Grublin Games - Waggle Dance Video

For our final production we were given the task to produce a video for Grublin Games, it was a new game Waggle Dance. Grublin Games are a company from Cornwall which produce board games for 16+. 

Our Waggle Dance Video. 

Planning. 

The idea that we had to produce was a ‘How to Play’ video to show other people an effective way of how to play Waggle Dance. We decided to focus on setting up the game and starting the games off in our how to play video because this is the part which we struggled with the most. The reason for deciding this was because last week Tim & Neil gave us the game and told us that we had to learn how to play it. However we really struggled and it took us about an hour and half to start the game because we struggled so much with how to play the game, therefore we thought that other people would also struggle with the first part and we thought that this would be a good idea for the video. 

For this project I worked with my colleagues Olivia Searle, Matt Jury, Chloe Binding and Kim Noot. In the previous week we decided that we would film at Olivia’s house, the reason for this was because we wanted to give it a more of a homely atmosphere. We thought this because we wanted something that the buyers of Grublin Games could relate to, instead of it being in a studio and having absolutely no atmosphere. Our plan was to start with a stop motion animation which would show us setting up the cards. We then had a plan to decide to do a time lapse of the game with a few close ups and a fixed angle of us playing the game.

Storyboard and Planning Sheet. 

Filming. 

On Monday after everyone arrived, we started with the stop motion animation, the stop motion took some time because we had to make sure that every piece was in the picture. We also had to check and make sure that everything was in the middle. The stop motion took us about an hour to film. We took about 60 shots, the reason why we had so many shots was because we took the image twice. This part took longer than we originally anticipated because after a few shots we had to start again because it wasn't in the middle. I think that the biggest problem we had with the stop motion was the lighting this is because we had small LED lights along with the natural lighting, that sometimes kept changing   throughout the hour.

After we had done that we decided that due to the lack of time we had that we wouldn't be able to do the time lapse. I was a bit disappointed because I was really looking forward to doing the time lapse because I thought that it would look really good. However instead we decided that we would film our hands playing the game. This worked out relatively better than we thought it would because Olivia hadn't actually played it before therefore we were teaching her playing the game as we went along.

We had a lot of footage of us playing the game with a lot of different hand movements on the board. Along with that we did a lot of close ups, we did close ups on each of the different cards, the reason for doing this was so that we could talk about each of the cards. We did close ups on everything, such as turning the card from day to night, the throwing of the dice and each of the individual cards. I think that it was important that we did close ups on each of these so that the audience can see all of the cards and see what they do as well as when they are being played.

Along with doing some close ups we also filmed a couple of panning shots, we did these shots to show the game in action, this way we could show the game being played while also being able to talk about it. I think that the panning shots were a really good idea because it gave the video such a nice flow which matched up really well with the other shots when put together.

Audio. 

I personally think that the audio was harder to do than the filming, this was because we had to get realist sounds while still filming. We had a lot of audio clips because we kept the audio on while playing the game. The audio that we wanted mostly was of the sounds of the dice being rolled and of us moving the cubes around. Along with these sounds we decided that we would put in a voice over, the reason for this was so that we could describe what was happening. I think that it was important that we did a voice over because this way it was a lot more informative and educational just as it should of been.

Editing. 

On the Tuesday we took back all of the equipment and booked out an edit suite for the whole day. This way we could record the voice over in the room without getting distracted. We did one big group edit and in this we cut out a lot of clips and just used the ones we needed. In between the voice over and our wild track we used the soundtrack that Grublin Games gave us. We didn't use much of this soundtrack because we wanted to create our own. We thought that our video would be about 2 minutes however in the end it was 2.45. I think this was because we used a lot of voice overs and put in extra clips so that all of the voice over would fit in and therefore the audience would get all of the information that they needed.

I think that although the video didn't exactly go to plan how we wanted it to. I think that we still managed to do a good job of it. However I think that if we were able to do it again, we would definitely make sure that we had time to do the time lapse because I think that it was a really good idea and one that should have been done. However I think that this is a lesson to learn from because it  shows that when we have very little time that we need to use every minute of it because it is very important. I think that the outcome turned out well although some areas could have been improved. However overall I am very happy with the final video.