Megan’s blog #5: 11.11.07 ~ The New Cinema
You Tube comes in for all kinds of criticism - a royal “time waster” for workers, a platform for “losers”, “ne’er do wells ” and crazed ”depraved” souls and outcasts who reveal their grim messages about humanity, hysterics, neuroses and pyschoses… The place where bottom trawlers post the detritus, flotsam and jetsam that either isn’t taken seriously in culture or listened to. It’s just there for cheap laughs and cheaps thrills - right?
That may well be the case.
But another case might also be made for You Tube as a site where serious freedom of expression, experimentation and truth about ourselves is revealed on a daily basis…
And when you can walk into any serious media organisation around the world and find every second serious journalist checking out clips You Tube and MySpace as a serious research tool, the time has come perhaps to take this online platform seriously as a new kind of cinema…
Debates welcome. Post below.
I dont see where the debate is, to be honest. There’s no question that this is the great leap of the gradual persnalisation of cinema. The kodak camera, super-8, the handycam.. all of these inventions put the ‘filmMAKING’ capacity into more andmore hands… but things like youtube complete the circuit of cinema…access to audience. Cinema is as much about its consumption as it is about its creation and things like youtube really democratise that end of the process. And i also it think that its starting to spawn its own genres, and there are artists who are really starting to develop youtube-cinema as unique form of cinema.
i think one of my favourites is this guy Noah Kalina, who took a photo of himself everyday for 6 years…
sure, its totally self-obsessed, and the music is a bit Beautiful Mind-ish but its a stunning portrait of time. Look at how his hair changes over the years. It moves so fast that its almost like the winds of time. i know thats sentimental, but you see what im getting at. He’s also showcasing how the internet is changing all of our narratives to being works-in-progress… think Wiki’s or even this blog, isnt complete without responses to continue this discussion… this guy, Noah Kalina… he’s framed his life in that same incomplete way…
ok shuffling off the soapbox…. gonna go post on the other stuff now. feel free to argue with me, im game.
sorry the link i placed there didnt come thru… here it is…
Noah Kalina takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo
oilwell pump…
I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read….