Seriously, is this just some elaborate practical joke? Are Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen deliberately trying to convince the world that they’re such bumbling nincompoops that they shouldn’t be trusted with $15 much less $15000 a month to make a documentary? Or are they really this incompetent?
I’m leaning towards the latter interpretation.
Watch the video and you’ll see what I mean. It’s their latest official update video for their backers on Patreon, to let the people who collectively sent them $9000 last month and another $7000 this month know what’s the SarkeesianEffect duo have managed to accomplish with their money so far.
And it’s filmed on a cheap webcam with bad lighting. Apparently these guys can’t be bothered to spend ten minutes to set up the equipment that their donors have so generously provided for them in order to make a video that looks even vaguely professional.
Even more hilariously, they filmed the whole thing using a directional microphone that 1) makes Jordan Owen sound like he’s fallen down a well and 2) RENDERS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO HEAR WHAT DAVIS AURINI IS SAYING ALTOGETHER.
You don’t have to watch the whole thing to see what I mean — skip ahead to about 1:15 in the video and wait until Aurini starts talking. He manages to get in a couple of words before moving out of the microphone’s range, and from then on nothing he says is audible (unless you want to blast your speakers out every time Owen talks).
In other words, not only can these two not be trusted to make a professional quality documentary, they can’t even manage to make a crappy webcam video properly.
Had their bete noire Anita Sarkeesian put out a similarly shitty video in order to tell her supporters what she was doing with their money, she would have been run out of town on a rail. Possibly literally.
In the comments on YouTube, Owen tells his disappointed backers that he can’t upload another video to replace this obviously fucked up one because that would trigger something on Patreon and cause all their backers to get charged again.
Uh, dude, you can’t upload an improved video with a different title, or on Aurini’s channel?
Huh. Maybe you should have, you know, watched your own video once to make sure everything was ok with it before putting it up in the first place?
I swear, these guys must have thought that Tim Burton’s movie about Ed Wood was a how-to, not a comedy.
*tinyest
You all are making a mountain out of a molehill. They can always just fix Aurini’s audio in post. XD
But seriously, there’s a pretty clear pattern here. They think they can just sit down in front of their equipment and have it work; they don’t seem to be bothering to do a sound or lighting test, and they certainly don’t seem to be arsed to actually look at the footage before posting it.
They are just projecting “we don’t care” as hard as humanly possible, and yet they get all snide when their backers (and critics) question their abilities to put this thing together.
I would like to take a moment to remind ourselves of the novella length video analyses of FemFreq videos. Frame by frame it was -repeatedly- judged bad technically .. her video, sound mixing, lighting and editing were so bad..everything from incompetence to fraud and outright criminal charges were declared for. Wonder what those guys are up to..
The budget for this is supposed to cover crew and production which apparently includes paying them to make these foolish videos in their living rooms in chairs pushed in front of other furniture(rent covered), paying experts who aren’t experts anywhere but YouTube and buying Chinese food, Red Bull and pizza for the interviewees. I think it is an excuse to fly around and pretend they are super-important manly men with look, real professional equipment!!!
The Patreon page is fantastic, an opening in Atlanta then if you give $10,000, you can hit Vegas with them!!!
It blows my mind that they are raising that much money.
@Policy of Madness, I can’t see what the that German website says about Aurini and Davis because there’s just a loop of somebody making noises with their hands to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believing.” Unless that’s the whole point of the article…
zennurse:
Somewhere in the comments on one of their incredibly boring explanatory videos about the poor quality of the “teaser”, Aurini says they’re not paying the interviewees because that would be a conflict of interest.
Which begs the question: WHERE THE FUCK IS ALL THAT MONEY GOING!
Bernardo, you totally Rock. I especially liked the little solo in the middle.
Far more rewarding than the Lavey impersonator.
Tinyorc, OMG, I have only seen these vids here, that is ridiculous! They could fly around the damned world for $15,000!!
