Fifteen Minutes
by TYLER WEAVER
YouTube just announced that they’re upping their 10-minute video limit to 15 minutes.
I remember being reticent to chop up my short, fourteen-minute documentary, The Fourteen Minute Gap (heh) into two pieces. Didn’t wanna. Can’t recall why, probably some artistic bullshit excuse like “it’s meant to be viewed in its entirety!”
Boy, did I have a lot of growing up to do.
I reached online video maturity when I hacked and slashed Gather ‘Round the Mic into 13 pieces and threw it up on YouTube. It was actually better than the full feature version (remind me – I’m going to do a post on the failings of that film and what I’d do differently; note that this doesn’t mean that I hate the film, just that I’m going to be honest about it, not that I haven’t… nevermind).
Believe it or not, this whole 15-up thing has given my nebulous thoughts about internet video a solidified thought – Internet video offers us the possibility of telling any story we want, for any length of time we want. We’re only limited by the conventions of the exhibition platform and the medium in which we work.
As visual storytellers, moviemakers, dreamweavers (DreamGrafters), we’re finally able to enjoy the same freedom as novelists.
Want to make a 10 hour opus? Go for it. Figure out how to get it out there and bringing in some scratch.
But let me caution. Just because we now have unlimited storytelling potential at our fingertips, it doesn’t mean that we should drag something out longer than it needs to be. Unlimited is a misnomer. We’re limited by the stories we choose to tell – but at least we don’t have to worry about the bladders of our audience.
Only their connection speed. And engagement quotient.
That doesn’t mean I want to see fifteen minutes of skateboarding bulldogs or frat dudes picking their nose with a crack pipe. I want to see the good stuff you create.
Let loose. The time is right.
|MH|
TYLER WEAVER is a storyteller whose chosen medium happens to be that expensive form called film. Don’t ask him why. He’s made some stuff that wasn’t terrible, like THE FOURTEEN MINUTE GAP, IL MIO CANTO LIBERO, and GATHER ‘ROUND THE MIC. He lets the world knows what he thinks as a contributor to the pulptone.com website and as the founder and EIC of Multi-Hyphenate… which you’re reading right now. He’s currently developing a transmedia project called WHIZ!BAM!POW! that pays tribute to his lifelong love of comic books. Because he’s slightly insane, he’s simultaneously developing a new documentary. He yaks about that and more on Twitter under the creative guise of @tylerweaver
