SeeSaw Saw You Wanting TV

News comes in that yet another online TV aggregator has launched.

SeeSaw aims to provide a vast array of TV back catalogues to British viewers, thus filling gaps that the big players like YouTube and Hulu either don't fill, or in the case of the latter, don't yet provide, as Hulu has still not launched in the UK.

The service is free for now, but intends to make some charge, probably for American imports, later in the year, according to a report in the Guardian. By focusing in its PR on shows like Skins, it's doubtless hoping to suck in a younger demographic. Admittedly, YouTube has started to offer full length shows too, so it will be interesting to see how the minnow fares with the shark.

The service is coming out of Beta in the week that YouTube celebrates its fifth birthday.

I was lucky enough to be working in Web TV back in 2000. Looking back, maybe I should have hung around and made my first million, instead of turning my back on it all and becoming a school teacher? On second thought, hell no, I love what I do. But it's certainly true that back in the day we had to encode video into a variety of formats (Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Real Player) at multiple bit rates, manually, for every video. Tedious as a definition couldn't even begin to describe how dull and time consuming that process was!

YouTube's trick was to jump on the Adobe Flash bandwagon, right at the time when Flash become capable of embedding video into its framework, making it a lot easier to embed video across the Web.

It's interesting also to notice the spat that's emerged this week surrounding Adobe's alleged attempts to block the development of HTML5, the new web browser standard which, inter alia, will allow video streaming and 2D graphics within the frame itself. For Adobe, purveyors of Flash, this is a potential disaster; not least because it means all those iPhone users around the world will no longer be barred from watching funky animations as part of their web experience.

What does this mean in the bigger picture? Basically, the delivery mechanisms are moving towards becoming truly platform agnostic, and this might force us back to the concept that content is indeed King, and it will be those who can create narratives for interactive platforms who will succeed.

To see evidence that this where we're heading take a look at the American Beta Google have been running with Living Stories, in which its partnered with The New York Times and Washington Post. Longer running stories are contextualized and re-presented for readers. From Google's viewpoint this enhancement of the user experience might provide more revenue opportunities, in terms of users staying on pages longer (good for advertisers) and content deals with publishers (they acquire an audience online that they're losing in print).

In other words, what we want is meaningful information, and what media institutions need are new ways to connect to us. The landscape in which the two sides meet and interact is evolving rapidly, and those who put up barriers to that process happening any place, any time, on any platform, are deluding themselves that the process can be stopped.

Postmodern mashups make the User Content King

A great video and an interesting blog post from Epic FU.

The video takes a song by Phoenix and matches it with clips from 1980s Brat Pack films. The end result is a brilliant and entertaining mashup, that once posted on YouTube gained the respect of the band and even its own tributes. However, as the posting on Epic FU points out, the very act involved in making mashups brings the producer involved into breach of copyright.

Somewhere along the line there needs to be a careful re-think about this issue. At a school level I find myself in the odd position where I'm told by my exam board (OCR) that while students choosing to make A Level music videos using commercial music won't be penalised by the exam board itself, they may find themselves in breach of copyright when they make the obligatory posting of their content to a website. And that may cost them marks and grades.

In this case the students are not attempting to defraud the music companies or their artistes. They're engaging in an academic exercise. As for most of the mashup producers, they're having fun and quite often bringing added airtime and publicity to bands. Famously, the Red Hot Chili Pepper ran a mashup competition a couple of years ago, inviting fans to make their next music video. The age of collaborative media production is upon us and the relationship between audience and institution has changed. Someone should tell that to the legislators and traditional content producers. As with Apple and the iTunes store a creative and innovative solution is required, so that user generated content can continue to flourish within a framework that doesn't threaten the financial well being of commercial media producers.

For now, the waters remain choppy and grey, but at least there are some great videos being made!

The Future Pace of Change?

A great video that highlights the incredible speed with which our world is being swamped by digital data, and the pace at which new communication technologies are reaching global market penetrations of 50 million users. The shrinking timelines are quite terrifying, and reminds me of Marshall McLuhan's coining of the phrase, 'The Global Village', back in the early 1970s. How true his observation has come to be, how swift the rate at which people all over the world can join real-time communities of shared interests and values.

There's mileage in using this video, I think, within teacher or student presentations that look at how the relationship between audiences and institutions are changing rapidly. There's also some use here if the video were to be incorporated into a presentation about issues surrounding Distribution.

If you use the video do let me know how. I'd be interested to hear from you.

The read/write web and students' learning

A fantastic short video, that gives a really good overview of how teachers can use free online interactive tools to empower students to work collaboratively.

