Music for vlogging

 If I ever get around to making video battle reports, I need to look at  using Music for Video Library. I will need to become a patreon too to get protection to use them on YouTube. 

One key is NOT having a long intro. Ideally a voice over, with music with a picture from the preview screencap and scrolling text introduction to the battle. It needs to be clear it's a wargame, if it's based on a real event or not,who are the combatants and what game system are we using, NO fastforward should be needed!

Also add a BAH-WAH or something.

More notes about YouTube

- All my battles are what-if's. State that at the start or title. 

- I need a close in thumbnail of a miniature, with smoke, and a snappy alt-history title. Eg: 1814: Russia Invades France. Can Wellington Stop them?

- Alternate History titles will get people in. Eg: Waterloo: Napoleon attack left (and early)! . 1816: Napoleon Fights Russia - In Germany!. 1820: Napoleon Invades...via Texas! 1806: Napoleon attacks London!  (Via airships!). People familiar with the topic will immediately know it's alt-history and might be intrigued to see the outcome.

 - Act 1: The stakes. I need to spend time before the battle describing the background- What is the (probably alt-history) reason these armies are fighting? What is the political situation? What part of the world? What's the weather like? Why did the armies meet at THIS location? What's that town's name? Where are the lines of attack and retreat? What is the armies doctrine and supply and morale status? How do this change from the historical record?  What are the Stakes?

- This should not be long - I can use my existing title crawl, extended with some maps and (historical) pictures of the general's and units.

- Use accented AI speech for French/Russian/Portuguese/Spanish etc. I have no idea where to get that from.

- Over view of the battlefield, marking points of interest or what will become relevant in the battle

- Maybe a flat 2D map, but this adds extra time and work. If I do that, use NATO symbols for units. 

-  Act 2: The battle.  A brief description of my army and enemy units initially visible. State the unit name (1st Brigade etc) but talk in number of battalions or batteries initially, to give a sense of scale of the units.

- You can use a static picture, but highlight the unit  you're referring to (put a white highlight border around it briefly) and zoom in and around the picture for movement.,

- Use arrows (blue for friendly, red for enemy) to show movement and and a explosion or firing icon to show combat. When moving, maybe having marching feet, but have muskets/cannons/charging noises for combat.

- I need smoke on the battlefield! Looks awesome and shows black powder battles very well.

- Use icons/colour flashes for unit states (yellow for disrupted, red for wavering?) and a very dark red or very dark blue for routing with arrows.

- Fade in and out the static pictures.

- Take lots of overview pictures of the battlefield, ideally at the end of the turn.

- Take medium shot pictures of each movement or combat. Not all of these will be used!

- Take close in shots of generals/combat/shooting.

- At the end, act 3: what happened. What went right, what went wrong. What was the enemy plans and what was the key points in the battle? The results, the political and strategic results. What happened to the armies and generals. Is the war over or is this only part of the story. 

- Most battles should be part of a continuing campaign! NO ONE ELSE DOES THIS. Units should carry on and do future battles! Mention previous experiences of them! Same with the Generals of divisions and corps. 

- End credits - credit who made this, where the figures/terrain/table came from. 

- End tag line.. "Napoleon Will Return in...XXXX battle"! Make Outlandish or interesting promise lie "....invading England via Zeppelin" or "...he will have his revenge in the next battle".

Yet more ideas for YouTube battle reports

 After watching yet more historical battle reports, what I would do if I ever did a YouTube video:

- Ask ChatGPT to convert my notes to a storyboard, It's not going to be 1-1, but it shows a structure and even finds the story I had not seen during the smoke of battle.

- Need a snappy name. Hmm, The Smoke of Battle Wargaming Reports? TSoBWR? SBWR? 

- The channel icon can have lots of smoke then and hide my crappy painting!

- If anyone offers me anything, say yes to being a sellout, but state out front in the video. It's not like any other create in the history of the world said no to money! 

