A Gamer's Journey (Shenmue Documentary) goes to Kickstarter

[xatruio]

I was going to contribute but then I watched that teaser/trailer and that cheesy opening scene changed my mind. That and the fact that it includes a billion talking heads...

Koralik's E3 video with Corey mArshall is cheesy. That wasn't too badly done, really. Also... it is a documentary..... there's suppose to be talking heads haha.

If anything it needs more talking heads--the band!?

Planning to back it Saturday or sometime next week.

[Jibby]

I was going to contribute but then I watched that teaser/trailer and that cheesy opening scene changed my mind. That and the fact that it includes a billion talking heads...

Not here to try and get you to pledge to something you don't want to, but I don't understand your criticism at all. It's a retrospective documentary piece. Of course it's going make heavy use of talking heads. Actually talking directly to the people involved with the franchise and getting their first hand accounts is something that's hardly ever been done before with Shenmue and the talking heads allow us to get a much more intimate look into things.

I also felt like the opening scene was really well shot. I fail to see how it was 'cheesy' by any means.

[johnjohnbrem]

I was going to contribute but then I watched that teaser/trailer and that cheesy opening scene changed my mind. That and the fact that it includes a billion talking heads...

Koralik's E3 video with Corey mArshall is cheesy. That wasn't too badly done, really. Also... it is a documentary..... there's suppose to be talking heads haha.

If anything it needs more talking heads--the band!?

Planning to back it Saturday or sometime next week.

It just depends on what you wanna do, or in this case,what you wanna show. James Benning doesn't use talking heads, same with Wang Bing, Peter Hutton, Frederick Wiseman, Gonçalo Tocha and I could go on and on. I get that this is a retrospective but I was expecting something a little different. Talking heads are fine if you wanna do an old-school documentary, but in my opinion that can feel closer to a filmed reportage than to a modern documentary, and that's cool, it's just not for me. I prefer when the images say something, instead of the images just show people sitting talking about something! But hey, I hope they do just fine and reach the 35k!

And yeah, everything is better when you add talking heads, the band!

[johnjohnbrem]

I was going to contribute but then I watched that teaser/trailer and that cheesy opening scene changed my mind. That and the fact that it includes a billion talking heads...

Not here to try and get you to pledge to something you don't want to, but I don't understand your criticism at all. It's a retrospective documentary piece. Of course it's going make heavy use of talking heads. Actually talking directly to the people involved with the franchise and getting their first hand accounts is something that's hardly ever been done before with Shenmue and the talking heads allow us to get a much more intimate look into things.

I also felt like the opening scene was really well shot. I fail to see how it was 'cheesy' by any means.

I get what you mean, but I guess that I was expecting something personal, rather than intimate.
Well I think that 99% of the audience that this movie will get will be from shenmue fans already, so re-doing a scene from the first game felt like preaching to the converted in a way

[Jibby]

Fair play, it's not your thing. I won't reprimand you for that.

I do suspect though that the final piece will have more personal elements to it too. I imagine they just wanted to home in on that particular cosy/intimate aspect for the teaser as that kind of tone is easier to portray (and arguably more powerful) in 5 minutes.

[Reprise]

I'm surprised it hasn't been funded already to be honest. Especially as $25,000 CAD isn't much for a Kickstarter. It has slowed down massively since the first 12 hours or so.

They need to promote this harder and get featured in some of the mainstream gaming media if they can. We need that $35,000 stretch goal ;)

[Sappharad]

I was going to contribute but then I watched that teaser/trailer and that cheesy opening scene changed my mind.

I also felt like the opening scene was really well shot. I fail to see how it was 'cheesy' by any means.

I also agree it was well done, and definitely makes you think Shenmue if you've played the first game. But if you're a random person who doesn't know anything about the series then it really doesn't make sense though. It's just there. What does it have to do with the documentary? My guess is it was attempting to show the quality of work they can do, but I can see how someone would find it confusing.

I'm surprised it hasn't been funded already to be honest. Especially as $25,000 CAD isn't much for a Kickstarter. It has slowed down massively since the first 12 hours or so.

