This video gave Sam and I a lot of inspiration for our original media creation. We wanted to explore simultaneous videos and this video conveyed a full story with locked off, stationary cameras. Our exploration into simultaneous videos brought us to YouTube, where we wanted to push the limits to what is possible on the platform, and also what we can achieve with its videos. The structure of this original idea was focused on creating 4 seperate YouTube videos that were created to flow and meld into a singular narrative, in the form of a grid.

The idea of having seperate, individual media texts that could be viewed on their own within the platform but when displayed inside a new platform (a 4×4 grid of the YouTube videos that play simultaneously) would create a cohesive and interesting piece of content.

However, there were two main issues that we had when following through with this idea that ultimately made us go another way; time constraints and the Manovich book “Language of New Media“. Time wise we were incredibly hard pressed to first create the concept and then create something of a quality we were proud of, realising rather quickly that for our videos to be coherent and interesting while also using the innovations of simultaneous video work was just not conceivable in the amount of time we had, although this is an idea I am very much interested in and could potentially investigate further in the future.

The other key factor was the Manovich book, specifically a principle he outlines known as “modularity”, which in terms of online media focuses on the idea that all forms of media texts are fractured and individualised within a larger media text, which very much is at the centre of our exploration into a combination of videos. The issue we found however, was that we were not actually creating individualised content that is part of a larger text, but instead we were basically fracturing a linear piece of media content, and displaying it as if it was non linear and modular. I do believe that given enough time to meticulously go through and plan out this idea, making sure that each fractured video was able to be viewed on its own, separated from the context of the wider text, we would be able to create a truly unique experience that follows Manovich’s principles of the new age of media.

 

“Creativity comes from constraint”  – Biz Stone.