VIDTOOLZ – Video Storytelling Tools

To its owners, Instagram probably works exactly as intended: it has after all, been built first and foremost into a money making machine.

But to me, as an independent content creator, Instagram is a highly dysfunctional platform.

Thereby, the amount of followers I have there, or dont have, has been mangled into almost complete irrelevance.

The amount of followers has very little to do with the quality of your content.

It is, unfortunately, all about the users obedience towards the senseless and valueless (other than money that is.) algorithms.

Unsurprisingly, I have very little interest in investing to an abusive and completely one-sided relationship.

My commitment towards content creation however, has never wavered an inch. To that, I will remain to be 100% committed.

If Instagram were to disappear tomorrow, it might actually bring along more good than bad things.

Having said this, I will continue to post my stuff primarily to insta, until something better comes along.

May that day arrive with haste!

The production of live content has been on a heavy increase, pretty much everything should preferably be made live. In broadcast days, when something was live, it was a big deal; it was a guarantee that something extraordinary was happening. Based on this now quite dated belief, live content is still able to gather high ratings, and more importantly,, live content is being boosted by the algorithms. This has led to severe oversupply, and people are quickly catching on to this change, the whole concept of something being live is fast on it’s way to become obsolete and pretty much meaningless. The ratings on live video will go down, hard, as the algos and creators have been basically cheating on the public. Needless to say that the horrid quality of the live content will not help either.

The audiences love big stars; the majority follows will what the majority follows; people don’t have time to process things themselves, at least nothing that comes out from the social media platforms, heck no, that is the one place where they come to relax, rest their poor brains from all the stress.

The majority of the creators show in their content, in their desperate attempts to try to copy the style and content of the big stars; that they are willing to sacrifice pretty much everything, just to get even a small taste of the so called stardom.

The advertisers also love stars as big as they come, as once again,  the less there are players involved, the easier it is to negotiate deals.

The platforms want big star creators, the bigger the star, the less there will be room for others, the less people they have to deal with, thus making the tasks of the platform a lot easier.

All this is true, and yet, I am so very happy to see that the tubes rewind video, with its glorification of the star content, is getting millions of dislikes, and is heavy on its way to become the most hated video in the history of the moving image!

Somebody posted my video on his channel. This got me thinking about what should I do about it. Should i feel flattered that someone saw it worthwhile to choose my content to be shared; or should i feel angry for someone using my content without my permission. One thing is for sure, good manners are usually very easy to uphold, but they can go a LONG way. If the poster had asked me one question: could he post my video – I would have said sure, go ahead, but now that he was unable to ask this one short question from me, I thought the only appropriate thing was to report this violation of my copyright. This is a lesson for myself too; never ever underestimate the power of good manners. They might occasionally seem a bit trivial, but believe me, us being humans, they’re far from trivial. This is vidtoolz signing out by asking you to be more kind and respecting to your fellow men. Have a good one.

The idea of mobility is very appealing, and in the camera department, the dream of mobile quality is being realized in great leaps. But when it comes to post production, no computing power is enough for post processing and at this moment, the power offered by a desktop solution, is roughly double of any reasonable laptop solution currently available. Location independent video editing tools for making high quality videos – that sentence is still more of an oxymoron. If you want to be champion in speed, all you need is resources. Thereby that solution is not recommendable. Where we should aim for is quality and trust. Those arenas cannot be conquered with sheer mass and brute force only. the most optimal workflow at the moment is that you shoot your material with mobile camera and transfer the video to a desktop pc for editing. This is vidtoolz signing out, being sorry for killing your workflow utopias by being honest. You have a good one.

The media landscape is changing so fast that the only thing we know for certain is that what works this year, most likely wont work next year. The creators have reacted to this volatility by starting to increase their volume – When they don’t know, what form is the winner, they create as quickly, as much content as they possibly can. Sadly, this leads to decreased quality. The majority of content creators are now fully betting on quantity, which results in a daily flood of very similar and generic results. A Creator should remind himself occasionally, that when the quality goes low enough, not even their momma is gonna watch that crap. Netflix being one of the more successful of the current players, has done the opposite, it has a very small catalog of videos but the quality is impeccable. Both in it´s tech as in the content. The more there will be creators competing for the audiences, the more will the significance of quality come into play.

Some of the greatest failures in life are often caused by the most embarrassingly obvious things. When Martin Scorsese was asked, What is a good film director? He replied: a director makes sure that everybody in the team is making the same movie. At a quick glance, that sounds almost weird in its simplicity, and yet so very few are actually able to realize that. What he is talking about, is the ability to communicate, the ability to listen to others and to convey your thoughts to others. If you don’t have communicational skills, you will be more of a burden than an asset to any given team. You might have all the special skills and rare talent in the world. But if you´re lacking in the ability to communicate, all that will, for the most part, go to waste. Director has a special skill to construct a movie in his mind, but if he is unable to convey this movie of his mind, to others and thereby into an actionable plan, very little of any significance, will ever be realized.

In a divided nation, people hide away, into their separate foxholes. What they need is a witch to bring them out into the fresh air. When things become too settled and stagnant, when we become too certain of what is good and bad, life starts to become too restricted, as eventually everything will be divided into good or bad; mostly bad. The stalemate will eventually be shaken up by the appearance of a witch, who not only questions things, but declares good to be bad and bad to be good. It’s an invitation, to shake up and play with our values and worldview, to turn it upside down, to see the threats as an opportunity. And vice versa. The authorities say, the witch brings only chaos and destruction to the society, while some argue, the witch makes us start to change by enabling us to see things differently, by doing things differently.

Patreon is essentially a paywall for your content. it´s reason to exist is the fact that it offers it´s paywall in a tiered form. You get to choose, your personal level of excitement and ability, the amount of money which you consider to be fitting to any given content or creator.

Thereby it’s rather obvious that Patreon did not rise to it’s current state by the merit of its ideas – It rose out of  desperation of the creators, as Youtube suddenly and without a notice, chose to stop funding it´s creators from Adsense, by demonetizing the majority of its content. With the excuse of the moral upset of the advertisers.

What Patreon is offering is a long-held dream of the creators. This dream of a world where the advertiser as the annoying and uneducated middleman between the creator and the audience is no longer necessary. Patreon sells this dream as a viable option for the creators.

The only people funding Patreon, and thereby, the creators, are not the audiences, and they never will be; as we live in a world where increasing amount of content is becoming free. This makes the very idea of a paywall rather ill-fitting. The more content is being pushed available, the less people want to pay for it. The time and attention of the audiences is the only real form of currency to the creators.

Good content requires time, money and effort. The audiences however, have hardships of their own. They don’t want to hear this, as this doesn’t benefit them. They naturally want to have their entertainment as cheaply and easily as possible. The only people who care; who care to be aware of this, are the creators themselves, and on a good day, maybe some members of their closest family and friends.

Patreon offers a sweet dream for the creators, but in the end it’s very little more than a common paywall, and paywalls in this modern world of ours, don’t work.

Climate change is a big problem, of which we gladly talk, endlessly. And yet we choose not to even consider any such solution models that would eke out any meaningful significance in actually solving the problem. This is the case, as we know and fear, that the implementation of these actions would end up bringing more negative than positive things to our personal, materialistic lives. That is, in the short run, our own brief lives. We don’t want to be the person to put on the cloak of suffering, at least not today. What about the cloak of uncomfortability? A hard workout at the gym simply will not suffice. Aren’t we the masters of the noble art of procrastination!? This is vidtoolz signing out by asking you to regularly step out of your own comfort zone. You have good one!