Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound (2016) Online

Proper historical explanation of Video Game Music - yet quite entertaining to watch.

I was a regular attender at the VGM festival IDIG2016, which included a viewing of 'Beep'. I enjoyed the viewing of this documentary and could imagine this being on Netflix, for example. It is, a proper outline of Video Game music. It even includes small factual segments regarding several aspects of creating music in the NES/SNES era, which I really liked. Fast-forward to the present - and it even briefly mentions that this kind of music on the new Virtual Reality medium will be a world-first!

Oh yeah - The 'Beepy' Soundtrack was great! (ironically, as it is about background music)

The bad? It can be perhaps seen as 'slow', as there are many interviewees with sometimes low variations regarding visual background (the room they are sitting in) or opinions (which is of course worse). Additionally, the pacing (storyline?), of the documentary was not quite clear to me. I felt it jumped a few times between historical and present.

Basically: + Historical accuracy + Soundtrack + Factual segments - Storyline - Possibly Slow

Beep looks at the history of how sound has been used in arcade gaming. It reviews the experiences of the people who had to make the decisions, both technical and creative in order to get the best user experience they could from the hardware that was available at the time.

It uses an historical narrative starting with sound in arcade games even before electronics were used. It drills through the various platforms that became available to the industry as the technology and industry evolved. It interviews the very people who created some iconic games.

The film is divided into parts covering the various levels of computer hardware. In these parts, there seem to be two difference kinds of sequences.

At first, they briefly describe the era in question with some slides and graphics, then are a series of in-depth interviews with the people who worked on the games of that era.

These interviews are about 98% of the documentary.

The problem that I had, however, was that it seemed to be oriented toward those who had a deep knowledge of the games of these periods, the music that was in the games and which of these people worked on which games. The interviews are personal accounts of these creators experiences.

The presentation could have been greatly improved with some editing.

Suggestions:

Greatly expand the "intro / explanation" parts and provide some recognizable examples of the titles and how the music / sound of these games fits in with the interviews which will then be shown.

THEN, and this would be so easy, as the interviewees are shown talking, include in their "title" the games they worked on. This was perhaps the most frustrating part as I was tempted to just watch this on my PC and google stuff as the video played to look up these people and what they worked on. We needed to see more screens of the games played and examples of their music. There were some. I needed more.

In the end, if you're NOT actually in the business of making music for video games watching this doc is like finding yourself in the middle of conversation between two people deeply involved in a hobby and you're NOT into that much.

So while the subject and the interviews are interesting, the lack of other information to give it context makes it too dry for people outside of the business. I stopped watching after about 20 minutes.

Sure sometimes the music is overused and sometimes the editing could use some work, but seriously where else are you going to get this information and this variety of game audio professionals in a film?! It's such a valuable resource in game audio, with information conveyed in this documentary potentially lost to younger generations, it's a much needed piece of history. I learned a lot about the audio used in penny arcades and the way chips were used in older consoles and gaming computers. Sometimes the film does assume prior knowledge of terms used in game audio, and explanations would have been helpful. There are also a few times where people interviewed repeat things said in other interviews, and 1hr30 might have been a better run time. I would still really recommend watching it if you have an interest in game audio or its history, plus there is an incredible amount of interview footage available online that didn't make it into the film that can be just as interesting. Some other reviews suggest this isn't worth watching but it is a documentary, and effectively serves to document a breadth of people working in the industry and their history in game audio, if that's what you care about, then you should definitely watch it, if not...I'm not sure what you expected? Thank you Karen Collins for making this film!

