what the fuck is wrong with us?
OK,
so i get this message about “irina’s gig” and I am encouraged to get my butt to Los Angeles for December 1st. So I try to figure out what it is, and I see the announcement for the jonny goldstein live show, and i try to listen to it while i browse elsewhere, but the system of operator 11 is so smart that if you try to actually just listen to the content while in another window – it wont play the audio. way to fucking go, operator 11 anyway, I got to the 29 minutes from the end of the video and I hear Irina talk about how PodTech had trademarked the word “vloggies” (what on earth did you expect?! they bought themselves into hosting the event, and wasted a lot of money on basically a big party – of course they wanted to trademark the word “vloggies” so they can create similar EVENTS in the future)
and i hear the dreaded words
A
RED
CARPET
again:
A FUCKING RED CARPET.
Somebody please say this is an elaborate joke.
The Winnies? This MUST be a joke. Please, Irina, say it is. Please?
Pretty please?
some wine internet tv show will sponsor the booze? (free booze? how OLD!)
galacticast will perform
askaninja will perform
valleywag will be there
oh, did i mention the red carpet?
oh, and AWARDS! no judges! But NOT meaningless!
What the fuck is wrong with us?
oh my god
i listened to more
SHOWGIRLS
IN A BIKINI?!?!?!
whats next? scobleporn?
jesus, what planet is this? planet hollywood?
oh
OOOHHH
This IS Hollywood.
This IS us re-inventing Hollywood.
It will take place in Los Angeles.
It Will be close to Hollywood.
It Will have the red carpet.
You know what?
I might be a videoblogger.
But I am certainly not THIS kind of videoblogger.
What am I then? Can we begin having sub-genres now? (If you at all can say that videoblogging is a genre, yadiyada, old debate)
Showy vlogs
Experimental vlogs
Monologue vlogs
Collaborative vlogs
Windows
i listened to a bit more
HAIR SPONSOR!??!
$150 for hair sponsoring?!
(yes, i know hair-for-the-red-carpet-costs-that-much)
then i hear that schlomo is involved in this too. hah!
you know, this reminds me a bit of pixelodeon, which was put together by people i love and respect. and yet the event itself rubbed me the wrong way. why? i dont know. i dont remember pixelodeon being an event that focused on the red carpet and $150 hair sponsorships, but I do remember the “hollywood vibes”.
i don’t know. i am sickened by this, and I AM SO SO GLAD that my bills-paying funds are not dependent on videoblogging consulting or anything like that. because
if i am the only one being sickened by all of this, and everyone else thinks the red carpet is just fun and good and constructive and democratic – - –
raymond
08.1616.2007 2:51 pm
im an amateur: it was some bug in my browser that made it impossible for me to listen to the sound while in another window, and it is NOT operator11’s fault. browser is restarted and it works now :)
mmeiser
08.1616.2007 3:34 pm
There is a sort of a disconnect I think. A lot of vloggers have upped and moved to LA.
It’s that rift between those of us that see vlogging as everday communications… aka. video sharing, much like sharing photos… and those that see it as simply entertainment.
Let’s call it the jay dedman camp and the andrew baron camp.
On the one hand much like photos this medium can be as artful and artistic, or simply like snapshots as you can get. My favorite example of “snapshot” style sharing is twitter vlog. It’s simple communications at its finest. My favorite examples of the artfulness of it are thepan and wreck&salvage. And of course there is EVERYTHING inbetween including travel vlogs and citizen journalism.
The other camp though is the commericial news and entertainment camp. Rocketboom, Podtech, and even one of my favorite vlogs lofi st. louis. This can range from simple reguritation of traditional media to explorations of the cultural periphery like lofi saint louis. In fact in many cases with shows like the new webalert and offerings from commercial publishers like CNET, ABC, NBC and others it is the exact same stuff as you would find on TV.
It is inevitable for this to happen. We cannot and should not say “fuck it”. We don’t control this medium… noone does… that is the beauty of it. Wether we like it or not.
The vloggies/winnies/ whatever it is must evolve with the times. If it doesn’t its existence will be pointless. Perhaps even it must make a split… or perhaps it can be the “sundance” or “cannes” of this space… for lack of a better word… but it must grow up or risk irrelevance.
I am MOST definitely in the jay dedman camp personally. What I love is sharing videos with the people I’ve come to know. I love their creativity, the artfulness and everything that comes with it. It’s a non-commercial use of video. To expect to get paid for the type of vlogging i love is like expecting to get paid for talking on the phone.
Mefeedia also represents this schism… and I think we can pull it off because blogging aggregators in the past have pulled it off. I think we can deal both in commerical content and extremely personal content just the way gmail does and bloglines, and google reader. We just have to make mefeedia a transparent tool.
But there IS this other camp, and that camp must be set free, given reign… Ultimately this concept thewinnies may be a compromised vision.
I don’t know that this awards concept can unify that jay dedman “moment showing” vision and that of andrew baron issue. I don’t know that the two haves can be rectified.
