An interview with Akidos, the newcomer
avAbout a week ago we announced Perra ”akidos” Andersen as the replacement for our long-time video creator Kevin ”Tweeday” Tweedale. We sat down with Andersen to have a chat about upcoming events and how it was like being a video editor back in the days.
Welcome to NiP! How did this recruitment happen?
Thanks!
A good friend and I had a meeting with Per at DreamHack Summer last month where this amongst other things were discussed. A few emails later a decision was made, and here we are 🙂
What is different with highlight making/video editing today compared to when you first started out?
Wow… I wanna say everything. For starters, back then it was way harder to get your hands on demos from the pro players. That’s why almost every fragmovie from that time is filled with highlights from the semi-pro level and below. Of course you could make a ”pro only” video if you wanted to, but the research wasn’t really worth it in my opinion. There were no VODs. All you had was HLTV-demos (if you could find any that weren’t broken) and in some rare cases POV-demos. Now days a game isn’t even played out before the highlight is uploaded and has thousands of views. Demos and VODs are found easily after each game. Back then, we didn’t even have youtube! We had to upload our movies to ftp’s/file hosting sites and the viewers had to download them to their computers to see them. Scary stuff, right?
Where to do you see highlights in 5-10 years time? What will they be like?
Counter-Strike and E-sports in general keeps on growing and as long as that’s true, the demand for highlight videos will always be there. In 5-10 years time I think it will be pretty much the same but with higher production value and resolution/fps.
You’re filling some pretty big shoes. What new things can you bring to the table?
This is a great question. I love Kevin’s [Tweeday] work on the longer NiP movies and they have really shown how dedicated he is. I will continue in the same style but with my own touch of course. You can also expect shorter fragmovies from smaller events and such.
What will be your first project with NiP?
Depending on how things play out in Montreal this weekend, a movie from ESWC would be awesome. After that my focus is on ESL One Cologne. I wanna make that BIG.
Who’s the most fun player to do videos of and why?
I’ve always loved sniping in FPS games. From the moment I saw the first ”ksharp” (http://youtu.be/J9L7IjvyFVA) or ”Rwa” (http://youtu.be/Zlxi7K5bXU0) video back in the day I was determined to become a great sniper myself and make some kind of video with AWP highlights. Watching players like allu, JW, GuardiaN, kennyS or Skadoodle go ham with the AWP always gets me going 😀