I'm sorry, I grew up with the C=64, making music myself as well as later on with the Amiga and so on. I got really excited when I saw the title of this documentary, but it was unbelievably uninformative, whilst loaded with repetitive answers and next to no accompanying example. There were almost no showcases that would properly illustrate what was being talked about, and talked about it was in extreme lengths with barely anything to learn from. Imagine there was a history on the car and you've had almost two hours of people, more or less involved with the creation of cars, talking about how you'd have to steer it and how the wheels needed to turn and that the engine had to get stronger and faster and glass needed to be used. Amazing! No? Yes, that covers pretty much the amount of revelation you'd get about the otherwise true glory of computer- and game music from the early days on until today. The only noteworthy aspect this whole documentary might have wanted to bring across, which was the early days' joy of having any sound coming from a device to today's worries about an A.I.'s accidental gas discharge and what that might sound like when it's wearing yoga pants, covered in fairy dust on spring day at dawn, could've sufficiently be presented in 5 to 10 minutes. And within that time you could've squeezed about all the actual example content this whole thing had to offer. I never expected myself to give up on this one, but after over one hour of it I decided to skip forward to see, if anything else might still be told... but no. I'm sadly disappointed, really, because the topic is absolutely beautiful and could've really made an excellent documentary, showing all the real passion that was brewing within each of the key eras of computer music's evolution, featuring at least SOME examples that would go with the interviews and not just the rare 3 seconds of barely related footage that actually made it into this one. And then, this has essentially about an hour worth of advertising for game companies, which really squeezes the life out of any interested audience. Again, I'm sorry, but I was just too bummed out about this one to hold back.

I'm a video game developer, composer, and also an audio teacher. Having been involved with game audio for more than a decade, I'm familiar with the work of Karen Collins. Her books are among the first to delve deep into the game audio field, both from a historical and from a practical perspective. So when she started a Kickstarter campaign for this documentary, I was immediately on board.

In many ways, this documentary is the film version of her book "Game Sound", which is a historical account of game audio, from the early arcade days to current generation consoles and devices. Just like the book, the movie helps the audience understand how game sound came to be what it is today, and how the creative clichés of the field were many times shaped by technological constraints.

The medium's history is told by a series of interviews with key figures from the game audio scene. Yoko Shimomura (Street Fighter 2, Mana Series), Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), The Fat Man (The 7th Guest, Wing Commander), Marty O' Donnel (Halo), the Lucas Arts guys, and many other iconic composers all share their experience in shaping the field of game audio.

For game audio practitioners and fans, this movie is a must-see. Most of the field's prominent figures, some of which rarely speak about their craft, are there, telling their story. The movie also does a good job of documenting the game music scene as a whole.

There are a few minor shortcomings. The rhythm is somewhat slow and the movie feels a bit too long. Also, there could be more audio examples of the games and situations that are described, but I can only imagine the copyright hell that this would mean for such a small team.

All in all, the movie is an excellent account of video game audio history, and a labor of love. Karen has made the most out of a really small budget, traveled the world for interviews, directed and edited tons of material and ended up with a polished and professional product. Not bad at all for a person's first venture into film making.

If you have an interest in video game audio, do yourself a favor and go watch it NOW. If you're just looking for something like "Indie Game: The Movie", it's not that kind of narrative-driven documentary.

Karen has also made available lots of free webisodes that might give you a taste of the full length movie. Watch them at http://www.gamessound.com/movie.html.

Imagine a documentary about video game sounds....without ANY examples and without ANY video game music. Sadly, that's what this documentary is. Endless interviews, endless talking. A lot of people you've never heard of talk about the game music business. Where are the famous composers? Where was Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway or Ben Daglish? Besides Chris Hülsbeck, no one I've ever heard of has made it into this documentary. Where are all the iconic game musics from Nintendo, C64 and Amiga? Where was "Last Ninja" or "Arcanoid"? Sad. Just sad. Instead of some game music, they played the same boring loop of music for 1 1/2 hours in the background of the interviews.

First, I really enjoyed the history pictured in the documentary. It brought back a lot of memories and it was fun seeing back the old hardware and software I played with as a an adolescent.

But for a documentary about sound and music, this must be one of the worst edited ones. Ever.

Although in the program specialists repeatedly mention overdoing the use of music is just bad, the documentary is just doing that. Every single interview just had to have that repeating music score, did it? At the end, it annoyed me so much, I wasn't been able to hear the last 20 minutes or so as that score was driving me nuts. I was literally happy it finally was all over.

Such a pity the creators didn't even watch their own documentary and learned something from it. A real shame, as it was a very interesting topic.