

Gold-Producing Purse of Economic Destabilisation.

WRITING FOR VIDEO: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

You write what you write, and that’s that. When your story reaches a natural or supernatural conclusion, kill it off. Stake it, in the case of the supernatural ending.

   When is a piece of writing finished? Depends on what you are writing. A lean novel is cooked at 75,000 words. An extra 25,000 on top of that is pudding – make sure it isn’t mere froth.

   In cinema, a page of script is a minute on the screen. Your 900-page epic on the life of a coffee shop has too much life in it. Cut to the bone. Or to the coffee bean. To the chase.

   When the writing is just a little over, circumcise it – after all, you aren’t the one feeling the pain…and if you are, you are doing it wrong. I think we’re belabouring the imagery if I say an editor should develop a thick skin.

   Down in the world of the very short story, how much should you write? I considered this when writing video scripts. It’s no secret that this blog was modelled on radio – specifically on what the journalist Alistair Cooke managed in decades of weekly broadcasting.

   I wouldn’t always write to a minimum limit – life gets in the way. But when I did write to a limit, hell, that limit was at least 1,500 words. Yes, I’d write more than that. I am, after all, a wordy cove.

   Now I make videos that run around ten minutes on YouTube, and writing 1,500 words covers the time nicely. There’s room for a pause or three, but 150 words should span a minute of audio without difficulty.

   Pacing is important. What the hell am I doing, though? I come up with a story. There’s a topic worth considering. Just exactly what the hell are dice, anyway? I’ll lay out a few items I want to talk about. And I’ll think about filming with particular camera set-ups and certain props.

   The story takes shape. There’s a lot of research. If I’m backing up a point from my own experience, that’s standard. It’s folly to discuss matters outside your experience as if they are inside it. So, yes, start with what you know. And, double-yes, do your research in case what you know is blatantly bullshit.

   It’s true that I pepper these video talks with boardgaming and roleplaying facts you won’t find anywhere else. I hope it is obvious that when I describe something as a gaming fact, I am, to use a technical term, taking the piss.

   What consumes the time? Research. With the research done, it’s time to write up a script. For the most part, I’ll write first and film later. Then I’ll edit the footage to match the audio recording.

   Sometimes I’ll film first, and then construct a story around the footage. It’s useful to see how much footage there is, and plan a chunk of writing accordingly. Whether the tail wags the dog or the dog wags the tail, from a distance you still see a four-legged animal…

   It little matters which process comes first. Script meets film in editing, regardless.

   I say that, but it isn’t entirely true. Rarely, I’ve recorded the audio track without a script. This calls for a chunk of audio editing as well as the film work, and I hardly ever take this approach. I’ll return to the topic in a moment.

   My first video script was 1,200 words…a little on the short side. But the video was a quarter of an hour long. Next, I wrote almost 1,900 words and finished that second video in eleven minutes.

   Those were the early efforts. I have a sense that I was all over the place, even though I planned to write 1,500 words to cover around ten minutes of film. What of the latest video I filmed? The script is almost 1,900 words long, and the mini-movie runs for…yes, about eleven minutes. Almost the same as my second video.

   Not counting omnibus editions, what’s my longest video? A piece on dead characters in roleplaying games. I spent over half an hour reading from a pile of dead character sheets. The script was only 38 words long – an introduction. Then I worked my way through the obituaries freeform. The character sheets provided the script.

   Collaboration extends the duration. For a video on Tourette Syndrome and gaming, I wrote 1,900 words, but the additional footage by Melissa C. Water, my collaborator, took the finished video to 23 minutes.

   Speaking of footage, how much do I film? I expect to film twice as much material as I use. That doesn’t mean the footage is ignored. For a shot of a prop, I’ll film for twelve seconds to be sure of getting ten seconds I can use.

   To match that shot to the audio, I’ll cut the scene down to five seconds. Yes, I’ve seen videos by people who put one image up for the duration of their talk. But I can’t do that. Running a shot for half a minute feels like eternity.

   What method do I favour? Writing the script and then filming the video, knowing what I am aiming for in matching visuals to the audio. Then I can go daft in the editing. Exceptionally rarely, I’ll have to cut part of the script after the fact.

