As the DIY Video Summit at USC looms on the horizon, it’s a good time to reflect for a moment on just how far online video and “user generated content” has come. The Summit is a multifaceted, interdisciplinary effort to bring together a wide variety of digital media creators, academics and industry folks, most of whom never have a chance to share ideas or to debate the future of “DIY media.” Once confined to a tiny box, with tinny audio and unforgivable lag, video was the bete noir of Web development. But just as video killed the radio star, video has conquered the Web, transforming the look and feel of even the most mundane sites, injecting a brash vitality into a medium that had grown a little too comfortable with static images and text.
The value of online video as an audience delivery system to paying advertisers has been the sticking point in the Writers Guild strike, and it will continue to haunt digital media contract negotiations in the foreseeable future. But the insane smorgasbord of video online is much more diverse than what you see on TV. Not only will you find a treasured episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you'll also discover video commentary on the episode, and countless remixes, including one combining footage from Buffy, The Office, and Harry Potter, all set to Miley Cyrus' rendition of "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree."
There are also plenty of shameless home videos, as well as alternate takes on movie trailers, music videos, political speeches, instructional tapes – you name it and someone with a little extra time on their hands has broken it down, torn it apart and turned it into something incredibly entertaining or entirely unwatchable.
You’ll even find video that wasn’t shot in the "real world," but inside virtual worlds (like Second Life) or in online games, where you can control a “camera” and shoot the interactions of avatars. In short, the world of online video is not simply a convenient alternative to TV, it’s a place where the media that documents our world and tells our various stories is morphed and made malleable in ways we never thought possible. Just as blog software democratized text publishing and distribution, ingenious new video editing tools (such as Kaltura) are making it easy for amateurs to experiment with the alchemy of sounds and pictures, the most powerful mode of communication this world has ever known.
But who, you may ask, has the time or inclination to test these tools? Thankfully, Radar Research conducted a survey that establishes some baseline information about who's embracing DIY media. Their "remix study," as they call it, measures the degree to which consumers of content have transformed themselves into producers of content. Conducted in July 2006 - long before YouTube was a household word - and using a nationally representative sample, the study found that 32% of respondents had already watched video mash-ups; 35% had watched anime music remixes and 25% had already used a video game “mod.” Thirty-five percent of the sample had engaged in some kind of interactive video related activity - from accessing bonus features and easter eggs on DVDs to actually creating mash-up or remix videos themselves. This at a time when only 11% of respondents had used a TiVo/DVR and only 75% had ever heard of “blogging.”
We’ve come a long way baby, as I’m sure the next iteration of the remix survey will reveal. But while the tools are available to empower us, the legal system has not evolved quickly enough to reward, incentivize, and protect new practices in video production and distribution. The Lear Center has explored this issue extensively in two books and conferences - Artists, Technology & the Ownership of Creative Content and our more recent work on fashion and intellectual property, Ready to Share. The DIY Video Summit has put together a high-powered panel to hash out the legal obstacles that face DIY videomakers. It may be a long time before we can have an event that celebrates the powerful possibilities of re-mastering our media heritage and reinventing our media environment without also having to consider the legal hazards of doing so.
