Dreadfleet Video Project: Iteration, Planning and Production
I created a 10-part miniseries on YouTube showcasing the painting of the miniatures for the boardgame Dreadfleet. The boardgame was produced by Games Workshop and had a short, limited release in 2011.
I thought it would be an excellent set of miniatures to learn how to shoot and create videos with. We refer to this as project-based learning. What is something we can create that forces us to learn a set of skills to complete without being too much of a reach. Don’t try to write an album, write a song. If a song is too hard how is a melody, a drumbeat, a sound? Everything we create can be broken down like this. Every novel starts with a word.
The boardgame was also obscure, and I could save more relevant and interesting miniatures and video topics for after I’d worked out some of the basic video production issues.
Objective and Intention
The initial idea for the project was to create a short video, 5 minute or less, demonstrating the miniature painting with some relaxing music. The project would help me learn how to cut and edit footage in Davinci Resolve, as well as understand, how to use music online without having copyright issues.
The other skill I was developing was audio production, so I planned on reading some of the lore and story behind the model while I painted. I’d like to get comfortable speaking to the camera and having my voice recorded. In the future I expect to make different kinds of content so this would be a good way to start working on these skills.
Copyright Learning
Over the course of a few weeks, I made 3 short videos and then learned more about Games Workshop’s Intellectual Property Protection Policy. It is very strict, and I realized the lore I was reading about the miniature could be perceived as theft by Games Workshop lawyers of their intellectual property. Reportedly, Games Workshop came down on various content creators on YouTube and I didn’t want to jeopardize future revenue or bring any issues to my new channel. I pulled the videos and contacted GW.
I described to them the type of video I was making and went into copyright research mode. I wanted to fully understand fair use rights and make sure my videos were created within those fair use rights. Games Workshop’s legal department and other departments contacted me back and their response led me to believe I was safe to proceed with the project. Essentially my videos became a review of the experience with the miniature. I started to add more audio explaining the painting process, wrote the lore information in my own words, and ensured that I had provided references.
Fictional lore can be a tricky grey legal area. Imagine I was talking about Darth Vader and explaining what kind of character he is and some of the things he has done. I don’t own this intellectual property. I didn’t create this character. Is it fair to profit off my discussion about Darth Vader? What level of ownership does a company have around miniatures I put together and painted and created my own stories for? We don’t believe a lumber company owns your house but is this the same?
My goal is to not have to take down my videos or upset any companies.
Outcome
Initially my video recording was quite poor. I had to learn how to paint differently and didn’t know which shots worked best. A lot of my footage was out of focus, and I wouldn’t be holding the brush in front of the camera very well. I also filmed the entire time I was painting. The result was 8 hours of very bad footage that I had to sift through and recover about 5 minutes of good footage from.
I was able to start getting better shots after adjusting how I was painting. I started recording at intentional points in the painting process. This would leave me with 20- 30 short video files instead of 1 long video and I was able to get more useable shots to work with. Recording like this led to easier editing and saved time. Around video 5 I learned how to better focus the camera on what I was painting and blur the background. At this point I had about 20-30 minutes of useable footage per miniature that I then cut down to an average 10-minute video filmed at 2x speed.
My initial videos were built around just using the footage I had to make the best video I could. As I gained more useable footage, I could begin to explore the question of what kind of story do I want to tell. I now had a significant amount audio and video, and I didn’t exactly know what to do with it. This was a better problem to have.
I started to fill the videos with more painting information, but I had a difficult time knowing what I wanted to talk about. Zoltess was enlisted as an interviewer and the audio for the final videos were built around her asking me questions and us discussing the footage while it was being played. I had now about 20 minutes of audio to work into a 10-minute video.
I was able to create more useable video and audio footage than I knew what to do with. These were great problems to have because I had to now decide what I really wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I could start to craft a story and sequence information in different ways.
On the editing side we started to realize that shots of paint going onto the model and really seeing the effect of each brush stroke was more interesting than repositioning the model or brush or making subtle painting changes that were hard to see. In editing I started to cut the shot any time the brush was more than a few millimeters off the mini. The hand movement lifting the brush was very distracting when watching at 2x speed.
I ended the 10th video of the project with a 10:25 minute video with music in the background, good shots played at 2x speed, and outro at .5 speed, fully covered with conversation, and hopefully designed to adhere to Fair Use within the Copyright Act.
I also spent some time learning about video descriptions, thumbnail designs, and composition rules, as well as title design and its impact on views. We also ran into issues with lighting and how the yellow bulbs could affect the color of the paint in the shots.
The videos were shot with a Samsung phone, which I still find amazing, but I will be looking into a more appropriate camera in the future. On to the next project!
Final Thoughts
Scope creep is the issue of projects expanding past the original objective and requirements. The scope creep in this project was constantly being assessed. The requirements changed because our skills expanded, and this did make the project take longer as we went back to re-add additional audio. The editing became more challenging as I had more audio and video than I knew what to do with which forced the next learning step. Overall, we were happy with how our skills evolved over each video and how we applied those growing skills. When managing scope creep I believe you need to allow for it to some extent but the overall awareness will allow you to judge the efficiency of the energy being added. At a certain point some of the new skills would be best applied to a new project.
Each video stands on its own so introducing and concluding videos with things like part 4 of 10 was something I was concerned would dissuade viewers without adding anything meaningful. I quickly dropped the idea several videos in. The date and time of release was also irrelevant to someone watching the video 5 years from now. My most popular video is my oldest video, and it didn’t even start getting views for about a year. Information about it being part of a series or the release date of a following video would be irrelevant information at this point and may even stop viewers from watching.
In general, advice may be good for you but may not apply to this situation you are currently in. Advice can be excellent but also wrong.
Next Steps
For the next project down this learning path, we will be creating a video series around the miniatures for the boardgame Scythe. We are designing these videos to again be short 5 min or less videos, but we plan to include my face talking to the camera, a focus on design choices when painting a boardgame, as well as how to create different base effects. We may also break away content into shorts, apply it to other distribution methods and find ways to create multiple videos and topics out of the footage.
I hope this article explains a bit of the learning, design, production and planning we focus on as creators. If you have any comments, suggestions, or observations, please add them, email us or comment in the videos.
Take care!