Countdown to King Project Update — February 5th to 11th — Laying the Groundwork

This week, I was able to film footage at both the first Lions Gaming general meeting of the semester and the first Super Smash Bros. Ultimate biweekly of the semester, Stronghold: The Siege #1. I created all of the graphic assets for this tournament series, which meant I was very busy and didn’t get as much done on this project as I would like.

Unfortunately one of the hangups I am having is that since I am in charge recording gameplay from our tournaments on my laptop, I have to carry my own gaming monitor to the venue, and I can’t seem to find a way to carry video equipment with me at the same time without sacrificing my recording setup. For this reason, I settled on filming with my basic camcorder. The quality isn’t fantastic, but it’s good enough for now. As soon as I figure out how to solve this problem I will try renting out more professional cameras from the Cage.

At the first general meeting, I filmed a lot of B-roll footage of club members playing games, as well as a short interview with a freshman who had just recently joined the club. It is possible that I may use this interview as an intro to the documentary, because when I asked if he would come to King 2020, he responded with “Hell yeah.”

At Stronghold: The Siege #1, the majority of my footage was of players during their matches, the commentators, and the tournament organizers calling matches. I was able to conduct a few short interviews with players as well, but I discovered after reviewing the footage that the environment of a tournament was not the best place to film in as the background noise sometimes made it too hard to hear the subject. Luckily, my interview with Evan “Evanem” Bianco was shot in one of the adjacent rooms in the Business Building, where there was no noise.

After this tournament, I thought a bit about what direction I want to take this documentary in. At first, this was going to be simply a chronological depiction of everything that happens during the semester, but now I think I want to focus more on players’ and Lions Gaming staff members’ stories and personalities. Some of the storylines I’d like to show off now are:

• Chris “Strawhat” Reubel’s winning streak at TCNJ biweeklies
• The rivalry between Gregory “Secret” Vertilus and Nick “Lemonpepsi” Coccaro to be the best player at TCNJ
• Steven “Moses Split The Red Sea with a Beyblade” Sharp’s comedic tag choices, as well as him picking up characters specifically to beat his brother
• Chad “Vegeta” Zsoldos’s main crisis and his thoughts on making top 8 at TCNJ for the first time in a year
• Possibly some interviews with guests such as Rutgers Camden players

For an example of the tone I’d like to go for, I’d like to show clips of an interview with Steven Sharp, then cut to footage of his long losers bracket run at Stronghold: The Siege #1 with him reacting to winning each match.

Because the tone of this documentary is shifting a bit, I am thinking of scrapping the “VS” screen that I created last semester as it might interrupt the flow a bit. Or possibly, I may use it sparingly to introduce an important match.

I learned a lot over the course of this week and I’m ready to carry it into the following ones. Queen 2020 is coming up this Sunday and if possible I’d like to get camera equipment for it.