Social networks, sociability, and a short film about love

Media pop psychologist Aric Sigman (who got his first broadcasting break on the LBC health show my dad presented and I produced back in the 90s)  has written an excellent report about the risks of using social networks,  in Biologist, the magazine of the Institute of Biology.

Dr Sigman was interviewed by the BBC and you can hear the report, and read more about his article here.

In brief, Dr Sigman warns that the aim of social networks - to keep people in touch - could be having a negative effect, especially on younger users, for whom online interaction increasingly is replacing face-to-face conversation. 

Naturally, there are pros and cons to this argument, with respondents to the BBC article arguing for both benefits and harm caused by the use of social networking sites.

Film stars repeat YouTube success story - News - South Manchester Reporter

www.southmanchesterreporter.co.uk

As a brilliant counterpoint to Dr Sigman's assertion that too many young people are online too much, up pops a fantastic short film, made by two 20 year old Media students at Manchester Metropolitan University. 

How To Say I Love You cost £200 to make, was shot in a morning, and garnered 650,000 hits in its first 24 hours on You Tube. Since its first posting a month ago it's had more than 1.7 million hits! Its makers, Hayley Stuart and Francesca Sophia, have produced a sharply observed commentary on how the Facebook generation still wants old fashioned romance to sweep them off their feet. It's just that for teens brought up on rapid Status updates, there isn't always time to waste on small talk.

How To Say I Love You is a powerful short film, that warrants your attention. Stuart and Sophia's previous YouTube upload, Olivia - Explorer, made for £7, has received over 1.3 million hits. Expect to see more from these two in years to come. Exceptional talent.

Stopped Frames and Time Lapsed

It's strange how themes can emerge from a seemingly invisible synchronicity in the air.

Last Saturday I spent a great couple of hours photographing a dozen Lacrosse matches at school. By the time I was done I had 452 shots, of which I decided to keep 352 after reviewing them at home. As I was scrolling through the shots on the camera I noticed a rather nice flip book effect occurring. Inspired by this observation I bought a copy of the excellent iStop Motion software, which is a stop frame animation program for the Mac. I dropped in all 352 shots sequentially from iPhoto, exported the resulting movie into the new iMovie 09, from where I added opening titles and a slight vignetting effect. Then, I slowed the film down by 40%, added a free soundtrack that came with iMovie, exported it for online distrubution, and hey presto, an afternoon of sporting prowess condensed down to 80 seconds. The whole process took 15 minutes.

Lacrosse: Berkhamsted V Benenden from Sacha van Straten on Vimeo.

I chose to use Vimeo over YouTube, as I find the compression on Vimeo produces fewer artefacts. I like the end result. Let me know what you think.

It's got me thinking that I should play around with stop-frame animations more. I've been put off by the thought of hours of time consuming shot taking, but actually I think there are ways to make mini-films without too much fuss. I believe I can shoot DV and iStop Motion will strip out the frames, to create the desired animation effect.

At the other end of the spectrum I came across this post for a new app for the iPhone at Digital Urban. It allows users to make time lapse animations from their mobile. I'm not sure how practical this might be, but there are some cool examples in the posting. 

iPhone TimeLapse Test from digitalurban on Vimeo.

So, time lapse and stop frame - they just might be the future of fast promo videos. 

Facing up to production planning

So here I am, having bought a couple of cheap but rather useful Flip camcorders a few weeks ago. A quick reminder - they look like mobile phones, are cheap to buy, as close to idiot proof in terms of operation as a piece of techno-kit can get, and seemingly irresistible to staff and students alike.

Finally, I got one of my test models back yesterday and figured it was time I had a little play with them myself. One of my lower sixth classes was ready to give me and their peers quick pitches about the film ideas they're developing. Filming will begin in the new year, and with only a week to go before the Christmas break begins, it seemed like a perfect moment to put them on camera.

So, I popped the Flip on a tripod, let it record the presentations, including audience questions, then flipped out the USB stick that's inbuilt, connected the camera to my PC, went to YouTube, hit upload, and got on with something else.

As if by magic, when I came back there were the three videos online. Now, these aren't going to win any awards for cinematography, sound or anything else. In fact, with perfect timing, a workman started using a noisy drill half way through our recordings. But, it does mean we have a moving image record of what happened, which is a useful piece of research data to own.

Here are the three presentations. There'll be some more coming tomorrow, and I will also start, now that I've created a Berkhamsted Media channel on YouTube, to upload other student produced material.