Quiplash
is a super fun game that you play on your smartphone. Two questions are sent to your phone each
round, you answer them however you want, and then the rest of the group votes
on their favorite answers. That’s the
basic premise of the game. When thinking
about what I wanted to shoot for this project, this game immediately came to
mind. I love the intimate setting that
this game creates, and the humorous answers that people come up with while
playing. I’ve spent a lot of time
playing Quiplash with my friends and family, and I’ve learned a lot about them
in the way that they answer questions. I
wanted to capture that feeling of friendship and fun that is felt when a group
of friends gets together and plays. That
is why I ultimately decided to show this clip, even though it is filled with several
mistakes on my part, more so than any of the other clips I considered using. I felt like the mistakes added humor and a
sense of friendship and lightness to the piece, which is what I was going for.
When choosing to shoot this project,
I severely underestimated how long the game takes to play. I shot for about an hour, and in that time,
the group played through three games, each one taking about 15 to 20 minutes to
complete. I wanted to show as much of
the process as possible so that the audience would understand the rules of the
game, but one round of the game took about 5 to 6 minutes, which was way longer
than the project’s time limit. In the
end, I decided to eliminate the beginning of the round where everyone submits
their answers, which would have increased the audience’s clarity about how the
game worked, but ultimately took too much time away from the other things that
I wanted to show, such as laughter, group bonding, and humor derived from the
game. I also wanted there to be a
satisfying conclusion, so I decided to show more of the scores at the end of
the round and less of the answer submission at the beginning. I had hoped that the group’s dialogue, as
well as shots of the screen and gameplay, would help the audience understand
how the game worked, but electronic games such as Quiplash are only just
starting to take off, so their rules are not as universal or easy to follow if
you’re not already playing it. If I
could do it again, I would have chosen a simpler game that is more universal,
or a board game that is fairly easy to follow, even if you’ve never played
before.
As always, while shooting the film, I was
reminded of my own weaknesses as a DP. I
don’t know anything about white balancing, ISO, or any other technical camera knowledge,
and I had little experience with using the shoulder rig. It was a lot harder than I thought it would
be to balance the camera, keep things in frame, and adjust the focus. If I could do it again, I would probably try
practicing and using the larger shoulder rig. Even though it’s more complicated, it would
have given me more control over focus, and the camera would hopefully have been
less bumpy. I also didn’t really
comprehend the difficulty of shooting a television screen, and I was grateful
that I had the laptop as a backup while shooting because without it, several
parts of the film would have been incomprehensible. Ultimately, I feel like I failed to capture
enough of the gameplay in order to help the audience understand the rules, but
I feel like I did capture what I was originally going for by showing the group
bonding, laughing, and enjoying each other’s wit and humor.
No comments:
Post a Comment