Gotuit and Web video 2.0
When commercial television made its U.S. debut in 1941, programs were little more than radio with pictures. It took a while for stations to grow into the new medium and take full advantage of the technology. The same could be said today of online video, which so far has been little more than TV with a progress bar. There have been plenty of experiments with interactivity, but for the most part, videos made for the Web have essentially been the same as those on TV, only less expensive. In other words, the production process hasn't really adapted yet to the fact that computers and the Internet are way smarter than TVs and broadcast pipes.
For a hint of how things might change, check out the announcement this morning from
Gotuit Media Corp. and Sports Illustrated. Gotuit's technology makes it easier for content owners and viewers to break a video into scenes and add metadata tags that describe the contents of each segment. These tags can then be used to search for and retrieve scenes from a library, and to create playlists of thematically related segments from disparate productions. Sports Illustrated's implementation is a straightforward collection of college football highlights, assembled into a video-laden website for the coming NFL draft. But the technology can also be used to power user-driven video remixing, as Gotuit demonstrates on its Scenemaker site. In addition, it can enable sites to sell and insert advertising timed to capitalize on what's happening within a video. For example, Nike might be willing to pay more to insert its ads into NBA highlight reels if they're guaranteed to run right after clips featuring Kobe Bryant (one of its clients), not those with Allen Iverson (a Reebok client).
The point here is that the beauty of the Web isn't in its ability to delivery video. Broadcasters have been able to do that since 1941. It's in the power to manipulate and customize what's delivered and viewed. That power needs to be unlocked by changes in the production process, and that's what is exemplified by companies such as Gotuit.
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Why hasn't google thought of this?
Posted by: mark harwood | April 04, 2007 at 03:57 PM
My guess is that Google's putting its efforts into automated ways to search for video segments, as some other companies do. For example, a company might enable people to retrieve clips of touchdown passes from a library of NFL highlights by searching through the text in the closed captions. Gotuit takes a different approach, one that requires actual humans to characterize video segments.
Posted by: Jon Healey | April 04, 2007 at 11:12 PM
Hi Jon
Great piece! I love your comments on the shocking lack of videos that use the interactive nature of the web. IMHO much current online content is like some early silent movies where the makers thought that cinema was basically theatre -- so they shot actors full-length against flat scenery with few cuts. Then as now there was a failure to see the nature and possibilities of the new medium.
However, I would suggest that the gotuit functionality you mention, good though it is, is still just slicing and dicing linear content.
IMHO, web video 2.0 must be conceived, scripted and shot specifically for interactive use. For a simple example, you may be interested in a BAFTA-nominated piece I shot for the National Theatre where Sir Ian McKellen talks interactively about Shakespeare: http://www.stagework.org.uk/mckellen (more of the same for Tate Modern etc at www.movieactive.com )
A piece like this perhaps exemplifies some of the "changes in the production process" which, as you say, are necessary -- the way it is scripted & shot would be meaningless on TV or in analogue cinema. It only works online, it only works interactively. That's how you know it's using the interactive medium properly. Why aren't more people doing this? I've no idea -- I think it's the great creative opportunity for filmmakers of our time.
Anyway -- great story, would love to see more in the same vein!
Martin
Posted by: Martin Percy | May 03, 2007 at 11:48 AM