Call me crazy, but if I was in any of those places, an iPad is definitely the last thing I would be looking at.

Filed under: Really?

The lure of the serif font proves to be irresistible to the Administration:

from this:

I’m not sure what that is above, HF-Mercury perhaps. Gotham below. 

Consider this:

Not really the same is it when we’re talking MONEY yo!

Check out this story in the New York Times this past weekend. I am not sure what to call in since there are two titles, one for the print version and one for the video version.

That in itself should tell you something about what is going on. The print version was called “Home, Hangout, Departure lounge” and the video version was called “Project Apartment: A Family of Friends”. They are similar but different. Initially what the assignment was was to go profile Daniel Vosovic from last season’s Project Runway and his roommates and “habitat” on the LES. A sound recordist was going to take audio and a slideshow was going to be produced. Somewhere along the way the sound got way-laid and I was on my own, or so I thought. On sunday the story is published and I see video, in other words, they went back and shot more footage, this time for the video.

Recently Vincent Laforet wrote a column on convergence on how the new Canon 5DmkII was a “game-changer” for the industry. I have no doubt that across the country, weddings and porno shoots will never be the same. But I digress:) When you look at the two features you see very different approaches. Mainly you see very different lighting. I think it was unfortunate for the video folks, they probably had to go late in the (very short winter) day and had no ambient light, either that or they chose to exclude it entirely and use their own for colour balance reasons, or expediency. For whatever reason, the effect is stark, what is a tiny, cramped, albeit colourful space is transformed into the average bare-bulb lit New York tenement interrogation room. So much of what I see online as “new” multimedia is actually just bad TV. I wonder what the video producers got paid to go in there, shoot a hours worth of footage, and then cut it together? Not nearly enough I am sure, probably a lot more than me. And what looks better? (ok go easy)

Truth be told it is a lot harder to shoot multimedia pieces than it is to do what I did. The issues multiply, colour balance, sound, moving camera, editing, B-roll, etc. I can make it appear as if it was a sunny day almost anywhere I go, if things don’t have to move. Motion does not have that option, they are locked down to the framerate of the camera and the ISO. Evidently the the new 5D in HD mode is auto exposure, with an exposure lock. A limited flexibility. More if you opt to spend a lot on fast prime lenses. And the sound recording on the 5D is really only good enough for background sound, not for interviews. So what am I trying to say? Besides the fact that after I get the camera you will be subjected to my poor attempts at video?

I think the idea everyone had for “convergence” was this idea that a single photographer or videographer could hoist a camera and capture both, stills and video. And that that could be a huge cost savings. What I think you see is that while it might be possible to take hi-quality stills from a video assuming you can overcome the lighting issues, which I don’t think you can exactly, not unless you want to haul around a 10K on a crane to all your Manhattan locations…taking video from a still shoot is another thing entirely. Basically we styled the still shoot to look good as stills. Every picture can be a “picture” and not just something on the way to something else. To video the still shoot is very boring, it is just behind the scenes of a still shoot. And while the current demand for behind the scenes seems to be insatiable, I think it will grow old soon. Please not another Victoria Secret show backstage!

We are still in this fractured place where neither approach is working very well. Traditional media printed on paper is on life-support. Online media is straddling the line. The multimedia pieces are hit and miss. Some of the best in my opinion are the information-presentation interactives, “charts and graphs!” But with pizazz! I think audio slide shows of stills are very effective as a bridge piece between print and online. Look at Magnum in Motion. Video has a way to go, it would be better if they had no responsibility at all to the printed piece. Motion is it’s own logic, and has it’s own expressive language that I think is getting wasted a lot of the time on some of this stuff. Basically I think what you are seeing is we are painfully reinventing the wheel online, enduring a lot of bad video that we used to criticize TV for (funniest home videos?-that was the “tube” before the “you”). Call it whatever you want, convergence, user-generated content, interactive, but the bar is low. I think the utility to advertisers is that it can guarantee eyeballs in one location for a longer duration. Think of it as glue. 

And what of the cost savings of having one person shoot both still and video? Not sure about that either. Good video is expensive, just like film. It is more complex to produce, execute and deliver. Vincent’s impressive “cologne commercial” cost him quite a bit, but not a fraction of what it actually “costs.” I hope someone picks him up for his eye while he is still cheap! The people who are really good at, the ones who can turn it around quickly, not surprisingly, are already doing it. They have jobs in television, and have had them for years. But we have resisted this other “convergence” of media, between print and television for a number of reasons, some of them very good. Monopolies, hegemony, diversity to name three. If I had to predict where this is all going, I might be tempted to say economic realities will force print media to merge totally with television to achieve economy in production costs. Martha Stewart paved the way long ago. She achieves high quality in both areas. And can decoupage with the best…It may only be a matter of time. Or as Woody Allen would say, we all have to sit through the Ice Capades, again.

Update: Canon’s Chuck “Santa” Westfall says that the sleigh bearing the new 5DMKII-will-save-us-from-armageddon has left Canon USA’s village and should be bringing the camera to good little girls and boys by the end of this week! Prediction-Holiday Video Ennui Up 1000 Percent. 

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