Not sure if this thread really belongs here or in the Videos & Streams Subboard, but I think the people who visit here are the ones who are more likely to have the type of feedback I want to hear. So here it is.
When I started making videos, it took me a really long time and lots of repetition to find something I was comfortable with; two years and over 555 videos later I'm still learning about things that work and things that don't work. Providing commentary is hard and
as I've said before the best thing you can do to improve is to do more of it.
Problem: providing commentary on the champion match while you're not playing is a totally different beast, and it's not a beast you get to practice with very much.
The purpose of this thread is to provide an additional resource to those people who end up commentating champion matches to improve their commentary; largely through asking for and incorporating feedback from viewers.
I haven't gotten a chance to listen to all of the S4 Champion Match yet, but there's one thing I wanted to type before I did: for the first four games of the match, before the champion had been decided, I felt like the tone was much more serious and focused on the game play; while during the last two games, we were just having fun and playing Dominion.
For me personally, I felt more comfortable during the second part because that's more along the lines of my style of commentary, but I certainly tone it down when there's something on the line like the League Championship. But what do people want to see? Finding the right balance on this is something I think we can easily accommodate, but it's hard for me to get a read on what's appropriate.
There are also several logistical issues that come with this format, that maybe have some things we can do to help mitigate them. I have some ideas but I wanted to try and see if there are any other ideas out there before typing them all out (that plus I haven't fully thought about them yet).
Getting inside of the head of the players: Most of the time, commentators speculate on what the players are thinking, but MQ was streaming his own commentary this season, which is often better (well, at least in my opinion but that's clearly biased). Is there a fair way to combine these things? Should there even be outside commentators when one of the players is willing to provide their own commentary?
Commentators don't necessarily know each other: I had never spoken to Stef (using audio) before this match, and only had spoken to Jsh once (at the Chicago meetup). After two seasons of this, it's probably not feasible to try and find time for all commentators to talk before the match and get comfortable with each other, and even if it was, I don't know how much it would help with improving the chemistry between them. How can we improve this given the limitations we have?
I want to talk about more topics, particularly after I listen to it again, but I'd at least like to get some ideas and discussion going so that commentators can have something to go off of for future Champion Matches. Hopefully this will get us started.