I was talking to Ryanne this afternoon and the subject of fewer and fewer videoblog posts came up. It wasn’t a big long discussion but we did cite a lack of excitement almost 5 years down the road plus a constant connection to far flung friends via Twitter as factors. We also noted that it’s not a lack of excitement for creating things as we both still do that regularly; it’s that we’re excited about making things in other places.
For me, videoblogging about my life started as an exercise in storytelling using the subject matter that’s always present. Now that I spend much of my time directing my creative energy elsewhere, what I’m realizing is that I really grew to like the idea of documenting my life. I don’t want to give that up. This is a tiny experiment in figuring out a way to integrate that back into my life. So I’m writing this post on my iPhone as I lay in bed watching TV. Maybe I’ll do this once in a while between videos.
Subscribe
Steal anything you want
20 Comments
I’ve been thinking about this too.
I made a video yesterday for the first time in months. not because i had anything more to say than i’ve had for the last four months – almost the contrary. i had time, and gave myself the headspace… and most importantly, i got excited about the idea of making video. which was what made me make video. not actually what i wanted to say. i just said pretty much what i’ve been saying to people IRL for months.
david howell made me think about this yesterday, too. he’s been doing a scooter vlog – and he spoke yesterday about how cool it is to find a community of motovloggers on youtube. i didn’t even know they existed. neither did he. but now he’s got another reason to make a videoblog, and he’s really enjoying being part of a community that has a shared interest.
http://www.davidhowell.ca/post/163859474/motovlog-com
what links most of us from the yahooish vlog community is our interest in video, and documenting things using videoblogging. we don’t necessarily share other interests. except sometimes politics. our connection is about making video – we used to get excited about connecting using videos, which prompted lots of videos – but now we connect increasingly on twitter. and we write on twitter the kind of things we used to vlog about. the daily minutiae of life that we used to document visually has had its energy sucked out of it by text. so it’s changed.
and yet here we all are, still talking to each other on twitter, still connected by our interest in video, and noticing how little video most people are making.
i guess david’s lucky in that he’s found a community of people who like both bikes and vlogging.
i don’t know what i’m saying. i haven’t figured it out yet. but maybe post-twitter our videos there’s more of a pressure to have that extra level of being focused on something before you can be bothered to turn on the camera – a story, an interest, a subject, an artistic intention/project – to integrate with other communities outside our own. i know you’ve done that with machinima.
ok. this is turning into a monster babble.
i also find that trying to make a living creatively gets in the way of making personal videos (creatively as well). just trying to expand and learn other things and maybe when i feel i know those things enough (cheese making, food preserving) i will feel confident sharing them on video. i hope so! i don’t want to feel bad about not making personal videos, but i kinda do. damnit.
I know exaclty what you’re saying. Not only in the lack of posting videos myself, but I’ve also noticed less videos from those who used to do it the most. Lives change and time gets shifted to other things. I think for those who make a living doing video it’s even more difficult for since you’re still in it all the time. Makes it hard to want to make something personal.
It will be interesting to see how the social web continues to change the way we communicate with one another and how it changes the way we share ourselves with the world. But video will never die. Vlog on my friends, vlog on.
i know what you mean.
admittedly, there are only so many hours in the day.
and you have to be super motivated to squeeze in all those extra hours of shooting, sifting, editing, compressing, publishing, never mind conversing.
but it’s interesting to me that we aren’t documenting these things, even haphazardly and imperfectly.
well… we sort of are, on twitter.
i would have predicted that i’d have spent far more time documenting the experience and personal journey of emigrating and returning. i mean, it’s been a pretty interesting year, one way and another… and British TV is full of these kind of stories.
but i hardly did that at all.
and thinking about your cheesemaking and food preserving, and setting up your smallholding, i probably would have predicted that you’d have published more video of the minutiae of all that, like you did when you were discovering videoblogging.
i’m not trying to make you feel guilty!! it’s just an observation.
i actually don’t feel guilty about missing the opportunity to document my move. but i’m interested by why i didn’t.
we have this thing that we love: videoblogging.
and we do these other things that we love to do, which would make great video.
and yet somehow these things are not necessarily combining in the way i’d expect them to.
why?
is it just twitter?
is it just time?
it it dissatisfaction with the videoblogging process?
what the fuck?
vlog on, clintus! vlog on!
