Youtube Live

richard - Nov 2, 2008

Sukhjit: For the past three or four days I have been watching hours of documentaries. They have nothing about celebrity, nothing about real market value. They simple provide information about subjects that interest a certain portion of the population. There’s an interesting series called Evolve and two subjects were “Skin” and the second was “Gugts”. These are topics that may not be interesting because there is a low chance that people would buy them. At the same time it’ like video encyclopedias. Rather than look at this information on a page you actually see it. Much as with David attenborough’s Life on Earth Series from the 70s I really think there’s more to television than mindless entertainment for the masses. I also think that music, games shows and other programs are not the only form of entertainment. In fact that’s why I never watched the five channels available in England. Frieda: There’ a lot that can be done when you’ve got unlimited airtime, as is the case on the web. They might as well take advantage of that and produce some original content.

In an age where mobile video streaming is cheap in comparison to the past it’s a shame that youtube do not showcase this technology and have three hundred people streaming from one city for example. Why is it that they chose to cover live music events instead. Of course music is cheap to cover, excluding rights issues. Get three or four cameras in a room to cover the action on stage, two or three more cameras backstage and you’ve got a program, That’s not all though. It’s something you can rehearse. The singers do their sound checks, the vision mixers and directors know the music, know the cues. Everything can be well orchestrated. The production will be flat and boring. The BBC stopped top of the pops and now you’ve got Youtube doing live music programs. Of course it’s a different program, of course it’s a different technology, but of course it’s just one more step on the trip towards a different age of television. I love new media and new technology but I wish they would do something more creative with their time. Look at Autumn watch for example. Camera crews went to beautiful landscapes to cover the wildlife. They even broadcast whilst scuba diving. They use the website as an addition and they’re doing some outdoor event. That’s what we need more of. In an age where everyone walks around with a video camera, whether flip, mobile phone or other so the broadcaster, especially when it comes to entitities like youtube, should reflect their user’s method of covering the world. They should get out of the studio and get twenty cameras in a city, and cover everything that’s going on in real life, nothing setup. Just capture life as it happens. If that’s too boring then do some research, see of a live event that you could cover, whether it’s a car show where you’ve got lot’s of drifting, a festival where you’ve got hundreds of things happening at once or a ski resort where you’ve got snowboarders, skiers and other activities taking place. You could have cameras at the telesièges, at the teleski, you could have some at the summit and some on the other side of the valley filming as people ski down. You could have dynamic cameras. Just get out of that studio and give us something that’s not an advert for someone’s latest single. That’s just dull.