Reflection 1: Ethnography & Our Documentary

In the King of the Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, the filmmakers did a variety of things that portrayed Steve Weibe and Billy Mitchell in a somewhat negative manner. Throughout the documentary, Billy Mitchell was consistently portrayed as the bad guy, in part because of how he acted in general, but also because of what footage of Billy the filmmakers decided to utilize. On the other hand, Steve Weibe is portrayed as a relatively hopeless grown adult that fails not matter what he tries, which is not entirely true. Steve is portrayed as hopeless when he loses Donkey Kong to Billy Mitchell, which makes it seems as though he has never amounted to any success throughout his entire life. Furthermore, once Steve begins training to compete in Donkey Kong, he is continuously shown ignoring his children and his family to play the game. He is shown playing Donkey Kong without pause as he young son begs for him to help him in the bathroom. This makes Steve appear as though he values a video game more than he does his own children, which is not a good way to depict the subject of the documentary.

When filming and editing our documentary, it will be of the utmost importance that we do not portray any of our interview subjects in a negative manner, be intentionally or unintentionally. Since we are studying the League of Legends gaming club, certain audiences with preconceived notions of “gamers” might not be particularly receptive to a documentary about a video game. Therefore, when introducing each interview subject, we should provide contextual information about other activities that the LoL players participate in, so as to engage and include the largest number of audience members possible.