Some very interesting thoughts….I also wonder sometimes if the fact that it’s not “new” anymore comes into play at all. I think when it was a much smaller group it was easy to be excited (says the guy who came in a year to late to the party) but now with hundreds of thousands of people vlogging (ok, maybe not that many but it seems like it) I mean how many video’s are uploaded daily to YT alone? (hundreds of thousands according to the YT fact sheet)with all that video it easy to get lost in the crowd not to mention a bit discouraged at times when a cat video or some guy getting hit in the crotch gets millions of hits and a thought provoking peace about community and family violence get’s only a couple of hundred hits..
But I digress….I can’t speak for anyone else but for me I know its the constant struggle with being an artist and sharing something, I mean I already have low self esteem and when I can’t “make” the video that my head comes up with, well….I get discourged and then a bit down….It’s also funny how many of us say that we can’t wait to post video from our phones these little moments of life that we can finally do with the convergence of phone and video, but then we complain about how bad the quality is and the fact that we arn’t making something “important”
And again for me, it’s that my life is changing, I am a grandfather know, it’s totally changed my world and at the same time it has made me realize what a chicken shit I am, I have done nothing but complain about what I do for a living and yet I am afraid to make a change, I fear both failure and success and so I live in this limbo of just existing. That and I am afraid to share to much because I fear what other people will think…even though I know my personal story is one of hope, I mean my childhood was bad, full of violence and drinking and darkness but I don’t share because I worry what people will think of me and I don’t share because it is a story of hope and I don’t think people really want that, I think they really do want the stupid “reality” drama, the dysfunction, the chaos, I mean why watch someone who overcomes when you can watch someone be an ass and then you can go “at least that’s not me” and then laugh and talk about how bad “tv” is…(probably none of you reading this do, but we are just a small sample and we are the weird ones I fear)
But then again it does take so much time to do video right and most of us are at some level perfectionists and doing something “half assed” just is hard for us so again for me I end up doing nothing because I don’t feel “good enough”…I mean most of you have went to school for this in some form or another and me?…I picked up a camera for the first time almost 4 years ago and everything I know I have learned from Freevlog, Ryanne, Jay, Rupert, Robert and others. I think I do have some talent, an eye and I do think I have a knack for editing (at least when I am trying) but without some schooling and some other talent who is really going to hire me? So go to school you say….I refer you to my chicken shit comment…
But then again, some things are better said in text, some things are better said in a photo and some things work better in video, so am I really a chicken shit or am I just trying to figure out a weird balance that works…
I am going to stop now and I am not going to re-read what I wrote because I would probably just delete it or try to make it better or at least try and have it make sense, so instead I will just say…..
I really love what Robert Croma said: “Vlogging’s not something you give up. It’s something that naps beside you, dreaming of being woken up.”
Heath has a point that when videoblogging was new, it seemed important to create lots of daily examples…as if it wouldn’t exist if we stopped.
Now online videos are just part of the fabric of the web. AWESOME! I still record video. Just haven’t posted probably for all the reasons you guys have mentioned. Time, lack of focus, enjoying life. Four years ago, I was a lonely bachelor slogging away in a media job that frustrated me daily. Life ain’t perfect now, but videoblogging helped me find new things.
I was watching this the other day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mH3dAPnpfM&feature=popular
This is a youtube channel where a group of friends take turns posting a daily video and talking to each other. Reminds me of the excitement, public/private, golly gee-whiz conversations we were having with each other. It still exists.
I love these conversations just like I http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck. We only DREAMED about the Whitehouse making these kinds of direct videos. So amazed and pleased.
