The blurring line between amateurs and professionals

Back from Nikko, will have photos up later on. It's a Monday and I've also took the liberty of having the day off, it's great to be away from work. Anyways...

I am amazed at how many "ordinary" people that are capable of putting out great works on the Internet. It wasn't long ago when the most polished media always came from TV or the radio. What was once expensive to film, compose and broadcast has become much more accessible to the ordinary person, that we are starting to see a wealth of impressively polished and professional productions being uploaded to youtube (note, if you do have the bandwidth to spare, up the resolution on the videos).


Aimbot from reddiew's channel

I still remember a while back that the media heads (unfortunately I can't find the source) were arguing that youtube would only be a source of videos that nobody would want to see and that its primary popularity was from uploaded copyrighted material. Perhaps that was the case, 2~3 years ago, but now with readily available HD cameras and video editing software, times are changing.

It isn't the necessary case with entertaining videos, but also for music as well. I find that youtube is also a great source for budding musicians with a flare for video.


Pomplamoose - Another Day from PomplamooseMusic

This is the kind of high quality material user submitted material that we are stating to find on the net. I expect to find more of them as users become more educated and talented as time progresses. As an anecdotal note, even I've had the chance to make a video for a friend's wedding using Apple's iMovie which turned out significantly better that what you might have gotten from just using a powerpoint slide show and music slapped on.

Though I don't think that we will see user submitted material displacing TV shows just yet, we are starting to see the nascent seeds being sewn. A while back kevJumba on youtube produced a miniseries with a friend from wongfu productions called funEmployed on the net:


FunEmployed Ep1 by JumbaFund (or kevJumba) and WongFuProductions

I would argue that making full out 20~30 min episodes on the net probably beyond the time and resource constraints of an youtube "amateur," perhaps we may start to see some experimentation into this medium in the future. Though we are not seeing direct competition against mainstream media just yet, the line between the quality of work between professionals and amateur video productions is most definitely becoming blurred. This is a classic case of a new disruptive technology going for the low end of an incumbent market. If you do have a chance, the book The Innovator's Dilemma is a great read.

As a bonus I'll post my favorite cooking channel, which is the foodwishes cooking channel with great video recipes. The recipes are great and short. Chef John that runs the channel, also won a youtube video competition and will be also hosting a cooking show on the food network. The lines have been blurred indeed.


Super Bowl Chicken Wings by Foodwishes