Making wargaming battle reports and rules videos

Well, I have had a real interesting couple of evenings trying to work out the ins and outs of making a gaming video and rules video as this is something that I am now trying to do.

Let’s step back a little and I will offer a little explanation for this my latest ramblings, I have watched many videos online of wargames, games reviews, rules explanations etc. etc. and I have seen some really good ones which have been great fun to watch or have been informative and I have gone back to watch over again, and I have seen some well not so good ones.

Here are my thoughts on what’s good and what’s not so good (my thought’s may not be right)

The good ones have good quality video / sound / fun action shots and good camera control.

Good quality video means no fuzzy shots of models or the table and clear shots of what is going on, this does not have to be HD or 4K quality but it does need to be clear.

The sound also has to be clear, no hissing, buzzing or rustling of the mike on cloths etc. this I have found is not easy!

And the main thing that I think needs to be good is the camera control, I feel that cameras need to be mainly stationary with only the occasional movement to new positions to show a point in the game when needed (I will talk a little more of my feelings about camera control later)

These of course are only my thoughts on what should or shouldn’t be done in a video, I may be totally wrong, but if I am to start to try and do some videos of my games / rules then I need to try and set down some ground rules for how I should aim to do my videos.

I watched a video where a guy explained how he had set up a ‘rig’ above his table to hold his camera and mikes, this rig is to allow him to have his camera filming from above his table, so I made a simple rig of my own which is now hanging above my own game table.

This rig is just a simple frame of 2” x 1” wood hanging from thin chains from my ceiling, this can be raised and lowered depending on how much of the table I want to film.

So, for close up shots of rules explanations etc. I can lower it to about a foot or so above the table top so that I can get nice close-up shots of cards or figures or rules books etc.

And if I want to show a full (almost) view of the table I can take it back up.

All this rig holds at the moment is the fixtures to hold one microphone (a TONOR TC-777 microphone) and two camera phones, one can be lowered for a close up shot of say the dice tray while the other can show the table, I do also have a Nulaxy C906 webcam with microphone which I might see if I can us in some way, this may just give me another angle on the table from a tripod maybe.

I have had a few practice attempts at doing some simple game play and also some intro rules videos, these last ones I really want to improve on and get out at some point so that people can see how my games play.

The rules ones I have tried so far have not been too bad, nice clear shots, and voice recording, but I realised very early on that I need to work from some form of a list or maybe bullet points so that I don’t waffle too much, I do not need to completely script what I say but it does need to be more focused.

I think that after the short time that I have been playing around with this idea I can definitely say that I am envious of all those people that do rules reviews or battle reports of their games using video. Ok some of the ones around are not great to watch, but I will not knock them for their efforts because I have found it is really hard to do these videos.

But I have to say this, I watched a video the other night for a game I really wanted to check out, mainly because I am in the middle of writing my own game using the same setting and wondered how this particular game compared to mine. Well, I lasted about ten minutes before I had to stop watching as the guy kept moving and swinging the camera back and forward between the stat cards for the figures to the figures on the table around the scenery back to the rule book, then over to the dice tray then back to the character stat card and then the item cards and so on and so on and so on… I was almost sick; I did really feel ill and had to turn off the video.

Now I really do not intend this ramble to come across as if I am moaning about the way everyone else does their videos and mine will be better, in no way do I intend that. I am a real novice and as I have found it is really hard to do these videos, I am on a really really steep learning curve at the moment as I really want to get some videos of my games out there.

I think these ramblings are as much to get everything straight in my head for the task as they are to give my thoughts to you the lone reader of this post.

The first videos that I want to get out there will hopefully be focusing on my Stars & Lasers rules, simple run through of the basic rules, if I can get it right, I want to try and get out there a simple short game using a few ships just to show how it all fits together in a game. I don’t know if I will get these videos done correctly but I really want to try.

A lot of people have asked for this or suggested that I do it, so watch this space as they say, who knows I might get a video or two done soon.