Here’s the link. Can’t embed. Trust me, worth a look at the Time Magazine Video.
Andrew Barron, you were ahead of your time…
I recently ran across a piece in a site called Innovative Interactivity (II) (I don’t know what happened to 1), called Five Tips for Emerging Videojournalists.
It was written by someone named Paul Franz, who graduated from The University of Miami last year and seems to have his first job working at Time Magazine.
How much advice he can actually give to VJs is questionable at best, but let’s but that aside for the moment. I don’t agree with much of what he says, but I agree even less with what Time Magazine seems to be doing with video online.
In the future, when Time Magazine no longer exists, you may say this was the reason (among a host of others, I am sure) why they went out of business.
Time dabbling in video is nothing news. I actually worked with Time Magazine as early as 1991, when Joe Quinlan hired me to teach a few of their print reporters worldwide (those were the days) to shoot and edit their own video. There was, of course, no Internet in those days, so the idea was that their excellent reporting, translated to video would be sold to TV networks. It wasn’t a bad idea. The Time Magazine reporters (they had bureaus all over the world then) actually knew what they were talking about. The lived there. (As opposed to network ‘reporters’ who flew in to a scene). Also working as VJs, it was a lot cheaper then sending a crew.
Fast forward 20 years and Time Magazine is again playing with video, but this time on their website or their app.
Alas, what they are doing still shows almost no grasp of what video is capable of doing.
Note above.
Time Magazine seems to think that the best use of video (and Mr. Franz suggests burgeoning VJs take note!) is to stick a ‘host’ in front of the screen, reading (quite badly) off a telepromoter while still graphics or a few videos flash over her shoulder or full screen. Well, that’s TV news 1973. What a break-through.
What is worse, Time Magazine has chosen to take the immense power of video (which can take you anywhere) and take us to… apparently, their offices on Columbus Circle. What a waste. What a waste of potential.
Now, let’s look at how Time Magazine chooses to use the medium.
What Time has done here, actually, is to point the camera at….. the magazine.
That’s right. Â You are watching a video that recreates the experience of… reading Time Magazine in print.
Wow
Tragic.
Well, it’s no surprise really.
Time Magazine has been making print magazines since 1923. It’s in their DNA. They can’t help themselves.
So here is what I would suggest.
To Mr Franz, save some money, then quit your job at Time, get a camera, get on a plane and go make some original and creative content before your experience at Time so corrupts you that whatever native talent you have (and you might not have any for all I know) is forever crushed out of you. Also, please stop telling aspiring VJs to ape what they see in Time. It sucks. It represents perhaps 1% of what video is capable of doing. And they do it badly.
For Time Magazine, for crying out loud, hand out flipcams to your staff, teach them how to really shoot and edit and tell a compelling story, and then throw them out of the building and tell them not to come back until they have a great story to report.
Where do you think Teddy White came from.
(Google him if you must).
