By now everyone knows about blogs. The crazy online journals complete with spelling mistakes and gorilla news . I still remember the special on the Katrina blogger who broke the in the water stories and was interviewed live on CNN. Currently most blogs consist of text and pictures with the occasional audio clip, but with the popularity of broad band and increased storage capacities, video blogs are the new rage, and why not? Who wants to scan through pages and pages of small text if you dont have to right? Unfortunately there are some serious problems with most video blogs making them almost unwatchable.
No cohesive script
While writing lends itself well to a bunch of unrelated tid bits for the user to jump around on and search between, video does not. You cant easily skip through all the different postings and in general the user will watch everything in chronological order. There arent video hyperlinks. Im disregarding flash here, but you understand my point. The average video blog jump all over the place doesnt have any specific purpose. I dont have time for that and neither do you.
They dont use a teleprompter
Um.. ahh daaa. Thats what happens if you dont have a teleprompter. An average video blogger says Ahhh, more times then Jenna Jameson in her last movie. Ok that was a bad joke, but you catch my drift. Even though video blogs are produced mostly by amateurs, you have to use a teleprompter. Professional journalists use them, The president uses one. On camera, very few people can recite a script from memory or improv without stumbling all over themselves.
Most people cant act.
Everybody wants to be famous. In a world with billions of people, its understandable, but please face it, most people cant act, as soon as the camera is turned on, here comes captain monotone.
Non variation of camera shots or subject matter.
Video needs variation to be interesting. Video needs variation to be interesting. Video needs variation to be interesting. Should I go on? Dont use a single framed tripoded shot for a 10 minutes broadcast, its boring.
Most people are boring
Do you want to watch regular looking person sitting on a couch looking back at you holding a remote and drinking a beer when you watch TV? I have a hard time understanding what makes people think creating a video blog with their ugly mug shot, in a tight frame, with low light, as they sweat and talk about golf clubs was a good idea. Video bloggers should try to put themsevles in our shoes, would you want to sit through that?
There are a lot more things I could go off about, but I think Ill stop here. As long as the average video blogger falls victim to these short comings, I wouldnt expect video blogs to replace or even compete with normal text and image based blogs. |
