Launch Of A New Concept For Video

Let us now praise……

We are all creatures of habit.

Once we have learnt an old way of doing something, it takes us a long time to unlearn it.

When new technologies come along, we have a natural human tendency to take that new technology and simply plug it into our old ways of working  – regardless of the consequences. It’s simply easier.

Since the days of Alexander the Great, armies fought battles by lining up facing each other and then marching towards each other. This worked whether they were carrying spears and shields or muskets and fifes and drums.

Then, in the late 19th Century, a new technology was introduced:  the machine gun.

The machine gun allowed for an entirely new kind of warfare.

The British first saw the impact of this new technology at The Battle of Omdurman in Sudan in 1898.  There, General Kitchener took a force of 8,000 British soldiers against the Army of the Mahdi who had more than 50,000 troops.  The British had the machine gun. The Mahdi had religious zeal.

When the battle was over, the Army of the Mahdi suffered more than 23,000 casualties.  The British – 47.

Clearly technology had triumphed.  Winston Churchill was there as a war correspondent, and watched at the British machine guns mowed down row after row of the Mahdi’s troops as they marched into the machine gun fire.  It was a massacre.

You might think that the British would have learnt something from that experience.  They didn’t.

A mere 18 years later, at the Battle of the Somme, it was the British who marched in the machine gun fire, this time from the Germans.  They suffered nearly 1 millon casualties.  The Germans were no better. For the four long years of the First World War, generals on both sides continued to march their troops into machine gun fire. They simply were unable to think of any other way of fighting a war.

Now, let’s turn to photography  – a less violent pursuit.

In the earliest days of photography, cameras were big and heavy. To take a picture you sat them on a tripod and had your subjects sit very still in front of you.  Click.

Then, in the 1930s, the Leica company invented a small, hand-held 35mm camera.  It allowed a new kind of photography – one that was faster, more intimate and far more powerful if it was done right. But to do it ‘right’ required a complete rethinking of how you used the camera and what the final product would look like.  Many photographers continued to put the Leica on a tripod and have their subjects sit very still. Click.

But a few didn’t. They were brave enough and talented enough to explore new approaches.  The best of them formed a group called Magnum.

Eventually, a visionary publisher named Henry Luce took their work and gave it a platform called LIFE MAGAZINE and launched a new world of visual imagery and photojournalism.

Now, the same technological transformation is taking place in the world of video.  Video cameras, which used to be big heavy things requiring a tripod and people sitting for lit interviews have suddently become small, hand-held instruments.

Most videographers continue to use these new cameras as they did the old – on tripods, making conventional videos.  But a small group of talented and creative people are beginning to embrace an entirely new way of working:  more powerful; more intimate.

Until now, this has been a disparate group; working alone.

But now, after much effort and many attempts, I can tell you that we have secured the backing of people with both the vision and the resources to make something new happen:  a Magnum of video.  And a LIFE MAGAZINE of video.

We are launching both.

And as such, we are now searching for the very best practitioners of this new approach to video.  This is a search for excellence.  And if you can deliver that kind of excellence, we are building a home and a platform and a network for you.

If you think your work qualifies, get in touch.

A new world is being born.  It’s the opportunity of a LIFEtime, so to speak.