So I went to YouTubeLive on Saturday night, or rather, the aftermath of it. Everyone was filing out, including a number of big YouTube stars. It's funny how I recognized the performers I watch, but totally missed ones who are popular with whole other groups of fans. Rather than one monolithic pop culture, there were multiple ones coexisting and overlapping among those people milling around. That, plus the varying degrees of YouTube fandom, where most everyone is basically just a regular person, and a fan of some other, bigger YouTuber. I was going to say "normal person," but one of the stars I'm talking about is TheWineKone.
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.
How does this video make Obama look like a rock star?
First of all, the rally itself looks like a concert. It's outdoors, there's a big stage and a huge crowd, and people are screaming, not just clapping. But if the whole video were shot from the audience's perspective, it would just look like a political rally. We would be passively waiting with the audience for the headliner to appear, and then we'd see the Obama we know from TV.
Instead, the video begins backstage (sidestage, really), and you can instantly tell. It's like the inside of a giant black tent, with lots of scaffolding, and I think you can see the sound guy at his mixing board on the right. It looks like backstage at a rock concert, which we've all seen in concert movies. And here's the thing: What does backstage at a campaign rally look like? We don't know, because nobody's shown us. It suggests backroom deals. But here, it's just Obama, a young woman, a young black man, and one white guy in a suit (who quickly ducks out of the frame). And then Obama talks to us.
First we hear the announcer introducing Obama, with exactly the tone of a concert promoter. And what's more exciting than going to a rock concert and hearing the promoter announce the headliner? Being backstage with the headliner as he is introduced, because he has to immediately go out on stage and meet his fans. There's urgency, not just anticipation.
But suddenly, Obama turns to the camera and gives his pitch for caucusing. It lasts just six seconds, but with the audience roaring in the background, it feels much longer. It's an incredibly taut moment, with Obama stretched between his live audience and us, the YouTube viewers. It feels all the more personal because he is supposed to be out on that stage.
So far, candidate YouTube videos have been mostly TV clips, conventional footage of rallies, or fawning supporter videos. Here, Obama is truly YouTubing. Centered in the frame, his face slightly distorted by the wide-angle lens, is it any wonder he looks incredibly young?
Then, without a cut, the camera turns toward the stage as he walks out, and the light changes from the cool of backstage to the warm glow of the spotlights. But again, we're backstage, so we can see the spotlights. As no other candidate can, he walks out on stage calmly, casually, and yells, "Hey!" Finally, the video switches to the audience's view as he greets the on-stage group in that warm stage light.
It looks thrown together, but this is a well-crafted video. Obama's voice is coming from the wireless microphone clipped to his shirt, while the introduction and the crowd noise are from another microphone. There's very little distortion. They've been perfectly mixed, probably while the video was being edited. (If the camera were plugged into the sound board, the cheering wouldn't be so loud.)
It's also a very smart political video. By taking us backstage and showing us the rock-star trappings of Obama's rally -- and in a sense, of his life -- the video makes him a rock star.
Though its amateurish "authentic" quality probably really is authentic, this Joe Biden video is an impressive piece of editing. The reason the word "live" keeps half-appearing is that the footage has been reframed and moved around on top of a black background.
It's fun to see Biden's sober assessments of the Iraq war and other issues highlighted with little graphics like on VH-1's Pop-Up Video. And you have to admit, as suave as the guy is, he could use a little multimedia bling at this point in the race. But will anyone vote for him just because they liked the jump cuts?
Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead ...
The Obama campaign's trying to translate its support among young voters into results in the early caucuses. I love how this video, clearly geared toward youth, looks like the kind of educational films we used to watch before these kids were even born. The title graphics are uncanny, yet there's something strange about simulated film scratches suddenly being cool. By the way, note the (signed?) This Year's Model cover image on precinct captain Gordon Fisher's desk, which gives him the all-important post-Boomer cred.
John Leland takes a good look at the Summer of Love's 40th anniversary in The New York Times, revealing some connections between the definitive hippie moment and today's commercial deployment of it that are more direct than is typically believed. The Summer of Love was a media-conscious event with an organizing body, he writes, and by playing up its role as periphery, it became the center. The result, if we are to follow Leland's conclusions, is staggering:
"To 'drop out' in 1967, as Timothy Leary urged the crowd at the Human Be-In, meant to emerge from obscurity and drop in — into a media spectacle that fascinated the country and a media economy that would replace manufacturing as the heartbeat of America.
Did the media economy's displacement of manufacturing start with the Summer of Love? He doesn't answer the question or even necessarily ask it, but if so, the hippies ultimately achieved a fascinating combination of victory and loss.
Leland's point of entry is the museum shows and staged entertainment events that will commemorate the anniversary this year. He minimizes these events by comparing them to the original. Here's where I think the article sheds light on the cultural moment we're in today.
"In this year’s Summer of Love it will be clear who are the performers and who the spectators, where art ends and life begins."
On YouTube, Justin.tv (as a technology), and other media gathered under the awkward techspeak name "Web 2.0," this is patently not the case. Does this mean we're seeing a new Summer of Love? Perhaps a new Summer of Self-Absorption? (1967 was one of those, too.) Will what we're watching now replace the kind of media industry that makes America run today? I don't have the answers, but it's time to ask the questions. As with rock'n'roll in 1967, we're nowhere near the end of this.
