I Am Irish Street Fighter And So Is My Wife!

deathrider

TheOriginalRazer hit me up on facebook with a link to the Street Fighter documentary that's doing the rounds at the moment. Gave it a watch tonight, thought it was great, yadda, yadda, yadda. Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gZBITO5GwI

Anyways, it got me thinking. Now it's about 4am, so my thinking (and indeed my grammer) could be shot to crap due to my being tired. However, what I was thinking was how come the Irish FGC have never made a documentary? It seems like it would be a great little project. There are a lot of people within the community from every walk of life, both those who participate on a very regular basis, and those who are much more loosely affiliated. I'd imagine that some of these people would have the technology and/or the knowhow to kick start something like this.

Now I'm not imagining anything to the calibur of I Am Street Fighter, but perhaps something small, following one or two of the community's players, or even following the setting up and running of a tournament. Perhaps, something that follows some of the different crews from around the country, and have it all wind up at a big-ass tournament? Even have it follow some of the best fighters from various different games- SF, Kof, MK, Tekken, Rise of The Robots; whatever. Of course, whichever path you chose it would have a rake of interviews with players, explaining what draws them to fighting games, what they get out of it, and why they do what they do to arrive at these tournaments time and time again. Some lads are local enough, so life is handy, but I know a lot of guys (myself included) travel long distances for a big fight. This, and about a billion other reasons, separates fighting from a lot of other genres. There's a great passion involved, and it's vibrant with the irish crowd too. It could be great to catch that passion and energy on film. Not just through recording matches/commentary, but through also getting to know the players behind the fights.

I'm mainly just spitballing here to see if there's any interest in something like this. It wouldn't necessarily be to expand the community, but it could pull some new fighters in. There are quite a lot of players, so I'd imagine it would look fairly impressive on screen if there was a big turn out at a local tournament and some matches got major hyped up. I know there are a few musicians that attend the tournies too, so perhaps some kind of soundtrack could also be put together. I'd do whatever I could to help out, although I know nothing about cinematography, even on a small scale. I'd happily do whatever I could through HSN though, and I'd lend as much of a hand as I could to anything else as I'd reckon putting something like this together would be no easy feat.

As I said, I'm just spitballing here, and throwing around ideas. I could wake up in the morning and think that this is an awful idea. But for now I believe it would be a lot of fun to try and put together, it would look well for the Irish Fighting Game Community all in all, and the end product would be pretty damned kick arse!

What are your thoughts here then, folks? Would something like this be possible and/or worth our while? Or should I have gone to bed already?

Doctor DooM

Recording footage like that requires certain skills (and technology) that to my knowledge no one in the scene really has, like the mikes I own wouldn't be good enough.

I'd love for something like this to happen and tbh it'd probably need my help to work (I haz ALL the footage of the actual games and commentary etc) but it actually takes considerable work. I don't know how to mike someone up for interview or light a room or anything like that. I do know when it looks crap because I've done stuff before and I've always thought it looks below par (The AJ Baa fights trailer is probably the best I managed, that took several hours of work for a 30 second job).

So the question is- is there any film students or the like in the Irish FG scene who'd be interested in doing this? Because I think it's doomed (pardon the pun) to failure without one.

OdgeXD

Well yeah, but I haven't got my own equipment. A project like this would be massively time consuming so renting equipment for a long term is out of the question (for me at least) and given the fact that I'm so far away, with the amount I'd have to be in Dublin it'd take an awful long time to get required footage and to get it edited together.

Not sure why I'm posting because I realistically can't do anything about this :P But if anyone does decide to undertake it I'd happily share my 'expertise' and help out any way I could. Just be aware it won't be a one or two day thing, probably closer to 6 months or more to get everything organised, shot, and edited.

Media student btw, I kinda know what I'm doing.

UberPrinny_Baal

I think this is a good idea Deathrider, and it's nice to see someone post in a tone that is pretty optimistic and willing to help.

There's nothing I hate seeing more than someone say "I have an idea that OTHER people should do while I complain about it not being done yet."

What a project like this needs though, is a literal project lead who can say:
"I am willing to do all of the unpaid work to make this happen, and I will be a bollocks and pester all the people who volunteered their unpaid work until the deadlines are met and the project is finished."

And I dunno who that person is. It certainly isn't me.

I'm not even sure what the technical requirements of this is; Doom raised a few good points (like lighting and mic placement) I wouldn't have ever thought about. It seems like as well that if you were going to film multiple players travelling from far out to a Dublin tournament, they would all need have similar/the same camera in order for the final product not to look weird.

If anyone wants to martyr themselves to do this, I will give them one piece of advice though: Don't get the community consensus.

