Because I'm worth it

Commissioning video for business requires trusting relationships.

Many who commission video production for business, spending significant sums as they do so, are not confident when judging the worth of paying more for better quality. Better quality in video can seem of intangible value. I get the same feeling when I get my car fixed: Should I get opt for the new cormthruster unit that'll last me another 5 years or risk just getting the widget pipes cleaned for half the price?

And this presents me with a quandary: as I make video for business, should I concern myself with achieving high level aesthetic values when the client cannot see the point?

It’s an issue I take seriously. Is my obsession with quality dysfunctional? Are my quality control measures the wrong ones? I’ve thought about this and I’ve managed to convince myself that I’m doing alright.

Good filmmaking speaks to the unconscious. When we make video for business we do have to communicate information, but on the whole, video is not as good at doing this as text. What video is good at is communicating to the subconscious – affecting attitudes and understandings.

Narrative is a profound craft that changes minds. Religion, politics and Max Clifford all use it to make meaning. Because we watch TV regularly it’s easy to think that telling a story is easy. It isn’t. There are rules and techniques that can be studied and mastered.

The worst sort of corporate film dramas are little more than lists of facts and points that need to be communicated - put into the mouths of characters. Exposition isn’t drama. The communication of facts and attitudes needs to be translated into the language of human conflict to attract our interest.

Visual composition has been studied and analysed. There are rules to be learned. And sticking to them can make a programme that is easier to watch and which communicates more effectively.

There's more, but in short – the skills we bring to bear in the creation of video for business create effects that look simple, but which come from the study, mastery and application of technique. When budgets get squeezed we can compromise our art – and that can compromise the result and the effect. What the client wants is someone who is only going to spend their money where it's going to have a significant effect on the impact they are trying to make.

I’ve talked myself into it – I am worth it!

Media Influence

There's been a lot of fuss about the Raoul Moat fansite on Facebook. Distasteful as this is, what's worse is that the mass media should take some blame for Mr Moat's killings.

The coverage of Derrick Bird's killing spree was intense and hysterical. There's plenty of evidence to show that the more intense the media coverage of an event the more copycats are created.

This is because our brains naturally refer to what's happening around us to model our behaviour. We determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. Presumably, Raoul Moat's fans have been affected by the mass media zeitgeist in a similar way to Moat.

The data about the affect of mass media suicide reports is amazing. Stories of car suicides, in which only one person dies, generate wrecks in which only one person dies. Stories of suicide-murder combination, in which there are multiple deaths, generate wrecks in which there are multiple deaths.

Heavyweight boxing finals influence murder statistics in the USA. When a match was lost by a black fighter, the homicide rate during the following 10 days rose significantly for young black male victims, but not young white males. And when a white fighter lost the match, it was young white men who were killed more frequently over the next 10 days.

This well-know psychological phenomenon can be used for the good. In one study withdrawn nursery-age children were shown a 23-minute video. Each scene began with a different solitary child watching some social activity and then activly participating to everyone's enjoyment. Just watching this film once was enough to reverse a potential pattern of lifelong maladaptive behaviour.

In my little corner of the world we try to use this effect to improve behaviour. I guess that's what training films are all about.

Preface

"The survivors in political life, like the survivors of the world of entertainment and the world of sport, are individuals who have grasped the idea of another reality। Their fate is to live in it forever, because to them it becomes more real than any other world" wrote the late Martin Pawley in his dystopian futorology classic The Private Future.





This notion once applied just to famous celebrities. But the internet has brought us all Warhol's 15 mins of fame, not in a nice tasty chunk, but in a thin spread. Dating, social networking, business networking, gaming, second lives, photo blogs - our identities are increasingly mass mediated.



For my part, I've always been very wary of the power of a media existence. It's power against me as well as what it can offer. To this sensitive soul, even writing this blog takes me a tiptoe closer to my Jordan (as opposed to my Katie Price). Next week it's botox and a makeover.



Being a fan, I like David Bowie's solution to the problems of fame - consciously creating avatars. It's nice to compare oneself to David. Nicer than a comparison with roleplaying online gamers.


So, as I take my own web presence up a notch I wonder will it lead to excessive pride and ambition with the enevitable downfall? Am I worthy? Have I achieved anything in my miserable existence?



Hang on, this is just a preface। What I'm getting at, what I'm saying is, although I'm principally a filmmaker, this blog, while talking about video and it's applications, will regularly do so with reference to the theme of the secondary reality. How it works, how we work it.





The marvellous Andre Gorz observed that whereas the industrial revolution had caused inevitable centralisation of society and power structures, the social affects of the micro-technological revolution were less predictable. Either it could lead to more centralisation of production and control, or their decrentralisation. Gorz' point was that this presents an historical opportunity for us to shape our world.



I'm going off to have a think about that.