Over the past twelve months over 28 gigs of data transfer have occured through 400,000 visitors and one and a half million hits.
There have been 746 downloads of the Paddington station video as I write this. On youtube the same video has only had 30 views. This makes me happy because I see that you can make videos high profile from personal webpages and links added in the right place.
I am happy that youtube is being sued because out of the hundreds of video sharing websites out there it is the most devious. It has taken hundreds of hours of content produced at great expense by teams of professionals and offered them in poor quality for nothing on their site. To make it worse it’s made them billions of dollars.
How can the mega corporations, through the intermediary of the RIAA give so much trouble to those who share music let allow youtube to thrive. It doesn’t make sense.
What about all those video sharing websites that went about making content and distributing it the right way? What about those who decided that they would provide a service at no cost to themselves. I’m speaking of those guilty of unlawful distribution of video material.
It’s a website about deception, look at lonelygirl, look at the coke and mentos adverts. Look at the ball in groin laughter. It’s all a form of sadistic pleasure. Why would you want to be manipulated in such a way.
On the positive side it was fun to see the world cup celebrations and I uploaded some video of my own in response to other people’s content.
When it’s used as a video version of flickr it’s an excellent website because it’s an audiovisual window onto the world where a vast wealth of video content may be accessed. Good snowboarding, post it, good party, post it, personal work you’re proud of, post it.
Everyone of us is a content producer and distributor and everyone of us is challenging himself to create something that other people will enjoy. Geocities was about websies, the original sixdegrees was inspired by the film to show that everyone is related throough less than six people to everyone else. Blogging allowed people to reount their lives to anonymous audiences, flickr allowed the sharing of instants and video sharing websites allowed for the sharing of moments.
Is it voyeuristic to look at online videos and photographs made by friends and random strangers and is it exhibitionist of them to show that content? Is it wrong to look at it?
I would participate in this more actively were it not for the droit d’image. I don’t want others posting pictures of me without my consent and I won’t post pictures of others without their consent.
Doesn’t mean I won’t keep looking. It’s fun to constantly refresh the most recent pictures on flickr and see all the events that have been taking place around the world.
Yesterday sound was added to the multicamera in order to add more depth and it’s almost ready. there’s a little fine-tuning left before it’s ready for release.
I’m not sure about the documentary because I took a break from it last night.
Two days till the deadline.
The proposal is handed in, I’ve done some camera work for a multicamera production and now I’m waiting to walk through the halls. It’s been a productive day and the workload should increase over the next week when the multicamera for my group takes place.
Soon I may have internet access in my halls again and at that point the writing will begin again. it’s hard to be inspired in a library. On the positive side I’ve watched up to three new documentaries since last night so I’m wondering whether to look at the origins of french and English cinema.
I had some inspiration whilst attempting to watch Nightmail by Grierson.
Tonight I shall be watching Philibert’s L’empire des Sourd, documentary I recently read about.
I went to see Borat and it’s really amusing, a good excuse to laugh for more than an hour.
There’s a studio, three cameras, four female dancers, one male. It’s a cabaret show yet no one is in costume. That’s because it’s a practice session for those who will be using the studio in two weeks.
I don’t like having a prompter on the front of the camera because it makes smooth movements harder to achieve. It doesn’t matter. I’ll get it right for the proper costumed event.
Yesterday I bought a series of six of Broomfield’s documentaries and I watched one of them today. Chicken Ranch is interesting because Broomfield lets the camera appear in shot, through mirrors and more. He also allows himself to appear, although only fleetingly, at least in this documentary.
He makes observational documentaries and allows the viewer to come to his own conclusions. This is a style of documentary where the action happens in front of the camera, with no use of voice over. Intertitles are enough, similarly to people like Vertov.
They are interesting documentaries because you can see that they have not been scripted. they document life, becoming more biographical and reflective of reality.
They do not strive to tell you what to think but rather encourage you to see and intuit from them.
How many documentaries do you watch that breath, that do not tell you what to think? Most attempt to say “he believes that” whilst “they believe that”. This is a more mature form of documentary making, one where the characters are the story.
I still have another five documentaries to watch and we’ll see what else I learn through watching them.
I found another documentary book today. It’s got many interviews with a variety of directors and I really hope that they help me understand the question that I want to ask and research without it being too broad.