Via google youtube.com/watch?v=11RSEC-c_K8 - lord of larp
"Just brilliant. Documentary on New Zealand LARP"
Not quite, after watching it I felt cheated.
Then I found this comment,"NONE OF US LARP IN REAL LIFE. bloody hell. as for the flamers⌠YOU MUST HAVE SEARCHED LAPRING TO GET TO THIS VIDEO fuckwits. we did this to win some cinema tickets not just for shits and giggles."
Guess they thought NZ was unheard of enough to be funny?
This article was a good read and very much applicable to Airsoft or any non mainstream activity.
Thatâs definitely the case. With a lack of single-point narrative, larps donât film in a comprehendable way. Battle scenes and other scenic stuff can be the exception, although fighting can look faked. The performances arenât (usually) by professional actors, and feels better in the first person than they look in replay. Same goes for setting, etc - all the stuff that fades into the background when youâre playing pops out in video.
I was thinking the other day that itâd be nice to have some well-made promotional videos on the NZLARPS homepage. But good larp videos have to be crafted, they seldom just fall out of pointing a camera at some people playing. Often they fail, so you have to be willing to just puyt it aside rather than use it because a lot of work has gone into it.
Way too much of Larping is imagination and suspension of disbelief. When you are there, part of it, you interact with colourful and interesting characters, having epic adventures, its lots of fun.
On film, all you see is a scout camp and bad acting and people shouting âStrike downâ and âLightning Boltâ It looks very very lame. I love participating in larps, but I cringe at most of the stuff on YouTube. I honestly think they hinder rather than help the development of larping as a mainstream hobby because it just looks bad on film.
There is actualy a realy good doco about LARP that had a private screening earlier in the month, members should be getting a copy of at some point and I recomend it heartedly.
While I think The Mordavian Truth is a good documentary, I would hesitate to say that it presents larp in a way that would attract players. Itâs very behind-the-scenes, it doesnât put across much of the feel of play and why itâs enjoyable. Itâs more of a sociological thing, a bit of âwhat is thisâ and a whole lot of âwhy do people do this?â Which is fine, nothing wrong with that. But itâs not really âconveying the larp experienceâ as Kham put it.
I think a promotional larp video can be done well and would be valuable, but it would take the right vision, mucho hard yakka and skill, and the determination to bury it if it failed. Apart from providing solid eye candy (because video is visual) and a sense of immersion, it would need to get across that âfree willâ thing that larpers experience, that realisation that your every action matters and might make a difference. Thatâs one of the chief appeals of larp, and one of the hardest thing to impart in a linear format like video.
Nope, not yet. Itâs for a school assignment so my sister isnât allowed to put it on the interwebs until after the official screening on October 31st.
