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A lot of you might not know him but he is one of the finest moviemakers’s in E-sports today. So much so that he has attained a call-up from one of the finest e-sports organizations, NiP (Ninjas in Pyjamas). He burst onto the scene with his fragmovie Daniel “RE1EASE” Mullan based on the CSS powerhouse and also his CS GO clips which earned him his spot at NiP.
The life of an esports moviemaker is an unknown quantity to us, So SaintDrug decided to sit down with Frank “fgw” Garnett Welsh to find out how one goes from editing normal frags for a community to editing full-length movies for Professional teams.
Q. How did you develop an interest for Counter Strike Moviemaking?
Well when i first got into CS:S a friend of mine ‘spandex’ used a frag i got and made a clip about it. Like most noobs i praised him as if he was some sort magician and asked how he did it. He showed me the basics and I proceeded to reel off loads of clips until I got a grasp of the editing principles needed to create a tasteful clip. It was then I discovered the likes of Doc.J, c12 and found a lot of inspiration.
Q. Your video Daniel “Re1ease” Mullan raved about its uniqueness as compared to the other movies that we see, what is it that you did differently?
I think a few things are done very well in Dan’s movie, some not so well. Some people may have noticed the frags are all in chronological order, from when he first joined FM! Toxic in 2008 to when he left esahara in 2011. Whenever there is a change in the soundtrack, whether it’s a break or a change in dynamics its designed to hint to the viewer its a significant point in his career. The commentary sections are very well structured and the smooths and cuts are well done. However, the movie does start to loose momentum mid-way through the second fragpart (before picking back up again) and although some may argue it’s not needed, it could do with a lot more creativity in certain areas. I’ve had criticism saying there is ‘no sync’ after the first song but it’s synced as well as it can be while trying to maintain the right mix of good cuts and keeping the frags in order. Finally, the outro is very poor but due to my pressing university assignments – the outro and all post-production are done in one day, which I always regret. There are better things to come from me but people often forget that was my first movie.
Q. Your opinion on CS GO and its future in terms of moviemaking?
I love CSGO. It definitely has a more promising future for movie making than source or 1.6 did. There has been an increasing amount of editors attending LANs and incorporating event footage into there movies, which is a good sign that organisations are starting to put money into these projects and that it will grow. Now it’s always been obvious that filming the guys play would improve a movie, but I think the real challenge for the movie makers hoping to push the boundaries will be incorporating the use of Compositing/3D/Source Filmmaker -PROPERLY- into the in-game content (and no I don’t mean onto the actual frags). However, I think first we need to see a better standard of filming, but I’ve heard it’s difficult in a LAN environment XD. Apart from that, i’m sure we will see more movie makers crawl out from their caves and start editing once GOTV comes and the game is a little bit more polished.
Q. Do you E-sports moviemaking can be a profession, we see moviemakers like tweedayy who attends events on a regular basis and are trying to professionalise it, your opinion?
It’s not something I’ve thought about much but I believe so. I imagine as e-sports continues to grow we will see more people working for organisations and the event holders to create video content that will help boost their brand/ advertise their sponsors. I imagine tweedays association with mtw started with just a ‘can I make a movie for you guys’, and now it has developed into a full-blown project with him attending every major LAN, providing almost daily video content for the organisation and contributing a lot of work to ‘mymtw.tv’. So we can see that project has been a success.
Q. If you had to choose a Favourite Counter Strike video apart from yours it would be?
It’s a difficult one. Off the top of my head, mTw @ CPH just edges it over vitriolic but they are both great movies.
Q. Finally, your thoughts on CS GO as a game for competitive play?
It’s very good. The game obviously needs to be polished but all in all, it’s Counter Strike – the best teams who practice the most will win. The main thing I would like to see is a whole bunch of new maps, We’ve seen GeT_RiGhT and f0rest owning people on dust2/inferno/train for years, I would like to see something different. We’ve seen in the likes of TF2 maps made by the community have been featured in the game. I think it would be great if a few map makers would put there heads together, then use community feedback to switch things up until everyone is satisfied. A little support from valve with this would help as well – If a new map is added in the update notes then a lot of people are going to try it and it has more chance of getting recognised.
Q. How did the whole NiP thing happen? Any projects in the pipeline?
Tweeday put me in contact with Niklas Fischer and we took it from there. You’ll be seeing a short movie about NiP @ Dreamhack Valencia in the next coming weeks, followed by full LAN movies of ESWC, DH Sweden and the Swedish GO championships. I’ll also start producing weekly content of the team once the Valencia clips are done.
Q. Any final words?
A quick shoutout to NiP and our sponsors Steelseries & Telia. The Infected Productions team, Suromitro, and all TalkEsport readers.
SaintDrug: Thank you for your time and best of luck for your future projects.