I will take a look, need to see what the fans have to say.
Maybe the whole thing is a devious plan to develop Half-Life 3? It’s probably going to look something like this:
@tinyorc:
My guess is thousands-dollars equpment and software they have no idea how to use.
@tinyorc:
Thank you for going into the comments. I read some of them and didn’t notice this “explanation”.
Yes, because all they had to worry about was conflict of interest. No worries about confirmation bias or cherry picking interviewees or anything like that.
@kirbywarp: but surely they only bought the equipment once, so many thousands could they possibly spend? My prediction: Jordan is going to buy more belts.
talbotfish:
Yup, have literally seen Sarkeesian-haters calling for her ARREST because the quality of her videos apparently does not reflect the amount of money she ended up raising and because she’s behind on her schedule.
Ignoring that these people don’t seem to understand Kickstarter’s terms and conditions, I do wonder how they can then feel vindicated or justified giving money to people who clearly don’t even WATCH THEIR OWN VIDEOS THROUGH ONCE before posting them to YouTube.
@pallygirl:
No idea. I was trying to give at least a little benefit of the doubt and handwave a couple thousand dollars for cameras and some absurdly expensive software licensing fee, but thinking it over again I got nothing. They had five interviewees so far, so even if they had to fly back and forth all over the country to do the interviews that’s still less than a few grand. I’d have to really stretch to make it total the 9k they apparently burned through.
It’s even worse because apparently they’re driving themselves into bankruptcy over this thing, which means they aren’t cutting off some big salary and they’re ending up having to pay out of pocket for stuff.
I would would totally donate a large amount of money simply to get them to publicly release their accounting.
I think it’s time that Dumb and Dumber just admit to themselves that high-tech, expensive equipment won’t compensate for a complete lack of skill and ability. A skilled artist can produce a masterpiece with just a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen, but the most expensive paint and canvas in the world won’t pull a masterpiece out of a fumbler.
Skill can cover for substandard materials and equipment; the reverse is not true.
Every single one of these videos could be improved tenfold if they would just google “How to shoot an interview” and follow the incredibly basic advice that comes up in the results. The main thing holding them back is their own arrogance.
@tinyorc and probably everyone else who’s commented, yes these two seem to be the kings of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in that everything they do shows arrogance without any underpinnings of competence, basic or otherwise.
I would also love to see an itemised list of expenses. How the hell can two people be going backrupt on $9K a month? That’s a lot of turtlenecks, whiskies, and belts.
Probably the best use they could have gotten out of $9K would be to drop it into film school tuition.
I accidentally watched the whole thing. The part where he casually reveals that he often shits his pants is pretty tremendous. ”
#gamergate: Sometimes you shit your pants. It happens.”
I’ve been to YouTube. It wasn’t pretty. It was pretty funny though.
I took in a little of Mike Lees’ Directors Cut, just to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Shark Attack:
That would explain why it’s fifteen minutes long. That’s the kind crucial information your backers really need to know!
Aurini must have been involved in a horrific traffic accident involving a Roma grandmother, because he seems to be the epicenter for some sort of gypsy curse involving audio.
OMG, that hand-fart video is the best. I shall have to bookmark it for future reference the next time some drama llama starts belching.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the mic settings. I have always thought PUA Anton Levey’s voice sounded fake. As if he’s forcing himself to sound deeper. Maybe his real voice is just so high pitched that he can’t be heard by normal human ears.
Oh hey, GamerGater scum babies, if you’re going to laugh at people who get death threatened out of their fucking homes, you don’t get to cry and wet yourselves when a Gawker writer makes a joke about nerds. Grow some thicker skins before you shit on other people.
I could only watch about 30 seconds of that. Looking at them is pretty much unbearable.
Two bumbling idiot man children try to one up a single feminist?
2+1=3. Half life 3 confirmed.
(Probably actually about ethics in games journalism)