A reporter from Reuters contacted me about writing an article about online video editing websites like Eyespot. He had seen a comment I posted on DVguru and was interested in me giving him some explanation for what I meant by the Youtube schools. So here is the whole eMail that I sent to him awaiting that he might quote me and link to one of my video-blogs one of these days in the article:
I believe the audiences have become less demanding for expensive and time consuming production value that used to be put into video productions. I think the Youtube audience actually skips all kinds of well produced and edited story in favour of the authentic works.
Authenticity I believe is the new requirement for video journalism. You see Robert Scoble at podtech.com was being paid by Microsoft to produce hand held web videos at channel9.com and has recently been invited to Intel’s D1D 45mm fab to get to film hours of shaky, badly lit, honest and non prepared video reporting of Intel’s top executives talking about their latest billion-dollar product.
I think the big companies have understood that the audiences now have become rather immune to expensive well produced and well edited advertising videos. So has the politicians. Check out John Edwards video http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1295/exclusive-john-edwards-interview-talking-about-social-media-and-its-role-in-running-for-president
Check out Ségolène Royal’s campaign videos at http://sego.tv she is french socialist candidate for the presidency in France, getting millions of views on the videos uploaded. And the style is always rough, improvised, no make-up, no profetionnal lighting, no standard editing techniques and more of this kind of video.
Check out channel101.com and channel102.net those are monthly short film festivals in Los Angeles and New York, all about low budget, high level of creativity, high level of enthusiasm, cheap and improvised camera work, to the point editing, bad lighting. The dialogue is rough but it goes straight to the point, telling a story and a way that is more comic than dramatic.
What the new type of youtube audience wants, I believe, is hyperactive video makers, very extensive coverage of everything that is interesting, gone are the times of few second edits because of TV-reporting that has to resume whole events into 30 second tv spots and thus badly satisfy audiences who want to have extensive coverage of certain events. That is the advantage of internet video, that there is no limitation in the length of the videos, thus editing is becomming less important. If people find a section of a video too slow, viewers can simply fast forward through the video. It’s about giving the choice to the viewers from sampling the content through fast forwarding or zapping up to sitting through very extensive coverage of everything.
I have been covering consumer electronics trade shows for a 3 years now at http://ces2007.video-blog.eu http://ifa2006.net http://e3cast.com http://cebitvideo.com http://wcitvideo.com among other video sites. The way I do it, is I film about an hour of video interviews and product demonstrations per day of trade show, thus it can become 4-5 hours per trade show which last several days. And every night from the hotel I upload the whole days shootings to the Internet in high definition and on Google Video for better search-engine availabillity and because Google Video conveniently encodes different lower resolution versions of my high definition videos. Then I get my videos linked to from different technology news sites like slashdot, digg, engadget and gizmodo. I am thinking of trying to have a business model where I would be able to licence my content to established technology news sites as well as ask micro-payments from my hundreds of thousands of viewers.
OK about my idea for the Youtube school, is that young people have got a lot of energy, a lot of creativity, a lot of time on their hands. Cameras have become so cheap, editing is nearly free using a PC and distribution is just a matter of uploading to the Internet. So definately I see the potential in some Youtube film schools popping up all over the world, at least that already established film schools will have to rethink their method of producing video. The principal of those Youtube schools I believe will be for those film students to be as productive as possible, shoot many short films with very low nearly no budget. The only requirement being that many film students work together, act in each others short films, that everyone gets to write stories, direct, edit, publish. The point should be to change roles and each gets the opportunity to produce a lot of video content and that everything gets published on Youtube and other online video systems.
Then when the online video business model is available, which I think it will be soon, all these students from the Youtube film schools will be able to make a living out of their very creative contributions. Gone will be the day when a few established film production companies control the whole film business, and welcomed will be a new type of business model that redistributes the funds to independant film makers, creative and energetic talents and dedication. Quality in film making doesn’t require expensive production value and expensive setups, rather it requires talent, dedication and good timing.
