Do video-sharing sites such as Youtube enhance or worsen creative culture?

The well known video-sharing site Youtube to me, is a stage provided for creative ideas blossom. Since there is no restriction of entrance so that people from different walks of life can share videos to the whole world regardless of content stule and quality. There are countless videos can be found in the site, from official music videos, movies to home made videos, that large variety of topics suggested creativity. For example many home-made make-up teaching videos pop up out of the blue.

           

I think that if no such user-friendly site is provided for internet users, people may not think of making themselves directors and doing so well.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Youtube

1. How many viewers are estimated to have watched the youtube video?

Using Bus Uncle as an example, there are several versions of this household video. One of them with bilingual subtitles attracts over 2 billions viewers.

2. How would you rate the video?
    - Is it high qualityin technical terms? Is it interesting aesthetically eg cameral angles,us of light, the narrative, and so on?
It depends. On one hand, this video made a hugh noise in the territory and  triggered off  severe arguments about social problems among citizens, which effect is   unprecedented and deserves high rate. As for intechnical terms, it is not satisfying since the video maker merely intended to record the whole incident happened on the bus. In the video, we can see that the definition is low and the camera angle is quite straight forward without deliberate alternation.


  - Does it raise interesting socio-cultural issues?
This video actually raises socio-cultural issues and it can be analyzed in two period of time. When the video had just came out, people first realised that citizens have many mental problems like stress and pressure brought by daily life. Not long after, more and more people saw it and discussed it in forum which gradually form a collective criticizing trend online. To my mind, the video itself is not a single issue, but it lead to catenation in the society.

3. Do you think that it deserved the attention that it received from the internet community?
I do think that the video deserved people's attention even the stressful uncle. Before, a single voice voice is not loud enough to raise echo. This video honestly an underprivileged man 's encountering, in which the whole society can attain weight to them.

Misson to Earth

1. Using "Mission to Earth" as an example, note what is new or different about digital cinema compared to traditional filmmaking? Consider the story and appearance of the film.

Digital filmmaking is highly different from traditional one in both visual and narrative aspect. For visual aspect, traditonal film making rely hughly on cameras to record images, like hand held cameras, they have technological restriction that they can only make video on-the-spot. It turns out that the visual style of those videos are quite realistic and down to earth. On the other hand, film makers can capture or even create images through digital filmmaking, such as twisting the image, bluring it or even showing the image in a multi-frame window. Directors can freely compose a scene out of his own imagination, no matter they may run counter to natural discipline. In the movie Mission to Earth, the number of windows appear in a layout is oftern seen, suggesting different aspect of the character: her seeing, thoughts, memories and the like.

As for narrative aspect, traditional filming usually have a main theme, a story line or you may say - plot. In which we can easily get hold of the development of the story even in patomime, the story is clear. But in digital filmmaking, the plot is ambiguous and some images are pletiuful yet unclear to the whole story development. They seem like being linked together arbitarily. So in the better part of the movie, voice over is needed to help spectators to grab th idea of the movie.

2. What other art forms (e.g. film, digital art, painting, websites etc) does this film remind you of? Explain the similarities.

Paintings

Some scene reminds me of paintings of  Piet Mondrian, who plays with geometric patterns in his finger tips.

We may see that Lev Manovich also likes to deasign the layout in geometric form.

This image  was cut in the movie which is very painting-liked, it reminds me of some painting in Impressionism.


 Music
It makes me think of a type of music : post rock. Both the movie and post rock music are not mainstream genre type. I think it is a must to appreciate them with full attention from beginning to the end, othervise the poetic nexus will be lost.

In fact you may find his music in Mission to Earth:)

Digital VS Analog Photography

1. As long as both digital and traditional camera serve as capturing fleeting moments surrounding us, most importantly they can capture images through lens. On top of that, they share similar tools of shooting provided that the two have colour filter for different style of photos.

2. Nowadays, digital cameras are gaining importance in our society compared to traditional ones. It is because digital cameras have some unique and intenable function. First of all, the storage of digital camera is must bigger than traditional one since the former one is supported by memory card so it is possible to store thousands of photos at the same time. However it is film to store photos of traditional one and the number is restricted, to usually 36. On the other hand, with digital camera we can always undo or alter what we have taken in a minute. For instance, we can review back the photos and see if it is a good one and make some changes. However, we can only see the photo shot after we developed film.

3. There are some differences between the two kinds since digital cameras. The most distinguishing one is that traditional camera can still depicted a realistic world as we see in photos. On the other hand, we can change everything we want with digital cameras by means of certain software, from colour to proportion, we can even juxtapose different elements into a photo to create some sort of mood and style. On top of that, using digital camera is more flexible since many functions are autometically done without user's direction. For example some claims that autometic focusing is ensured.

photoshop

before

after