Post #1: 2/15/2021

Recently I watched a documentary on YouTube about Minecraft (the game I'm using as a platform for my project) and its impact on the YouTube community. It was titled "The History of Minecraft on YouTube" and found on a channel called KwebeecCorner. It runs at 2:19:36 in length. You can find it here.

I didn't search for this video, I happened to see it on my suggested and it caught my eye because I've been personally invested in Minecraft gaming videos on YouTube in particular. Not only have I uploaded my own, but I've watched a lot of the personalities mentioned in this video for almost a decade. The subject matter of this video was near and dear to my heart, which is perhaps why I enjoyed it so much.

The format of the video was to divide by year, organizing each one by a certain theme and spending a decent chunk of time on each one. The content was largely narrated by the creator of the video, and each segment was accompanied by interviews with some of the biggest names on YouTube in terms of Minecraft gaming. The b-roll was almost entirely made up of in-game clips, most of which were taken directly from other people's YouTube channels and from original videos from each year. None of the interviewees are shown talking in person, they are featured as audio only. This was particularly reassuring to me because it worked well, and it's how Ross and I intend on formatting our film. 

The thing I was most inspired by while watching this video was its ability to integrate virtual footage with footage of real-world events. A segment of the video focused on conventions that took place, and all of this footage was recorded in the real world. It admittedly provided a nice break from all of the in-game footage, and it illustrated how impactful the game was. Not only were these people playing with each other online, they were meeting up in real life. 

This is a problem we have been grappling with for our documentary, and I think this segment may have provided a potential answer. Among my group of people I met through the Minecraft server, we have met up in real life three separate times. They have flown from Texas to here twice and my friends and I from here have flown to Texas once. I have access to photos and video from these occasions. This may not be as grand as an entire convention, but it serves the same purpose. Our friendship on something as trivial as a Minecraft server evolved from playing with each other in a game to meeting up for several weeks in person. This is quite an amazing and recent concept; people normally wouldn't have any way of meeting anyone halfway across the country, that is until online communities sprung up.

I believe this solves our problem. The majority of the footage in the documentary I watched was virtual, as it should be. The focus is on this specific game and how it creates blossoming online communities, so the majority of it should demonstrate this. This will be the case in our project, as most of the focus is on this game. However, it is always nice to see human faces in documentaries, and this idea not only fulfills that function but does so in a way that serves as a perfect example of the point we're trying to prove: that our online community is more than just a group of people playing a game with no purpose. 

Overall, I found this documentary to be very entertaining, and it helped me understand the format Ross and I should probably stick with in ours.