March 6, 2007

• News and Notes: MikeVideo Updates

  MIKEVIDEO UPDATES: 18 YEAR OLD VIDEO ARRIVES ON THE INTERNET

  I've been holed up inside my media room for the past three days, and emerge this morning (I even took a day off of work on Monday!) with a certain feeling of accomplishment. Even though it's March already, and as usual, I haven't been able to update a lot of my massive AllThingsMike website, I have at least been adding some of my older "archival" videos to the MikeVideo section. In the entry below, I display some "performance" footage from 1991, uploaded from a VHS source tape. At the same time I was "making" the short "Dancin' Fool" vid for the blog, I was immersed in a more ambitious project, "re-creating" the 1989 MikeVideo movie "Moviola Dance" for the internet. I downloaded a sample copy of a new video editor last month, Sony Vegas . I might or might not upgrade my Studio software from Pinnacle. The Sony product, although relatively new, has a lot of fine features, including somewhat editable transitions and effects. I can do the same chroma key and animation effects as in the Studio, but the Sony product is much more stable, and so far hasn't crashed my computer. Over the course of the weekend, I not only captured and edited three segments of "Moviola Dance" but I created a "Feature Page" on the MikeVideo site for their display. The embedded files on are Google Video, instead of YouTube, because "Moviola Dance" contains footage from old MGM musicals manipulated to different music tracks. The last time I has something like that on YouTube, "42nd Street Dance" , which combines footage of Ruby Keeler dancing not to the original soundtrack but to a Paul McCartney tune, the powers that be at YouTube removed the video because of copyright infrnigement. I know that the footage is copyrighted, but I'm not "selling" the videos, and I always credit the original copyright holders, as I do with the music and the dance sequences in "Moviola Dance".

  It is always my hope that someday one of my little "internet movies:" will be "discovered". A lot of time goes into creating them, and even when I'm using older material, as in this case, I am removing some of the inherent flaws in the VHS medium and adding new credits and changing sequences in order to make the videos seem fresh. I begin so much on the internet that I possibly will never be able to finish, that when I do accomplish something in a short period of time, like the "Moviola Dance" project, it makes me feel grand.

  The Sony Vegas software tryout times out in two days, and at that time I will purchase the product, which costs about $125.00. I didn't really play around with it until just this past week, but I like what I can do with it, and have already begun three new projects including (1) a new Video Blog (my sixth) showing the various places I've lived for the past 20 or so years, (2) a "Cultural Blender" video, incorporating lots of animation, to showcase the "icons" in the Cultural Blender website, another section of AllThingsMike, which needs a complete overhaul, and (3) another episode of  "MikeVideo Histroy". I added the first episode to the MikeVideo History page and created more links to the videos I mention in the history which are online. It never ceases to amaze me that I put up the very first MikeVideo page on my website back in 1999 before the technology was ready for me to display the videos.

  To quote myself from 2004, discussing the "future" of MikeVideo: "The Future of MikeVideo will essentially create "my television station" on the web. I have a dictum that anyone can create a digital video with high production values if they purchase a good video editing program and have some artistic tendencies. When I made "The Uncle Mike Story" in 1989, before the advent of digital video and streaming media, I had an idea that given enough photographs and video footage taken during a person's life, I could create a "video signature" of them for posterity. Never one to sacrifice art for commerce, I never followed up on this instinct. Nowadays, people with all those photos can make websites, internet movies, of DVD archives complete with music and narration. The neat thing about this advance in digital video composition is that most people are "digitally savvy" enough to learn how to operate and to master the program. I went through too many of these programs back in the day when it wasn't so easy. The future of personal video, like the future of personal websites, is limited only by the imagination and wherewithal of the webmaster and videographer creating the media. The fact is that there shouldn't be any limits, and for a lot of creative types, there aren't any"

  THE INTERNET COMMUNITY

  I have "whined" in many posts that my intention for this blog has always been as a "destination site". I envisioned that many readers would automatically come over to see what I have up my creative sleeve on a regular basis. This has never happened, and though I believe that the few criticisms I seem to get (1. I write too much. for people to read. 2. The page loads slow. ) are really moot points. The site is called "WhenWordsCollide" and I do try to insure that the words do make sense, and that I have something to say. The page loads slow because Xanga puts a lot of "stuff' in the code. I've been on Xanga blogs that load much slower than mine, and that doesn't stop them from getting comments. I only post about three times a week. (I'm writing this one in the wee hours of the morning before starting work.) I possibly shouldn't obsess so much about getting any recognition. But it upsets me to see totally inane blogs and video sites on YouTube that not only are immensely popular, but always get lots of comments. In three years of blogging on Xanga, I can attest that no matter how many subscribe to me, the only time I can insure that people visit is when I visit them. Besides the "regular readers", there are always new people dropping by, but not the amount of people I wish for. I know I can stop commenting and visiting, and I'll still get an average of 10-15 comments. However, I really wish I could bring awareness to WhenWordsCollide so that each post I make immediately gets lots of hits. I think the quality is already here. Some of the people who take the time to read the "long posts" (which don't disappear) always seem pleased (with very few exceptions) so I must be doing something "right". 

  I purposefully want my blog to speak to and about "humanity." I don't "narrowcast". Perhaps that's the problem. There's "too much going on" as some have pointed out. I can't help it that I have many interests and I'm still excited by them, and want to share my work. I contemplated moving this blog back to Blogger, or removing the commenting feature. I hate it when I get a comment that doesn't even mention the post. Or a comment which says "I don't have time to read right now, but I'll be back" (usually written by someone who doesn't intend to return.) My girlfriend thinks I obsess too much about interaction and the "community" aspect of blogging. She's now "addicted" to a website named "MiceChat" which caters to people obsessed with Disneyland. I think if I were to blog about "American Idol" or some other established cultural pheomenon, instead of trying to create my own, then perhaps I might get more hits.

  I find it interesting that my Webshots Gallery is now in the "top ten" for California photos. My camera isn't even that good, I finally put a new folder online after four months, but a few of my folders have been rising in rank on the "feature" page on Webshots for California photos. This feeds on itself, gathering more viewers, and attracting more visitors to the site. I want this to happen on YouTube and Xanga too, but it hasn't. I created the Internet Island community to help this along, but then moved the posts off this site and onto another blog. So now I don't even get traffic because of the blogring.

  Well, enough whining. Most every blog I read would use this space to say: "I haven't been able to visit your sites, and I hope to get around.... blah blah blah." I don't like to do that. I'll apologize to any "friends" I haven't "visited" when I visit or message you. I think I've only written a haf dozen "short comments" in the past three days. But, heck, I'm busy creating, and for me, that's the fun of the internet.

  The conundrum is that when I visit more often, I tend to get lots more comments, and people don't tend to do what I do and go back several entries to see what they might have missed. People on Xanga usually only comment on the "current" entry, and during these times I get lots of RYCs. It's always the work which matters most to me. When I spend lots of time on an entry, I am sometimes too burned out to go "promote" it by making the viists then. Oh well, enough obsessing. I have to get back to work. 

  • 8:22 am
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