I've been holding this in for a while now, but I don't know why you guys are still doing this show on the Escapist. Your show remains as unpolished as when you had started.
I was going to say "nearly", but when researching your episodes for this little rant, I compared your first episode (Wood Vs. Yellow) with your most recent that wasn't live (Best Animated Disney Movie Ever). Not even the sound quality had improved. It still feels, today, as slapped-together as when you first put up the show. And it's been over a year.
I get it, I was paying attention to your bookshelf, a lot of how you do things is a style choice. Okay that's fine, Zero Punctuation hasn't changed its fundamental format in five years; but if you go and compare the first ZP (Heavenly Sword and Other Stuff) to an episode less than a year later (Ninja Gaiden 2), you'll find that he had polished his format significantly.
I know that some will argue that the feel is part of your charm, but I will remind you that Jim nearly got chased out of here with pitchforks for doing the exact same thing as you guys are doing now: Sitting in front of a camera and saying stuff. Since then, he's given his show a major shine and buff, as if the Escapist forced him to be more professional.
You guys haven't done that and, for some reason, get to remain as a dwindling example of the only unprofessional slobs still on the Escapist. I don't say that lightly, so let's look at a few things you might need to make any show polished and professional: Preparation and Post (the actual editing and inserts and such). No matter what you can say about equipment used and acting skills, if you have those two processes down, you'll look good.
---
Preparation
So, aside from decorating the bookshelf and actually choosing what the episode is about, what do you do to prepare?
Do you makes a list of all the best/worst examples of the weekly topic that you can remember? Or do you just go with the first example you can remember? There are many episodes throughout the year in which I and many of your regular viewers can instantly think of things that are, pretty obviously, better/worse than what you've chosen as your best/worst. Maybe you choose those answers specifically to get a rise out of people, but again, I'd like to point out that another reason Jim was ostracized was for being purposefully antagonistic.
So, after you've made your choice to defend, do you research the topic? Do you rehearse your arguments with each other? Or do you just collect up talking points most prevalent in your head and then wing it when the cameras are activated? This is, perhaps, the biggest reason I don't like your show: Lack of good arguments to bolster your case. Sure, you sometimes make good points, but only if you happen to think of them at the time. You can claim this as a style choice, but I would then feel compelled to point out that you're making a show for the Escapist and not just filming the making of a podcast. You can still rehearse the feel of a free-debate to make it more entertaining.
Post
So, once you have all the raw footage and sound, what do you do to make it presentable and enjoyable?
Do you make sure that what you've "filmed" flows through the restrictive time-limit you've been placed under? Do you make sure that what you cut and what you leave doesn't detract from the entertainment potential? Or do you just use hard cuts and mismatched sound. Now, normally, your sound editing is fine, although you do make mistakes that you don't fix. The bigger gripe here is your video editing. The very fact that you have to sacrifice the flow of video to keep audio clean is an error in your preparation, but that you would use hard cuts after post is mind-boggling. I would assume they're paying you for this, right?
What do you use to "spice up" the dialogue? What thematic style do you use to alleviate the feeling of just watching someone(s) talk into a camera. This, if you couldn't tell, is the gimmick of every show. ZP is just a guy complaining about a video game, but it's got that humorous art thing and is done from the perspective of "reviewing". The Jimquisition is just some guy griping about topical interests, but he has a nice documentary style read-off, book-ended by comedic skits.
With that in mind, do you use your gimmick in a thoughtful way? Does your use of such a thematic style enliven the core of your show? Or do you just insert pictures over the two guys talking in jarring, and sometimes hard-to-follow, ways. I admit that this is, by definition, completely style decided and hardly a big flaw. But yeah, sometimes you put up pictures too fast to appreciate... often with text that distracts the viewer for just long enough to actually miss the picture itself, causing you to have to think back... and BAM you've lost a good flow as now viewers are tying to catch up to you and basically what I'm saying in a run on sentence is don't put big white letters in your real life pictures because it's distracting.
Conclusion
(Modern Translation: tl;dr)
There is a lot that "No Right Answer" needs to fix or polish before it can feel like a professional show on the Escapist. I mentioned it before, and I'll mention it again here, but the show really does make me feel like I'm watching the filming of a 5 minute clip of a podcast. But don't get me wrong, I actually like the guys who make it and what the show could become. I wouldn't have spent an hour and a half writing this if I didn't want to see more. But as things stand now, the show is worthy of nothing more than a channel on YouTube.
