Noah Caldwell-Gervais is a video essayist who writes longform pieces looking at computer games holistically. They're thoughtful, insightful and a positive example of strong media literacy. Sometimes, such as in his piece on several Star Wars games he brings in a broader critique of theory such as Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces at the same time. If you've met me in person and heard me blather on about something for an hour or two with little provocation, it's that but American.
Noah's audio editing sucks. The bitrate's all over the place. The mid-range frequencies are too loud. The mostly inconsequential B-roll footage that plays over his narration has inconsistent levels. You can hear every mouse click from his pressing "record" or "stop" in what is presumably Audacity. He never cuts out coughs.
I'm not bringingt his up as a criticism or to bring him down a peg. It's actually what inspires me the most about his work. Nobody's perfect and nobody has mastered every skill. Skills take time. Time to learn skills often requires money. Bills need to be paid. There's so many limits to achieving perfection in a field.
The free and easy access we have to media from all sorts of producers often disguises just how much goes into making things. Slick, expensive documentaries, serials and propaganda produced by for-profit companies with fully paid actors, editors and set constructors sit next to abandoned podcasts. As an amateur there's always a pressure to make a single, perfect text that will be a breakout moment.
Audiences don't care about perfection. For somebody who knows nothing about audio editing, script writing, video editing or even how to capture game footage, all that matters is if a text informs, inspires or simply entertains. If a travelling stoner can leave me excited to listen to 8 hours of Resident Evil discussion, I should be able to finish one of the 20 or so large drafts I have floating in this site's cache.
