Content is king.
Simple statement, but it’s true. However, if you can’t see, hear, or understand the content because of the quality of the delivery medium, what good is it?
Small video is a problem for video professionals. It’s ugly. It’s low tech. It’s portable. It’s viral. It’s cheap. It’s competition. For a long time people who wanted a video seen by more than immediate family had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to have it produced. Now, anyone with a camcorder and internet connection can publish video with a huge potential audience. Why has small video taken off so much?
Simplicity. Just below this entry is a YouTube video. There are tons of places to view a better version of the trailer, but none of them are as easy to link to as YouTube. And on the web, who cares? It’s easy to publish, and relatively easy to get an audience. The trailer below communicates. It works. It’s all about content. Where else but the net can you see the next coolest skate tricks and the latest political speech, all within a few clicks of each other.
But what happens when small video invades the live worship experience of your church?
Let’s assume you have all the copyright permissions to display the video in the service. And assume it is the perfect content for the service. How ugly does a video have to be before it is rejected? And what do media ministers do when they are asked to show a video that needs to be rejected. (The first questions is answered below. Look for the second in a future article.)
Will the low quality distract the audience from the content? This really gets to the heart of the matter. The context of the service drives the ability for quality to impact content. A youth camp worship service is significantly different from a classic Choir/Orchestra service. The camp service would more readily accept visible compression artifacts. The classic service would not.
I’ve used horribly compressed video in smaller groups when the message of the video transcended the nasty quality. I’ve scoured the net for a higher resolution version of a video so I could play it in a service, rather than the low quality version I was given. I’ve respectfully refused to use a video because there was no way to make it viewable without distraction. In each case, an evaluation was made based on the audience’s ability to accept distortion.
On a side note, there is a place where even the YouTube crew will not accept low quality: Broadcast TV. The apparent contradiction of trends toward both HD content and small video is fascinating. But, it will only last as long as small video compression/transmission methods can’t deliver great looking video. Give it a few years and this won’t even be an issue.
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