I’ve also spoken with some of you about the feeling the need for a challenge. For wanting even more. Using the tools of videoblogging that we’ve learned…and putting them towards a big idea. Explore the storytelling potential we have. No matter where these conversations now take place, one thing hasn’t changed: we can do anything we want. Videoblogging will be what we make it.
So it’s not a technical challenge anymore, but the challenge all artists have had to face: finding the time, finding the inner coherence and outer organization, and having the luck to make something beautiful and smart.
haha maybe we’re all competing for the biggest rambling comment on Verdi’s blog.
Answering Ru’s question “why” – I like the idea of documenting my life and various pursuits. But on some level, I don’t need to do that and put it on the web just for me. I mean, I was there, I know what happened. So I partially do it for the sake of sharing, and I’ve honestly grown to feel that nobody out there actually gives a shit. Maybe that isn’t true, but it’s certainly how I feel. Croma, bless his huge heart, is maybe the only one who consistently takes time to show that he cares. And Verdi, who hasn’t taken me off his “Beauty & Truth” links yet.
I also have some of the same issues that Heath has. Only I’m not afraid to share out of fear of what others will think of my darkness or weirdness. I’m afraid to share because, what if I share the deepest part of me and no one finds it worth watching, it’s just boring. At least I think that’s what I feel when I think about vlogging about some of my inner processes.
Another thing along that vein is, it’s actually a struggle to portray what I’m thinking about visually: right now I’m still trying to process experiences that brought up classic “white guilt” and turn them into something useful and respectful. This is something that should be happening all over the U.S., but these are really hard things to talk about without being attacked from all sides. And as passionate as I am about finding the way to answers, (a) it would totally hurt me that none of my friends are really interested, and (b) it would totally suck to put that kind of thing out there and have it trashed by a bunch of haters. I haven’t found it worth risking yet. Or rather, I haven’t found a safe enough way to risk it yet.
I’m fairly down about the level of support we manage to give each other. I’m pretty sure I’m not supportive enough. At least I invested in Quirk’s new project. I know we’re all busy with so many things. It is what it is for awhile.
Sorry Verdi. This is our blog now.
heath, you are not chicken shit. it’s one of the hardest things to give up a steady income, even one that you hate. to do it without knowing that you’re going to be able to eat is insane.
and yeah, everything jay says is true. and there is a lot to be excited about, even if we’re not all necessarily turning that excitement into videos at the moment.
but i think cheryl has some important truths here…
and it’s kind of what i was trying to say about david being lucky to find a new community of vloggers who share his subject of interest.
i don’t think i’d realised, but an important reason that i haven’t been making any videos is that i don’t *watch* any videos. other people’s videos have always been what inspire me to make videos. we feed each other.
but now i use twitter instead of RSS – and so i only watch when people post links. and links disappear so quickly that if you’re not there *right then*, you miss them. i only just discovered david howell had a new vlog yesterday, and it’s been around for ages. and i haven’t been making the time to manually visit any vlogs – including all of yours. the only reason i’m here is that i finally visited my rss reader. and why? because i posted a video myself.
i have miro, i have itunes, but i’m not using them.
it seems such a basic thing – it’s always been as much about the watching as it has about the making – but, as we’ve fragmented and moved to twitter, it’s broken my watching patterns.
if i’d posted that video yesterday and nobody had watched, i’d be massively demotivated. i guess i’m lucky that other people use RSS. (i think robert and david actually have bells and sirens that sound when new videoblogs are posted)
what cheryl says about vlogging other interests is also true. we’ve built quite specific audiences for our vlogs, without necessarily intending to. even a slight shift in focus feels difficult.
and you know you can’t expect the same level of comment and interest from your current audience if you suddenly start making lots of videos about, say, politics or cheesemaking.
as cheryl said, we then have to deal with our friends & family’s disinterest, and stronger comments from outsiders than we’re used to in our somewhat cosy regular community.
so, do you start afresh on a new specialist vlog, without your regular subscribers?
i think you probably have to. to keep the lines clear, to stop yourself from expecting your other friends to watch & be interested. and have a really strong policy on comments to keep yourself sane.
and then you have to put the work into finding and building community & audience for that new vlog.
people like ryanne and jay know this already from having ryanedit and momentshowing and ryanishungry. there is some crossover of audience, admittedly – but it’s not total, is it?
