The user-generated content conundrum

My friend Charles and I have been corresponding lately about whether something like YouTube can ever make money. What kicked it off was a report by TDG that said user-generated content would make up almost half of all video streams on the Internet between now and 2013, but deliver only 4 percent of the online video ad revenue. That may sound pretty dire, but Charles, who knows something about this, confirmed that advertisers are still skittish about having their ads placed with these kinds of videos. They're too unpredictable in terms of taste and subject matter.

Now there's this blog post by someone from WatchMojo, who makes the novel suggestion that Google just eliminate all that unprofitable user-generated content, or UGC, from YouTube.

It's become fashionable to dismiss user-generated content as "crap." At least this commentator acknowledges that user-generated content is why YouTube exists in the first place. If I want to watch "high-quality" content, I'll go to TV, or newspaper sites, or Yahoo News. But guess what? TV's not that good! Sure, it conforms to commercial standards of image and audio quality, but the "content" of the content, as it were, is often devoid of ideas. Certainly of new ideas. That's why we needed YouTube in the first place.

The problem with talking about UGC is that it's impossible to generalize. The only thing one UGC clip has in common with another is that it it's not commercially produced. Even apart from the problem of advertising on unpredictable UGC videos, it's difficult for "experts" to praise this content as a general class. In fact, the overall language of the mainstream media defies attempts to praise even individual user-generated works, because the mainstream media doesn't officially value the qualities that are frequently most valuable in UGC: utter inanity, inside jokes about the UGC universe, a subtle sense of intimacy.

And, of course, a lot of what we hear about online content in the mainstream media (I mean, consumers as well as reporters like me who are in the "pitch stream," as it were) is driven by business considerations. And the fact is, 99.99 percent of user-creators have no economic interest in getting the word out about the value of their content, let alone the means to get the word out in mainstream media channels. Now, folks like MojoVideo are in an awkward position here. In a way, they have the potential to be ad-friendly, but they have a huge mountain to climb if they want to compete with the established studios and networks in perception and brand awareness. At the same time, their content has neither the spontaneity nor the street cred of video that comes from the average Joe. Yet the Internet must have room for something other than mainstream TV and movies, and the peculiar charms of amateur video.

IAST: The Exiles

I am SO there. This looks like a good article about the movie; I just stopped reading. SF: Castro Theatre, Aug. 1-7.

Quick take: Weerasethakul shorts

Thai director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul seems to be on a one-man crusade to free our minds. He constantly challenges assumptions about cinematic tone, setting, storytelling and more. That practice was on glorious display in Mysterious Objects, the program of shorts presented at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Sunday.

Surprising audiences is an art filmmaker's job. But Weerasethakul does it in such gentle, lighthearted ways that there's never a sense he's throwing something out there and leaving it up to us to figure it out. There are hard things to figure out in some of his films, but his work is always accessible at some level. Most important, there's an underlying sense of play that lightens the whole experience. Some of these shorts would be perfect tools for teaching students to think outside the box.

The Anthem (2006) is most stunning in this respect. Like the feature Tropical Malady, it consists of two parts, in this case a conversation followed by ... an indoor sporting event? The idea of the short, apparently, is some imaginary alternative to playing the national anthem before movies, which is traditionally done in Thailand. Weerasethakul creates a strange combination of many elements with such flair and energy that we're easily taken along for the ride.

Another highlight was Ghost of Asia (2004), a co-production by Weerasethakul and Christelle Lheureux as a tribute to the creative spirits of people lost in the 2004 Asian tsunami. Children "direct" an actor/ghost in frantic beach activities. It's not what you'd expect a post-mortem tribute to look like. My Mother's Garden (2007) is a dreamy combination of animation and eye-popping organically inspired jewelry. Worldly Desires (2005) is a meditation on filmmaking (specifically, the making of Tropical Malady) and wilderness. It was the longest work in the program and also the most challenging. Is the jungle the world's most elaborate backlot, or are humans a species that hunts images instead of prey?

It was a rare chance to check out little-known work by someone I think is on the leading edge of film. If not for Michael Guillen of The Evening Class, I wouldn't have known it was happening. Sunday's was actually the second of two sets, but according to Guillen and others who attended both, it was the better of the two.