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I came at this project as a double noob. First, I was a boardgaming noob (compared to some, anyway). I knew designer board games were cool and special, and I'd played a decent number of them. (At the time, my favorites were Goa, Power Grid, and Bohnanza.) I knew enough about the games to realize they would make for a good documentary, but I didn't know a ton about the community, the designers, or how the whole genre came to be. That was an asset in some ways because I approached the hobby with a clean slate, asking lots of questions.
I also didn't know an awful lot about filmmaking. I loved watching documentaries, but had zero experience behind a camera. As I studied up on filmmaking, my nose buried in Documentary Storytelling and The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide, I discovered that I needed to sketch out a story for the film. At first that was counterintuitive. "This is a documentary! You're not supposed to make the story! You just... you document it." Still, people watching films have a certain expectation of a film's structure, whether it is conscious or not, even for a documentary:
Quote:
Most screenplays have a three-act structure, following an organization that dates back to Aristotle's Poetics. The three acts are setup (of the location and characters), confrontation (with an obstacle), and resolution (culminating in a climax and a dénouement). In a two-hour film, the first and third acts both typically last around 30 minutes, with the middle act lasting roughly an hour.
Confrontation? Climax? We're talking about a hobby documentary here so that was sort of mystifying, pretty much the same way that putting "documentary" and "storytelling" together in a title was to me at that time.I wasn't expecting to find drama; I just thought it was a cool topic and I wanted more people to know about it. I figured I was going to have to ignore that traditional act structure, so I sketched an outline of what I thought I would cover – things like communities, game nights, game groups, conventions, variety and peoples' favorite games, benefits of gaming, etc. – then I started interviewing people at Unity Games in Woburn, Massachusetts in February 2009. I was asking pretty generic questions, but I made a point of asking every interviewee what THEY thought was important or special about the hobby. Their responses started to open up my eyes to things like Spiel (the annual game convention in Essen, Germany, which I did NOT know about prior), self-publication, and more interesting topics than where I'd started.
So as far as that "document this!" side goes, the film follows this general informational flow:
-----• Nostalgic introduction ("what's past is prologue"): people talk about their childhood memories of boardgaming.
-----• History: how did designer games come to be, and make their way to the United States all of a sudden
-----• Monopoly
-----• Community: meeting people, forming game groups, holding game events
-----• Designers and Publishers: industry stuff
-----• ESSEN
-----• So you want to be a game designer?
-----• Looking forward: board games moving into the video game space
-----• Summary: what does this hobby mean to people
In some ways, the above does follow the three-act structure. There is sort of an Act 1 of setting the stage and relaying background information. One could argue that Essen is the climax of the film, and that the stuff that comes after Essen is "where do we go from here" and summary. Here is one of my early attempts at organizing the topics into that structure:
As it turned out, though, there were a couple of story arcs that themselves followed that three-act structure pretty well...
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Act 1
The story behind Huang Di and Bryan himself. The background information of his Salem, Massachusetts surroundings, and a summary that brings you to the point at which JKLM is scheduled to publish his game.
Act 2
Basically the story that unfolds after the set-up, leading up to the bad news and status update about Huang Di's "to date" publishing status. That serves as the climax, I think.
Act 3
Originally, I would have thought the final title card in the credits sequence (and I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, such as they are) would be the climax. But that's actually the "dénouement", "the outcome or resolution of a doubtful series of occurrences" – which does make perfect sense, when you put it that way.
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Act 1
Same situation here, there's background information that brings you up to speed on Dominion, Donald X. Vaccarino, and Rio Grande Games, and how it all came together.
Act 2
The confrontation, or suspense part, is the anticipation leading up to the Spiel des Jahres win in 2009. Speculations before the announcement. The climax of winning that, and the initial reactions by Jay and Donald.
Act 3
The resolution involves the odd situation in that while the SdJ win has meant a great deal around the world, with Dominion being published in "16 languages already" – 18 last I checked in with Jay, which is more languages than Magic: The Gathering is published in! – here in the U.S. there's still a challenge in trying to get people to understand the magnitude of this accomplishment.
Obviously, I had no idea these two stories would emerge when I first started filming or that they would fit into this act structure format. When I first interviewed Jay Tummelson about Dominion, the game had not yet even been nominated for the Spiel des Jahres. When I was first interviewing Bryan, we were talking about filming his launch party. But if it hadn't been these stories, it would have had to be some other story. This is also why there is room for more documentaries on boardgaming; there are an infinite number of stories to tell around this hobby, and an infinite number of angles and approaches people would take to tell them.
In the end, the stories of Huang Di and Dominion not only serve as engaging story arcs, but also contrast with each other very well. This was all luck-based, a matter of me being there with cameras at the right place and time to get enough angles and opinions, and the right timing for these stories to be able to run their courses in time to be concluded before post-production ended – but I think it's one of the big reasons the film is getting a pretty good reception. Because let's face it, it's not my elite filmmaking expertise at work.
And by the way, if you're interested in documentaries of this nature, these are some I highly recommend, with IMDB links for each:
-----1. Rock, Paper, Scissors: A Geek Tragedy
-----2. TILT: the Battle to Save Pinball/Special When Lit
-----3. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
-----4. Monster Camp
-----5. Get Lamp
Safe travels!
Lorien Green
P.S. – One other little bit I wanted to share was the process behind designing the inside cover of the DVD. My husband had this cool idea for it to be a menagerie of board game components. I think if he'd known what he was getting into, he might not have shared that concept with me, though. I just went down into the basement one night and warned him not to come down there – for his own good:
I used pieces from about 75 games in the final shot. Six of those pieces remain orphaned to this day because I couldn't figure out which game they came from. Hey, out of 75, that's not bad! And they will find their way home someday, but I figured you guys would appreciate the gravity of that photo. This was one of the initial progress shots to give you an idea what the final product looks like:
P.P.S. For those of you who want some taste of what the actual movie is like, here's the trailer:
(Editor's note/disclosure: As you can see from the screenshot above, I'm in the movie. I'm a friend of Lorien's and helped her get in contact with some of those interviewed, so I'm hardly unbiased when it comes to wishing her success – and someday I'll actually watch the movie, too! —WEM)
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