TV channels can get away with showing a wide variety of shows because each show is on at a specific time – in a way, you ’subscribe’ to that timeslot. My PVR is only ’subscribed’ to record Sky One at 9pm on Sundays, for instance – not all of the other shows on Sky One. In the videoblog world, each timeslot is a different vlog or feed.
Maybe we could also start thinking more like TV channels (i know, i know) and doing kind of what Verdi does here – and what i’ve been thinking about doing – having a main website that’s like a “channel” umbrella which links to all the other vlogs/’shows’ we do, with their various separate focusses.
will wordpress let me post a comment this long?
Both Cheryl and Rupert hit on something that maybe I hadn’t admitted to myself. I probably don’t post videos because there isn’t that community we once had.
I also mainly watch videos that come through my twitter stream, so don’t see many personal videos posted by friends. It seems many of us are in this situation.
Ultimately, I hope everyone knows that they are supported regardless of the quiet. I’m glad for the struggle. Be kind of dull if all any of us had to offer was “Update #598 on my tea drinking habits”. Or maybe not. Or maybe it would. I don’t know.
Yea, sorry Michael, didn’t mean to stage a coup….I just think for a lot of us, it’s reached a tipping point. I do think I did hit on a few things as I was writing my last response at least for me…it’s that I don’t just do video. I mean I have always done photogaphy, I have done that since I was in my late teens, early 20’s I love pictures, I had always wanted to “make movies” but I just never did, till about 4 years ago. And I used to write a lot, screenplays, short stories, etc…but that fell by the wayside a long time ago…
So what does all that have to do with your post…it’s just that video is just a PART of my life, pictures, words, sounds those are all a part of me also…I have spent the last years ignoring that part of me and I think it needs to be feed again…I just got a new DSLR camera and I am in love again, taking pictures because some stories can be told with a snapshot, they don’t need any video at all, they dont need a sound or text even, it just is there for anyone to take out of it what they will…
But some things work better in written format, and some are just sounds…I am trying to find my balance again but I don’t know if I want multiple blogs that house all those different things, I mean it’s who I am and if I am documenting who I am then maybe my vlog/blog will just have to be a jumbed mess….much like my life
But what is cool, is that I can see that the passion to create is still there, in all of us, I have always wanted to work on a long form video that documents a select group of vloggers as they do what they do…maybe it’s time I really looked at that….
I guess the community has changed. to be honest I probably go back and watch my own videos more than others to remember how things were when I made them, unless I see other people’s links in twitter or facebook. (like this one)
I think this is ok though, it’s mostly the point of my videos anyway. I still make little things but videos are time-slotted in between other projects. but I think for me they always have been anyway apart from vb-projects eg week/month.
Holy crap.
I agree with you all and… I always come back to this:
If something is going to be a long-term thing/habit/passion/whateverthefuck you have to have something internal that motivates you or it will die. I love it love it love it when people watch my videos and leave me comments but that’s not why I do it. The things I make today get 1/10 or 1/20 of the views that my videos used to get. Often the thing that gets the most views on my site is a stupid screencast I did about the Parallels software a few years ago and those people don’t give a shit about the other things I’ve made. But that doesn’t matter.
You know what matters to me? 3 weeks ago I was in a hospice room with my dying Mother-in-law and lots of her family – many of whom hadn’t seen her in a dozen years or more. We were telling stories about her and Rebecca started telling one about what kind of grandmother she was and how much our daughters loved her. And I realized that I had the moment she was talking about on video, on my blog. So after a quick search, everyone (like 10 people) gathered around my phone and watched this video of their sister/aunt/mother/grandmother when she was alive and happy.
And last night while you guys were writing essays over here, for some reason Rebecca asked me when we took the girls to see Coldplay. We couldn’t exactly remember so I looked it up on my blog and played the video. We skipped though most of it and then were surprised to find that I’d added a short part on the end where I’d got the girls reactions to the show. What an beautiful trip 3 years back in time.