We as a group, like every group, are brutal at making decisions. Just decide what you yourself want to do, and then do that. You don't need the permission of the IFGC if you decide you want to do this. Don't entertain any forum posts or private messages about how the final product SHOULD turn out unless you yourself think it is a good idea.
The only person you might need the co-operation of is Doom, and as he said, only if you want to use his footage/post it on his channel.

As for myself, I'd be willing to do player interviews at events. I seem to have kinda gravitated towards doing that in vlogs anyway, and I enjoy it. Even if my questions get edited out and replaced with Text Cards of said questions (which seems to be the style for documentaries at the moment), I'm totally down with helping in that very specific capacity!

Doctor DooM

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

If anyone wants to martyr themselves to do this, I will give them one piece of advice though: Don't get the community consensus.

This is actually some of the best advice possible for someone- anyone- who's trying to get stuff done for scenes like this. There will always be someone who can't come on the day. There will always be someone who doesn't like the choice of games. There will always be someone who doesn't like the venue, or the rules, the name you pick, or the way x or y or z are done. While you should of course not ignore criticism and complaints, especially from people who contribute regularly to what you do, sometimes you just have to make choices and accept you could be wrong and live and learn with them, because the alternative is that you spend forever having your idea whittled down by committee to something useless.

jimmypenguin

'+distraction' has made a few posts on the galway tourney pages..

he plays and his job is camera/sound recording.
maybe get onto him about taking part

he has all the equipment necessary

deathrider

jimmypenguin wrote: »

'+distraction' has made a few posts on the galway tourney pages..

he plays and his job is camera/sound recording.
maybe get onto him about taking part

he has all the equipment necessary

Is he Joe? I don't know the screen names of most of the local Galway fighters, as we seem to use our real names at tournaments. The flip side being that I don't know the real names of most of the other Irish players, as it's all screen names then...

I'm rambling again. Is that Joe?

Nutrient

I can see it now, 'LYTHERO: HEART, SOUL, STYLISH' hit the charts as #1 documentry as it delves into what it takes to battle through Marvel online to find not only a worthy adversary, but, a player with a mic.

jimmypenguin

lol.. no distraction is a mate of mine spud,., dont think youve met him..

Doctor DooM

Lol, we may have met spud once or twice. I was interviewed for his website.

deathrider

jimmypenguin wrote: »

lol.. no distraction is a mate of mine spud,., dont think youve met him..

Could you point him in the direction of this thread?

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Lol, we may have met spud once or twice. I was interviewed for his website.

Damn double names and alter egos making me all confused. I'm Spud! Lol

Doctor DooM

deathrider wrote: »

Could you point him in the direction of this thread?



Damn double names and alter egos making me all confused. I'm Spud! Lol

Ok, that's pretty funny. Lol!

Bento Sento

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

As for myself, I'd be willing to do player interviews at events. I seem to have kinda gravitated towards doing that in vlogs anyway, and I enjoy it. Even if my questions get edited out and replaced with Text Cards of said questions (which seems to be the style for documentaries at the moment), I'm totally down with helping in that very specific capacity!

I think that if we want to eventually do or get to something like a documentary or anything of the sort this would be the best place to start. Interviews would be a good way to bring a lot of things to light the same way a documentary would but in an easier fashion. It would look good on the site to.

As for the actual style of interview, if you want to have two people (one interviewer and one interviewee) then then interview needs to have a good personality and also be able to handle himself well on the mic. If you want to do it the other way where there is just the one person being interviewed with text questions then you need good editing skills to make it look nice.

Doctor DooM

Bento Sento wrote: »

I think that if we want to eventually do or get to something like a documentary or anything of the sort this would be the best place to start. Interviews would be a good way to bring a lot of things to light the same way a documentary would but in an easier fashion. It would look good on the site to.

As for the actual style of interview, if you want to have two people (one interviewer and one interviewee) then then interview needs to have a good personality and also be able to handle himself well on the mic. If you want to do it the other way where there is just the one person being interviewed with text questions then you need good editing skills to make it look nice.

I know a while back Onion was considering doing something like this, I was going to be his first victim but I can't recall actually sitting down and doing it.

Bento Sento

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I know a while back Onion was considering doing something like this, I was going to be his first victim but I can't recall actually sitting down and doing it.

If I remember correctly he actually sat down for an interview with Nutrient at the DoC that was in the Clarence but it never seemed to have seen the light of day.

deathrider

I always thought that interviews video interviews worked best when the questions were edited out completely, making it look more like the interviewee was simply telling a story.

D4RK ONION

I defo want to do bitesize player interviews. The nutrient interview was seriously winged and didn't come off nice at all.

Dwy

deathrider wrote: »

I always thought that interviews video interviews worked best when the questions were edited out completely, making it look more like the interviewee was simply telling a story.

I agree so much, feel uncomfortable watching anything other; seems awkward whenever you listen to the question by the interviewer :pac: