and a little child shall lead them…
The video above was sent to me yesterday by Pat Younge, Chief Creative Officer at The BBC.
It wasn’t done by anyone at The BBC.
It was done by Pat’s 14-year old daughter, Rebecca for a science project at her school, Drayton Manor High School, Ealing, London.
She shot it on her FlipHD mino and edited it on iMovie on her dad’s Mac.
She’s never had a day of formal filming or editing tuition, she just worked it out for herself.
The video is raggedy, but it speaks volumes to me, and not about science.
There is a whole generation coming up who have no fear of video. In fact, they thin of it as second nature.
They adapt to it as easily as they adapt to using an iPod or an iPhone.
They don’t need an instruction manual, or endless training.
While broadcasters and newspapers may agonize over how difficult it is to transit their journalists into video, it is already natural for Rebecca and her friends.
We recently completed a long round of talks with a major television network in the US that wants to transit to having all their staff carry their own small cameras and shoot and edit all their own material.
We didn’t get the contract (too bad).
They decided they are going to proceed with their own in-house training.
In the last 3 years, they have trained and fielded 7 people so far.
Rebecca and her friends are going to make that network obsolete, and in fewer than 7 years.
While those born before 1995 are still agonizing over how hard all this is to learn, and those born before 1960 still think you need to book a crew and a studio and lights and a director, a new generation is coming along that is going to make all of these people obsolete in an afternoon.
Think about it.
You may, ‘television professional’ look at Rebecca’s video and say, ‘Oh come on. It’s got some problems’.
She is 14.
She has never had a day of training.
She doesn’t need any equipment. (And as soon as her dad buys her an iPhone 4 which has both HD video and iMovie (and a way to upload it from the source), she won’t be on his Mac anymore either.
A new world is coming, and it has little to do with making the ‘agonizing’ decision about empowering your staff with video.
The next generation of hires is already there.
And the first thing they are going to do is make anyone who is still video illiterate…. obsolete, redundant and unemployed.
In an afternoon.
2 Comments
Malcolm James Thomson July 10, 2010
A wonderful example, Michael. But, please, less dissing of those of us born before 1960. I am seventy years old and in the nineties I was warning my employers that soap opera production (which is what I was doing in Germany) was going to be revolutionized through the increasing availability of scorned ‘semi-professional’ kit.
It’s not a matter of age but of attitude and I spend a lot of time encouraging prematurely aged thirty-somethings to read your blog, Jeff Jarvis’ and Henry Jenkins.
rosenblum July 10, 2010
Hi malcolm
No disrespect intended!
I myself am pre-1960.