Sunday 11 January 2009

Woolworths Closure and Video Content.



Its just a week since I posted my Woolworths video on Youtube, and it has been the most successful film documenting the closure of the store over the past week EXCEPT for one other film which uses copyrighted pictures and audio. Its been even more popular than the broadcast reports from ITV and Associated Press.

Firstly, I've got to say the quality of my film is accepted as pretty average. I already talked about what I used and how fast it was turned round in a previous post, but considering its popularity I feel far better videos capturing the closure of Woolworths are worthy of mentioning. And as its been a quiet week for work as everyone is either still off, or slowly getting back into work routine, I've had a chance to follow the progress of my Woolworths film and compare it to the many other videos on the same theme of the store closures.

They mainly fall into the categories of:

A- 'Mash-ups' of mainly copyrighted images to a commercial music track- Like this
B- Members of the public filming on their camera phones with a running commentary- Like here
C- Staff photo montages- there are many of these, like this and this.

So now to my favourites. These films deserve special mention and many more hits.

Pole Dancing- suggested as a future career for this Woolworths staff member!

Desperate measures to sell the last bargains in Somerset.

Crash, bang, wallop in Loughborough

Staff party in a closed store caught on camera by the public!

Before and After in Worthing

Waltz of Woolworths in Malvern

2nd favourite Cha Cha Slide in Didcot. I love it how the store still appears to be full of customers

My favourite- Super Troupers at the Pallasades in Birmingham- a very well done. Where were you lot when I was looking for members fo the public to sing when I was filming in Birmingham for ITV's 'Who Dares, Sings'?

This film by Mike Probert really captures the emotion well in Newquay, and really deserves more views- its exactly how I would have executed my Woolworths film if it wasn't a spur of the moment decision to film it. (And I had permission to actually film in the store!)

Whilst the above film by Mike used 'Greatest Day' by Take That, this brings me to the final point in todays blog. Copyright.

Youtube have also started introducing audio-disable for films with copyrighted music. Videos with commercial audio will end up like this one. This will possibly have the biggest impact for amateur video makers in the history of Youtube! For example imagine Mike's film above silent.

Basically on Youtube a copyright holder can either decide to do nothing, allow you to keep the music but a link is added to itunes to buy the track, and they also get any ad clicks from the video featuring the music. Or the worst option they can have the music removed!

That's all from me, thank you to all of the above Woolworths staff and customers for amusing us- and good luck to the staff for finding future work.

We will see more events like the Woolworths closure covered in every perspective on video over the coming years, the trick is making sure the effort put into making the video content gets rewarded!




1 comment:

Ayd Instone said...

This is what blogging is for in my opinion; to capture and broadcast social change in the moment. It's the job of artists and philosophers (to give good bloggers their real titles) to use these new tools to show the bigger picture or to interpret the facts of 'news' to extract the contextual meaning and significance for ordinary individuals.

This is what folk music is by the way - my own humble attempts on the same topic can be seen at www.aydinstone.com.

Thanks Jonathan.