Lovers of cinematic catastrophe, rejoice!
Facing accusations of fraud, douchebaggery, and skull abandonment in the wake of a split with his estranged “filmmaking” partner Jordan Owen, the formerly bald film auteur Davis Aurini has released a 38-minute “Rough Draft Preview” of his version of The Sarkeesian effect.
I have not yet had a chance to watch the whole thing, but from the brief bits I have seen it more than lives up to the hype, if by “hype” you mean “the general consensus that Davis Aurini cannot possibly produce anything but poop.”
In the first 4 minutes alone, Aurini uses narration and music from Owen that he clearly doesn’t have permission to use; the rest of the footage is also “borrowed” from others, and the much ballyhooed “Animated Title Sequence” consists of the words “Animated Title Sequence” over a still image.
Watching this, it is important to remember that this film was not edited by a 5-year-old on a budget of one juice box, but by an actual adult human being who considers himself something of a filmmaking pro, with a budget in the tens of thousands of dollars.
So let’s watch this together. I will offer more extended notes once I’ve had a chance to stop giggling and digest the rest.
EDITED TO ADD: Ok, I finally made it all the way through and, wow, it’s even worse than I expected.
Where even to start? There’s no real narrative; none of this will make much sense to anyone who hasn’t been following the whole #Gamergate thing already.
The “argument,” when it’s not completely incoherent, is thoroughly dishonest and (when it comes to criticizing Sarkeesian’s actual videos) ridiculously petty. The film makes repeated assertions about Sarkeesian (that she’s a “bully,” that she wants to censor video games) without any evidence at all.
When we finally get around to the interviews — there is no original footage at all in the first 18 or so minutes of the “film” — the argument is simply laughable. Essentially, Davis says “SJWs claim to speak for women and minorities, so here’s a … WOMAN (dramatic pause) who disagrees!”
It’s not explained why they’re interviewing a sex worker, much less this particular woman. In fact, she made webcam videos parodying Sarkeesian, but this is never mentioned. (Also not mentioned: the fact that she’s the wife of the “mediator” involved in trying to get the film made.) Why is she talking about Gail Dines? Has Sarkeesian ever spoke in favor of censorship?
And then we get the “Honey Badgers” complaining about “damseling,” followed by Paul Elam … damseling. (What relevance he has to a discussion of Sarkeesian isn’t clear.) Then Alison Tieman damseling.
Oh, and then there’s Davis complaining that when Sarkeesian gets threats, she gets money from it! Never mind the $30,000 collected by AVFM last year ostensibly to pay for security. Or that the Owen and Aurini are basically living off of people’s hatred of Sarkeesian, as are a number of bloggers and youtubers .
Other, er, highlights:
- Terrible fonts (an Aurini trademark)
- That stupid grid of YouTube videos that Aurini uses when he’s got no actual filmed footage or stock photos or anything else to use for a visual
- The terrible sound, with volume changing radically from clip to clip
- Terrible lighting in many of the clips
- The lengthy segments with no visuals at all, just a black screen
- Various people shown without introductions or subtitles to explain who they are
- Even when people are identified, no real effort to explain why on earth they would be relevant
Probably not a good idea to include so much footage of Owen, given that he. you know, has publicly said that Aurini is a fraud who doesn’t have permission to use any of the film footage
It’s striking how much more professional the clips from Sarkeesian videos are when compared with everything Owen and Aurini filmed.
Now, obviously, this is a rough cut. Real filmmakers often make rough cuts missing elements from the final film — music, cgi special effects, etc.
But they generally don’t release these to the public in advance of the film’s release, because they generally look terrible. The footage they use to promote the films prior to release are designed to make the film in question look awesome, not to prove, yes we have some footage.
The only reason Aurini has to release this is to “prove” that he actually has been putting in some work on the “film.” But what it really shows is how little work he’s done. I mean, take a couple of hours and clean up the fucking audio a little. At least make sure the volume is consistent within shots and from clip to clip.
The “quality” here is less than the quality of many unprofessional youtube videos that are slapped together in a day.
Also, it’s kind of amazing that he had no original footage at all to use in the first 18 minutes. Did they film nothing but the interviews themselves? Not even some footage of, I dunno, someone watching YouTube or pretending to type something on their computer?
