As a potential future media professional, I intend to create online video content that excites and inspires the viewer. I find the degree to which well constructed video material can create a feeling of happiness or excitement in the viewer to be quite amazing. For this reason I decided to analyse an example of online video practice that I believe to be a fundamental example of this influential style.
Julian Melanson’s ‘Art In The Streets’, is an artistic video that communicates a valuable message and thus inspires and excited the viewer. To explore notions about what online video is exactly, an analysis of ‘Art In The Streets’ is useful. Ten criteria were explored to try and position ‘Art In The Streets’ within the world of online video.
Provenance
‘Art In The Streets’ was written, directed, filmed and edited by Julian Melanson, a young aspiring videographer based in Los Angeles, California. Julian is the artist behind the popular YouTube channel DRNTube and has progressed in the field of video production from originally making skateboarding videos with friends, to a professional level, having been responsible for the creation of videos for labels such as DJ DIK, Harlequin, American Gentlemen Magazine, IVI Vision and many more. The footage for this video was captured partly throughout the streets of Los Angeles, as well at the Museum of Contemporary Art. ‘Art In The Streets’ was produced in June of 2011, commissioned by theberrics.com and Levi’s for display at the MOCA Art in the Streets exhibition. This exhibition was the first time a historical collection of graffiti and street art was exhibited in the U.S. and traced the art form from the early 1970s, to the phenomenon it has become today. Since the video was originally commissioned for artistic exhibition, it seems less likely to be suited for the online medium.
Purpose
The piece intends to contrast two artistic practices: graffiti painting and skateboarding. This contrast highlights the similarities between the mediums in terms of the constant regression and societal disapproval both art forms receive. Furthermore, the footage of the MOCA Art in the Streets exhibition, complimented by narration of a local graffiti artist expressing his passion for both art forms, indicate that the video is designed to celebrate the beauty and enjoyable nature of both practices. Overall, ‘Art In The Streets’ proposes a fight for general acceptance of graffiti art and skateboarding.
Idiolect
The speech habits and language used by the narrator (Freddy Quintana) in the video are notably informal and casual. The interview appears to be recorded in a relaxed environment with little scripting. Thereby the language used is indicative of contemporary teenage slang, which could be used to target an audience of a young demographic, as well as situate the viewer within the culture of skateboarding and graffiti art. The culture of viewing online video content is often relaxed, disregarding a need for intense concentration. Therefore the idiolect used in ‘Art In The Streets’ suits the online environment.
Appearance
The video primarily features unsaturated, pastel colours. This sets the grungy nature of the work and positions the viewer at the core of the street scene in Los Angeles. This also creates a juxtaposition between the pastel backdrops and the saturation of the graffiti art, highlighting its importance. The lighting is often stark and features a recurring film burn visual effect. This effect corresponds with the elements of a skateboarding or street sport video. As well as simulating a music video transition, paralleling other forms of online video practice.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere of the video is primarily created through the use of music and sound effects. ‘Art In The Streets’ features a journey from a soft, slow atmosphere throughout the introduction, into an intensified montage during the middle of the work, before returning to a relaxing finish. This balances a sort of euphoric appreciation of the art with an intensified, exciting display of the art museum. The music used throughout the introduction to the video features soft clicking and deep distortion, similar to crickets in the evening. This is symbolic of nighttime and helps set the scene to create a mood associated with skateboarding and graffiti. In addition, the combination of sounds of graffiti cans and skateboard wheels creates a blend, which further presents the contrast between the art forms. The created atmosphere helps the viewer engage with the content and react in a certain way.
Appeal
The appeal for watching this material comes from the video’s ability to incorporate key aspects of a skateboarding video, as well as an artistic presentation. The cinematographic techniques used throughout the skateboarding segments of the piece closely align with techniques used in professional skateboarding videos. Most likely due to the artists video background, the use of smooth panning and tracking of the skateboarding subject produces appealing footage, which parallels a professional skateboarding video. In addition, the coverage of the MOCA is shot using a documentary cinematography style, which positions the viewer from the point of view of an exhibitor at the museum and therefore appeals to people who seek art. In addition, short duration forms part of the video’s appeal due to the fast paced nature of browsing the internet.
