Life has a way of coming at you sideways sometimes and the current climate we find ourselves in could not be more exemplary of that. The experience of day to day life often casts old events in a new light and through that recontextualization can offer one a deeper understanding. That is why when, in the year of our lord 2020, Ludvig Gür, director of Pretending I’m a Superman brought up KONY 2012, I couldn’t help but think “Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time….”
Like many of his generation, Gür experimented with and honed his craft on YouTube. In a time when content on the platform more easily escaped watchful corporate eyes, Gür and his contemporaries were given license to freely pursue projects that personally excited them. “I made an amateur documentary about the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games.” It was that video that caught the eye of producer Ralph D’Amato and would eventually lead to him offering Gür the position of director on Pretending I’m a Superman.
While waxing about simpler times when the majority of videos were titled The History of…., “footage” was mostly a collection of JPEGs and copyrighted content went strikeless, Gür indicted two key projects that he felt changed how the YouTube documentary community was viewed. “When KONY 2012 came out and Noclip, they really sorta started making I think, 30-minute documentaries that you’d expect on TV.” For those unfamiliar, KONY 2012 was a 30-minute documentary film released on YouTube that was tied to a viral fundraising campaign. The years since its release have not necessarily been kind to KONY 2012 or those involved. It is, however, hard to overstate the impact that the free YouTube documentary has had on our culture at large.
Noclip on the other hand, is a Patreon supported YouTube channel, that specializes in documentaries about the more technical aspects of video game development. In fact, there is a connection between Noclip’s Danny O’Dwyer and this project. “ He was actually a supporter of the film,” Gür mentioned when Noclip was brought up. They don’t really know each other personally, but it seems as though Gür and O’Dwyer are cut from a similar cloth. Both exhibit a passion for sharing the stories of talented individuals, but the way in which they choose to display these talents showcase their divergent thinking.
Wikipedia (for better or worse) remains the best friend of amateur documentarians. Armed mostly with a laptop, these individuals do their best to establish and fact check a narrative, but rarely have access to anyone closely involved with their subjects. This can lead to misinformation slipping through and even cause projects to stall out as their creators stare into the infinite void, trying to decipher what is even worth sharing. With D’Amato by his side, Gür was granted access to resources he’d only dreamed of during his burgeoning YouTube days. Those resources are used to great effect over the course of Pretending I’m a Superman, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the path forward was always clear.
Gür recalled, “I think the movie we wanted to make back then was pretty much what people had expected.” The instinct that had earned him his director’s chair was suggesting that the film be structured as a comprehensive series retrospective. Mostly, each title in the franchise would receive a deep dive treatment and the audience could take away a wealth of knowledge about how each game went from an idea on a whiteboard to a product in their home console. That is not the version of the film that is being released on August 18th however. When discussing the narrative shift Gür said, “As we kept going, I think I saw that there was some hidden storyline there about skateboarding and really how it became popular along with the games.”
For me, the decision to focus on the people and world surrounding the games, as opposed to just providing a history lesson, is what makes Pretending I’m a Superman stand out. With Noclip, O’Dwyer and his team perfected a formula that people like Gür were instrumental in conceptualizing. Support from over 4,000 patrons has given the Noclip team the ability to produce lengthy, multi-part series about a myriad of subjects and franchises related to video games. Both of these projects put their considerable resources to good use crafting compelling narratives. Still, with Noclip the game is the character and in Pretending I’m a Superman the characters share the story.
“Noclip is a great channel, but I think our documentary, if it had appeared in Noclip, would probably have been a lot different and focus way more on the development side of things,” Gür pondered as we discussed comparisons between the two. D’Amato was heavily involved in the first eight Tony Hawk titles as a producer, so the decision to focus less on development wasn’t taken lightly. Gür had already told his version of that story once though and he knew its limitations.
The skaters, developers, musicians, tricks, locations, and good times are what Pretending I’m a Superman cares about showcasing the most. When Gür began work on his first THPS documentary, it was as a solo venture and he only had interviews conducted by others to go off of. Given the opportunity to actually speak to his heroes, he was able to craft a film with an immense amount of heart that, like the games it covers, leaves its audience with a basic knowledge of skateboarding, a big smile and a Goldfinger song stuck in their head.
Life can come at you sideways sometimes. One day you could be messing up budget information in a YouTube documentary you’re making and the next, you could be interviewing Tony Hawk with one of the men who help craft that very same budget. It never hurts to stay mindful of your origins.
