Response to Origins of Video

Around pages 8-9 of the reading, author Meigh-Andrews discusses the historical quandaries surrounding the categorization of video as an art form. Some considered video an extension of film and television. Others saw it as a separate entity, one that was liberating because it wasn’t bogged down by tradition or scholarly discourse on account of its novelty.

I myself lean more towards the former view on video simply because, like film and television, video records moving images and uses them for aesthetic and communicative purposes. When contemplating the nature of motion picture media, I see a spectrum. On one end, we have the stereotypical Hollywood product: an expensive, glossy money-magnet whose cast and crew have more or less relinquished all creative control to the studio’s whims. As we move away from this pole, we get a good view of film as a collaborative art form, with director, cinematographer, sound designer, screenwriter, actor, and hundreds of other staff members working together to fulfill an artistic vision. Move even further and we hit the independent circuit, where budgets are smaller and the director has more creative reign. Film begins to look more and more like how we envision video, and eventually, the two become indistinguishable (consider Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation, a documentary comprising only home videos, old Super 8 footage, photos, and answering machine messages; and the Korean short film Night Fishing which, though I haven’t seen, was shot entirely using an iPhone).

Television defers from film only in narrative and the way it allocates its budget. Whereas a movie finishes within two, two and a half hours, TV shows run on through multiple episodes and seasons, so writing becomes especially important. Production quality for TV tends to be lower (for an exception, see Breaking Bad) because many resources have to be invested in sustaining the story. As a moving image medium, TV’s relationship to video is the same as that between film and video. And while the narrative-heavy nature of TV makes it different than much of the video medium, there are many web series online that rely on narrative without foregoing the creative autonomy inherent in making video.

Below, I’ve posted Primer (the whole thing’s available on YouTube), a movie that was shot in five weeks on a $7,000 budget. Though very much of the film medium, this movie showcases how the gap between standard issue Hollywood product and video can be bridged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNfxDFbQY10