Self-taken video on Melbourne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrOgTboUxM0&feature=related

This self-taken video from user Sobhyfouad is a very amateurish, along with poor quality of image and sound. The camera man narrate the video while filming, providing a brief description of Melbourne’s yarra river surroundings. Allow me to assume that under a typical viewing situation, one would not stay for more than three minutes with a badly taken video, especially when neither the images nor audio is clearly engaging. Being hardly audible in the first half, the video faces a high risk of losing its audiences, especially when video hopping is common in Youtube. According to a study (Tubemorgul 2008), online video viewers tend to have short attention span, with viewers having 53.6% of clicking away after one minute.

I assume that this video would highly unlikely to be spread through friends recommendations, given that there are many more better quality videos on Melbourne. Viewers probably happened to stumble upon after typing ‘Melbourne’ in Youtube search box just like I did. They are people who want to know more about Melbourne, wanting to find footage of Melbourne’s scene rather than looking at travel programs.

Considering that the film is of low quality, the views are surprisingly frequent.

My self-explanation for such phenomenon is because of:

1. The title of video clip

2 Linkage with other main commercial produced videos.

3. People’s desire to see the realistic view other than the corporate view

The essential part of the video is when he make a sweeping statement that “Melbourne is the most beautiful city in the whole-wide world”, which he later used to name the video title. Crowning such a appraisable statement, attracted thousands of view as both keywords search “Melbourne” and “city” links us to this video. It is, in fact, the top three that are listed when a user types “Melbourne”. One point that we should take note that is the number of views can be quite deceiving. It does not determine that viewers stayed throughout the entire seven minutes.

97 comments were generated, but user Sobhyfouad did not reply to any of these comments, having already given his personal take on Melbourne in the video clip. However, the comments that it attracted managed to show us what the others think about this statement. This two-year-old attracted active comments after one year. People who commented cannot be defined, which might be the reason for their extreme comments, some even insulting. The good part is that public are given a space where they can speak freely whatever they wanted. Similarly to anonymous surveys, where comments are expressed freely due to its private consumption of information.

Through the ground level view, it gives a more ‘realistic’ feel compared to the finished look of tourist destination video(despite the poor handling and sound quality). Melbourne image is constructed not only with the video itself; comments raised from the video play a big part too. Apart from debating whether Melbourne is a beautiful city, security issues were raised for discussion. Clearly, violence and crime is something people link with Melbourne, since the video did not mention about safety initially. People who have not visited Melbourne might be terrified if they happen to view these comments. Fortunately, there are others who are fast to defend Melbourne as critics on Melbourne’s violence aroused.

Now, it is not necessary to depend on corporate for branding Melbourne city, because a more realistic identity can be easily created by the public. Taken from the perspective of an everyday people, this video can be a new kind of film and media category. With improvements and comments from others, anyone could have potential to come up with a video that brands Melbourne, and ultimately affect how the rest of the world perceive Melbourne through the clip.

References:

Friedman,W 2010, Short-Term Attention Prevalent For YouTube; For TV, Not So Much, Media Post, viewed 10 September 2006, <http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=136976>.

Jarboe, G 2009, ‘Weight Youtube alternatives’, YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, Chapter 6, Wiley Publishing Inc. , Indianapolis, Indiana, viewed 11 October 2010, <http://books.google.com/books?id=WaBicMvGids C&pg=PA268&lpg=PA268&dq=youtube+study+attention+span&source=bl&ots=ah3dhyxZlL&sig=dge0iC0aNGEDbGpQTZc8FfScufY&hl=en&ei=Qg6zTIP8M4eevgOX_p27Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=youtube%20study%20attention%20span&f=fals>.

Peter Kafka, P 2009, YouTube Watchers Boast a Very Short Attention Span, Over and Over Again, All Things Digital, viewed 9 October 2010, <http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090108/youtube-watchers-boast-a-very-short-attention-span-over-and-over-again/>.

Scheve, I 2010, How YouTube Changes the Media Landscape. Inges Blog. Weblog [Online] 3^rd Oct. Available from: http://ingescheve.wordpress.com/. [Accessed 09/10/10].

YOUTUBE, 2007. Melbourne the most beautiful city in the world [online video]. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrOgTboUxM0&feature=related [Accessed 08/10/10].