This pretty normal for a kickstarter though. Just look at Shenmue 3 - it hit 2 million in the first 12 hours, but it took around 2 weeks for it to go from 3 to 4 million:
https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3/

Here's the tracker for this one, ignore the trend estimate right now because it's going to take a couple days to level off:
https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/14965 ... f-shenmue/
The tiers are very reasonably priced, but I think they could've gotten more money for the highest reward tier. I'm guessing they were worried about going too high for that.


My thoughts: I'm interested in seeing some of the interviews and thought the preview in the trailer was nice. It didn't feel rushed to me, because their goal is to introduce the project and some people aren't going to want to sit through the entire thing if they didn't go fast.

Even for people who don't care about the interviews I think it's worth it just to help them get access to the some of the development materials that they described for their "deep dive". I know there have been a bunch of people who have been hoping to see more of the Shenmue Saturn stuff, which last we heard from Ryan Payton they can't find anymore, but there's so much more stuff that changed during the development of the original games that any more details we could get would be very interesting. Even what they have on Shenmue 3 will be interesting - they teased us with those few seconds of test gameplay from 2016 and based on the screens we've seen in the last 3 years that is going to look completely different if it's even in the final game at all. Any bonus footage they can get us of the game while it was in development is going to be so interesting to look over once the game is finished. We've already been doing it for years with the stuff we have from the previous games, so from my perspective anything they can dig up and share is going to be just awesome. Much of the goodies won't be applicable to general audiences but the things they could find for the bonus content sounds very exciting to me. I'm not expecting they'll have much from the Dreamcast era for some reason, but I feel like this is the best chance we'll ever get to see things that changed for one reason or another. Hopefully I'm not being too enthusiastic in the wrong direction about what deep dive materials meant.

[spud1897]

Just had a quick look and it is about £1.1k from being funded already.

Awesome

[Kyo_JP]

I will back it next week, and now I need to find their documentary about He-Man

[newyokohama]

looks like one of the CA$ 3,333 backers bailed.

[oliquidrusho]

I was going to contribute but then I watched that teaser/trailer and that cheesy opening scene changed my mind. That and the fact that it includes a billion talking heads...

Koralik's E3 video with Corey mArshall is cheesy. That wasn't too badly done, really. Also... it is a documentary..... there's suppose to be talking heads haha.

If anything it needs more talking heads--the band!?

Planning to back it Saturday or sometime next week.

It just depends on what you wanna do, or in this case,what you wanna show. James Benning doesn't use talking heads, same with Wang Bing, Peter Hutton, Frederick Wiseman, Gonçalo Tocha and I could go on and on. I get that this is a retrospective but I was expecting something a little different. Talking heads are fine if you wanna do an old-school documentary, but in my opinion that can feel closer to a filmed reportage than to a modern documentary, and that's cool, it's just not for me. I prefer when the images say something, instead of the images just show people sitting talking about something! But hey, I hope they do just fine and reach the 35k!

And yeah, everything is better when you add talking heads, the band!

Let me preface that I absolutely agree that if the preview doesn't float your boat you shouldn't feel compelled to fund this. Totally get that. But you are out of your mind if you're expecting this project to reach the levels of the ELITE documentary filmmakers you just named. Did you even realize how highly of a skewed frame of reference you were going by when you typed that? Those guys you named are some of the best ever. A better comparison would've been to those Netflix documentaries about nostalgia for toys and video games.

Again seriously I get the overall reason you don't want to donate and support that. Just dude, wow just a totally unfair comparison you threw up there.

[Peter]

looks like one of the CA$ 3,333 backers bailed.

They didn't... Well, yes they did... But there are reasons. It's a bit complicsted.

Adam should be doing an update tonight all being well.

[newyokohama]

looks like one of the CA$ 3,333 backers bailed.

They didn't... Well, yes they did... But there are reasons. It's a bit complicsted.

Adam should be doing an update tonight all being well.

All good! I'm confident we'll get there. :-)

[Reprise]

They really need to promote it more and contact the gaming media to see if they will run pieces on this. Maybe even some of the more general Sega fansites... Just saying... again.

The only places I've seen it posted are on Facebook and in Shenmue groups, which is preaching to the converted really...

[Crimson Ryan]

I've put in for a digital copy. I hope they can reach 35k. Overall I'm more interested in Shenmue III development..