Posts tagged video
Why It’s Time to Rethink Web Video Entirely
Producer Adam Westbrook recently built an essay called The Web Video Problem about how cinematic video content is wrong for the web, and that we can and ought to recreate the visual storytelling experience on the web entirely. Toward that end, he’s working on web publishing house (Hot Pursuit).
He writes:
In visual storytelling on the web we are still talking about images in deliberate sequence. We are juxtaposing these images, either over time (in a linear audio/visual way) or in space (like a web comic might).
If we accept this definition of visual storytelling (in the purest sense) then it doesn’t matter if it’s video, a web comic or even an animated GIF - or a combination of all these and more.
Combine this with the growing capabilities of the web browser, and the connectedness of the internet, and potentially we have the ability to tell dynamic, visual stories in a way that hasn’t been done before.
This excites me very much.
The essay is nicely built and designed with bold, scrolling visuals (using the curtain jquery plug-in, which yes, is very popular these days and can be downloaded here for your own building pleasure) so that you can choose to read the whole thing or just get the highlights. It’s worth checking out.
Bonus: He provides some great resources on visual storytelling:
A good briefing on the principles of visual storytelling are featured in the second issue of Inside the Story Magazine, available here. If you don’t want to pay for the whole thing, this free articlecovers a lot of the same ground. Scott McCloud’s comic book on comic books is an essential read for visual storytellers. Craig Mod’s essay on Subcompact Publishing informed some of the ideas about thinking web-natively, as did this article by John Pavlus and this piece by Bryan Goldberg. Finally, Steven Benedict’sanalysis of Spielberg’s cinematic storytelling skills demonstrate what visual narrative can acheive, and let Steven Soderbergh tell you why this new thing shouldn’t become like the movie business.
Image: Screenshot from The Web Video Problem
Stabilize that Camera
Ever have problems with a shaky cam when you’re shooting in the field? We all do, but check this new camera stabilizer.
Via Gizmodo:
The product is called MōVI, created by Freefly, longtime maker of crazy camera-drone equipment and stabilizers. [Vincent] LaForet is presenting a short film and behind-the-scenes video to illustrate its abilities, which consists of a completely custom-made gimbal and 3-axis gyroscope that digitally stabilizes the camera (a Canon 1DC in this case). It looks to be very light and portable, a far cry from giant metal arms, vests, and weights that almost the entire camera support world is based on.
Via Vincent LaForet:
This device isn’t the end of the sticks, Steadicam, slider, dolly or jib to be sure… but it sure will make you think twice about using those tools on many of your shots when you find out how quickly this device allows you to execute a similar shot but in a fraction of the time. It can literally take longer to explain a shot, than it would to execute a perfect shot with the MōVI.
It’s way beyond our price range, coming in at $15,000 for the version currently in production with smaller model to be released for around $7,500, according to LaForet. Still, would be good for a day rental on an important shoot.
Or, hopefully, as Gizmodo suggests, the technology will trickle down to more affordable models and spinoffs in the nearish future.
Using Social Media to Cover For Lack of Original Thought
A recent Onion Talk for all you social media editors/consultants/experts out there.
CLOUDS Interactive Documentary – Exploring creativity through code.
FJP: We’re sold, “People across the planet are dreaming together… it’s like experiencing a documentary in a video game environment.”
Mozilla Releases Popcorn Maker
Via Journalism.co.uk:
Mozilla has released Popcorn Maker 1.0, which allows journalists to create web-native video that includes real-time tweets, Google maps, images and more.
Popcorn Maker allows users to drag and drop video from YouTube or Vimeo or audio from SoundCloud and then add other other elements such as images, tweets and links to content on the web. For example, tweets that include a hashtag can be added and will be automatically updated with new tweets containing that hashtag after the video is published.
For those with coding skills, there is a Javascript library called Popcorn.js, which was launched at last year’s MozFest.
After watching the videos and poking around a bit, Popcorn Maker feels like Storify but with a video wrapper.
Visit the site to how it’s been used. For example, this story on New York’s Stop and Frisk laws; this neighborhood tour that mashes up Google Maps and Wikipedia; or this remix of a TED Talk.
The problem, he said, that traditional media has with online media is that ‘they don’t get you can’t just put plastic robot anchors on and expect people to take it seriously. The younger audience doesn’t buy it. That’s our advantage; we’re honest with the audience, and they can tell we’re real.’
What Cenk Uygur’s Success Says About the Future of Media (Digiday)
Uygur is host and creator of “The Young Turks,” a political show on YouTube and carried by Current TV. The 42-year-old has built up a large and loyal fanbase in the last seven years. He does a daily live stream — “TYT” has 413,00 subscribers who have watched its videos a whopping 850 million times — and since December 2011, “TYT” has had a nightly one-hour show on Current TV. But Uygur, whose show is focused on politics, hasn’t stopped there. In the last two years, “TYT” has added eight other shows to its fledgling network, ranging from a film review show to a sports show and a college-focused show. The Young Turks Network is a modern video network, all owned and operated by Uygur and team, and it runs through YouTube.
