I’ve been reading, er, viewing Sam Javanrouh’s terrific photoblog forever. This might be the first video he’s posted. At least, it’s the first video I remember. The caption reads “Chess players at Dundas Square, Toronto. Shot on Canon 5D with 5 seconds intervals. Exposure of 1 second for each frame. Music from Philip Glass’s ‘The Photographer’”.
I’m a casual soccer/football fan (I struggle with which term to use). I’m a long-suffering supporter of Canada’s national side, and enjoy watching European matches whenever I get the chance. I look forward to the big tournaments–the World Cup and European Championships–every two years.
The second most popular sporting event on the planet, Euro 2008, is on right now. As I’ve mentioned, we’re a TV-free family. I really only miss the thing for watching sports. I’ll go to my parents’ house or the pub to watch a game, but I like to watch the video highlights of each match on a daily basis.
Unlike North American sports, it’s ridiculously difficult to watch Euro 2008 (and World Cup, if I recall correctly) highlights on the web. No domestic network website–CBC, TSN, Sportsnet–shows them, and I’m denied by my IP address from accessing the BBC’s video. As far as I can tell, my only options are:
Spend CAN $30 to watch highlights and ‘full match reruns’ of all the games. Given that every North American league makes their highlights available for free, that seems pretty steep. I don’t actually want to watch many games–just the highlights.
Resort to ‘illegal’ highlights sites like the usually reliable FootyTube.
The Euro 2008 doesn’t offer a cheaper price if I don’t want to see full matches. Plus, they don’t give me any kind of preview of the video for which I’m paying. Am I going to pay $30 for YouTube quality streaming video (”hey, that pixelated blob scored on that other pixelated blog!”).
If I wasn’t going to Chicago next week, I might actually pony up the $30. Instead, I’ll rely on the less legitimate but free options.
Today I happened to see the video for the catchy Sara Bareilles tune “Love Song”. I first heard this song about a year ago, but apparently it just went huge on the Tube o’ You.
I was struck by how much of the video was shot in the style of the average YouTube video. Ms. Bareilles is centered in the frame, looking directly into the camera, and the shot is basically just her head and shoulders.
Compare that with another singer-songwriter-at-the-piano video from 2002: Vanessa Carlton’s “1000 Miles” (could she look more underwhelmed in her photo on Wikipedia?). I’ve put a few screenshots together to illustrate:
Obviously this is only a single data point, but I’m reminded of an earlier post I wrote about musicians co-opting the style and conventions of YouTube.
Music video directors must recognize that a huge part of their viewership has shifted mediums. I wonder how much (and how else) the move to YouTube is impacting videos? Do they use more saturated colours? Simpler set ups? Any thoughts?
On a related note, it’s interesting that I’m not allowed to ‘embed’ (that is, include in a blog post or elsewhere) either of these videos. It’s been disabled on YouTube. What are record companies and managers afraid of?
All I can say is that the Boss is going to be pissed.
I like how it ends with “our ecosystem rocks!” I kept looking for a hint of winking irony, but I didn’t see any. Thanks to Lee for the linkage.
UPDATE: A Microsoft representative says that it’s a spoof, though intended for an internal audience. That may be why there’s no apparent indicators of irony (an important aspect of satire, I think)–the target audience would recognize it for what it was.
Via Amber, I discovered the unusual design for Washlet.com, a site promoting a, uh, toilet. The site is more or less entirely comprised of little bits of video (note to designers: fix your title tags), discussing the pros and…well, just the pros, of their fancy new toilet.
The toilet-promoting monologues are hilarious because they’re so carefully worded. They never say the word ‘toilet’, and are constantly dancing around the actual nuts and bolts of our bodies and the device’s operations. I kind of feel for the poor actors–they seem so darned convinced of the Washlet’s awesomeness.
I’ve been watching the slow but steady rise of video-centric websites over the past few years. I actually don’t mind this approach at all. However, all of the information should be conveyed and easily available (and linkable) in text form. Why? Arguments for SEO aside, maybe I’m a verbal learner. Maybe I want to cut and paste a chunk to send to my bidet-obsessed friend. Maybe I want to blog about a particular product.
I actually prefer a hybrid model,with video naturally integrated into a text-based site. Coast Capital Savings and Steady Hand do this well.
I was reminded of an amusing Phillips campaign that I blogged about a while back, called Shave Everywhere. They’ve changed the content on that site, but the new stuff looks as good or better than the old.
I just watched the eight extant episodes of The Guild (YouTube channel), a (what is the right term for this? Webisode?) comedy series about the lives and times of gamers. Here’s the first episode:
If you’re a World of Warcraft player, you’ll get all the jokes. If you’re any other kind of gamer, you’re probably get 80% of the jokes (”You like my helm? It’s +5 Sexterity”). Everybody else might get half the jokes.
The performances range from decent to marginal, but that’s pretty standard for any pro-am type project. The main creative force and best actor is Felicia Day, who’s done a lot of work (she was on Buffy in the final season, though I can’t specifically recall who she played–one of the new crop o’ slayers, I suspect).
The conceit of offline and online lives colliding feels fresh, though, and the writing is occasionally witty. In any case, there are worse ways to spend about 40 minutes (eight episodes times about five minutes).
I think this is probably the first piece of fictional video that I’ve watched consistently on YouTube. Do you have a favourite web-only show?
This is a personal bias, but to me this woman has that prototypical ‘actress’ look: big eyes, expressive face, long brown hair and nice cheek bones. I have several friends and acquaintances who are actors who fit this description. Do casting directors favour this type? Maybe, but it seems like they self-select to some degree. Peculiar.
