ayo im gonna blog dis documentary at you guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VhWMFADkXVo
ep. 1
like whereas tsm is on some meta reality tv shit, clg goes full on bro intellectual sundance channel documentary
i actually don't have much to say about this episode, like they are trying to create this history but they kinda move on really quick. actually, compared to game cribs where you can kinda jump in even if you don't know much about this game (lots of tedious and selective recapping for example), this documentary kinda assumes some background knowledge from the viewer i think
this seems more stereotypically "sporty" so far, slow motion hugz etc.
oh and there is a shit ton of product placement but not in a hammy way like tsm does it
actually, instead of expecting knowledge from the viewer it might be that clg just wants to craft a story, something that doesn't include saint or xhazzard or kobe in a significant way
like obviously there is a big difference between a serialized "reality tv" show and an episodic documentary
i dunno now I watch ep. 2
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ep.2
the closeups of voyboy + "voyboy <3 so cute", pretty gud
actually I've always been interested in what went down in korea. for me there wasn't a lot to go on really. I mean I wasn't really following this stuff back then and I was hardly playing the game, what I mean is that it wasn't like casually accessible
when they came back, as far as I remember, they were kinda tight lipped. in public forums like reddit or chau ama there would be, like for MONTHS, questions like "do you think you wasted your time in korea" or "weren't you guys supposed to blow away NA when you came back" stuff like that and they would never get answered in a satisfactory manner. no one wants to say they wasted their time and money for nothing, that's mainly what I got out of it, but there was also this little burgeoning notion that they definitely learned something meaningful and just hadn't found a way to implement it in NA or something. da clg mystique tho. I kinda still view them that way, even though like objectively they have been doing consistently poorly.
i mean its really interesting how this clg vs. tsm thing endures even though they are really different teams now
but, as kinda foreshadowed by the previous episode, there wasn't any secret information in this korea episode. chauster admits that they wasted their time, but everyone kinda knew that already. its kinda interesting that I want or expect there to be more
kelby keeps appearing and master narrating but they don't really tell us who he is and why he is stalking all of them
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ep.3: iz hard 2 even speak on this team
hory shit dis shit got dark
so this episode is kinda what I was looking for, it starts getting good when kelby says "they're just doing this for the money" and there is this image of hotshot google image searching some watches
this whole section is really good, especially when kelby says "missed out" and you see hotshot zonked out in bed by himself. it also gives more insight about how shitty the korea decision was. like I don't know shit about own3d contracts so im making dat assumption that if clg hadn't left na, hadn't given all that na popularity to TSM (who now regularly pull 10k viewers through oddone dyrus and wild turtle), that clg would be much better off now both mentally and financially. I don't really remember what the numbers were like when own3d was around though, I was either not watching or not paying attention at the time.
serious discussion in da arcade, pretty funny like it kind of sums up e-sports for me. I still have a really really hard time taking the idea of video game sports seriously, but I know a lot of people into this game don't. anyway, its kinda fun that hotshot makes an excellent point so the team does the opposite, and I really like this whole dbl + chauster vs. the rest of clg thing brewing; doublelift really really worships chauster (and himself) and chauster worships himself. there is actually this idea throughout na that if you can only win if you think you are the best, like you can clearly see that dbl and chauster hardly ever talk about bettering themselves and like public opinion seems to kinda sway around on this environment they created. so dbl will have these really great plays and it'll be all "look he was right all along" or he'll play badly and people call him arrogant. na is definitely changing though, like dyrus is often called "consistent" because he just started playing smarter and a lot of the immovableness from these players is missing now.
it's not even that they aren't hyphy for the drama, it's that the memory of the hyphyness lingers, like the drama is intensified because it looks like they are maturing
doublelift says that jiji not living at the house is a big problem, but chauster consistently says that its not a problem at all in amas and stuff. jiji is living there now, g00dbye kitties and gf
dis explosions in the sky ive come to a realization stuff is so cheesy though, i dunno what my stance on that is because I really like cheesy hokey shit, but this might be too much. i guess I should also mention the plethora of dubsteb frag vids in this documentary, but I don't really have anything to say about these things right now I just notice them
they give doe eyed aphromoo and chimpy link the "next time on clg docu" space, something they didnt really give voy or saint or kobe. I kinda wonder about the lack of a single voyboy or saint interview. like when they said that the documentary was made inhouse I didn't know they meant actually inside the house without leaving the house.
where da fuk is loco (mebbe clg just wanted to avoid the child porn lawsuit possibility)
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ep.4
calling the last episode "a new hope" fits in the sense that, at least from what I've seen, the lol esports scene's longevity kinda depends on this active constant remaking. for me NA will always be in the spotlight, it's just more accessible and more interesting. I want to say things like I can get at NA league drama more easily than korea league, or that the NA players are easier to characterize but I mean I'm in NA. I do wonder what it's like to experience this kind of thing in korea or in eu or whatever, but whatever this is what I have and I like it a lot. it's incredibly predictable that the documentary wins with a victory promise, like it makes me think that through all these changes nothing has changed, but part of clg's appeal at the moment is their tendency to make all these major changes to little effect, and this feeling that maybe one of these changes will stick maybe they found the secret ingredient, etc.
fans of doublelift's signature vacant stare will like the scene that starts ~7 min
nientonsoh and jiji muted, signifying that communication errors will continue
i didnt realize nientonsoh was basically seth rogen
OMFG THESE BLOOPERS BASICALLY SAY THAT THE WHOLE THING WAS LIE, AMAZING
like truly tsm level meta shit, they dropped da bomb on me with hotshot pretending to be in bed
maybe I'm putting too much on this because I pointed out the juxtaposition of zonked out hotshot before
but it really elevated the whole thing for me, I mean episode 3 was pretty good but a lot of the documentary was cheesy high peaks low valleys stuff.
I mean that's not necessarily a bad thing and it contrasts well with the content TSM puts out (cuz u kno, TSM and CLG are black and white but they are part of the same cookie)
music was not done by kelby as bind conjectured, but that idea made watching the whole thing really funny
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in conclusion:
this was a pretty good addition to the crazy spectacle that league/esports is becoming and has become. that's always how I have taken all of this, I am witnessing this hot mess little birdy coming out of egg burgeoning wtf real life shit and it's crazy and new and good. like tsm is #1 for me precisely because of their eagerness to kinda dive into that idea (and it's really suitable that clg puts something out after tsm does, w/ this whole narrative of tsm always managing to be a little ahead of clg). but i dunno I guess I feel like the trailer (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCMv24Z_9tQ) promised more. I guess that's what trailers do though, but I wonder about all that other footage.
part of my excitement about all this is like the importance of diy shit in making this stuff exist, like obviously tsm and clg have partnered with corporations on their respective things (the documentary was made by 16 people, sponsored(?) by machinima; but I mean TSM and CLG are companies now anyway), but league has spawned a lot of people creating their own content. and then it's made followable because they all mostly in conversation with each other, like halo frag video are NOT in conversation with each other but something can happen "in" league and it's talked about and responded to.
and now I realize how cool it is that a lot of voices are cut out from the documentary because clg is always shouting and arguing over each other, and that the main voices are the loudest, Hotshot, Doublelift, and Chauster. some real ouroboros shit