- No Crypto. It's a Scam. No Scams please.

- After writing the battle report, there's a story there. Wargames and role playing games make it easy to tell a story - that's the point.  In my last battle, the story was actually about the Spanish Conscripts who nothing was expected of, arrived late, couldn't do anything...and their stubborn stand against  overwhelming odds,  saved the turn, the battle, the war. Wargame battle reports without a story is like Arnold J Rimmer telling you about his RISK game. "And then I rolled 6 6"!

- Use lots of moving arrows - red and blue ones. Show where units are and label them to follow their stories through the battle. Every good historical battle doco needs them. 

- I can use NATO symbols, but they tend to make the picture of the battlefield cluttered. They belong on top down hex maps.

- Use AI to do the talking. Do multiple ones for different view points. Keep the same AI voice video to video. The accent needs to match the army general talking. 

- When playing solo, compliment my opponent at all times. 

- Need lots of smoke on the battlefield! 

- At the end, analysis the tactics, but also the strategy, the logistics, the doctrine. And also the luck. 

- ending tag line "...and remember, smoke 'em if you got 'em!"*. 

 

If I ever did a wargame video, what I would like to see before the battle starts

 I try and watch wargames on youtube, but they don't ever seem to click for me, though some have. 

A lot of this is lack of understanding of whats going on and why should I care?

If I ever did a wargame video:

- Start with the name of the game - is it FOGN, Black Powder, Rangers of Shadowdeep etc

- State the war we are fighting - give some background. Make if up if needed, but give some setting

- What are the 2 army lists we are using? 

- What is the size of the battle- is it a squad, platoon, company, battalion, brigade, division, corps, army?

- State the scale - 6mm/15mm/28mm etc

PUT ALL THIS IN THE VIDEO TITLE!

- Introduce what the battle is about. What war, what battle, why are we fighting today? Why is this battle occurring?

- More detail on the 2 armies fighting- who are they? 

- What are the stakes for both sides? Why are they here?

- Go through each army, with close ups of each unit. Display on the screen the army list so it can be paused and read. 

- Explain what and why each unit is here. What is it's purpose or what is is supposed to do in the battle? What is in the army list?

- Show the commanders and state the name and rank. 

- Look at the battlefield in a wide shot from other armies perspectives. What is likely to be the key terrain that each army can see may be important for them? Why? Show with a graphic highlight and arrows of likely axis of movement and fire. 

- Show initial unit positions  and add graphics to highlight them with their unit names. Show sub units if needed if they take orders from single commander

- If doing an interview of the commander, don't show the player, show the figure on the table - we should be focused on them!

- Chapter title for each turn for each side

 

Things not to do that I never care about:

- Show the faces of the players. 

- Show ANY dice rolling!

- Long intros by the players to camera beforehand.  

- No talking heads! I am not the focus of the video, the battle is!

More thoughts about vlogging battle reports

 - I need a vlogging pack with a tripod, light, lenses, gun mike.

- Use Google improve for photo's to make them look better!

- https://www.naturalreaders.com/ is a cheap text to speech converter

- Use  https://freesound.org/ and You Tube Audio.

- https://www.littlewarstv.com/quick-strike-challenge.html is a guide on how to do it.

    - 1-2 Minute intro and history of the battle

    - 2-8 minutes of the battle. For Bolt Action, that's only 1-2 minutes a turn.

    - 1 Minute conclusion and 1 minute lessons learnt.

    - Use close in video, model eye view. When a character does something important or blows up, get the close video.

- Good point about keeping them less than 10 minutes! I can do a 2nd video of conclusions and lessons learnt and how to do better next time. So many battle reports go for 40-200 minutes! No one's watching all of that!

- Even better, do a 3rd video on the history of the armies/battle/campaign. 

- If doing a battle of Australian troops, I could use the actual regimental diaries from the AWM as a guide on the battle itself, and colour commentary when needed. It can be used a separate voice over.

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.