Okay, I did watch the first few minutes just to get to the “animated” title sequence. I don’t think I can watch more than a few minutes at a time though.
I noticed this too. They are very clearly only preaching to the choir. Fellow gamergaters are going to look at that speech praising Sarkeesian’s work and inwardly seethe the whole time. But if they’re hoping to convert anyone, opening the movie with that was a disastrous choice. It just makes Anita Sarkeesian look like someone who successfully put together a product to analyze video games and the gaters look like petulant manbabies who harassed for it rather than just doing a counter analysis. Which is of course, true. But if they’re trying to present gg as a legit viewpoint, they failed in the very moments of their video.
I want to watch the trainwreck but I don’t think I have the stomach for those levels of cringe and wasted time.
Well I’ll just see how far I can go before noping the hell out
Two friends and I put together a little 10-minute video documentary about a SCOTUS case over two weekends with free editing software and a budget of $0. It still looks better than this.
Who knew animation was so easy?
@PoM
The deliberately-stupid Photoshops I fart out in ten minutes look better than this. =P
Wow, this guy takes putting words in her mouth to a new level. “Her producer said CDi games don’t count but then she used a CDi game. Why did she not listen to the words of her producer, who is obviously god!”
Owens’ narrative speed races to disingenuous bullshit with his horseshit line about how “PBS compared to her to Rosa Parks, Harvey Milk and Martin Luther King”,
It’s from a series Youtube videos called PBS Game/Show from PBS Digital Studios with 58k views. PBS Digital Studios’ description and disclaimer from their tumblr page:
http://pbsdigitalstudios.tumblr.com/post/116474116679/how-i-became-a-videogame-feminist-jamin
The video’s are hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Kill Screen magazine, and they represent his viewpoint. You can judge for yourselves by watching “Do Gamers Need Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminism?”, which starts off OK with with the idea of “initiating event” and has a not entirely terrible argument briefly show itself but, yeah, it’s becomes disastrous, embarrassing and historically inaccurate when he compares Sarkeesian’s efforts to the life work of legendary Civil Rights giants. But, sorry Owen and bitter gamer gators, that’s Warren’s opinion, not PBS’s.
https://www.youtube.com/user/pbsgameshow
Wow, I always somehow forget video gets imbedded, sorry if it’s a bit too much.
I finished watching it. Even worse than I expected; I added some quick thoughts to the post.
This guy, like MRA’s is an idiot. I watched Anita’s videos willingly at the time of release and approved of her goal. The critiques this lump of MRA propaganda sets forth of how she chooses to interpret or manipulate her evidence in them, however, was something I noticed even as a Sarkeesian fan.
While I watched the “tropes” series, I’d pause and turn to my wife (who wasn’t watching them, it was ‘my’ thing) and point out how not all of the information presented was accurate.
I actually approve of her goals, I just find her handling of evidence a bit hamfisted. I had chalked it up to my being a professional scholar who analyzes culture for a living, and Anita not having had the proper training, but she seems to hold some legitimate degrees, so this can’t exactly be the case.
Like I said, I hate these guys, but when showing a great deal of evidence how the information was mishandled (letting go of the cases where the critics whose names I won’t repeat were totally off-base in their criticism), I had to rethink whether the errors could have simply been due to unfamiliarity with scientific approach to evidence, or whether some of these mistakes were due to starting an inquiry by begging the question that your thesis will be correct, and working over the evidence on a bed of Procrustes until it fits.
I wish Anita good luck in any future endeavors, but there is plenty of real misogyny that needs to be dealt with in the world of video games with no need for her to invent some by shooting female characters and dragging their corpses around. That action read to me like the sort of tactic the Christian right’s anti-RPG propaganda used in their warnings and tracts about Dungeons and Dragons being the work of Satan in the 80s.
OMG! I’m an adult, and never say OMG. But I’m listening to the section about Rules for Radicals, and the narrator’s critique of it seems to characterize the MRA movement to a T, while not particularly sounding like Sarkeesian’s tactics.
– Guess who I just inverviewed for the movie? A woman.
– Awesome. What’s her name?
– No idea, but she was pretty hot. She’s also a sex worker.
– LOL. Great, so what did she talk about?
– Uh, she didn’t seem to know anything about Sarkeesian or gamergate. In fact, she didn’t seem to know anything about videogames whatsoever. She spent most of the interview complaining about some Gail lady. The whole thing was a waste of time, really.
