Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen | solitude.dk

Sometimes B has projects that I get involved in. I don't always understand why I'm doing what I'm doing, but it very rewarding to work on small, strange creative projects. This weekend I was pulled into the wonderful world of animation. I can't tell you waht the end product will be, but I present to you: Jerry Springer animating into Drew Carey.

An 1980s Mercedes Benz and 1970s music — it's the only way to get from A to B. Vloggercue was awesome (despite stomach aches), but New York City was overwhelming as always. Boston afterwards was much more laid back. I'm ready to go back any time.

Apparently anything warrants a press release these days. RavelBabel has created a system for video comments (via) and they're calling it a hyblog. Part regular blog, part videoblog — a “true hybrid blog”. I'm wondering why they wanted to use this term instead of just calling it a videoblog. After all videoblog implies blog.

But get how you are supposed to add your video comment: You have to upload your video via FTP and they will review each video manually. They turnaround will be no longer than 24 hours on weekdays (if you post during the weekend your comment will be posted the following Monday). Come on, RavelBabel. Get with the program, join the 21st century, wake up and smell the coffee. This isn't 2001 anymore. As Steve points out there are other companies who are much closer to solving the video comments issue. Hell, even the video comments prototype I hacked together in one evening in 2004 is better than this. Comments were automatic and everything. And I didn't even send out a press release.

A cable channel showed the brilliant movie One Hour Photo tonight, starring Robin Williams as the psychotic photo lab operator. I won't get into the tragedy of his character, but move on to a quote that stuck with me:

I'm sure my customers never think about it… but these snapshots are their little stands against the flow of time. The shutter is clicked… the flash goes off… and they've stopped time… if just for the blink of an eye. And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this… I was here. I existed. I was young. I was happy… and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture. Most people don't take snapshots of the little things… the used Band-Aid… the guy at the gas station… the wasp on the Jell-O… but these are the things that make up the true picture of our lives. People don't take pictures of these things.

Peter Harms Larsen writes about this registrering aspect of the photograph and the video in “Faktion som udtryksmiddel” (in Danish only, sorry):

Fotografiets — og senere filmens specifikke mekanisk-kemiske produktionsteknik (i modsætning til tegningens og maleriets subjektivt håndværksmæssige), medfører at disse nye billedfremstillinger på én gang registrerer en del af den synlige virkelighed nærmest som et måleinstrument, samtidigt med at de afbilleder den med en særlig realistisk mimesis. Vi får altså billeder hvis betydning består i en kombination af den indexikalske og den ikoniske tegnfunktion i forhold til den gengivne virkelighed.

And Adrian Miles makes the more or less obvious connection to blogging in “Blogs: Distributed Documentaries of the Everyday”:

This 'everydayness' of blogging grounds practice in the lifeworld of the writer, and tends to assist in legitimating the blog in terms of its purchase upon the world. […] The notion of authenticity here is related to the indexical markers described, so that these texual markers operate much like the analog indexical relations evident in film. This is not to overstate the point, but it is to insist that when a blogger mentions a place, time, or person, such place, events and people do exist.

Richard BF somehow thinks that video has patented the registration of the everyday in videoblogging. He even says he doesn't like photography because it's posed (if that's not what he's saying I'm not understanding his dislike of photography). The difference between video and photography is not that one is somehow more real than the other — they are equally “posed” so to speak. The difference is simply that the photography freezes a blink of an eye in time, while the video records a series of blinks. I find this freezing in time very alluring, as it can show things the continuous recording cannot. They two are different, but to say that one is more real than the other would be a mistake.

Richard ended his post with a snapshot of real life. I suppose I should end with a photo snapshot from real life. Jenn took the photo, but I wish I had. The photo has frozen time at the right moment where Indie (the cute puppy) and the cow are looking at each other. That makes this blink of an eye much more powerful than a video of the event would have.

This is just a quick test of a new script. It takes any link with rel="enclosure" that also contains an image (like the screenshot above). Then when you click on the image it automagically replace the image with the embedded video. Non-javascript enabled clients will just get the straight link. To it's a great deal for both robots/crawlers and humans.

The downsides right now it that the script doesn't work in Internet Explorer for Windows, and only in the newest beta version of Opera (Firefox users are fine). I haven't tested with more browsers.

Once I get some more quirks worked out (and added support for Windows Media as well as Quicktime) I will put up a notice on how you can use this on your own blog (it's really easy!).

The video is a short clip from Main Street of the small Michigan town where I'm at right now.

Since reading discovering that there are videos available from the seminar called “Interface and interaction: Social software” (via Jon Hoem) I have had them bookmarked for viewing. The videos look interesting, but since they are only available for streaming and not for downloading I've no gotten around to watching.

