Random thoughts:
What's the language of videoblogging? Blogging is not journalism - it's a personal voice. When searching for the language of a new medium, it helps to think about the specific strenghts and weaknesses of the medium.
The first photographers tried to imitate painting. It took decades before the language of photography was born: capture the moment. Frame the world through your viewfinder. These are the unique strenghts of photography. There are many movements within photography, many languages, but there is clearly a basic language that fits the medium best.
So what's that language for videoblogging.
Let's look at some of the strenghts of videoblogging:
- It's personal self-publishing. You can say whatever you want, no approval needed (like in a printed publication).
- It's quick. Blogging means you can get something online fast.
- It reaches people. Blogging means you can reach small or large numbers of people.
Wait a sec - we're talking about blogging here. The language of videoblogging will be based in the language of blogging.
What's specific to videoblogging? It uses video. Let's see what videoblogging is not:
- It's not journalism - although it can have elements of journalism.
- It's not movies. No extensive editing.
- It's not video art.
That doesn't really help. I spent an afternoon on Sunday talking to my friend Jay about what videoblogging really is. Here's my manifesto (for now):
1. No editing. Editing takes too long. Selection is the only editing allowed.
2. Tiny movies are moments. Long movies will kill my bandwidth, so tiny movies are a must.
3. Quantity over quality. It's blogging after all. Post as you think. Unfinished pieces.
4. Movieblogs are conversations. The strenght of videoblogging is that you create an audience. That's where using the old fashioned languages of documentary, ... falls down. The tools exist, but the distribution doesn't. No audience. So work that conversation.
Some more ideas from that conversation (which I wish I would have videoblogged):
- Developing the language will be done by insiders of the old languages (TV, movie, ...), who can deconstruct these languages, together with the very young who have the creativity to build upon the work of these pioneers. (Agree?)
- Bandwidth preservation is important.
- Optimizing the workflow is important.
- Will the third world videoblog?
- Why have the tools to make movies not being taken advantage of on a greater scale? Most cameras are being used for home movies. We thought it was the lack of distribution - with a home movie, at least you have an audience.
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Finally: why haven't I seen Bush's latest speech with a commentary track by insightful people as a downloadable file? It'd be more entertaining and interesting than watching the live speech on TV.
The Vogma manifesto:
- a vog respects bandwidth
- a vog is not streaming video (this is not the reinvention of television)
- a vog uses performative video and/or audio
- a vog is personal
- a vog uses available technology
- a vog experiments with writerly video and audio
- a vog lies between writing and the televisual
- a vog explores the proximate distance of words and moving media