
Instagram Video and the Death of Fantasy - scholia
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/digital-diary-instagram-video-and-death-of-fantasy/?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
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tomkit
Photos allow you to discriminate which moment in time you want to convey to
people. You can take and retake photos until you distill it to the right
scene. Dead simple postprocess editing, e.g. filters, allowed you to enhance
that even further.

Videos don't work the same way. Trying to distill the zeitgeist into a video
is (24FPS * 15sec) times more work. Without a rich set of postprocess editing
tools, i.e. what filters did for photos, that are equally dead-simple, the
fantasy-aspiration of what instagram did for photos simply isn't there.

Sure, the trailer instagram showed for the introduction of videos had the same
emotional and fantasy components in it that filters brought to photos, except
they did a crap ton of postprocessing work on it to get it to that stage.
Contrast this with when they showcase photos and filters - they must have done
little or no work. Unless the app itself can create the level of videos that
instagram showcased, instagram video has brought upon itself the death of
fantasy.

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karl24
A wonderful post. Jenna Wortham is writing some of the most thoughtful stuff
on how and why we share the photos that we share.

I'm a believer that the market for sharing the mundane moments of life, in a
private way with those closest to us, is an untapped opportunity.

Snapchat is only the first to find massive adoption by serving this use case,
there will be others.

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terhechte
I've added video support to my Mac Instagram client, InstaDesk, this weekend,
and in order to test the feature, I had to browse for videos and play them. So
after watching quite a lot of Instagram videos I've to say I think this is an
interesting and cool feature. A lot of these videos were beautiful, or
interesting, or captured a cool idea. Of course, there were also boring and
stupid ones, but in general I found the quality quite high. I'd like to
compare this to Vine, but I haven't used Vine in the last couple of months, so
I can't really draw a fair comparison.

What I want to say is that even though this is probably just a measure to bug
Twitter/Vine I find that the Instagram community does use it in a way that
makes it a pretty cool addition.

Though one has to see how this unfolds, whether people will continue to use
it. I've created a video too, and on my rather old iPhone4 it required a lot
of waiting to get it done.

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scarecrowbob
I shoot a whole lot of pictures of my wife's violin students-- a lot of the
world that makes for beautiful and moving still images... leaves a bit to be
desired aesthetically when translated into audio and video. :D

That said, I really enjoy the silent, 5-10 animated gif format and I'm sure
that as a format the short moving picture will come a long way from where it.

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OwGrk
As of today, you'd probably see a great difference between amazing candid
pictures versus videos but I wouldn't be surprised when the day comes and
people can modify scenes and effects on instagram videos.

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lnanek2
There is on the fly video transforming too nowadays, though. You can make
people look different, a different time of day, etc.. Instagram may not have
it yet to the level it does for photos, but it will.

~~~
fennecfoxen
I'd say that Instagram has filters to almost the exact same level as it has
filters for photos. ("Time of day" may be a little beyond its ken, but that's
the case for photos too.)

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STRiDEX
\- "shows off versions of yourself that you want to remember" Is that so bad?

~~~
sliverstorm
The article is not making a judgement; that was simply leading up to the point
of the article:

 _Video is imperfect. It’s a lot harder to craft a perfect video_

In other words, we show off versions of ourselves that are not true-to-life,
and it will be much harder to maintain & showcase those facades when the
medium is video.

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sliverstorm
We'll get there. The low-light level performance of video on cell phone
cameras will continue to improve. The view angle will grow, and editing
capabilities for video will continue to grow as well.

Personally, I hope increased popularity of video services like this one will
help drive further improvements in recording devices and editing software.

~~~
thenomad
You'll also need some way to distill the skill of video editing into a tool.

Documentary video editing (ie editing non-staged video) is really hard, and
it's a skill very few people possess.

I'm not saying that software to suggest edits between shots or timing changes
can't be created, but it's a hard problem.

~~~
sliverstorm
Oh yes, video editing is very hard. The tools are extremely obtuse, as well.
Which is why I am hoping that smart people rise to meet the demand and make
something more powerful than the current crop of casual video editors, but
less obtuse than major NLEs.

To get off the ground though, you could maybe start with some automatic
greenscreen software or something. Novice cameramen would love that, and if
you are splicing in a set video file, it could be pretty straightforward from
a usage point of view.

~~~
thenomad
Even given a tool that's easy enough for a newbie to use but has the power of
Adobe Premiere Pro or the Avid suite, you still need a lot of non-tool-
specific skills. It's not just about the obtuse interface, but also about
knowing what to cut together, when, where and why.

~~~
sliverstorm
Ah, but that's like photo composition. The amateurs don't know photo
composition, but they will get it right on accident sometimes, and they will
have fun all the same, which is what they really care about.

As clearly evidenced by the proliferation of cameras, most people don't
necessarily expect to be able to make amazing gallery-quality photos, but they
_would_ like the technology to get out of the way (so to speak) so that they
can spend their time shooting.

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corwinstephen
So basically this guy is saying he'd rather remember his life as a distorted
story that airbrushes away reality in order to embellish an element of
perfection that never actually existed than as the actual real-life moment he
experienced. Sounds strikingly similar to:

-Brave new World -The Matrix -The Truman Show

and all those other "is a fake bliss bliss nonetheless" type stories.

This guy took the blue pill.

~~~
scott_s
I think that's an uncharitable assessment.

We constantly filter out a lot of noise - auditory and visual. Our memories of
events lack that noise. Naive recordings - such as what complete amateurs
using smart phones will produce - will have all of that noise. So the
recording of the event will not match our memory, partially because it will
record things that were not important.

In order for the recording to match our memory, it would need to filter out
all of the auditory and visual noise. But that's just the start. There's also
the fact that amateur videos tend to not do a good job of showing what a
viewer may want to pay attention to. As a participant, you can, without
thinking, look around to see exactly what you want to see. This ease of
knowing your surroundings will be a part of your memory, and the video will
likely not capture it.

A _professionally_ made video could alleviate most of these problems. That's
why editing movies is hard, and considered an art. Showing viewers the right
shots for the right length of time to give them certain understandings of a
scene is crucial to making the viewer feel like they are there.

My point: you're assuming that the video recording is somehow an "objective"
view of reality, and your memory is "subjective." Your memory certainly is
subjective, but I say the video is, too. Raw videos are not how we experience
life, nor are they "reality", so I think it's uncharitable to conclude the
author only wants fantasy recordings.

~~~
corwinstephen
I can partially agree with you here; The way we perceive the present is
certainly not the way it comes through on camera. However, I don't believe
that adding a filter to an Instagram photo brings the photo any closer to the
way we experienced that moment either. People slap filters on photos to give
them an artsy touch and to make their lives look like something to be jealous
of when the photo shows up on some social network's news feed.

So yes: if someone were able to devise a way of capturing memories that could
be played back the way the really felt, that would be ideal. But since we
can't, I'd rather see that event as it was than distorted in some mostly
random direction.

Having said that, this is not me taking a swing at Instagram. I think it's a
great product, and I have a lot of fun with it. I'm just saying that the
author's logic train here is rather faulty.

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scott_s
I think it's easier to get a picture that approximates our subjective view of
reality. But my point was not an argument in favor of filters. I was
explaining that it's not denying reality to say that short videos (or even
pictures) are unsatisfying because they don't match our memories.