Quality
The quality of the video is an important factor when considering the success of online video. Given the enormous quantity of video across the World Wide Web, the quality becomes a determining factor to separate particular videos from others of its kind. ‘Art In The Streets’ is of high quality and resembles professional video production elements. The use of studio lighting, dolly tracks, high quality microphones and unique locations, all combine to create a high quality production. This emphasises the importance of the video and increases its potential appreciation online.
Distribution and Accessibility
The video was created for presentation at the MOCA Art in the Streets exhibition. However the video was posted on Julian Melanson’s YouTube channel (DRNTube) and shared throughout a large variety of online websites and forums such as: Levi’s, Juxtapoz, Complex, PSFK, Oyster Mag, Obey Clothing and more. Clearly, the video has been distributed throughout online channels targeting the skate community, street art community and several DJ and dance music communities. This highlights the video’s connection with its target market and it’s ease of accessibility to people within the appropriate niche. However due to the narrow reach of the piece, limitations are placed on the video’s ability to become viral and more broadly accessible.
Expandability
Given online video practices revolves around sharing and expanding upon the work of others, it can be beneficial for a work to encourage improvement and replication. This would further the reach of particular aspects of the work to larger audiences and potentially create trends among online video through influenced popularity. ‘Art In The Streets’, in essence presents an encouragement to formulate connections between hobbies, whilst creating a pathway to celebrate oppressed art forms. This concept and purpose can be transferred to other art forms or interests and means that engagement with the piece is not limited to purely viewing, but also encourages creativity to create duplications and expansions of the video or at least particular aspects of the video. Whilst it may not encourage direct response videos, the fact that it inspires new video creations forms part of it’s place in the online video world.
Innovation
For a video to stand out on the Internet, it has to have innovative qualities. There is an extensive amount of videos online that present or promote skateboarding and those that document graffiti art. Also whilst there may be an online video culture that associate with both forms of street art, very few online video practices associate skateboarding with graffiti art from an artistic and educative point of view. That factor is what makes ‘Art In The Streets’ stand out as powerful and inspiring, contributing towards its online success.
Mind mapping is a great way to organise thoughts. The human brain may have many ideas and however scattered, learning stems from creating associations between two separate elements (thoughts), the connection between the two is what provides meaning and therefore a learning experience. Mind mapping entails breaking down certain concepts into the parts that create it’s meaning and this naturally organises one’s thoughts of particular concepts both in broad terms and specific notions of the concept. During this week’s Online Video Experiments, we created a mind map for ‘Online Video’, breaking the concept down into four distinct areas: affordances, purpose, avenues and format, where broad and specific uses or associated notions of ‘Online Video’ could be mapped out by their relationship with each other. This was a practice based learning experience as it required much analytical development of associated concepts in an interactive manner.
Below is the mind map that our group created and you can see how the visual factor of mind mapping generated the idea of categorising all of the associated terms into 4 groups.
Each group’s mind map was collated through the process of class discussion to create the below ‘mother’ mind map. Similarly, groups of associated terms were formed through this process, although to a larger extent.
The process of mind mapping is something that I rarely practice, however I can see from the extent of discovery resulting from today’s mind mapping process, the importance of using visual brainstorming to create associations thorough associations that may not have been possible otherwise, or at least to the same extent.
In Online Video Experiments there is an emphasis on ‘practice based learning’. Practice based learning is a module of learning that stands in direct contrast with classical classroom, theory based learning. In a classical classroom style learning situation, one often absorbs content in an effort to memorise material and thus gain knowledge through methods focussed around understanding concepts and ideas via direct exposure to theories that surround the material. Whereas in practice based learning, understanding material is anchored to an interactive experience with content. The learning module encourages getting directly involved with content through analysis and heavy personal reflection of work, the learning outcomes thus become more relevant and tangible in regards to the practical use of learnt content. Whilst this blog enables practice based learning to flourish, another of it’s key assets is comprised of the blog’s informality. Due to the public and casual nature of blogging, the medium therefore encourages creativity through the lack of restrictions evident and the unlikeliness of disapproval. Thus this blog has become a safe haven to project creative ideas and experiments to the world wide web, unhindered by formal restrictions found in other mediums such as essay writing. So long story short, I’m looking forward to it!
Year 2 of the Bachelor of Communication (Media) kicks off with a bang, blowing the dust off media factory and busting out the blogging. I will predominantly be using this blog for work associated with the class: Online Video Experiments. However, amongst that content you will be sure to find other relevant and no doubt extremely un-relevant content acquired from, as well as inspired from the media world.