(ya’ll are leaving more comments while I’m typing this btw)
Talkbot – you know even less people watch that than the tiny amount of people that watch anything here but again I don’t give a fuck. I watch those videos over and over because they make me laugh. They make me laugh when I think up ideas; they make me laugh when I edit the videos; and they make me laugh when I talk to them on twitter.
So I guess that really, I agree with what Robert Croma said and there are many things in our lives that are like that. They’re important to us and they get expressed in different ways over time. Nothing to worry about – just something to notice. It’s all working the way it’s supposed to.
Whoa…wow…there’s a whole lotta typing going on here.
Yeah. You know. I just watched the video Valdez made inspired by your post. (He made video while I typed).
http://vimeo.com/6143526
Simple clips, cut together the way I love them. Like your last video, and classic Ryanne & Jay vids.
And I watched Heath’s tour of his house, and Cheryl growing watermelons, and Mike Moon mowing his lawn.
This is the stuff I love. And when I see it, I know that.
I don’t want to make TV style shows about emigrating. That’s why I don’t do it. I want to do *this*.
Making and watching are all part of the same thing. If I watch, I make.
Back to the RSS reader, then. Damn Twitter for distracting me from that.
Yeah, I don’t *live* for comments. I’m self-motivated to make the stories, like the one about my grandmother, or the hummingbirds.
But sometimes I (and others – I’ve seen you do it) make videos asking questions or sharing thoughts because I want or need to have a conversation about something. When those get bubkus in commentary or response, it’s very disheartening. That is all.
No, wait, one more thing. I get what Jay says, “we are supported regardless of the quiet.”
And riffing on that plus what Michael says about having to have something internal that motivates you or it will die.
Unexpressed support is one-sided, and it’s on the wrong side. If you feel supportive but don’t do anything to show it, then you can’t expect the people you support to know they’re supported. So I suggest you visit the sites you feel support for once a month or once every three months and *show* some support.
I know I do this, to tend to and “water” the relationships built and keep them going.
Because un-tended friendships die, too.
but surely we do all tend our friendships elsewhere… not just on our blogs. And on your blog frontpage, there’s a post where you’ve asked some questions and got 22 responses!
Equally, there are always posts where one watches and enjoys, but that it’s difficult to write anything intelligent about, usually those that are snapshots or slices of life. I know I always spend way too long writing comments because I don’t want to just write “looks cool” or “way to go”.
Looking back at my own video making history since the early 1990s, there is an obvious pattern of rise and fall, and rise and fall … Sure, each particular rise or fall has its own reasons (taking a college course, frustration with technology, getting my first camera, overwhelmed with editing, joining a video club, collapse of the video club, finding a vlogging community, changing job, joining a vlog challenge such as semanal or vlomo, and so on) but at a bigger level it’s the pattern which is important.
There’s little point trying to re-create the particular circumstances which provoked a creative burst in the past, the important bit is not to be blind to new reasons when they turn up.
Perhaps, as some seem to be saying in previous comments, we are starting to see a dissatisfaction with the impermanence of twitter, facebook and instant messaging compared with the beautiful way web video forms an immersive trail of personal history.
Whatever the reason, if you are feeling that stirring in the belly to make video again (and I know I am), don’t spend too much time analysing when you could be doing it, even if only for your own sake.
A while ago I felt the Yahoo group allowed me to be in touch with a community that made videos for the Internet. There was a mix of “vloggers” and others who were trying to break into Hollywood-type shows by self-producing and show-casing. It was, at times, a jumbled mix. But now everyone seems to have gone their separate ways on different lists or social networks. There is no one meeting-place anymore. I can’t follow threads on Twitter or Facebook although Friendfeed offers some promise.
I’m making lots of videos for my documentary websites (I don’t even know if they are “blogs” anymore) but there is no one place to check into a few times a day while something is rendered.
I miss the group!