Storytelling and Momentshowing

In May 2004, Peter and I had the marathon conversation through Central Park on videoblogging.
Peter helped me cfeate a blog and post my first video.
Not easy or intuitive but it was possible.

Then, we created the videoblogging group and put out the call.
Very quickly, like-minded people came together.
You can see the new tools being developed.
You can see a small group of people trying to figure out the 3 big problems of putting video on blogs.
Bandwidth, Storage space, and the need for simple editing/posting tools.

The next problem I see is the language of videoblogs.
Do you post short 10 second moments everyday, or post a 5-minute, edited movie every week or two?
I say short, daily moments.
But then the question is: what moments?

I remember when I first had the idea for Momentshowing.
It was 1997 and I had just come back from living in Europe. I was working over there, trying to figure this world out. Young and dumb. I wanted to write and it wasnt working.
So I bought a Hi-8 video camera and started recording.
I didnt know what I was doing, just taping everything.
I'd sit in my basement apartment, making short tapes for my friends.
I wouldn't build stories. I would edit short Moments together.
Short is between 30-seconds and 2 minutes. In the Moment, you show someone talking or something happening.
I realized that the Moments can be unrelated.
But once editing together, people will make the story up in their own head.
The key is to keep the Moment short, self-contained, and entertaining.
Basically, it's like looking through a photo book.
Each picture is unrelated to the next, but somehow they give an idea of the world.

So I got a job working in local TV news in Cincinati OH to learn the tools better.
First, I learned that corporate news sucks. the info you get is extremely condescending and lazy.
I thought, wouldn't it be cool if you just made a 30-minute show with daily Moments from around this small town. You'd get a much better sense of the place than these 2 minute stories on house fires and shootings.
Much better perspective. You'd really get to know people. My news director was unimpressed.
Then, I got a job at CNN in Atlanta.
My ideas of Momentshowing were going crazy.
Imagine a TV show where you showed Moments from all over the world. No stories.
"These are some of the things that happened today. check it."
We'd get to know the world much better. I don't need someone narrating the world for me.
But CNN of course is about news. Pictures and narration.
They have a definite view of the world that they want you to learn.

In 2000, I quit CNN and tried to be a freelance jouranalist in Kinshasa, which is the captial of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
(This is funny because the country is neither a Democracy or a Republic.)
At CNN, I had worked on a news show about Africa...and never once covered the story of the Congo which was presently at war.
I brought a camcorder and my laptop.
The idea was to post video to my website...showing what life was like in a country at war.
I was interested in people.
But I wasnt ready. Technology wasnt ready.
Upload speeds were too slow; I was too inexperienced with HTML.
So after 4 months, I moved to Manhattan a little wiser.

I got a job at MNN, Manhattan Neighborhood Network.
MNN is the community TV station in Manhattan that airs 1200 original shows per week made by regular people.
No censorship.
After working for corporate news for 4 years, this place was a godsend.
I was teaching people how to make TV, and seeing the fruits of my labor.
Im pretty sure I learn more from my students than I teach them.

Then, I met Peter and we started talking about how to put video on the internet.

Videoblogging.
I get excited because Momentshowing can still happen.
You can record a short Moment and post it with some words.
I could see people all over this planet show us their world.
Iraq, for instance.
What's it look like? News doesn't show us.
But forget politics and news right now, think about this.
If you don't blog in english, only a small community will read your ideas and stories.
But if you videoblog, everyone can understand a video moment.
We can finally start talking to each other directly, instead of learning about each other through the controlled media.

I wonder how long it'll take for developing countries to get reliable internet and inexpensive cameras?
When will the conversation really start, unmediated?
So i post video as often as I can...playing with the format...watching other people...and waiting for it to grow.

Comments

[Susan]

Wow... I like your idea of a news show with 30 minutes of Moments from around town. MUCH better than just shootings. I figured out early that I wasn't going to take more than 30 seconds of movie at a time (except in rare instances) because you start to lose interest... then I realized I could clip those 30 seconds into four segments, mix them with other 30-second-segment clips, and like you said people put the story together in their mind. Or here's another example... I took a 30-second clip of my daughter hoola hooping and split it into four segments, then put one segment before each of four scenes... it made it seem like she was hoola hoooping forever :D was an awesome effect. So 30 minutes of moments in news... minus 15 minutes of commercials... hey wait! That's rocketboom! ;)

[Syd]

Are you on YouTube? What do you think of YouTUbe and the proliferation of video-sharing sites?
How has vlogging changed since you began?

THanks!
Syd

[jay dedman]

Funny to read this now. I wrote this pre-Youtube.
I think it's great how easy it's gotten to publish media online, especially video.

I still like having a blog of my own where I archive my videos, but videos live everywhere at the same time. Let's just remember that the site that seems cool now, may be gone in a couple years. So never rely on a company to be your archive!