Friday, August 18, 2006

The gift of time

I did not, in the end, have to teach another teacher's class period one today. I had just about the whole period to myself, and I got almost nothing done. The reasons were twofold: - the students had not filmed much, because the cameras kept being hard to get hold of (though I have some doubts about their motivation) - the teacher had failed to book the computer lab that's needed for video capturing (which she said she'd do last week) And it turns out there are about 6 students involved in film-making. The rest of the class are making websites and such. So it will probably be a complete doddle, whenever it does end up happening :) Roleplaying We played a game of Prime Time Adventures last night. We came up with a sci-fi frontier show, called Second Wave. There were some nice ideas in there, and I really enjoyed the freedom afforded by PTA to get through the story at a good pace. It made me very curious about just how difficult it is to run PTA well - I can see how hard it is, but I'm not sure how I'd go in the producer's chair. It is a game I will have to run before the year is over! Short Films Are being viewed/preliminarily judged tomorrow. I keep checking the forum and website out of nervous excitement. It is a very good thing for keeping me distracted and not thinking about the ERO visit that's very likely next period (in 10 minutes time).


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you going to have a crack at Capes?

qufendes

Matt said...

Yes, I shall. At Kapiti Roleplaying Weekend, if not before :)

Anonymous said...

In regard to PTA it is in many ways easier and harder than it looks. A couple of tips I learnt from Steve .

Think on the game before running it. Steve often has broad ideas that can help propel the game's formation in a subtle way should players lag . For example, he brought up the concept of shows about people helping others (Quantum Leap and others) to consider.

Also, as a producer, introducing elements to get stuff started is good too. Start the session with something that can't be ignored. I have found as a player in a cooperative game, this kind of play is good too, as it helps others who can partially react to the situation as well as make decisions.

hix said...

Mostly, what I do in that pitch stage is treat myself as another equal player. So, for the Confusion game, on the walk down I thought a little about the sort of TV I was interested in *on that day*, and I pitched one of my two ideas - the other was gritty, realistic fantasy (sic).

And then I just keep the conversation going, asking questions, making sure everyone's involved, until we get that *CLICK*, where everybody gets into an idea. From then, I just trust that we'll all work together to make it cool.

In non-convention settings, it's even easier, because you can play through the pilot, decide at the end of that if you're all into it, and not have to commit to a series for five to nine weeks.

If you are into it, but feel it was flawed, just replay the pilot when you go to series. Real TV shows do it all the time.