Web video is no longer just a punch line or a sound bite but something bordering on an experience. Thanks to better compression tools and increasing bandwidth, Web designers are finally free to refine smaller-screen viewing- bad video doesn’t have to hide behind distracting text clutter or tiny video windows any more. Take the recently launched Hulu, for example, NBC Universal and News Corp.’s “free and ad-supported” portal for viewing and sharing television and film content. It’s got a clean interface, a large main viewing window, fabulous audio, thumbnails you can actually see and scan easily, robust servers and, the key ingredient, wildly popular programming to snag viewers (who, despite the “limited advertising,” appreciate the quality compared to fifth-generation YouTube recordings of the same shows). The three-to-four minute quick hits and punch lines still pull in the most viewers, however, and Saturday Night Live skits are among the most popular.
Repurposing previously aired broadcast, cable and film material online (while trying to sell downloads and DVDs of the same programming, as Hulu does) will continue to feed the 24/7 Web beast. Broadcasters now know that their programming must find viewers where they are, not where they’ve always been. But the production values of video intended for online-only viewing- or at least, for viewing online first- are also starting to improve.
Using the three-to-four minute rule, The New York Times Style Magazine, T, is creating a series of short, standalone celebrity interviews for its Web site that, based on the quality of the original footage, could easily be compiled into a film for later theatrical release. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s “Screen Test” film series recorded at the Factory some forty odd years ago, the T Magazine series is shot in 1080p HD and features well-known and emerging film actors. As you’ll see in the tutorial on page 32, the Panasonic AJ-HPX3000 and kit used by DP Manfred Reiff on set is a far cry from the 16 mm Bolex Warhol used for his one-shot, three-minute takes. The resulting T Magazine films are also more narrative, immediate, and engaging, which in an effort to attract the widest range of viewers, was the creative team’s goal.
Warhol shot his art films in 24 fps but projected them at 16 fps, a standard projection speed of the silent film era and unfortunately, the speed at which the vast majority of video online is viewed today. Web video may be inching away from its own equivalent silent era, that place between what Warhol called the "half-dimension" of still photos and the other "whole dimension" of film. But it can only do so with better production values. The quality of Web video starts with the quality of the captured image in camera and compression, digital recording and archiving are all critical parts of the process. It’s not really a question of Web only, but Web first, followed by anything, from a cell phone to a film screen, later. That’s the new business model. And in a world where the Web comes first for more and more viewers, first impressions matter.
– Beth Marchant, Editor-in-Chief
bmarchant@accessintel.com