Usually I create a form of pseudo-playlist in my browser's list of downloaded files with the videos I need to watch. That way I have stuff downloading in the background and when I want to watch (sometimes days later) they're ready for instant viewing. That doesn't work very well with streaming files, but maybe me blogging this will help me actually view some of the videos. After all, I would like to know how Luhmann and social software fit together.

While talking about the recent breakdown of Justin Hall, Jay mentions that video is the fly on the wall that shows situations objectively, while writing forces choice on you:

I say this because text blogging forces you to have judgement. If i decribe a moment between us, i am forced to color it with feelings…if I am to be honest or interesting. But with video, you let the viewer choose what to think. “This happened…no denying it. What do you think?” Words force choices on you.

And I disagree very much with this thought of video existing only as a fly on the wall that represents the situation objectively. In Rasmus Dahl's article “Disctinctions in Documentary Television” (in “The Aesthetics of Television”, Aalborg University Press, 2001) it is discussed among other things three types of intervention in documentaries. I've simplified the article a bit because I'm just trying to prove a point.

Scripting/organisation

Not everything is filmable. As Rasmus Dahl says: Going from the muddy, baffling field of reality, or realities, to the focused and limited space of the pro-filmic — the events observable by camera and microphone — involves necessarily a sort of transformation, and the nature of this transformation is dependent upon the decisions made by the producing agency.

Shooting

A more visual form of intervention takes place when you shoot the video. You can't film everything, you have to choose when to turn on your camera, and since you can't encompass a whole situation you have to choose what to film as well. In the same vein perspective plays in, moving the camera up or down from eye level makes a distinct difference for the viewer for example.

Editing

The way you attach clips in order to create the story is the last type of intervention. Additional material like music, graphics and sound effects also have an effect on the level of intervention here.

There are rich possibilities for doing intervention in video. In fact I think the amount of choices are on the same level as written accounts, if not higher. You can make a video open for interpretation, or you can make it closed — just as you can with a written text! The problem lies in the fact that people have a tendency not to think about video as a subjective work of intervention because it can easily appear to be a mirror of realities. Thus video is more effective as a tool of deception for the author, because the viewer doesn't expect intervention to have the impact that it does.

One last somewhat related thing I want to point out. Jay suggests that Justin should be videoblogging instead of text blogging, because that way he wouldn't have alienated himself from the world around him. But taping video instead of writing won't solve his problems. Justin needs to edit himself, whenever you insist on making everything that happens to you public it doesn't matter if you're writing or filming.

The problem is that you are “recording” situations that partcipants don't want recorded. A lot of situations aren't meant for public consumption, and it would seem Justin lived in a fantasy world where this wasn't true. If he can't or won't accept that he will continue to alienate the world around him.

As I've shown it's pretty painless to quote video in video. It would also be straightforward to quote text in video by including the text in your video clip. But how do you quote a video in a text post? For text I do something like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

I can of course just make a link to the video I'm quoting, but often a small snippet would be optimal to bring forward a point. Do I just cut out my quote, save it, upload to my own server and embed it like any other video? With a link inside the videoquote to the original video?

In his last video Peter mentioned quoting in video. I've been meaning to make a little test for a while, and so Peter became my victim. The video was made using only Quicktime Pro. I just marked the piece of Peter's video I wanted to use and chose “Copy” from the Edit menu. Then I simply pasted it in (“Paste” — also in the Edit menu) at the spot in my video where I wanted it to appear. Export, add a link using Quicktime Thingie, and I was done. I wanted to try out a video-in-video thing, but I've run out of time today.

This isn't going to turn into a photo-blog or anything. There are just some photos I would like to share. While waiting for the bus at the new bus terminal in Aalborg I placed my camera on a table and clicked the button. I like how it turned out.

Videoblogging Week is getting to me. Whenever I take out my small camera I can't help thinking to myself: “Would I be videoblogging this if I could?” Maybe the question I should be asking myself is “Would I prefer to tell this as a narrative?”. In this case my goal isn't to provide a narrative, but only to show one frame of a possible narrative.

Of course it's a bit strange to have this photo as an example as it is pretty much a lucky shot. However the focus is on an aestetic shape — the reflection of the ceiling in the table — and not on a narrative taking place at the bus station. Thus a photo is a better option than a video, in my opinion. Not to say that video can't be used when the focus is on an aestetic expression, because it can and it can be very good at it. For this object the aestetic image is just better captured with a normal photo.

Steve Garfield's video on Micro Machines is an example of the opposite. His goal is to tell a short narrative about a Micro Machines video shoot (very meta-texual by the way) and the narrative works much better in moving images than it would have with a series of photos.