Has Digital Killed The Video Star? by Tim Leighton of FITCHLive
Has Digital Killed The Video Star?
Tim Leighton, Head of Strategy FITCHLive
‘The king is dead, long live the king’; it’s a syndrome that is well documented. With the much-celebrated advent of every new medium comes the ensuing panic that everything that went before it has been rendered utterly redundant. And now that Digital has been crowned as ‘the next best thing’ is it not time to consign the good old-fashioned medium of film - as we currently know it - to the great communications dustbin?
There’s plenty of prima facie evidence to suggest that the answer may well be yes. After all, whether it’s on a website or on your mobile phone, video in this brave new world is a very, very different beast. It has to be short and sharp; it has to work in a small viewer or on a small screen and, heaven forbid, it can even be made and manipulated by complete amateurs and shared with an audience of millions via the likes of YouTube.
When we think about the tools of our trade - the beautifully crafted scripts, the evocative characterisation, the intriguing visual techniques - all deployed in order to communicate messages with depth, this new culture would seem to be a complete anathema. Besides which, who on earth wants to sit there for longer than 30 seconds before clicking through to the next bite-sized piece of eye candy? Come on, admit it, video as a communications medium is dead.
Or is it? Arguably, we are in fact entering one of the most significant and exciting chapters in the history of film. Far from being a threat, digital technologies offer the possibility to take video as a communications medium in to a completely different league. And the reason why goes back to the demands of today’s audiences. They don’t want to view video anymore... they want to experience it. They don’t want to listen to messages anymore, they want to work with them, shape them and have some input.
So, no longer press play, sit back and tune out; the viewing paradigm has changed from a lecture to a conversation. And thanks to digital technologies, film can now begin to fulfil this need and become an even more relevant, even more effective medium. Interactivity can allow audiences to share film content and make choices about how they watch it. But even more excitingly, audiences can also choose how they use this content - whether it’s to find out more information, or add their own input and continue the narrative. The possibilities for how film can be deployed in a virtual environment are only just beginning to be explored.
Sure, the world has changed, but communication values haven’t. There is still a need for compelling stories to be told in a compelling way. In fact, arguably, the need is more compelling than ever. As the sheer volume of content brought to us by the multiplicity of channels available today proves to be overwhelming, the shining, high quality examples are the ones that will be remembered.
Film is dead, long live film. In today’s media landscape, the effect of new technologies and media is cumulative; it makes the mix richer and offers more possibilities. Oh how wrong The Buggles were.