– Uh oh. Guess we can’t use this footage. That’s too bad.
– Yeah.. totally.
– Maybe we could use it anyway?
– You read my fucking mind, bro.
I’ve watched it! I apologize for the length, but I think it’s worth people knowing about its content – here are my thoughts.
It begins with an extended sequence showing Anita’s rise to prominence, the harrassment against her and her announcement at an award ceremony, showing us exactly why she’s become well-known – a sort of odd choice for people aimed at discrediting here. Never mind, her name is almost inaudible under the rise of some weird wibbly music and here comes its composer, Jordan narrating with an audible hiss. He’s going to tell us why she’s not that good after all.
Insert animated title sequence here!
Aurini takes over and spends absolutely bloody ages lingering on a shot of ten of Anita’s videos playing side by side while he talks at us in his most well-practiced “condescending dickhead” voice. In this single section the sound is all over the place – you have to keep turning your volume up and down to hear what he’s saying or to defend yourself from the sudden ear-explosion when someone else starts speaking.
He goes through four criticisms of Anita’s videos, the subsection titles remaining on the screen throughout in a black-outlined handwritey font in the best of Windows Movie Maker traditions. Seriously, so far the budget of this could have been covered by the cost of maybe a scone and cup of tea to keep the editor going.
I have never seen one of Anita’s videos, and if she’s saying some of the things she’s saying here, then I actually agree with maybe a couple of his rebuttals – but it’s important to say that he never shows her actually calling for these games to be banned or not exist or anything, just raising observations about them that legitimately need to be questioned.
“Anita characterizes gamers as […] juveline losers who are probably violent sex criminals in the making”, says a juvenile loser who previously derailed this documentary over an argument about one of his sex criminal friends.
“Her career should have been […] ultimately forgotten – but there was something else that kept Anita in the spotlight.” Wasn’t it you, Captain Skull?
It wasn’t – here’s the introduction of [dramatic pause] the social justice movement! It’s one of those positive terms that’s never used in a positive way, isn’t it? Very much like “the moral high ground”. Ooh, you’re saying we should free the slaves, Abe? How’s it look up there from the moral high ground?!
Fifteen minutes later (though it feels much, much longer) we have reached Part 1! And a change of microphones again. This one has been placed strategically at the bottom of a bathtub (maybe it’s Jordan’s).
The screen’s just gone black. I thought my computer had gone to sleep, but this rough draft is a bit rougher than I’d thought.
Oh, wow, there’s a tweet being shown that was directed towards one of my friends off FurAffinity. Hi, LadyFuzztail!
One three-second pause later, here’s the first of the long-awaited interviews – Christina Parreira! It begins with the two-shot that has been comprehensively mocked before, but is corrected with a painfully obvious zoom in from the edit suite. Jordan’s disembodied arm is still in the shot, and his vocal encouragement to her to continue is heard throughout.
A rubbish static-hiss transition later, I have to turn the volume all the way up again to hear what’s being said in a TED talk that isn’t announced or contextualized whatsoever.
Jesus christ my ears. The volume has gone back to normal suddenly. They seem to be demonizing the use of “education” (with a classy meme-tastic Impact font over the picture) to further awareness of the depiction of women, but I don’t really see what they were going for.
Aurini finally announces what the TED talk is about, framing it as an “anti-porn crusade”, from inside his goldfish bowl. He quickly links this to George Orwell. What a massive wanker.
Here’s the second interview, this time by Jason Miller the #NotYourShield person. He seriously says “ethics in game journalism”. The emergency video crop has happened here as well, making him appear to address a hand lying about on the table and then just talk at a wall (somewhat appropriately).
Jason Miller’s title overlay – notably different in style and quality from the ones that were used before – remains throughout almost the entire clip.
Here’s the Honey Badger Brigade! He describes them as an all-female group, which is wrong. “Anita plays the role of damsel on the public stage”, Jesvm Christvm. Let me go and throw up for a moment. The interview is conducted with two microphones of wildly varying tone, quality and audibility.
“It’s just evidence of the way people are on the Internet”. The way people are on the Internet is not some natural unavoidable occurrence, you intentionally ignorant knobspanners – it’s that way for a reason!
“Oh, they made rape threats […] so they’re the bad guy!” You unutterable tosspots.