   It’ll occur to me that a vague-ism has crept into the narrative, and it has to go. The audio is edited, mostly to remove coughs and splutters, but I seldom edit the audio when it is matched to the video track.

   You’ll have that awkward moment in which you realise what you are saying isn’t what you thought you meant to imagine you’d believed you were rumoured to have planned all along. In short, you realise you are talking utter bollocks.

   If I talk utter bollocks in the published video, that’s my problem. I haven’t taken a video down yet. For legal reasons, you must be aware of legal reasons.

   So where do we stand in all this, if I am giving advice for beginners making videos? Start with story. Research. Write your script. As a very rough guide, aim for 150 words per minute of film. I record the audio separately so that I can hop from one point to the next using a visual shift.

   How long does it all take? It takes for-absolutely-ever. I write these scripts in files with single spacing, wrapping up 1,500 words on the third page. The typing itself doesn’t take long, but the research that leads me there lasts forever plus one day.

   In terms of reading the script aloud, I’ll speak for around twelve minutes when delivering a ten-minute talk. Two minutes disappear in audio editing, when I cut the long pause before the sneeze, the sneeze, an aftershock of a sneeze, blowing my noise in as undignified a manner as I can manage, and a long pause as eye-watering settles down.

   I also fluff lines. And I pause while I scroll another screen full of dialogue into position. Occasionally I wait for a noisy aircraft to half-fly overhead. With audio in the bag, I almost always immediately edit that file.

   If you record at the top of the hour, you’ll use a quarter of that hour nailing the basics down by the time you start to edit. When the audio is unusable – and that’s a blue moon event – it’s back to the microphone, with adjustments.

   Editing audio for a minute adds two minutes to the process. Grab your starting duration and triple it. Don’t be surprised if you take a whole hour to record and then edit your fourteen minutes of waffle down to a ten-minute talk.

   Video production is glacial. I’ll know, from the number of words, and the stacking of props, that I am in for a long video recording session. The video on cardboard screens for roleplaying games has a script that’s 4,700 words long.

   If we’re strolling through audio at the rate of 150 words a minute, you’d expect to make a video that runs 31 and a third minutes according to the mystical calculations. In the end, I recorded 37 minutes of footage for a video edited to last a shade under 30 minutes. The estimate worked out, more or less, in that case.

   There is a sense, when making longer videos, recording longer audio sections, that you’ll pace yourself well enough once you are into the swing of things. It’s the shorter videos you’ll rattle through, runaway-train-style, burning up your script at a ridiculous rate of knots.

   I avoid super-short videos. If the script is a third shorter than usual, the finished video is half-length instead of a third shorter. With fewer words in play, there’s far less scope for the dramatic pause. All you can do is rattle through. I learned that from listening to radio. Up to a point, silence on radio is definitely dramatic. Then deafening. And after that, you reach for the switches to see if your radio stopped working.

   And that thought carries me across the 1,500 threshold. How long would this blog post last if I converted it into a video? Let us find out…I’ll add it to the queue.

RISE OF TRIBES UNBOXING: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Alchemical procedures concluded, I posted a video on YouTube. That post saw the start of my YouTube channel, featuring videos on tabletop games: equipment, gameplay, random thoughts, and, yes, an unboxing.

RISE OF TRIBES, by Breaking Games, may be the only game to feature in an unboxing video on the channel. We'll call it a first and a last.
   The channel isn't about producing unboxing videos. It's all about telling stories based around games, whether those are boardgames, card games, or roleplaying games.

Still, you must start somewhere. There's a competition to win loot, and a deadline hovers. If you wait around for the perfect moment, you'll never create content. But if you have the rocket of a deadline up your arse, that tends to focus your concentration.

I'll continue with a few game equipment videos after the unboxing. Soon enough, I'll tackle a gameplay video.
   If all goes loosely according to my non-plans, the first game video will be an international event of a piratical nature with Melissa C. Water. We'll play a game in the face of her Tourette-related issues...

