Is Video a Language?

Look around…

Video is a language.

Just like French or Arabic or Chinese.

It is a way that we communicate ideas from one to another.

You can pick up ‘street video’ (point the camera and push the button) just like you can pick up street Arabic.  You may parrot a few phrases, but when it comes to trying to communicate subtle ideas or information, you are dead.

Languages have grammars.

French has a grammar, as does Arabic, as does video. And if you want to become really powerful and proficient in telling your stories in video, then it is incumbent upon you to become fluent in the language and grammar of video.

When I say the world grammar, most people really have no idea what I am talking about.  This is because we have grown up in a world devoid of any kind of education in basic grammar, even in our own native tongue.

Many years ago, I set out to learn Classical Arabic.  I took a course at New York University and as I started to work with the textbooks, they would explain that in the subjunctive case you used one ending and in the nominative case you used another.

I had no idea what they were talking about.  Education in basic grammar had gone out the window by the time I was in ‘grammar’ school, (a misnomer if ever there was one).  I had learnt English grammar (note learnt instead of learned, the past participle).

If I wanted to really learn Koranic Arabic, as opposed to street Arabic, I would first have to learn English grammar. So I did. I got a basic English Grammar book and learned the rules of basic English grammar. In doing so, it made Arabic.. and French, and Spanish all the more comprehensible. They because plug-and-play.

Now video, as Arabic, is a language, and it has a grammar. It can be a very subtle grammar, once you understand it, but it has a grammar none the less. It has a way of very clearly and cogently communicating ideas and information, just like any language. But to speak video, you must first learn the grammar.

Most ‘professional’ cameramen and most TV producers have no idea of this.  What they do is set up the camera or hold it and point it at something they want to record, hit the record button and then take the tape home and cobble something together in an edit that is driven by sound bites and narrative, with the pictures slapped on the top to provide cover.

This is both painful and tragic. It is like Pidgin English. I get the concept, but elegant it is not.

Nor is it very powerful or compelling. It does work, but just barely.

What are the rules of grammar for video?

They are far more than I can explain here, but let me give you a very basic example.

Many years ago, I used to teach at Columbia University in New York.  Columbia is located at 116^th Street and Broadway.  Harlem begins at 125^th Street and Broadway. So for many years, my white and middle class students would, for their first film assignment, make their way 9 blocks uptown with a camera and tripod.  A thousand times, I watched the same stupid student film – a long and languorous pan of 125^th Street, going slowly from west to east, with a deep and resonant narrator saying “This is Harlem, the heart of Black America’.

What a pile of crap.

What a pile of crap because no one in their right mind stands on the corner of Broadway and 125^th Street and cranks their head really slowly from left to right, taking in and slowly panning across 125^th Street. No one.  No one in their right mind would do that. That is not how you visually ‘take in’ Harlem on first seeing it.

But that is what we do with a camera. All the time.

How many times have you seen a documentary on The Grand Canyon in which the producer does the same thing. The slow pan. Ever been to the Grand Canyon?  Did you really stand on the edge and slowly crank your head from left to right – really slowly?

I don’t think so.

I don’t think so because unless you have some really severe neurological condition, no one in their right mind takes in the world like this.

But this is what we inflict on our viewers all the time.

It’s completely unnatural. It is, in fact, alienating.

Now, observe how you visually take in 125^th Street in Harlem on seeing it for the very first time.  Without a camera! Observe how you yourself look at it with new eyes, and you will learn to how to shoot it.

You see the wide first. As a still. Then your eye is taken by details – a street sign, a woman crossing the street; the face of a man in close up; the sound of a police car; a storefront selling something; a couple walking towards you; a man playing an instrument.

Now, shoot it as a series of stills.  Don’t move the camera. Don’t pan and wander all over the place.  Now, in the edit, re-create with the stills exactly what you instinctively looked at and saw.  Re-create the experience you had of observing Harlem for the first time.

Re-create it exactly as you saw it and experienced it and now you can reproduce that experience for the viewer.

Do you get the idea?

As a species we have had more than a million years of experience in visual perception. We know how to ‘see’ the world. It is instinctive. What we don’t do very well is manage that information and reproduce it for other people to experience what we want them to experience.

This is understandable.  We have been a writing culture for thousands of years.  We have learned how to communicate our ideas in writing fairly well by now. This too is driven by a grammar. We have been a speaking culture for longer than anyone can possibly remember, so we have become extremely adept at communicating our ideas in spoken language.

We have been a visual/video culture for only a century, if not less.  We are at the beginning of a great experience. But like any language, it begins with a discipline.. and a desire.