“Tropes exist for a reason […] they’ve existed for so long we’re used to it. They’re instant judgements that we make.” How about working on not making those judgements?!
Oh, here are the head offices of the patriarchical conspiracy theory. (It’s a blank screen).
Oh dear god, Paul Elam is being announced. “To any sensible person, Paul Elam might sound like a feminist”. Where are you getting your sensible people from?
This interview is actually reasonably shot and recorded – well done. He says his stance is “not very popular with the mainstream media”, but doesn’t offer any speculation into why “Bash a Violent Bitch Month” might not have had the popularity he hoped.
Ooh, white males don’t get enough sympathy from the public. Aurini keeps banging on about how minorities make Internet harrassment a big business. Piss off!
Er, everything just stopped. Oh, it’s back again – someone unannounced is moaning about the threat of rejecting victimhood. I can’t speak to this because no context is provided. A slight hum begins in the background halfway through.
Heeeere’s Jack Thompson, ex-attorney! With Jordan Owen sprawled untidily over his sofa. Aurini laughs audibly from behind the camera. He talks about marketing adult games to children, which it never has been. Owen asks a question, at least I think he does – the volume’s a bit low.
Then somebody called Jim Goad appears, bizarrely being interviewed at a picnic table. He doesn’t get more than about ten words in, before…
After part 1 took a year and a half, the title card for Part 2 appears – infiltration! – but thankfully, this video stops there.
It’s not very good, basically – about on par with the usual Youtube videos, with the budget going to fund some flights for interviews (or that new car Aurini had his eye on). And not just due to its rough draft status – there are problems here that aren’t going to be fixed by playing with levels or Aurini’s self-proclaimed masterful editing skills, no matter how much he insists otherwise.
Why not watch one of my videos instead? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG8chy-kRRg I talk about the representation of women in Duke Nukem 3D for almost a few seconds!
Animated gif.
Refutation of stupid argument.
Witty comment.
(That’s a rough draft of my comment. Please give me more money.)
For a PhD student, Christina Perreira doesn’t seem to understand academic discourse very well.
Well done. We now have two Davids watching these excrescences so the rest of us don’t have to.
I have to confess to giving up on these two clowns — individually and as a pair — several videos ago. I’m extraordinarily grateful to you and all the others who save us all from the brain pain, and earache apparently, of doing it for ourselves.
“It’s only thirty-eight minutes long? I don’t know whether to be surprised or relieved. Perhaps both; with the budget and length of time this project gestated I assumed some three hour epic, not something shorter than an episode of Ancient Aliens.”
No, Aurini said its going to have 4 parts, this is just the rough version of part 1
How is it not done yet? I admit I don’t know much about making videos but atill, how is this not done yet. This should of been a short little incident but it’s taken most of a year and I just don’t understand how.
You would think this would be a red flag to supporters bit they somehow still have those. :p
Wow, that video was so bad. It will be used as example A at “its easier to complain than make things.”.
The videos makes me appreach Anitas hard work even more. Well done MRA-dudebros.
Wait…they RECENTLY coined the term intersectionality? What kind of drugs is Aurini on? Reading Wikipedia will show the concept of intersectionality is not a recent invention. His research could have been restricted to Wikipedia and would have been more accurate for Christ’s sake!
“You would think this would be a red flag to supporters bit they somehow still have those. :p”
The only alternative is to admit that these two are frauds and that allowing them to bilk you out of hundreds of dollars was a huge mistake. That runs dangerously close to re-evaluating your preconceived notions and developing self-awareness. And as we all know, the average gator will go to nigh-impossible lengths to avoid that.
Jason Miller says feminists don’t believe black people can be racist. Name one feminist who has ever said that!
So that lady on the couch who obviously doesn’t have anything to do with video games… Can someone please explain “feminism”, “radical feminism” and “marxism” to her? She obviously doesn’t know a lot about those words but does like to use them a lot.
@davidknewton
Thanks for the summary, now I don’t have to watch it. 🙂
I made it more than half way through it before I gave up. I got to the interview with the guy who started NotYourShield and I had to turn it off when I got to this part:
So, the man who is trying to claim that internalized racism and internalized misogyny don’t exist is doing so by saying that there aren’t African-Americans in academia! I think my irony meter broke.