Michael W. Dean
This morning Alan sent me a YouTube video
| www.youtube.com/watch?v=2US_SJZVsZk (URL 1.5) |
of his pal nalts giving a spirited and funny rant on why mainstream media sucks for showing only the big players (the top 5 percent in terms of the number of views) whenever they parody anything about the cultural force that is YouTube. I agree with what he's saying, but it's not surprising that mainstream media works that way. Television (ThemTube) producers and magazine writers are busy people who get hundreds of emails a day saying, essentially, "Check this out! It's gonna change the world!" (Everyone says that, and everyone is usually wrong.)
The main job of mainstream media, other than writing and reporting, is sorting—sorting the few gems out of the crap pile that is their inbox. It's a tough job, so they tend to rely on others and go only for something that someone else has already noticed. They do not create a buzz; they report an existing buzz. So, they tend to get into a feeding-frenzy mode. Nothing is worthwhile until someone else tells them that people are looking at it. This is also true of traditional media gatekeepers, such as A&R agents at record labels, talent agents in Hollywood, modeling agents, DVD distributors, and so on, ad nauseam. (A&R means "artist and repertoire." A&R agents are basically talent scouts.)
In 1968, maverick pop artist Andy Warhol predicted, "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes."
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_minutes_of_fame (URL 1.6) |
Mainstream media hacks have dragged this "15 minutes of fame" statement up again and again with regard to the Internet in general and, more recently, with regard to YouTube. And it has a good point, even if it's a no-brainer. What it fails to report is that Andy Warhol got sick of being asked about the "15 minutes" and started telling people, "In 15 minutes, everybody will be famous" and "In the future, 15 people will be famous." These statements are even truer on YouTube, and the 15 people change almost every 15 minutes. (Another one that I like is "On the Internet, everyone will be famous to 15 people.")
With the exception of world-changing news events (like the hanging of Saddam Hussein, captured on a grainy cell phone and uploaded to YouTube where it was viewed millions of times), most of the stuff that gets famous and builds a following for people have a few common denominators. Most viral videos have decent storytelling, decent writing, good lighting, good sound quality, and no technical issues (like bad encoding). There are exceptions to this, like fluke videos of a tin can in a microwave or some dude wrecking his genitals while falling off his skateboard onto a railing. But while these may get hundreds of thousands of hits in a short period of time, the person uploading will have trouble re-creating that viral magic. If you want to make a go at having some longevity on YouTube, you will need to understand the basics of filmmaking, and that means understanding the basics of storytelling, writing, lighting, cameras, editing, sound, and encoding.
Don't worry, it's not rocket science. It doesn't involve math (well, nothing past eighth-grade math, and not even much of that). You can learn these basics in a day, or in a week if you're busy with a lot of other stuff. You can master them in a month. But if you don't learn these basics, there's very little chance you'll ever become a major player on YouTube.