Vlogging IS getting very commerical. It’s getting WAY more commercial then blogging…. as video simply has that potential to get vertical unlike no other medium.
Anyway… am I making any sense.
Vidoeblogging as a medium has unique challenges. Unlike blogging and photo sharing it has the ability to get VERY commercial. It will, nay MUST, always remain accessible to the rupert’s (twittervlog) and the jay dedmans and the vloggers we’ve all come to call friends. But it will undoubtadly also become extremely commercial and there is NOTHING we can do to prevent it so we just better deal with it and get over it. It’s either stay involved and try to steer it and make the best of it… or simply walk away.
Personally… winnies… or whatever, no matter how odd the concept is that we’ve been given I trust irina and schlomo and others involved enough that we can makethis work… though… thewinnies… that is an ODD name.
I think in fact that irina meant it as a spoof of a hollywood awards show, but I do not in fact have the whole picture. I’d not even seen the website.
Oh… and btw, I thought pixelodeon straddled the line extremely well. I loved it. Yes it was in hollywood, I’d prefer europe… I’d prefer NY or chicago, or san fran… undoubteadly this changed the flavor of the conference.
But pixelodeon was still about movlogging and everyday moments and artful stuff.
see: http://pixelodeon.mefeedia.com/
My only problem with pixelodeon is it was put on to quickly… it presented itself origninally just as a screening and not a conference, and therefore I think it slipped under the radar and failed to be attended by a great many who didn’t realize that it was going to, and could be something more. That was simply lack of time in my opinion.
BTW, do check out the screen room we put together.
http://pixelodeon.mefeedia.com/
Let me know if that changes your perspective on what it was about.
Yeah. my only regret with pixelodeon is it seemed to be missing to many key vloggers, like yourself. This caused it to be very incomplete in my mind.
-Mike
schlomo
08.1818.2007 7:05 pm
Yeah, I’ve been roped into the Winnies, but you are little off the mark in what is happening with it.
It’s just a party. Nothing more. I like throwing parties; I’ve thrown many. Stupid theme parties are a pasttime of mine. Goofy costumes; random themes.
It’s healthy for people to gettogether. Its natural. And like Vloggercue, it doesnt have any pretensions to Inspire and Change The World. Just wants to be a place where people can chat, eat, and drink.
Three things I enjoy doing often.
missb
08.1919.2007 5:03 pm
I got into videoblogging for the communication, the interactivity, the people. I’m THAT kind of videoblogger. But why just sit at home twittering and vlogging and facebooking and powncing and whatevering to all these fabulous people I feel I’ve come to know (and loooove) online when I can GO HANG OUT WITH THEM IN PERSON??
Waitaminute: you mean there’s going to be a get-together with
a: people I want to see and talk to and
b: I can dress up
c: there’s free booze?
Fucking show me the way, man! Sign me up! I’ll be the first at the door and I’m going to look slammin’! I don’t even want to videoblog it, I just want to BE there! Fuck conferences! I’m not a tech person! I just want to hang out! I don’t care which fucking “camp” people are in. Jesus, is that ever a dead horse. It is what it is. And videoblogging is well on it’s way to becoming something completely different than most of us intended. “I-Caught”, anyone? Kill me. Does that make me sad? Yes. Yes it does. Absolutely. Yes.
But it’s sure as hell NOT going to stand in my way of putting on a push-up bra and getting lit with my friends!
Red carpet? Whatever. I don’t care if it’s mauve astroturf. Bikinis? Drag Queens? Excellent. I want more. The bigger and gaucher and loucher the better. I want to out-LA, LA. I’m a New Yorker, after all. Out LA-ing LA is my birthright.
The idea isn’t to one-up the Vloggies, or inject extra Hollywood into videoblogging, it’s just to have a good fucking time.
And dammit, Raymond, I expect you to be there.
The Winnies | jonnygoldstein.com
08.1919.2007 8:33 pm
[...] Last week on Jonny’s Par-tay, Irina Slutsky announced a new project, the Winnies, to take place Saturday December 1, 2007. It’ll be a party celebrating DIY internet videomakers in that Sodom South of San Francisco known as Los Angeles. Love it, or hate it, it’s gonna happen (and personally, I think I’m gonna love it.) [...]
Madge Weinstein
08.2020.2007 6:37 am
My cunt stinks.
schlomo
08.2020.2007 7:37 am
That’s why we have The Douchees, Madge!
We all get clean and smell like vinegar and rose water.
Missanthropist
08.2222.2007 3:11 am
The Fall Film Fest will have a carpet of vomit since screenings will be at bar/restaurants. The point is to hang out and talk shit. $15,500 in prizes, 50 of which are @ $250 so more folks get something of value, yo. Nobody’s yet redefined non-competitive competition well. The Wburg Fall Film Fest is a chance to do just that. Who’s gonna help me redefine it? Got the Festival Guidelines in a Spin wiki.
http://www.spinxpress.com/Faux_Press/Fall_Film_Fest
Edit its little heart out.