Instagram Video and the Death of Fantasy
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
Videos don't work the same way. Trying to distill the zeitgeist into a video is (24FPS * 15sec) times more work. Without a rich set of postprocess editing tools, i.e. what filters did for photos, that are equally dead-simple, the fantasy-aspiration of what instagram did for photos simply isn't there.
Sure, the trailer instagram showed for the introduction of videos had the same emotional and fantasy components in it that filters brought to photos, except they did a crap ton of postprocessing work on it to get it to that stage. Contrast this with when they showcase photos and filters - they must have done little or no work. Unless the app itself can create the level of videos that instagram showcased, instagram video has brought upon itself the death of fantasy.
I'm a believer that the market for sharing the mundane moments of life, in a private way with those closest to us, is an untapped opportunity.
Snapchat is only the first to find massive adoption by serving this use case, there will be others.
What I want to say is that even though this is probably just a measure to bug Twitter/Vine I find that the Instagram community does use it in a way that makes it a pretty cool addition.
Though one has to see how this unfolds, whether people will continue to use it. I've created a video too, and on my rather old iPhone4 it required a lot of waiting to get it done.
That said, I really enjoy the silent, 5-10 animated gif format and I'm sure that as a format the short moving picture will come a long way from where it.
Video is imperfect. It’s a lot harder to craft a perfect video
In other words, we show off versions of ourselves that are not true-to-life, and it will be much harder to maintain & showcase those facades when the medium is video.
Personally, I hope increased popularity of video services like this one will help drive further improvements in recording devices and editing software.
Documentary video editing (ie editing non-staged video) is really hard, and it's a skill very few people possess.
I'm not saying that software to suggest edits between shots or timing changes can't be created, but it's a hard problem.
To get off the ground though, you could maybe start with some automatic greenscreen software or something. Novice cameramen would love that, and if you are splicing in a set video file, it could be pretty straightforward from a usage point of view.
As clearly evidenced by the proliferation of cameras, most people don't necessarily expect to be able to make amazing gallery-quality photos, but they would like the technology to get out of the way (so to speak) so that they can spend their time shooting.
-Brave new World -The Matrix -The Truman Show
and all those other "is a fake bliss bliss nonetheless" type stories.
This guy took the blue pill.
You and a bunch of other "rebels" may disagree, but what people want is precisely that: from Instagram to MMORPGs, people will adopt any and everything that allows them to escape their boring realities and live in something fabricated and that gives them the illusion they are in control.
We constantly filter out a lot of noise - auditory and visual. Our memories of events lack that noise. Naive recordings - such as what complete amateurs using smart phones will produce - will have all of that noise. So the recording of the event will not match our memory, partially because it will record things that were not important.
In order for the recording to match our memory, it would need to filter out all of the auditory and visual noise. But that's just the start. There's also the fact that amateur videos tend to not do a good job of showing what a viewer may want to pay attention to. As a participant, you can, without thinking, look around to see exactly what you want to see. This ease of knowing your surroundings will be a part of your memory, and the video will likely not capture it.
A professionally made video could alleviate most of these problems. That's why editing movies is hard, and considered an art. Showing viewers the right shots for the right length of time to give them certain understandings of a scene is crucial to making the viewer feel like they are there.
My point: you're assuming that the video recording is somehow an "objective" view of reality, and your memory is "subjective." Your memory certainly is subjective, but I say the video is, too. Raw videos are not how we experience life, nor are they "reality", so I think it's uncharitable to conclude the author only wants fantasy recordings.
So yes: if someone were able to devise a way of capturing memories that could be played back the way the really felt, that would be ideal. But since we can't, I'd rather see that event as it was than distorted in some mostly random direction.
Having said that, this is not me taking a swing at Instagram. I think it's a great product, and I have a lot of fun with it. I'm just saying that the author's logic train here is rather faulty.