This
week we looked at some video storytelling and it was delicious. An
additional set of options are available to readers engaging with recorded film:
staging, lighting, ambient sound. So much can be done without words.
I
like the rough, observational Cinéma vérité of these blog stories, although you
wonder if for all the roughness and bad angles, the shots were meticulously story-boarded
and scenes set up to provide that feeling.
If
I were to do anything like these video blogs, I would particularly try to imitate
the imperfect, accidental-seeming, abstract camera angels of Marble Hornets and the ambient sounds of
Connect with I. They both work
subliminally to make you curious about what’s going on. They’re also beautiful abstractions of image and sound on their own. And they can be seen as a
commentary on bad camera work and editing, like the 15-min show spoofing bad cable
access, Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule. Some ugly, discontinuous things can be reframed to look interesting or beautiful.
These
blog segments are addictively small (just one more potato chip…), like
commercial-break segments, which is odd considering as a culture we’ve always
proclaimed to hate those time slots of storytelling. Internet culture has maybe
converted our brains into liking information being served up in this way.
If our attentions were so short, we wouldn’t be able to binge watch TV shows
and video blogs. But we don’t mind the segments being smaller sized for our
convenience. When you think about it, there’s a lot more time involved in
clicking the play button over and over again every two minutes. These stories
demand that we commit to them again and again like needy friends.
Works Cited
Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule. Adult Swim, Accessed 21 March 2019.
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