Unconventional Video

Mobile Video Changes the Game
The UpTake, a nonprofit based in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.), is one of several new organizations that hope to generate and distribute political video from amateur and professional VBCJs. Launched in January 2008 in time for the Iowa caucuses, The UpTake recruits and trains new members to use mostly consumer-grade video technology to produce news stories. With a core staff of six, some of whom are correspondents who produce content, The UpTake publishes stories on its own site (www.theuptake.org) and on partner sites such as The Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo. Through partnerships with live streaming services such as Mogulus and Qik, The UpTake streamed live from both national conventions. "Qik sponsored us with three Nokia N95 phones for the DNC and RNC, and we’ve hacked a few 3G iPhones to allow for live streaming," said Jason Barnett, The UpTake’s executive director, from the Denver convention. "Our goal is to have 100 people on the streets of Minneapolis with cameras."

Professional videographers aren’t born knowing the difference between FPS and XLR. While shooting amateur video isn’t rocket science, an important part of The UpTake’s mission is to train novices in the art of videography. The most common failing in amateur video is poor audio, and today’s streaming-capable phones have to be modified to accept external microphones. "They can have great video," says Barnett. "But with no audio, the story is dead." Live streaming from smartphones is impressive enough, and soon they will be able to zoom and focus. Streaming-capable phones are still expensive—about $600 for a Nokia N95—but prices will certainly come down in the coming months. Barnett notes, "Citizens need accessible technology, and that means cheap."

As streaming-capable smartphones and high-speed data plans become more ubiquitous, competition among a handful of live-streaming service providers is heating up. The most popular services in the political corner of the live-streaming space include Qik, Kyte, Mogulus, Ustream, and Israel-based Flixwagon. Among the features that distinguish the competing services from each other are video and audio quality, chat features, compatibility with different phones, and ease of use. Live mobile streaming is still a relatively narrow space, and companies are offering some political vloggers free phones and free access to services in efforts to build their brands.

The DNCC did not offer live streaming to mobile devices. Because of the long lead time required for a project of this scale, decisions about streaming were made before video-capable smartphones had penetrated the market. Most live streaming services now list compatible phones on their websites. While that list is growing, the Nokia N95, with its high-quality Carl Zeiss optics, and hacked versions of the 3G iPhone are the current favorites of VBCJs. The release of new devices supporting the Linux-based Android mobile device OS, developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance, should shake up the smartphone market in 2009.

While many unaffiliated VBCJs produce hours of unwatchable video, Kate Soglin’s Citizen Kate (www.citizenkate.tv) illustrates what a plucky individual with a point of view and a sense of humor can do. One of the first VBCJs on the scene—she started in February 2007 at Obama’s initial campaign announcement in Springfield, Ill.—Soglin and her support team file edited video reports from political hot spots including the presidential debates and the national political conventions. Citizen Kate recently attracted the support of Digital Fountain, which donated use of its new DF Splash video streaming technology. "We’re used to seeing our video on the Internet with a crappy YouTube look," says Carey Lundin, founder and co-producer of Citizen Kate. "But now our video looks fantastic." (Note: DF Splash does not yet support Macs.)

Remixing the Election
In March 2007, Phillip de Vellis’ "Vote Different," a video mashup (i.e., a digital media file that recombines or modifies existing digital works to create a derivative work) targeting Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign based on Apple’s landmark 1984 MacIntosh ad, became the first political video of the 2008 campaign to go viral, attracting more than 5 million views. Three months later, Barely Political’s "I Got a Crush on Obama" video attracted more than 10 million views and made a national celebrity out of its star, the mythical Obama Girl. The will.i.am "Yes We Can" video, based on Obama’s concession speech after the New Hampshire primary, has attracted more than 21 million views on YouTube since its debut in February 2008. These are among the most popular examples of a subgenre of political video mashups that are gaining traction in this election cycle. (JibJab’s Flash movie, "This Land is Your Land," featuring animated caricatures of John Kerry and George W. Bush, attracted millions of viewers during the 2004 election cycle).

Remix America, a nonprofit startup founded by Norman Lear this summer, is hoping to build a community of politically oriented video artists. One of Remix America’s attractions to video artists is that it provides a safe haven for mashups threatened with violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. "As people have become more irate over the past four years, we have found a small but dedicated community of remixers and mashup artists who want to be engaged," says Noel Hidalgo, community manager at Remix America. "They needed a place where they could have all their video hosted under Fair Use." (Note: One indication of the impact that video streaming may have on politics in countries other than the U.S. is the fact that Hidalgo was one of 10 people deported from China for live streaming from their phones during the Olympics.)

Remix America hosts an extensive trove of rare, iconic American historical footage that is available for free download and use in video mashups. A community of volunteers throughout the country also records and uploads contemporary political video for later download and use by mashup artists. Budding and experienced remixers can use software designed by Kaltura, an open source platform for the creation and management of online video, to create and publish remixes online, at no cost, using the Remix America player. The hope is to spawn the next generation of video mashup artists in the mold of Michael Fox, Byron Valino, and Craig Meyer, creators of the widely praised remixes,"Baracky," "Baracky II," and "The Empire Strikes Barack."

Is the savvy, relatively affluent audience for political streaming video an ideal target for advertisers? That’s the bet that a new subgenre of political streaming video hubs is making. One show new to the scene is Political Lunch (www.politicallunch.com), which streams a daily compendium of political video sourced from the worlds of broadcast and web TV. Hosted by Will Coghlan and Rob Millis and produced by New York-based Hudson Street Media, Political Lunch streamed live from the scene of both conventions. Like most political streaming video producers, Political Lunch extends its reach by maintaining a presence on streaming aggregators such as Veoh, blip.tv, and YouTube.

It used to be that "home video" would have to find its way to a broadcast television station to have any political impact (e.g. the video of the Rodney King beating). No more. Today, cable TV networks solicit video from VBCJs for CNN’s "iReport" and Fox News’ "uReport." Political blogs such as The Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo now shoot and stream their own videos. Even traditional or "legacy" media have recognized the trend and are following their customers—or former customers—to the web. At the Denver convention, videographers from newspapers as well as television stations shot footage to be streamed through their associated websites. Print reporters trying to anticipate the "next new thing" in online journalism searched the blogosphere’s Denver home, The Big Tent, for clues.