Related: NPR’s special series on the future of TV: How We Watch What We Watch
Moleskins and Stop Motion Are Just a Few of Our Favorite Things
Created by Rogier Wieland for Moleskin using 382 notebooks, his cat and a mouse borrowed from a pet shop.
The making of video can be viewed here.
H/T: Colossal
IMDB’s Top 250 Films in 2.5 Minutes
Edited to a DJ Faroff mashup of Joan Jett, The Beatles, House of Pain and Cypress Hill, Jonathan Keogh brings together 250 movies in 2 and a half minutes.
H/T: Slate.
Skating China’s Ghost City
Ordos, China has been a fascination the last few years. In particular, a nine-year-old district within it called the Kangbashi New Area.
Located in Inner Mongolia, Time had an article and photo essay about it back in 2010. So too the New York Times. Reuters chimed in in 2011. The BBC followed suit in 2012.
Created to house upwards of a million residents, almost no one lives there. Apartment, office and government buildings stand mostly empty. Convention centers are unused. Global economists fret this indicates a property boom ready to go bust.
But you can, evidently, skate.
Charles Lanceplaine, a French videographer based in Shanghai, recently visited with a group of riders to take advantage of the empty plazas and streets.
Bonus: Like people doing things in unexpected places? Check out four-time Irish women’s surf champ Easkey Britton riding waves in Iran near the Pakistan border.
Surfing Iran
Four-time Irish national surfing champion Easkey Britton recently traveled to Chabahar, Iran on the Gulf of Oman near the Pakistan border. Evidently, the swell there picks up during monsoon season in India.
Easkey writes about both the waves and how the trip challenged and changed her media-fed perception of Iran for SurfGirl Magazine. A PDF version is available here.
Video by Marion Poizeau
The VO1CE Project: citizen journalism and development
Think citizen journalism, think crowdsourcing, think video-documentaries, think advocacy, think mapping, think civic media. This is what the Vo1ce Project is about. An idea developed by Angelo Greco and Marija Govedarica focused on training citizens in underserved communities to report on sensitive issues and then publishing their findings on a web-based platform. Vo1ce’s goal is to foster community development by engaging marginalized localities in documenting and sharing information.
“We decided to focus, at least on this early stage of the project, on covering censorship because the problem is everywhere, and we think it affects every single layer of the communities in the Americas”, said Greco, a graduate from The American University, during an interview in a cafe in Mexico City.
Currently, Vo1ce has ongoing projects in Serbia, the USA, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. Angelo was visiting Mexico City looking for citizen journalists, journalists, activists, and human rights advocates willing to join the censorship project that is about to take off in the Latin American countries. After his stop in Mexico, he traveled to Medellin, Colombia, also looking for supporters. (Interested in joining the cause? send an email to info@vo1ceproject.org)
Why are they focusing in Latin America?
The complexities of the region in terms of the challenges faced by underserved communities and the interest of professional journalists to mentor citizen journalists are a great mix they’ve found in the region, said Greco.
According to Greco, the main challenges ahead for Vo1ce will be to find journalists and activists willing to join the cause, developing a friendly-yet-professional mobile app to help capture and transfer footage and then find the best way to publish the findings of their different projects in a visually compelling platform.
The Vo1ce Project is an NGO currently going through a fundraising campaign.
Image: Angelo and Marija founders of the Vo1ce Project.
The Daily Telegraph Betting on Live Video
The Telegraph Media Group has redesigned its studio to handle live streaming, struck a content deal with the AP Video Hub and hooked itself up to London’s communication hub, the BT Tower, in an effort to bring live video to its audience during breaking news events.
However, the Telegraph won’t just be a live streaming studio affair.
Various reports mention that journalists will have a “backpack device allowing high-quality live video to be sent over 3G networks.” In other words, this traditional print publication will soon have video reporters out in the field streaming back to the mothership.
I don’t know what the Telegraph is using but I’ve used one of these “backpack devices” from LiveU.
They basically work like this: you connect your camera to the broadcast device via Firewire. Inside the device are multiple 3G cellular uplinks from different providers (eg., Sprint, AT&T, Verizon) and a software layer that disaggregates your video among them. That way, each of the multiple cellular uplinks handle just parts of the video instead of all of it. Having multiple carriers means that if any one has a weak signal, more video is pushed toward the others.
On the receiving end of the signal is a server that reconstructs the disaggregated video and pushes it back out for Web, mobile and tablet audiences to view.
It’s all very neat stuff and has been used by media outlets to cover events ranging from the Grammy’s to the World Cup to this year’s presidential election race. — Michael
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