Clip culture
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Clip culture, compared to "lean-back" experience of seeing traditional movies, refers to an internet activity of sharing and viewing a short video, mostly less than 15 minutes. The culture began as early as the development of broadband network, but it sees the boom since 2005 when websites for uploading clips are emerging on the market, including youtube, Google Video, MSN Video.
Those video clips often shows a moments of significance, humour, oddity, prodigy performance. Sources for video clips include news, movies, music video and amateur video shot. In addition to the clip recorded by high-quality camcorders, it is getting common to produce clips with digital camera, webcam, and mobile phone.
History
Tools
Impact
Rise of Amateurs
Unlike traditional movies largely dominated by studios, clip movies were overwhelmingly supplied by amateurs. In May 2006, The Economist reported that 90% of clips on Youtube came from amateurs, a few of whom are young comedians. It, in effect, also brought amateur talents.
In 2005, two Chinese students Huang Yixin and Wei Wei, now dubbed as Back Dorm Boys showed their talented in lip-synching in a song of Backstreet Boy, with their self-consciously grimaces in a video uploaded to some clip websites, has instantly became famous. Not only were they hosted by televisions, concerts, but also granted a contract by a media company in Beijing for lip-syncing for cash.
Earlier celebrity of clip culture includes David Elsewhere, a prodigy in popping and liquiding. His performance at Kollaboration Competition in 2001 was widely spread in the internet and was later hired to participate in advertisements for Heineken, iPod and Pepsi.
Citizen Journalism
Citizen video reporting dated back as early as the development of camcorders, but all videos were screened until its spread has been aided with a freely upload websites, in which censorship is limited to make a vast amount of videos available to anyone who click it. A scene rarely broadcasted on television, and many first-witnessed scenes has since then became public.
Notably in December 2004, tourist videos on Asian Tsunami has offered worldwide audiences the first scenes of the disaster. In Decemeber 2003, videos in Hong Kong showing the bully in De La Salle School has outraged the public, raised a wide concern on school violence and led to the arrest of 11 students.
Vlog
In late 2005 to 2006, new form of blogging emerged as a vlog. It is a blog that takes video as the primary content, often accompanied by supporting text, image, and additional metadata to provide context. Su Li Walker, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said that like blogs, which have become an extension of traditional media, video blogs will be a supplement to traditional broadcasting. [1]
Convergence with traditional media
The potential markets of video clip has catched attention from traditional studio. In 2006, the producers of Lucky Number Slevin, a film with Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu and Bruce Willis, are going to make 8-minute clip to Youtube, but celebrity in traditional media is proved to be able to gain a bigger popularity in clip culture.
Emerging Trends
A recent development is the appearance of curated, or programed, blogs such as Viewtube, Tuberaider and a host of others. Made possible by the embedded player function on sites like Youtube, these newcomers are seen by certain industry watchers as examples of a new trend. Differing significantly from Digg based aggregators such as Videosift, or commercial prank and shock sites like Ebaum's World, these new sites function more like repertory movie houses in that they tend to be quirky, thematic and aimed at a dispersed but similar audience.
Cyril, a Japanese-European magician, became famous by showing his theandric skills in Japanese TV magic show in 2004. His fame was achieved only in Japan and international magical circle, until his video clips was later spread across Asia, then other continents.