You-Read-It-Here-First

[jabailo]

I've been surveying some of the "art" of YouTube lately...or should I say, scouring to find some. For example there's Time's Top 100 You Tube videos:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1974961,00.html

While I, along with all of America apparently, laughed at Charlie Bit My Finger, I wanted to dig a little deeper. I realize that trying to interpret the art of one medium (YouTube) with the aesthetics of another (full bore cinema) is one of the classic mistakes of the so-called intellectual, so I wasn't going to tut-tut about not being able to "find the next Goddard". Quite frankly, it might be "Fred" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9MA0eW8yyw ) viewed 20 years hence.

So, I am trying to know the form that fits the medium.

Utterances: The vid must be short. It must be small. It must be focused and understood quickly, like reading a headline, not a book.

That said, that like the early works of any new medium, which can dominate just because they are first, might not exploit all the possibilities, and at the same time might be able to borrow a few artifices of the old (again, without weighing the whole thing down by complaining about where are the Citizen Kanes ).

Cutting for example. Just because you can hit a switch on your webcam, or your phone doesn't mean you have to leave it running. And yes, while later on you might intend to "download that cool editing software which your friend uses" you probably never will.

So, here's a 1 minute vid I made in about 30 minutes. I filmed with with a veho muvi micro ( http://www.veho-uk.com/main/shop.aspx?category=camcorder ).

I used the on and off button to make jumps (on/off button...try that sometime). I then uploaded the clips into some editing software that came with a jack I just bought that allows me to record to my PC from a VHS machine (found some old tapes I wanted to convert).

The software was just right, let me stitch it together and trim some excess.

Again, I don't know if this is as good as I can get, but I think I'm suggesting a small alternative in style.

Without much ado, I give you... Receipts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCwFg-F7Sqk