We do not allow filming video of our LARP, even if we are in a “public” place  for our events, we are a private event and part of a private organization/club and we will ask you to leave if you show up with a film crew or a video camera, even if it is a little cell phone, GoPro, or DSLR. We will collectively not participate in your film project be it professional or personal.

We are happy to direct you to The LARP Alliance though, so that you may find LARPs that are receptive to you. http://www.larpalliance.net/

Furthermore, if you are not a member of our community or you are not NPCing or PCing at our games, we will ask you not to take pictures as well as it breaks the immersion of our player base and compromises their anonyminity.

Bascially, if you want to come to game to just take picture of the LARPers and not play with us, we will politely ask you to leave. Staff is very serious about protecting our players from exploitation or misuse of their likenesses.

Why we don’t allow filming:

Our LARP is not receptive to being filmed by outside crews for many reasons, as we have many SAG-AFTRA members who must be paid for their likeness on film, we also have a lot of scientists, teachers, doctors, programmers, and lawyers who do not wish to be on film for anonymity and professional purposes. Furthermore, Dying Kingdoms LARP is a Protected Intellectual Property that can not be reproduced without written permission from the owner and The Dying Kingdoms LARP LLC. The liklihood of your getting permission to film is extremely poor as we have taken a poll of our players and enough people are not receptive to being filmed that we must respect their wishes. We are also particularly burned from bad experiences in the past requiring us to enact this policy.

And it’s not just us that feel this way. While we do not speak for everyone, many other LARPs in the area are also not receptive to being filmed without being asked first, and without having the people filming be part of the community, especially without compensation (many of the productions that contact us seem to operate on no-budget, which means if you did use footage of our game neither the game nor our players would benefit in any way).

If you are curious as to the reasons why we don’t tend to like film crews, we suggest that you watch this video: Lightning bolt! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw

(Basically, it never looks as awesome as it feels.)

We also suggest that you sit down and watch Darkon, you can find it on Netflix or in many other places online, and it tends to be the kind of thing most productions want to film. Watch it and see why a lot of LARPers are not keen on being in that style of film even though it is fairly critically acclaimed, picture yourself inside that movie and see if it is something you would want yourself portrayed as. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkon_(film)

Great Examples of LARP in the media:

If you are serious about getting into the world of filming LARP, one of our staff members, Liz Jamieson, has put her thoughts on the subject here. As a SAGAFTRA member and an actress, as well as a long time LARPer and advisory council member on the LARP Alliance, she has some great suggestions of the kinds of things our community at large, not just Dying Kingdoms members, would enjoy seeing in the media more…

Good Examples from www.mackenziejamieson.com:

• Kevin Avery “A LARPing We Will Go”: A youtube piece on a LARP
• LARP LIVE AVATAR ROLE PLAYING: This is a fantastic parody. The reason why it’s a good parody is because these people actually know LARP:
• Knights of Badassdom: They brought on LARP Alliance as consultants which was really smart. If you don’t have the time to join a LARP and understand it, use a LARP consultant like any professional business would do when they don’t know about a subject and need an expert. I don’t have a full review of the movie as it’s not out yet. But based on the trailer, as a LARPer, I am very excited to see this movie.
• Role Models: This film was also decent at featuring LARP and also used LARP Alliance as consultants.