Today I decided to try my hand at “live” commentary. I’ve done plenty of live commentary before, but today was different. In the past, I’ve always done my commentary while playing the match, which puts serious limitations on both the ability to deliver quality commentary and the ability to deliver quality play, due to the inability to give full attention to either. As a third party to these matches, I was able to devote my full attention to exactly what was happening on the screen instead of also having to focus on making things happen on the screen. Granted, since I had played the matches (they were all previously recorded), I knew, more or less, how everything would play out, so the element of surprise wasn’t really there for me. I did, however, go in without having previously watched the footage for any sort of refresher.
I chose to do this type of video today because while Josh and I were recording on Thursday of last week, the audio ended up getting completely out of whack. I think it has something to do with the setting on my capture device to auto-adjust game volume when sound comes in from the headset microphone, but I’m not sure. This is one of those post-reformat kinks that I’ve yet to iron out completely, but hope to have fixed by the time we record another massive chunk of matches.
Having completed this video, I think that there’s something good to be said about looking at your own match videos with the eye of a commentator. It requires quick thinking–do you address that whiffed jab, or do you keep talking about how the focus attack that got broken three seconds prior was a bad idea? Do you keep talking about the match up and how it should be played, or do you move on to talk about how the match is already half over due to Cody’s sheer damage output? It’s kind of like taking a really intense test on game knowledge. Here: talk for about ten minutes about these matches that run, basically, non-stop for the entire ten minutes and have something technical or otherwise meaningful to say for the entire period. It’s not easy at all. I already had serious respect for FGC commentators–the UltraChen duo being my personal favorite–but this brings things into a new light.
I highly suggest giving it a try if you haven’t–even if you have to go in manually and play back old matches held in storage on your game system of choice and yell at the TV.
Kunai Vortex 