I was going to say "nearly", but when researching your episodes for this little rant, I compared your first episode (Wood Vs. Yellow) with your most recent that wasn't live (Best Animated Disney Movie Ever). Not even the sound quality had improved. It still feels, today, as slapped-together as when you first put up the show. And it's been over a year.
I get it, I was paying attention to your bookshelf, a lot of how you do things is a style choice. Okay that's fine, Zero Punctuation hasn't changed its fundamental format in five years; but if you go and compare the first ZP (Heavenly Sword and Other Stuff) to an episode less than a year later (Ninja Gaiden 2), you'll find that he had polished his format significantly.
I know that some will argue that the feel is part of your charm, but I will remind you that Jim nearly got chased out of here with pitchforks for doing the exact same thing as you guys are doing now: Sitting in front of a camera and saying stuff. Since then, he's given his show a major shine and buff, as if the Escapist forced him to be more professional.
You guys haven't done that and, for some reason, get to remain as a dwindling example of the only unprofessional slobs still on the Escapist. I don't say that lightly, so let's look at a few things you might need to make any show polished and professional: Preparation and Post (the actual editing and inserts and such). No matter what you can say about equipment used and acting skills, if you have those two processes down, you'll look good.
---
Preparation
So, aside from decorating the bookshelf and actually choosing what the episode is about, what do you do to prepare?
Do you makes a list of all the best/worst examples of the weekly topic that you can remember? Or do you just go with the first example you can remember? There are many episodes throughout the year in which I and many of your regular viewers can instantly think of things that are, pretty obviously, better/worse than what you've chosen as your best/worst. Maybe you choose those answers specifically to get a rise out of people, but again, I'd like to point out that another reason Jim was ostracized was for being purposefully antagonistic.
So, after you've made your choice to defend, do you research the topic? Do you rehearse your arguments with each other? Or do you just collect up talking points most prevalent in your head and then wing it when the cameras are activated? This is, perhaps, the biggest reason I don't like your show: Lack of good arguments to bolster your case. Sure, you sometimes make good points, but only if you happen to think of them at the time. You can claim this as a style choice, but I would then feel compelled to point out that you're making a show for the Escapist and not just filming the making of a podcast. You can still rehearse the feel of a free-debate to make it more entertaining.
Post
So, once you have all the raw footage and sound, what do you do to make it presentable and enjoyable?
Do you make sure that what you've "filmed" flows through the restrictive time-limit you've been placed under? Do you make sure that what you cut and what you leave doesn't detract from the entertainment potential? Or do you just use hard cuts and mismatched sound. Now, normally, your sound editing is fine, although you do make mistakes that you don't fix. The bigger gripe here is your video editing. The very fact that you have to sacrifice the flow of video to keep audio clean is an error in your preparation, but that you would use hard cuts after post is mind-boggling. I would assume they're paying you for this, right?
What do you use to "spice up" the dialogue? What thematic style do you use to alleviate the feeling of just watching someone(s) talk into a camera. This, if you couldn't tell, is the gimmick of every show. ZP is just a guy complaining about a video game, but it's got that humorous art thing and is done from the perspective of "reviewing". The Jimquisition is just some guy griping about topical interests, but he has a nice documentary style read-off, book-ended by comedic skits.
With that in mind, do you use your gimmick in a thoughtful way? Does your use of such a thematic style enliven the core of your show? Or do you just insert pictures over the two guys talking in jarring, and sometimes hard-to-follow, ways. I admit that this is, by definition, completely style decided and hardly a big flaw. But yeah, sometimes you put up pictures too fast to appreciate... often with text that distracts the viewer for just long enough to actually miss the picture itself, causing you to have to think back... and BAM you've lost a good flow as now viewers are tying to catch up to you and basically what I'm saying in a run on sentence is don't put big white letters in your real life pictures because it's distracting.
Conclusion
(Modern Translation: tl;dr)
There is a lot that "No Right Answer" needs to fix or polish before it can feel like a professional show on the Escapist. I mentioned it before, and I'll mention it again here, but the show really does make me feel like I'm watching the filming of a 5 minute clip of a podcast. But don't get me wrong, I actually like the guys who make it and what the show could become. I wouldn't have spent an hour and a half writing this if I didn't want to see more. But as things stand now, the show is worthy of nothing more than a channel on YouTube.
.
