Battleshed Diaries

Friday 5 June 2015

My movie experiment



My reader may have noticed that I've added a couple of wee videos onto my most recent posts. These are very simple movies made up from the photos I used in the posts, with a few sound effects added into the mix. All very simple stuff, but why I bet you're asking?!

Well, it's just a wee experiment really. I usually take a whole bunch of photos during a battle if I'm planning on writing up a report. As my posts tend to be more narrative (you may have noticed!) I have to be extremely ruthless when selecting photos, usually just four or five, to illustrate my battle reports. Which is a shame really, as there are often some great photos that are doomed to the pc's recycle bin.

Initially I tried a simple slide show with all the useful photos from a battle, with the idea to add in a link to the show at the bottom of the report as a kind of optional bonus archive.  But that was a bit dry. So firing up the MS Movie Maker on my ancient laptop, I quickly edited a photo movie using a few free sound effects. 

And that is where I'm up to now. I plan to trial it with our recently started In Her Majesty's Name campaign, adding in the movies as an extra after each battle, made up of all those rescued photos and hopefully helping to visualise the story of the battle.  I'll probably have to upgrade my movie making software though!

So, what do you think?

5 comments:

  1. I'm a big fan of making the photos (or movie) do the talking! Especially with games like IHMN which are RPG-like. Looking forward to seeing your next AAR!

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  2. Thanks for the encouragement, Gordon. That's the idea, provide the option for the AAR story to be told through pictures. Kind of inspired by your comic style reports! I'll give it a go anyway. Next IHMN game is scheduled next week, so should have something up by next weekend.

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  3. You'll have to let us know how these go :)
    Cheers,
    Craig Cartmell

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    Replies
    1. Indeed. Worth a post or two whilst I experiment ;)

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