*

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder might be the trickiest thing to deal with, but I will steer Melissa through a few games in which the problem is lessened.
   Her swearing, from the Coprolalia, shouldn't cause us too much difficulty. YouTube videos are routinely demonetised based on changes in the weather and the letter R in the month.
   Or the word DAY in the day of the week.
   You'd think a video highlighting the difficulties of dealing with Coprolalia wouldn't be demonetised thanks to the swearing, but Melissa has experienced flagging for that.

Filters that flag the word breast affect articles on breast cancer. Think before you blink.
   Tourette is called the Swearing Disease, but it's not true - for 90% of the people with that particular neurological condition.
   We are going to swear in the Tourette videos. Melissa belongs to the glorious 10% of people with Tourette who have the sweary aspect to the condition.
   And I'm Scottish. You can't step outside your door without batting swearwords away with a shitty stick, in Old Scotlandia.

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Will Melissa fuckshitbuggerhellyeahsuckitPluto her way through boardgames? Yes. She may end up ruling the Coprolalia Clan in RISE OF TRIBES. And there's nothing wrong in that.

Here's the full video of Melissa on flagging videos...

For the RISE OF TRIBES unboxing video, click the picture below. This takes you to my YouTube channel, which is named after this blog: REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE. (Though, officially, YouTube forced me to name it after myself in the small print.)

BOARDGAMING WITH TOURETTE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Melissa C. Water is helping me gradually close in on the target. There'll be piracy on the high seas in low company. And a good time had by all.
   You can lay to that, shipmates.

*

My first YouTube video won't be a gameplay example, though. We're still sailing into port across choppy waters on that score. However, the video introduction is done...
   What to expect, in a video dealing with games? Dice, of course. 

There'll be several piratical games in time, so anticipate the arrival of treasure chests. I decided YouTube videos on tabletop games needed a sense of the theatrical. That's when I opted for the use of many props.
   What else to expect, in videos dealing with games? Cards, of course...

I'll make videos on gaming equipment. Cards. Dice. The table. A much-needed cloth. Daggers. Gunpowder. Small quantities of uranium. The usual stuff.
   There'll be games, too. Shocking, I know...

I determined, quite early, that gloves make great props for introducing games thematically. Piratical gloves go well with tales of larceny upon the seven seas, and so on.
   But, as handy tools, gloves are effing useless when it comes to moving game components around. Luckily, I only bought a few different pairs of gloves for the channel.
   They'll be used for effect here and there. No need to stuff a wardrobe full of them. Practicality outbids theatricality in this game, every single time.

Pictured: a still from the unboxing video I am planning to open my channel with. This is a shot of RISE OF TRIBES, by Breaking Games.
   I had a terrible time great fun lifting components out of the box with my awkward cumbersome begloved fingers wonderful atmospheric gloves. Would rather eat glass than attempt that again. Fun times.

Running a game internationally brings a whole host of problems to the gaming table. Fiddling around with counters on the end of gloved hands...isn't going to be one of those problems.

   I will face Tourette-based issues with Melissa C. Water, joining the game all the way from French Canada. We might be interrupted by full-on body tics. Convulsions. They appear epileptic in nature.

   We won't feature in the games as visual players ourselves. The emphasis is on telling a story and capturing game board imagery. The privacy issue, therefore, doesn't come up.

   I wouldn't be publishing footage of Melissa in convulsions anyway. What kind of Sick Space Muppet do you take me for? That leads to another point, though. How much of the audio do we use in the videos?

