You Tube - does it increase audience's creativity?

YouTube

It’s visited by 10.4 million people a month, and its traffic has grown by 56% since last year alone. Even the Queen uses it. It’s almost certainly bookmarked on your computer. So what do you do with yours? Pete Fraser investigates the weird and wonderful world of YouTube.

YouTube is fast replacing TV viewing for teenagers, and they are not just watching copyright-infringing professionally-made stuff designed for bigger screens, or violent happy-slapping stuff shot by bullies on their mobiles. The interesting bit is the stuff in between...this article looks at some recent sub-genres of homemade YouTube material which seems to me to be quite interesting (and in many cases not impossible to emulate yourself!). So be inspired...

Lego videos

If you type ‘lego’ into the YouTube search you will get around 58,000 results. They are not all brilliant animations, but many of them are. And a lot of them have had several hundred thousand hits. Top of the list when I looked was Grand Theft Auto: Lego City with over four million, followed by Lego Indiana Jones and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the latter professionally produced for the film’s latest DVD release). Lots of clever re-makes of scenes from films, done with loving care and attention to detail by young animators pepper the site. There are also many examples of music videos re-made, some of which clearly lend themselves to systematic animation, such as ‘OK GO’, while others are just eccentric, such as ‘Fame’ or songs by Rammstein.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF-kELmmvgA (Grand Theft Auto)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egPgU5kAjKE (Indiana Jones)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIXByCAIzos (Monty Python)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjCL0_0Il7w (OK GO)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6O3RTHO6OI (Fame)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxUZUnRwH7s (Rammstein)

Sweding

The recent release Be Kind Rewind from director Michel Gondry, in which Jack Black and his colleagues do nil budget truncated re-makes of famous films, coined a new word: ‘sweding’. The characters pretend that the delay in films being ready for rental is because they are being imported from Sweden, hence the term. As part of the marketing for the film, the distributors set up a competition for viewers to ‘swede’ well-known films of their choice, uploading them to YouTube, thus spilling over the fiction into the reality of fan production. By the time this MediaMagazine is published, I would expect there to be thousands of sweded films on YouTube, partly as a result of the competition and partly through the film inspiring other viewers to make some. My favourites at the time of writing are Die Hard and a silent version of Taxi Driver, although if you search for the latter, you may also come across some home videos of wild taxi rides in Gothenburg!

There are even director channels full of sweded videos, including Dokkoi from Japan, who even uploads ‘making of’ sweded videos, showing how he made his Blade Runner swede.

http://www.bekindmovie.com/ (the main movie site)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT6XYtlIGj0 (Die Hard)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6g0zJVO8qA (Taxi Driver)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiBPEu2rDzA (Blade Runner)

http://www.youtube.com/user/dokkoi (Dokkoi’s profile)

Anime Music Video (AMV)

I heard researcher Mimi Ito from California speak at a conference in London last year where she showed some amazing Manga videos and introduced me to an online world I knew nothing about. She has looked at how young people create their own communities online in which they share music videos they have reworked from a huge range of existing anime texts. Sites such as http://www.animemusicvideos.org is a good illustration of this, where the fans not only upload their material to share, but also comment on one another’s work and then meet up for conventions and award ceremonies. Some of these videos have found their way onto YouTube, though they have often been removed for copyright infringement. Again, a search on YouTube for ‘anime music videos’ will reveal an enormous amount of material. If you try Mega64’s ‘Sorry’ you will find a good example of how the fan community comments on a video, with over 80 comments and 30,000 hits.

Silvermoon377’s profile (a retired Canadian AMV maker) tells the viewer about her work and the time she put in on each video (175 hours editing on just one!). Her videos are incredibly intricate labours of love; if you watch her video ‘She’s Just Oblivious’ you will see her extraordinary work. The video has had over 600,000 hits and 2,500 comments.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org

http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=NnlzWZrmqII (Mega 64 ‘Sorry’)

http://www.youtube.com/user/silvermoon377 (Silvermoon377 profile)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O9dZF2q6R8 (She’s Just Oblivious)

Machinima

According to Wikipedia:

This technique involves rendering computer-generated imagery using real-time, interactive 3D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software. Usually, machinima productions are produced using the tools (demo recording, camera angle, level editor, script editor, etc.) and resources (backgrounds, levels, characters, skins, etc.) available in a game. It can also produce more professional-appearing production than is possible with traditional at-home techniques of live video tape, or stop action using live actors, hand drawn animation or toy props.

A massive resource for these videos is machinima.com’s channel, which features nearly 500 videos in a range of genres and links to channels with fan versions of games, music videos and short films.

Have a look at the Madonna ‘Hung Up’ video, which has more than 1 million hits and was made using SIMs 2. LuVR2003 tells you how to make machinima using SIMs on his channel, which also features Rhianna’s ‘Umbrella’. More commonly used as the engine for Machinima is Halo, of which there are many videos on YouTube, such as those produced by imSuck. But the place you should start if you want to find out more about machinima is with Fling Film’s ‘What is a machinima?’ which was made using GTA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1RVugthVM (Madonna)

http://www.youtube.com/user/LuVR2003 (LuVR2003 channel)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSW6onXiyYY (Rhianna)

http://www.youtube.com/user/imSuck (imSuck channel)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBE4KoXGgDk (What is a Machinima?)

Where next?

So once you’ve had a look at some of these – what about having a go yourself? Lego animation can be done with very cheap stopmotion programmes and a cheap camera attached to your computer. The main trick is in the movements – keep them very small! Follow the instructions and you should be able to have a go at machinima if you have any PC games. Anime music videos of course use found material and re-work it in imaginative ways, but I’d guess that to do it well you would not only need to know a lot about the material you are working with, but also have many hours to spend trawling through it to find the bits you want to ‘rip’. But if you have a camera, some mates and some bits of junk, sweding is the instant one to go for. Just think of a film you all know well, pick out some iconic moments, some memorable lines, hum some theme music, make a few props and costumes and before you know it you’ll be a director to rival Jack Black. I’ll be looking out for you on YouTube – if you make something as a result of reading this article and getting inspired, tag it with MediaMagazine – there’ll be a prize for the best thing I spot during 2008!

Pete Fraser is Chief Examiner for OCR A Level Media Studies, and Director of Learning at Long Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge. He has written many film and media textbooks.