Before starting my video essay, I had a goal in mind that I wanted to show the audience how I’ve found ways to spend time with my friends by playing video games. But not any kind of video game, the games I played were heavily intuned with their open-world aspect and teamwork with other players. That game is “Sky: Children of the Light”, as it was such a contrasting game towards the reality many of us were facing during the time, you get to interact with other people and explore beautiful nature-inspired worlds. The game also provides the player a customizable avatar that allows them to show their own unique charm, as well as emotes and a chatting system to talk and play with friends.
I’m afraid that I may not get my point across in the video since I will be trying to simplify the wording, making it easy for the audience to read. This was not the only game I had entirely played during the past year, I had also planned to include games such as Genshin Impact and Identity V because these 2 games also had features of teamwork, interaction with friends, and an open world. The reason I didn’t include them, in the end, is that it was starting to make my video too lengthy, and “Sky” seemed to just be the primal example. The other 2 had other genres that didn’t really match up with what I was saying so it’s best to keep it short and get the point across.
While composing the project, I first wrote my script in a journal very roughly, I had then slowly revised the writing to what you see in the final product. I had then doodled my little avatar used throughout the video, it didn’t take much time, it took probably 5 minutes to create and send it out to my phone. I have prior knowledge of video editing on my phone, specifically with the app VideoStar, so I was able to put my skills to use with this project. I then had to ask my friends to get on the game so we can record the little clips used in the final product. We had to redo them a couple of times until we got the best cut. I had no problem editing my text, drawing, and music into the project, the problem was that I didn’t have the best video editors to use from.. I wanted to use iMovie to compile all my edited clips together but I couldn’t use the app. This was because my phone was not updated to the latest iOS so I couldn’t redownload iMovie. And to update my phone would cost me 6 GB of my storage (which I don’t have) , so I had to find other video editors to compile all my clips together. The first app I had downloaded left a fat watermark on the corner of my video after compiling all the clips together and it was so distracting to look at. My overall video has gentle cool colors so seeing a bright vibrant coral pink box labeled “FILM VIDEO EDITOR” kind of ruins my video visually. Thankfully, I found another video editor and it compiled all my clips without leaving any marks and I was able to smoothly upload my video to Dropbox. I wish I added more visual things to my video, but I believe my simple format could work too.
Now looking at my final product, I’m quite happy with the results! I’m an amateur so of course, I’m not going to make my video look like a GrubHub ad but it’s pretty simple and I love the mood the video exudes! I described how the game was used as a fantasical escape from reality, and a way to see and hang with your friends, and experience nature in a way you couldn’t during those times. The push for teamwork gives players a sense of fulfillment that has been quite lost since the beginning of quarantine. I must admit I feel like I could’ve explained things a bit more, or probably go into more depth with what my topic was about but I think what I wrote was pretty straightforward. If I were to refine this video, I would be a lot wordier, and would possibly include the other 2 games I had originally wanted to talk about. I would also probably make the setup and overall video more aesthetically pleasing if I wanted it to be perfect.