- Collective book to which I contributed, with the article “From economy to the conversation and audiovisual creation”.
- Publication Date : 19 February 2014 published by Armand Colin
- Link to the official website of the conference that gave birth to the book : www.mobilecreation.fr/?p=423.
Synthesis
The mobile phone has the means of production and distribution of images, text and sound in the hands of more than six billion people in the world. Rather than trying to define a Mobile Art, this book takes you through the creative process extremely diverse in their terms and in their subject both in regular communication practices but also in film, literature, music or transmedia. This book documents the creative practices by mobile phone and re- creation of the mobile telephone, France to South Africa through the Sahel or Switzerland, mobilizing multiple disciplinary approaches (sociology, psychology, economics, aesthetics, ergonomics, musicology, pragmatic) and plural referred (scientific, artistic, activist).
Complete article
Download article “From economy to the conversation and audiovisual creation” (french).
From economy to the conversation and audiovisual creation
Benoît Labourdette
In history, it was never produced as much photographic and video image currently and since the onset of community video platforms (2005) the most massive amount of images produced in the world is made by non-specialists (people, any people). Web 2.0, that is, sites whose content is not generated by professionals but by amateur (users) becomes a shared space: this is where social networks develop. Note that this transformation could occur before because broadband was available for five good years, but that there was a specific technical problem for the video that made its use on the Internet by fans very difficult, a problem that has settled through automatic and invisible update version 7 of the Flash plugin on almost every computer on the planet in the first quarter of 2005.
Economy and production of amateur films
Home movies, they are made with a Super 8 camera, camcorder, or a camera, were, prior to 2005, published only in a small area (family and / or friends). Roger Odin has long shown that these films did not have to be judged as “inferior” to the professional cinema, but their form was simply responding to other functions, in particular to social and identity function (produce consensus perpetuate the family institution).
In fact, the difference between professional and amateur films films is, at this time, above all economic: you pay to see “content” professional (we bought a place cinema, DVD, it fulfills the TV license, advertisers pay to place their movies on TV, etc.), but it does not pay to see “content” amateur. The economy has traditionally been a professional economics of content sales, while the economy is an amateur equipment and consumables sales economy (hence the regular appearance of new models for the amateur nourish Economy: accessories, films, video tapes, memory cards ...).
Things change after 2005.
Now the Youtube platform is the main space sharing videos: 100 hours of new video content uploaded every minute, 4 billion videos viewed per day. There are mostly amateur videos placed there to be shared, that is to say, viewed by members of the family and friends of each network. Are there and professional content, but were for the most part, posted by amateurs, also in order to share.
The business model is advertising Youtube. Next to each video, there is an advertisement, and before the video (preroll) after the video (post-roll) and video (instream). So the more a video is viewed, the more exposure advertisements is great, and the higher the number Youtube matter increases. Thus, more fans produce and share videos, and the figure will increase Youtube matter: we passed a saving of amateur content. Some amateur films totaling more than 500 million views, producing, Youtube platform for a number of approximate case $ 5 million. This is the case, for example, Charlie bit my finger, a film of 50 seconds, a film so “cool” that makes you want to send emails to share with his friends, a film that says viral: a father filmed her two young children playing when one of them starts to bite the finger of the other. Charlie bit my finger reported amounts much greater than that reported most professional productions and here it is the content that produced that value.Although most amateur videos only account a small number of views, it does not matter because it is enough that 100 videos viewed 10 times each, or a video view 1000 times, so that, given the almost zero cost of hosting each video, the result in terms of turnover for Youtube is the same.
The economic barrier that separated the amateurs from the professionals has now fallen. The total turnover of Youtube is more important than the number of film industry’s case in its entirety. One can even say, if we take as a criterion the only economic criterion, the professional production is only a subset of amateur production, producing much more promising and profitable commercially speaking. This raises the question: what does it do so now to spend time making professional films?Note, however, that in the new economic system, the money goes to the platform, not the “authors”. Although revenue sharing is possible for some years, the fact that it is the amount of viewings which bases the economic value of an output result it is extremely rare that the amateur makes money (the If Charlie bit my finger and its millions of viewing is rare).
Last remark about these economic issues: Google, owner of YouTube, is also the manufacturer of the Android operating system found 75% of phones sold, a system that makes it extremely easy and intuitive (almost immediately) the publication of the video we just rotate. Now, the easier it is to upload our videos, the more we do, and Google will earn money through advertisements that accompany each of our exchanges. Thus, the objective of this industrial (and others in its industry) is to ensure that fans not only produce but share as possible of audiovisual content.
Towards audiovisual talk
This incentive sharing has unexpected consequences.
Before the advent of the cell phone to make a video (or photo), he must first decide to take along a camera or a camera; So we always had, even if it was not clearly formulated prior project. Today, the phone is always with us in our pocket: this is our communication prosthesis, become indispensable to life, equipped with a camera prosthesis. It is no longer necessary to feed a preliminary project: we are always equipped. Filming with her phone is now an extremely simple and trivial thing. But the new is that the exchange tools in addition to shooting tools, it becomes possible to engage a kind of conversation interposed pictures or videos.
Prior to 2005, the words around them films, preceded them, followed them. Even family films which nevertheless often had no generic or dialogues were discussed at the screening by family members. The big news is that since 2005, we can make films and make them public by way of words. In fact, thanks to “groups” which one belongs to the “social networks”, when turning a video, we generally know who we want to go and when you press the “publish” button, we know who will receive it, with no other thing to do as pressing a button. It is no longer necessary to “present” his film with words.
Before, the language of words outside the structured language of images. Today, the language of images (from manufacture to distribution, dissemination to the responses they generate) can do without words. The language of images can then be used in conversation. Some sites will even offer to make the fleeting images, reducing their lifespan to a few seconds: the exchange of images is then like a real conversation almost live.
Towards audiovisual creativity
All very well and opens new doors for our brains so malleable ... why not ... But we also know that the images are a real language with its own grammar, its rules, its representations, cultural models underlying his unconscious political office, ethics ... However, in the context of this conversation, we remain in a sort of “visual orality”: we speak, we speak, but we do not know “write” the language we by the. The written (but what does writing in visual orality?) Is the material that “politically” structure (in the broad sense) society. If this work is not controlled by the citizens, society can not be democratic. It seems to me that today, everyone needs to learn to write the images with which we speak every day, just to keep us in a democracy.
But how we learn, how is it appropriate language? By studying the rules, grammar, standard? Of course not. We learn a language by speaking, being supported in the generous act of creating something. Regarding language, we learn writing poems, writing stories, and even telling his vacation provided it is done with a point of view ... In short, we learn a language by exercising their creativity, working shape to transmit to another speech, thought, emotion. We learn a language by integrating with its collective dimension, that is to say, by developing its own generosity. We learn a language by exceeding the ephemeral dual call to move to the production of an object defying time that caters to the collective, that is to say the political.
In the audiovisual field, so it is offering to people, whether young or not, to create movies that will be presented collectively, to tell stories, to enrich others of his worldview that everyone will be able to appropriating the language. The aim, moreover, is not “learn” but to give, to offer the other, an object formed, an object that will outlive us all, and who will address the Another universally (language learning will follow).
Arrange for a few days, a filmmaking workshop with mobile phone, films that will be produced collectively, and that will be the occasion of a public presentation in a room for a tangible human collective, concrete, physical, creates an emotion that can stimulate participants awareness of the issue of production and a desire for risk-taking on the formatting of the message they want to convey, in short all work on the audiovisual language which will lead both authors and spectators to experience strong, unique, shared, memorable, short, a founding experience of writing images to an experience of creation.
