Addendum to: With Phoenix at Gamescom - The other side.

Yesterday I wrote about my impressions of the film shoot with the TV channel Phönix at Gamescom. This morning I got a call from the head of the service who was in charge on site. He told me the following:

• First of all, the program had been shortened from 75 minutes to 60 minutes, so that a lot of things had to be omitted that were actually still planned (including scenes with me).
• He also said that they had of course tried to make appointments, but the team had received no response to many requests and then had to try on location. Furthermore, a number of appointments had also fallen through, so that they had to spontaneously restructure - hence the delays in my shooting date and the planning problem that I perceived as chaos.
• It is generally difficult to shoot a feature in such a location, as the conditions are difficult to predict in advance. You plan, but in the end everything often turns out differently and then you have to restructure spontaneously, which isn't always easy.
• You really do need everyone on set, even if it doesn't seem that way to the outsider. Everyone has their job - the make-up artist, for example, has to choose the type of make-up according to the lighting conditions, which requires experience, the two assistants have to make sure that visitors don't keep running in front of the camera during filming, film and sound recordings have to be recorded separately by two people, as there is too much to consider for one person to be able to concentrate on both alone.
• Regarding the part with World of Warcraft: The extensive editing was due to the reduced broadcasting time and it was not the intention of the broadcaster to portray me as an addict, nor was this the impression they had of me. With the sentence I added, "It's atmospherically very good (...) and it's addictive", they were only trying to summarize how great I thought the game was - "it's addictive" was therefore meant positively, just as I wanted it to be portrayed.

After this phone call, of course, I see things a little differently - nothing was explained to me during the shoot, as it was assumed that I knew how things worked in television and that the processes sometimes seemed chaotic, but this was not the case. The head of the service also made a point of emphasizing that he was not like the RTL reporters, but that he had always shot magazines and that the unfortunate cut was not deliberately chosen to make me look bad. My personal impression of the phone call: I'm sure it honestly saddened the head of the service that my impression was rather negative and he was keen to correct one or two things. As for the WoW cut, I believe him on this one too, except I fear that the key word "addictive" is what will ultimately stick with the viewer (especially in the context of a game that makes any layman immediately think of zombie-like guys staring at the monitor for hours and days without blinking, moving only the fingers of their left hand and the mouse), even if it wasn't intended that way. I suppose that's what happens when you're not that familiar with the subject and I think I can live with that, because those who are concerned and have a clue about the subject know otherwise anyway. A few more words about my behavior, which was not right in many respects:

• I didn't complain during the fair. Had I done so, some things would certainly have been explained to me beforehand and it would have been fair to give the employees the opportunity to explain themselves.
• My way of writing is sometimes a bit polemical - but I never really mean it as badly as it might come across. I'm sorry that phrases like "the bored assistants" were used, especially as I couldn't really judge.
• Furthermore, it would have been humanly correct to ask the team exactly what all this meant before I published the article and not simply write something without giving the team the option to comment on it. I am sorry that I failed to do this. I did not anticipate that the article would be a problem. It was not my intention to malign the station or the staff, I just wanted to give my personal impressions of the two days at the show in an entertaining way, but not to attack anyone personally. I sincerely apologize that I made a mistake in the article.