Making Videos

I've occasionally linked some of my SWTOR videos before, but lately I've mostly settled on just letting the widget do its thing. What widget? The small one at the bottom of the sidebar that shows tiny thumbnails of the last four videos I uploaded to my channel. I do wonder if anyone actually notices it though; to be honest I keep forgetting that it's there myself...

Sometimes I'm not entirely sure how I feel about video-making. I definitely have no aspirations to become a "YouTuber" who puts out video content regularly. I don't want that pressure, plus I genuinely prefer the written word most of the time. However, that doesn't mean that sometimes a different medium doesn't lend itself better to a particular task - conveying the excitement of a first boss kill for example. Sure, you can post a screenshot and tell an epic tale of how you got him down just as he enraged... but it's pretty hard work to get that kind of thing right. Alternatively, you can just leave Fraps on, put some eighties rock on in the background and presto! You've got a pretty good approximation of what the crucial moments felt like that night.



While I've dabbled in recording different things, operations remain my favourite part of the game to make videos of, to try and capture that epic feeling of lots of people going up against a large opponent together. My favourite effort so far has been this TfB video I made a little over a month ago:



Basically, I wanted to finally make something that felt a little more "cinematic" than my previous attempts, with no annoying UI, floating combat text, my character always standing in the middle or other bits and pieces distracting from the action. It shouldn't come as a surprise that actually playing effectively like that turned out to be pretty much impossible!

Fortunately my guild allowed me to tag along for a 16-man story mode run for the express purpose of playing camerawoman, and I don't think the other three healers were particularly taxed. I don't doubt that at least a couple of people were quietly rolling their eyes at my quirky projects though.

I keep thinking that I want to do a similar thing for Scum And Villainy, but with seven bosses the operation feels a fair bit longer and I'm not sure I really want to subject people to more of me tagging along uselessly in terms of gameplay.