{"id":192,"date":"2019-10-10T16:13:03","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T20:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/?p=192"},"modified":"2019-10-10T16:13:03","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T20:13:03","slug":"lukes-research-update-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/2019\/10\/10\/lukes-research-update-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke’s Research Update #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the last week, my research was in the form of watching the 2013 documentary The Smash Brothers <\/em>for the first time. This documentary was created by Travis “Samox” Beauchamp and produced by East Point Pictures. It is a nine-episode series with each episode running at about 30 minutes. Seven of the nine episodes detail the careers and personalities of some of Super Smash Bros. Melee<\/em>‘s best players, including Christopher “Azen” McCullen, Isai Alvarado, Ken Hoang, Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman, and Joseph “Mango” Marquez. The stories of these players are presented chronologically, with the first part detailing the beginnings of competitive Melee<\/em> and the final part describing current events in Melee<\/em>, including the game’s inclusion at EVO 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Smash Brothers <\/em>is often credited with creating an entire new wave of Melee <\/em>players, sometimes referred to as “Doc Kids” (a term coined by Daniel “Tafokints” Lee), who started playing the game after August 2013. It’s not hard to see why: for its time, The Smash Brothers<\/em> had some of the highest production value ever seen in a fan documentary, let alone a Super Smash Bros.<\/em> one. The documentary consists of many interviews with notable Melee<\/em> personalities such as Wynton “Prog” Smith, Chris “Wife” Fabiszak, and Kashan “Chillindude” Khan, as well as all of the highlighted players, except for Azen. Most of the episodes interweave descriptions of the players’ personalities and playstyles with the story of one or more tournaments that were the highlight of that player’s career. For example, episode eight, “The Natural,” is centered on the rivalry between Mango and Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma, and interspersed between interviews with the two players and their friends are clips of footage from a recent tournament where they faced each other. Sometimes, the documentary features skits or extra segments that explain Smash Bros. <\/em>terminology or give a bit more backstory to what is being shown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although my project will not be in a direct documentary format and will feature less interviews, I was surprised how well this series was able to capture the story of Melee<\/em> with very little other than camera footage and clips from tournament streams. A narrative technique that I could incorporate into my project is having one graphic or image that connects every players’ story. In The Smash Bros.<\/em>, there is a video game-inspired map of America with images of the players’ faces on it that is used to show the locations of players and tournaments at various times. The east coast-west coast rivalry is a common theme that runs through the entire series and I could try to find something similar to connect the players in my project. I also enjoyed that in most episodes, footage from tournament Twitch streams was shown with the commentary playing, and the stream footage switches back and forth with camera footage of the players, in order to give different perspectives on important moments in Melee<\/em> history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned a lot by watching The Smash Brothers<\/em> and I now see why this series was so influential. I will try to include some of its techniques into my project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last week, my research was in the form of watching the 2013 documentary The Smash Brothers for the first time. This documentary was created by Travis “Samox” Beauchamp and produced by East Point Pictures. It is a nine-episode series with each episode running at about 30 minutes. Seven of the nine episodes detail… Continue reading Luke’s Research Update #1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research_update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cassel.immtcnj.com\/thesis_fall_19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}