A Role Playing Games Documentary: “Men Of War”
http://www.vimeo.com/4710473
This short documentary is about Role Playing Games, it will tell you what table top role playing game is and what it is not.
I have been working on this project since the last meet up of the Netherlands Role Players’ Guild.
I interviewed with 8 people in total, 6 of which I knew from the guild.
It costed me only 3×60mins of mini DV’s and around 2 days of re-watching, indexing and planning + 3 days of editing work.
The song at the back of the interviews is called “Bugün”, and it is composed and played by a friend of mine “Karaimer”. He also agreed to compose and play other songs for my upcoming short films. /happy
Anyway, here is the final edit of the video, so here you can watch and comment on it. So that I can make it better. And thanks for watching!
Can’t see the movie? Download it here
Reader Comments
The documentary looks good, I think it’s more informative about roleplaying then several other documentary’s I’ve seen on the subject. Nice too include the children as well. A few quick points of feedback
- Too bad you didn’t use the Interview with Judith, just showing that “girls game too” would have been a refreshing statement versus the usual stereotype of Gamers.
- I’m having trouble understanding what I’m saying at 01:51 till 01:55, perhaps you could edit this a bit(it sounds like I’m saying “ass” when I’m saying “has”)
I never connected table top rpg with violence, but the first 40 seconds made me reconsider..But, a nice way to introduce your rpg club and keep the attention of the viewer.
The production values are getting a little professional :) i can see that you put some work in that. However some of the dialog is a bit hard to understand.
I think you were able to give good idea about the game and the players in just a few minutes, well done.
I have enjoyed the documentary very well… I know more about it thinks to this documentary
maybe it is an idea to add subtitles to the documentary. not every one is a perfect english person you know =P
I agree with the part of the reader comment about the girl… I see only guys getting interviewed and I see that RP if for both men and girls so maybe adding a girls intervieuw to the documtary so girls can see that RP are not only for men
for the rest it is only little detail editing and It’s ok with me ^^
Hi Harm Jan,
Thank you for the comment!
I will try to put subtitles on those parts which are impossible to understand, or we can make a voice over recording if we have time.
About Judith, I really wanted to use the interview with her, but I had to keep it short and to the point.
“Violence” was only one of many parts I wanted to focus about Role Playing. So I let the other subjects like “Women in RPG” or “Addiction” be the subjects of my upcoming documentaries :)
Perhaps in the end it will become one complete “real”documentary, that would be cool. Something like Über Goober perhaps(without the boring part then)
It’s really hard to keep it small actually.
I had hard time cutting, and taking out parts. People said nice things during their interviews, I wish I could make it 20 mins longer or so, so that I could use all those parts I cut out too :)
The real documentary would be easier, where you don’t have to cut in the middle of the most beautiful sentence someone says, just because it does not perfectly fit in the concept you are making your “short” documentary about. Well, never made a real one though. So, I may not exactly know how hard it is to make it fit to, say 120 mins :) Not to mention how many more days you need to edit all those extra minutes. (must be at least 20 times harder then mine which was only 6 minutes)
Hi Tiw,
done all by yourself ?
Nice stuff but i agree with the ideas of “more girlz” and “get subtitles” wich will makes it easier to understand when some guys whispers …
Will we play together soon ?
Looks like shadowrun or cyberpunk stuff …
:)
Hey Skraag,
Yes, I made it all by myself for my film making course :] Well, the music is not my creation, and I had to cut and edit some scenes from the Little Red Riding Hood cartoon, I found from Youtube, to fit what Nik says in the end.
About not using any girls in this documentary, I have to say, I didn’t make any effort for not using them. They just weren’t there that day when I was interviewing. I can use them as long as I find them, right? ^^
And actually, there was one girl I interviewed separately, but we interviewed in a cafe, and it was so loud that you could hardly hear what she was saying. So I couldn’t use her interview in this documentary :(
And yes, there are some shots from a Shadowrun game in this documentary. Maybe, I should also mention about that in the credits..
If it was too loud then only sub it and cover the background with some nice music :)
There were a girl you forgot : yourself :p
And also i forgot : what about showing strange dices ?
Where are D4 D8 D10 D12 ? :p
Do you want me to send you pics of them ?
Hi Tiw, nice job! I also agree about ‘Girls in RPG’, maybe I can interview with you =)
I felt I couldn’t relate to any of the characters and that it lacked a protagonist. also I didn’t like the fact that it lack humour of any sort. You were too close to the project as anyone else who made this would have had more fun and got the people in your documentary to show the imaginative side to the games. No one cares about the rules of the game we want to see the people who play it. The music was inappropriate for the piece. I did like the chapters you used on the bright side of things.
also like the little red riding hood by far the best thing about your documentary, but why not use the sound from the scene. anyway that was good