I was lucky enough to get to do most of the post-production on Noclip's Age of Empire II Definitive Edition documentary. The remote interviews were conducted by Danny, most of the footage was captured by Frank Howley (I did some pickups), and I did the vast majority of the editing and graphics for section titles, although those were adjusted to varying degrees by Danny in finalization.
While the process was smooth, this was my first time working on a bigger project with the team, particularly one with collaboration between members of Noclip, and one where I had to combine multiple interviewees into a smoother conversation. This took some time to understand, but I gained a lot of confidence and new skills that I've been using with the Noclip team since then, like in the next project I did with them on Vampire Survivors.
I think the biggest challenge on this one was making sure that the footage we used to both reinforce the points being made by these smart guys and to hide cuts that tightened up their flow, was clear. AoE II can be a complex game with a lot of UI elements to consider which can be noisy for the viewer. I tried to get around this while respecting the limits of our control with the commercial version, and it worked out in the end. Frank was a great help, and showed me a lot of tips and tricks for getting around this!
Capturing a particular sense for the qualities and history of a game as monumental as AoE II is tough - a challenge the team that made the game also had to deal with - so I'm proud of what we were able to do in building a fairly definitive story of the game's definitive edition. I'm really happy with how this one turned out, and the reception has been great!
