Experimenting with Matt Chat Formats
I guess you guys have probably noticed I’ve been playing around with the Matt Chat format. Mostly this is just to avoid stagnation; I feel like I should always be trying to find ways to improve the show or just change it up enough to keep it fresh. I also have to admit it’s been fun playing around with Blender and some of Vegas’s more advanced features.
However, some folks have objected strongly to the changes in the latest video. It seems that I may have went overboard, rendering a moving 3D background of a circuit-textured tunnel throughout the video. Even I thought it might be a bit distracting and tried to slow it down, but apparently not enough. Only now do I realize that I didn’t need any such thing–I’m already providing two points of interest for viewers: the talking head and the gameplay footage. If you get bored with one, you switch to the other. Adding a third thing just makes it look too busy.
Still, I won’t give up the quest to find subtle ways to improve the show. A lot of it happens behind-the-scenes, such as finding better formats and rendering settings for YouTube, or streamlining my production methods to get the videos out faster (and with less exhaustion on my part!).
The general consensus I’ve reached with my Facebook Matt Chat fans (who seem to be the most talkative of any of the various MC-related forums): keep the gameplay footage and talking heads, but overlay the heads rather than give them a dedicated space. I’ll just impose a static background that will fill in the black (and help people remember this is an HD widescreen format).
The only real question left is whether to keep the pop-ups. Some people seem to like them, others find them a pain. What’s your thoughts? If I keep them, what kind would you like to see?
, but that's not really a trailer, Matt.
