AMATEUR VIDEO: GOOD? BAD?

We spent a lot of time on Wednesday talking about "Internet 2.0" and how the new trend in recent years is media content being produced by the average person. Because digital media technologies are so cheap and relatively easy to use nowadays, almost anyone can pick up a camcorder and produce video. Making it look good is the issue. As we saw with all the video blogs, the quality was (mostly) terrible. And to make matters worse, the content was just as bad, if not worse. Maybe once the home video fascination wears off, the video trend will simmer down ... but probably not. Look at cell phones. Remember the huge, brick-like cell phones of the 80s? That novelty never wore off. Twenty years later and the cell phone industry continues to grow. I think basically anything to do with communication can't help but get bigger and bigger. After all, we are social beings; communication is very important to us.

But more interestingly, I liked how we talked about how much skill and work goes into producing a decent, 2-minute video. I can relate. In my spare time I am an amateur documentary filmmaker. I started a new project recently. I've been filming for about 3-4 weeks (about 2 hours of raw footage thus far) and this will probably only translate into about 3-5 minutes of finished video. It's a lot of work!!! But it's all worth it, because if done well the end result is timeless, especially now when video is digital and never degrades like the old video tape did.

So perhaps the digital video craze will not die off, but perhaps people will get sick of the meaningless, poorly created video available and there will be a demand for talented professionals to take back this industry. Then again, will the world population at about six billion and growing, probably not....