So in Magic: the Gathering (surprise?), the term "meta-game" refers to what decks are currently being played. So whenever you need to choose a deck to bring your local tournament or whatever (either through construction or copying), you need to make sure that it had a good match-up against a good amount of whatever meta-game you were stepping into. For example, if everyone plays rock at your local game store, you bring paper. If everyone plays scissors, then you sure as hell don't bring paper; you bring rock. Similar to the meta-game in Magic, there is a "meta" for Halo montages, which consists of what's currently being done and what has already been done.
Knowing the meta in the Halo montage world is very important when you're making a montage, because clips derive a lot of their value based on what the meta is. The first step in applying knowledge of the meta to montage creation is to simply know the meta. While this kind of sucks, you will need to watch a good amount of montages before you even start making your own in order to gain a good idea of what the meta is and make your video accordingly. However, how well you need to know your meta depends on what kind of video you are trying to make.
In my older post, Honers and Innovators, I explained how honer material and innovator material age differently. In summary, honer material ages more slowly while innovator material ages rapidly. This is very important when it comes to knowing the meta, because you will have to know the meta to different extents depending on what kind of video you are making. If you're making a video with an emphasis on honer material (your traditional multikills and whatnot), all you need to do is watch a couple very recent well-received montages, sort of average what people are getting (average Last Resort beach spot multikill is killtacular, average Guardian KotH multikill is killtastrophe, etc), and try to match that. However, if you're making a video with an emphasis on innovator material, you will literally have to watch every video in existence that might share content in terms of category with what you are trying to make. For example, if you're trying to make a Salaya-esque montage that revolves around using trick jumping to make unique escapes and perform ambushes, you will have to watch every single montage that uses trick jumping to make unique escapes and perform ambushes. This is because, unlike honer material, innovator material becomes old incredibly quickly. While a generic multikill like an overkill extermination on Last Resort from the beach spot can be used in dozens of videos before it gets old, a clip like PianoFrenzy's health pack jump on Countdown would get old after the 3rd or 4th attempt. Even if you're only performing this trick for the 5th time in all of Halo montage history, your clip would be labeled as "unoriginal" and a "stolen idea". In the end, when you are trying to innovate, you just want everything you do to be new.
The reason why you have to watch literally everything when it comes to innovator material is because unlike honer material, innovator material is less of a gradient and more of a disconnected cluster of awesome ideas. While innovator material can be recycled by improving it (an example is the icicle jump at the end of LBYL 2 by Gary UK. Even though this clip relies on its originality for entertainment value, it was recycled and improved upon with the use of more icicles to use trickier places), the constituents of the innovator meta are mainly entirely different from one another and loosely contained together under a few vast umbrellas (trick jumping, glitching, etc). Honer material, on the other hand, is a smooth gradient for the most part, because honing is the gradual improvement of a process over time. As time passed, the traditional montagers got better and better at stringing together kills and the average multikill went up by one every few months. If you know that the average for clip X is an overkill, you know that it was probably a triple a couple months before and will be a killtacular in a few months.
Now I'm going to talk about exploiting the meta for your personal gain. The easiest way of exploiting the meta is by simply one-upping what it is currently. This is the Kampy/honer way of doing it. While everyone was getting overkills and killtaculars, Kampy came in with a mix of stellar clips at killtrocity and above in his 4th Halo 3 montage. The honer method of one-upping everyone can also be applied to innovator material. For example, a clip where someone trick jumped off of 5 icicles in a row would be ridiculous. Similarly, a clip where someone did Salaya's grenade launcher jump twice in a row in order to reach an out-of-reach place would also be insane. The second way of exploiting the meta is the innovator method. There are two ways of doing this, which are somewhat similar:
1. You can look at the meta, identify what's not there, and do it.
2. You can look at the meta, identify what's there in the highest concentration, and do the opposite.
The first way is simply doing something completely new. The second way is opposing the main stream. Pretty much every Halo clip becomes boring eventually from being seen again and again. For example, an MLG Onslaught overkill is always a fairly hard clip to get given that the opponents are not complete idiots. However, it was done so many times and shown in so many montages that the MLG Onslaught overkill quickly became outdated and obsolete. The homogeneity of these clips also quickened its downfall (set up in enemy base, move from side to side, pick them off the spawn, repeat). Sometimes you can reap tremendous entertainment value for your viewers by simply going against the main stream and doing something that people aren't tired of. For example, Reddit's second Halo: Reach community montage received a powerful positive response for its map variety. In an era dominated by Sanctuary in the MLG field and by Pinnacle and Caged in the social field, this montage was a magical breath of fresh air. Non-sanc, non-pinnacle clips weren't exactly some sort of innovation; they were merely not what was dominating the meta at that point and viewers appreciated them just for that. This is why I think that an MLG montage that purposely has absolutely no Sanctuary clips in it at all would be incredibly well-received given how dominant Sanctuary clips have been in MLG montages since the beginning of Halo: Reach. Another example is Mastalee, and in a similar vein, Lynx. There have been many times in Halo montage history when the meta devolved who could duck-hunt better and get the largest multikill. While everyone was trying to go for gigantic hardscope multikills, Mastalee developed his own style and went for clean super long range no scopes for low-ish multikills (triple, sometimes overkill, sometimes lower than triple). Lynx, on the other hand, just went for sick no scopes in general (overkill on Last Resort, mancannon snipes, etc), also for low-ish multikills.
In the end, the meta is one of the most important things to know when making a Halo montage. Once you've identified what kind of Halo montage you're going for (honer or innovator), you should get to know the meta accordingly and use this knowledge to obtain whatever level of entertainment you want your montage to have. Thanks to everyone once again for reading and take care.
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