In my dealings with Melissa (editing her Kindle book), I found that she remained relatively calm when she latched onto a subject of interest to her. Tourette-based behaviour rose in frequency the more she talked about Tourette itself.
   Discussing audio tics, generated by Coprolalia, draws attention to the audio tics and increases the frequency of those sounds.
   I feel we face a vicious downward spiral and a virtuous upward spiral when we speak privately, depending entirely on the topics covered.
   It's my hope that gameplay will be of benefit to Melissa. We'll see. The channel is here to tell stories based around games. Winning and losing are of far less importance. The old adage applies.
   Did you have fun? Then you won.
   As far as audio is concerned, the videos are all going to be edited anyway. This is a real problem with gameplay videos online - lack of editing.
   I'm not going to name names here, or point fingers, and the people involved weren't famous YouTubers or big names in the boardgame side of things anyway.
   But I watched this video waiting for a game to start, and the people concerned were more interested in consuming meals. If I ever make game videos, I vowed, then I am not going to start game set-up with an introductory preamble that involves baking an effing cake.
   (Veering off, I must add this. There's a team out there on YouTube called Sugar High Score. If anyone could do a fascinating gameplay video about baking a cake, they'd take the biscuit.)
   My Bad Pun Detector is broken. Where was I?
   Yes, back to what I was saying about dusty desert-blown game videos. I was stuck with the charge of the pizza brigade. Well, I think it was pizza. Frankly, I'd lost the will to care by that point.
   Edit your nineteen-hour videos, folks.
   I'll do my best to edit out the faffing about. That means the Tourette-based videos face the same treatment. We might be forced to edit the worst tics out. But I might just as easily be forced to edit away the worst fumblings over intransigent game counters. Note to self: gloves are problematic.
   Luckily, Melissa is keen to see where this takes us, and she's game. You kinda have to be game, to game.
   Also, Melissa has a cool piratical gaming bonus...

Melissa C. Water's photos appear by kind permission.

BOARDGAMES AND OTHER PLANS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

I entered a competition.
   And now you know that I had other plans.

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For a million years I've been planning more content. This involves writing. But the content is visual. Yes, I'm making videos. And yes, I'm using a lot of silly voices in populating those videos with characters.

   I decided I could do something vague in the area of boardgames. Boardgaming is about telling stories by hurling plastic cubes across cardboard maps...

Or hunting Dracula across Europe...

  
 Trying to track the Whitechapel murderer to his lair...
   Assisting Sherlock Holmes in curious investigations...

 Monopoly it ain't.

   Setting up a small film studio, I went about the daunting task of assembling a system, a machine, for churning out videos about games. Yes, I had to buy in a load of games of all shapes and sizes. In all sorts of price-brackets.

  

Occasionally, I backed a KICKSTARTER. One game arrived. And with it, thanks to the makers, came a chance to win a prize if I did an unboxing video.

   This marketing move put me under the gun. I had a time-limit, and brought my video plans forward.

*

What will this boardgame channel, on the YouTube, bring to the audience? Silly voices, of course.

   I have no interest in acting. However, down the years people kept telling me I should be one of those actors, dahling. Not having any interest in that area, I stuck to writing stories.

In writing stories, I read my work aloud in the different accents of the characters passing through semi-imaginary worlds.

   Now I plan to inflict those silly voices on a bewildered public. But there's more to this than hijinks and low comedy.

*

One offshoot of boardgaming, with its own playlist on the YouTube channel, will be BOARDGAMING WITH TOURETTE. I'll host games internationally, with Melissa C. Water in Canada.

We'll explore the idea of running games with someone who faces more than a few difficulties in getting through play. This includes Tourette tics, Coprolalia, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

   Just typing COPROLALIA TOURETTE into the search engine throws one of Melissa's videos at me. For the purposes of this blog, I searched for BOARDGAMING TOURETTE.

   I discovered one game on the boardgaming database, BGG, about shouting a word as you turn a card over. No videos found. Smjj from Sweden doesn't like it. Thanks, boardgame database. Hardly inspirational stuff. Leaving the database for the wider world web, I tried again.

   BOARDGAMING WITH TOURETTE threw the same vague card game at me. Surely we can do better than this. There are many hurdles to blast through. Blasting through them, we'll find that we can do better than this.
   As with everything else, these plans take a million years and a million more. But I am under the gun, and must away to unbox a game in front of several cameras.

Pictured above: Pandemic Legacy, with 12 mm dice replacing stickers. Fury of Dracula, 3rd edition, receiving an undead helping hand. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective: Whitechapel/West End adventures.
   Deep Sea Adventure with a playmat replacing the submarine token. Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu. A cluster of ships spilling across the board of Black Fleet.
   Melissa C. Water appears by kind permission.