My EVE

I chime in with Pinky...

1. I love to see accurate representations of what people do, how they play and all those things that make it awesome. It can really be anything as long as it's informative and compelling. I obviously have my preferences, but as long as it's well made (that doesn't imply just well produced, even if that is a factor) i tend to enjoy it. If you make a detailed account of how you mine, i could actually enjoy that even if i lean more toward explosions.

4. The thing i find most lacking is narrative. Even if RnK and individuals like Kil2 have started a good trend there with their excellent narrative i think alot of people don't value appealing to an "outside viewer" well enough. It can be people not playing the game, but even more importantly today with the game polarising isolated aspects of the game it's important to understand that less people will share your perspective. If you make a WH-movie it's important to distinguish important features to a Sov-null player for example, whereas if you make a "big battle" VBR it's important to accurately present the political AND tactical background to immerse the viewer more - so it just doesn't become a swath of zoomed out pixels.

When it comes to content that kind of tie into the whole pulling away part. What i find lacking is compelling midsize content, that is a reflection of the game in general so it's difficult to do something about. Fewer groups play in that scale, so there will naturally be fewer movies. There are a couple of reasons why i miss it. One is personal bias, but the other include: the rarity itself or the overall exotic appeal, often good presentation with narrative and complex strategy, varied regionality (null, low, fw, wh) or the large overall span of different things you can do in that spectrum (let's define midsize as 15-50-100, and you can see how broad that scope is, yet still quite uncommon).

Good propaganda is still available through the political actors (even if it's usually more extrinsic and not as much gameplay), while the likes of Kil2, Kovorix and the many movies from the Genos group have really revived the solo-pair scene. It's awesome, but even that is comming to a point where it's maybe a bit too common and you begin to miss the other content inbetween that and a big sovereign slugfest. Almost every other movie out there seem to be frigate-BC-cruiser-Tier3 with the odd Tech II sprinkled around. There are some tanky BS and there's plenty of missile spam.

Those movies can definately also be good, but they are usually better recieved when the player do something at least bit out of the ordinary (when the piloting involve some exceptional choices, when there's slightly more exotic ships or when there are a few more ships that do something interesting together).

5. Definately content before pakage, but the pakage is nonetheless important - any good movie have both! A poorly presented movie with awesome content is much more appealing than something with just surface though.

1: What do you want from EVE Online videos? (‘plosions, documentaries in game or out, mining, tuts)

Explosions and tuts are the best IMO.

Documentaries are okay every once in a while, but My Eve shouldn't turn into national geographic.


2: What do you want to show people in your EVE Online videos?

Anything that is worthy to be shown.


3: What is stopping you from making your EVE Online video? (time, experience, tools & programs, HDD space etc)

Content, remembering to fraps everything.. , HDD space can be a hassle but if you are dedicated enough you can learn to work around it.


4: Generally speaking…what is lacking (if anything) from either CCP video content, or, Community video content?

Not enough videos and not enough people seeking the videos IMO.

5: What is more important; Style? Or Substance?

Balance of both obviously.

i think what most people want is an explenation of what is going on during fights, but for the more experianced guys that already know what they are doing, what appeals is any footage that shows the pilots skill level, ie. clutch moves,overheating, range other randoms stuff like that.

The narrative stuff is totally awesome, try watching most solo pvp videos and its usually great fights with some cool music, however when you do find one with a commentary it adds alot to it.

realisticly people will watch almost anything as long as there is good fights or a well done commentary, even good music selection. if you can combine these and add more to it thats when people start to tell all their eve friends to watch it.

hope that helped somewhat.

also, eve online livestreaming is an awesome thing it shows off how boring eve is and how it changes to superintensewtfspaceshipseriousmode in a amtter of seconds, and i hope more people do it in the future

1: What do you want from EVE Online videos? (‘plosions, documentaries in game or out, mining, tuts)
I think most people are after similar things. The most popular videos are of people going up against the odds and winning. The bonus points start to flow if you smash up popular ships in something rarely seen, but there's much more to videos than that. Music plays a significant part as it's usually the only sound on display. Sounds harsh, but no video ever became a classic with dogshit tunes. If you don't know much about music, probably best to play something mellow.
My favourite videos are all over the place in terms of content, but they all stand out and have a certain attitude about them that raises them above the mob.


2: What do you want to show people in your EVE Online videos?
I would like to take the above into account when/if I get around to it. I'll try to make something that I'd like to watch.

3: What is stopping you from making your EVE Online video? (time, experience, tools & programs, HDD space etc)
All of the above.

4: Generally speaking…what is lacking (if anything) from either CCP video content, or, Community video content?
They're mostly all the same. Slow motion spaceships, big bangs, and some world weary voice over. How they fail to come up with new ideas is bizarre. They're very pretty, but are starting to look ten-a-penny. ''I Was There'' made me so embarrassed. Give me a job thinking up CCP videos and I will show you 300,000 nerds starching their pants.

5: What is more important; Style? Or Substance?
Style.

I think that most of the top vids over the years have been set apart by style. New players and bitter vets are most likely not going to gain much from your run of the mill video; I tend to think that they are best aimed at medium age players can identify all the subtle business that's occurring on the screen.

But a video with some real thought put into its production gets noticed by everyone. The more unique creations have something to offer every player because of their outlandish appeal. Back To Terror was great because it was totally bananas. R&K's invest a huge amount of time into their videos regarding style; I thought Clarion Call 3 was a very shallow and a real disappointment, but it took me a while to come to that conclusion. I had to think about it for a long time to see through the l33t production which helped disguise its lack of real content. That's an unpopular opinion, but I say that as a huge fan of their other work.

Ultimately it's a chicken and egg kind of question, but I went with style because that's what people tend to remember. We're all playing the same game, so it helps to stand out.

What would be swell:

CCP themselves to create a "MOVIE CAP" function that records like Fraps does but is set up to not record your interface. Instead it just records the screen background, which happens to be where all the ships, lasers and explosions happen to buried if you look underneath all your spreadsheets.

That way people could make great movies without forcing viewers to have their corneas sandpapered by all the same windows we spend far too much time looking at in the first place.

Trying to keep my personal opinions out this thread as much as possible, but, I would like to believe that a visually impressive video with no context is less interesting than a balls-to-the-walls PvP video frapsed' @ half resolution and edited in windows movie maker.

Kinda like the Transformers 'movies', which had huge budgets for the visual, and zero budget for the story. To this day I have not seen these films more than once and can't even tell you what happened in any of them, other than Megathron beat up another robot at some point.

AK

@Mac Tir

the ten cameras/ten people debate would never end, as there is a huge difference of opinion regarding what makes a good photograph under those terms.

I'll use an EVE example of two video producers; Loxyrider and Dire Lauthris.

Dire Lauthris will compose videos using style, his style; namely: editing an ensemble/montage of cuts with digital-watch timing to the music.

Loxyrider will compose videos using substance/context, with great attention to composition of the individual frames, specifically the 'rule of thirds', as they tell you to at film/photography school...because that's what they tell you, amongst other stuff.

I don't know the answer, and wouldn't wish to define who has the better approach, but if pushed into a dark corner in an alleyway, would say that Dire's approach appears more instinctive, and Loxyrider's approach appears more instructive.

In other words, and supporting (slightly) your statement, some people create good videos because they instinctively understand what works, or what a video needs; whilst others acheive the same level of success, but through adaptation.

AK