Sunday 13 February 2022

Thoughts about YouTube battlereports

After trying to watch many many battle reports on YouTube, if I ever did one, these are the things to keep in mind-

  •  If I have a title sequence, it must be very short and not loud. Any video with a long title sequence gets fast forwarded.
  • Do an intro describing the battle, the mission, and an overview of the terrain. 
    • Mention the game system and provide link to it. 
    • Mention where Terrain came from - if I bought it or built it. Provide links to suppliers. I often want to buy the terrain I see in video's! 
    • An overview of the Terrain and mention any objective's. 
    • Mark deployment area's for the initial start of the battle.
    • Do an army overview, giving the army a name, commander names, if the unit has a history and what it's intended purpose is.
    •  Use railway terrain boards for the back for nicer pictures.
    • Army overview needs a background- either railway boards or placed in front of the battlefield terrain.
    • Do NOT do a face to camera. I don't care about them and it just takes time I don't want to watch and skip past. 
  • Do not say "and without further ado". It's very noticeable and annoying.
  • Do not show dice rolls (except for reason below). When watching, I don't know or care what you need- this is NOT a tutorial on the game system. 40K games are horrible for this, spending 1/4 of the video showing dice being thrown and picking them up before you know what the result was!
  • A tripod must be used. Shakey cam can be used for important zoom ins and model eye views only.
  • Do not show the players- it's boring, you can never understrand what they are saying and its distracting from the game! 
  • Do not show the players moving units!
  • If needed, use a picture of an actual commander and speech to text overlay.
  • You CAN show the dice for important points like will the Tank about to take the objective be taken out by that brave PIAT crew, or the mountain of dice a German MMG squad puts out. But is should be rare and show critical movements.
  • Model eye views once a turn for important choices should be used - what you see from the air plane view of the battlefield is going to be hugely different from what the platoon or division commander can see. 
  • If playing solo, remind the viewer my opponent is the best guy ever, and a cunning commander.
  • Bolt Action reports should not start every unit by "The order dice for the Americans was pulled and they did XXXX". It gets very repetitive.  Just say who and what unit is doing what order. 
  • Don't show tape measure measuring unless it's to show the unit is OUT of range. Just say if they are in range or at close/long range.
  • After the battle, conclusions must be made and lessons learnt. Point out on the battlefield what was the critical terrain or movement. This should be focused on the battlefield and units, NO FACE TO CAMERA.
  • Post production should have the sound of  gun fire/explosions and ideally added graphics showing who is shooting at what. 
  • Place YouTube chapters for Intro/Terrain/Army introduction/Each entire turn/Ending/Conclusion/Outro
  • Outro should be a final reminder of who won, who lost, a mention of upcoming video's planned for future and the inevitable reminder to Like, Subscribe and Ring the bloody bell. 

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