Six Reasons Why Every Film Student Should Have a YouTube Channel

1. The opportunity to create content for an audience - and receive direct feedback from that audience. Viewers can provide their feedback by "thumbing up" a video, leaving comments, and adding the video to their list of favorites. In addition, YouTube provides a service called "Insight" to every channel and every video, allowing the channel owner to analyze how their audiences are responding on a wide range of categories, including age, location, attention (how long people actually watch each video), and more. 
2. The opportunity to network , learn- and collaborate - with a wide range of like-minded content creators from around the world. Artists of all types can work together with an ease never before possible 
3. The chance to develop, early on, a track record as a filmmaker / content creator. Many YouTubers, without any training, have used their channels to generate real world content creation jobs. The channel, in effect, becomes a living, breathing, constantly changing demo reel with real-world endorsements from an engaged audience. 
4. With commitment to a YouTube channel, the filmmaker will need to develop content on a regular basis - not only keeping the "creative juices flowing," and developing his or her craft, but developing the creative discipline critical to success. 
5. The chance to develop the public speaking skills that are critical for any director - to be able to talk confidently to an audience with ease. Though vlogs are typically created alone, they're distributed publicly. Vloggers who host their own channels are also building extemporaneous speaking skills as well.  
6. Building and evenutally monteizing a YouTube channel offers the chance to develop valuable real-world entrepreneurial skills that successful filmmakers need.  The possibility of becoming a YouTube partner (and sharing in advertising revenue), is only one avenue through which an individual can financially benefit from their channel. Building an audience also provides the opportunity to create independent partnerships with advertisers and engage in additional opportunities such as product placement.

Your feedback is encouraged!

Do Movies Miss the Vibe?

In my most recent vlog, I mention the availability of Kes, a 1969 British film by director Ken Loach. It's been unavailable in the US for quite some time, and this new release, restored and (in the edition I bought) clear as I've ever seen in blu-ray, is really a tribute to the truly beautiful independent film. As interviews in the new "Making of" documentary explain, this film was a landmark for British films in it's "naturalistic" style - shooting on actual locations - and with non-professional actors.

I find any great work of art contributed to or created by non-professionals to be happily subversive. That's why I like Kes.  To be clear, the filmmakers behind Kes were professionals - though this was one of Ken Loach's first feature films after a number of years producing BBC films.

Kes is powerful because of the deeply sensitive performances of many of the actors, particularly David Bradley, who played the lead, Casper.  In the "making of" documentary accompanying this edition, Loach describes a shooting style that pulled the camera and, as much as possible, the paraphernalia of filmmaking away from the actors as much as possible.  Loach created something that we rarely see on the screen.  Without impacting the flow of the film or it's watchability, we actually have the time, occasionally,  to study Casper's face - to gain an almost instinctual understanding of the central character.  As he trains the kestral, we're just as much watching him and the soaring bird.  When, in a classroom, he's yelled at by a teacher, we looking more closely at him than at the teacher.  It's not a question of pushing in to an intimate close-up, either - Loach often presents his characters very much in the midst of their environments.  We witness Casper's reaction to ridicule at his desk in the middle of a classroom, not in a single shot that isolates him from his surroundings.

In the "real" world, we get to know our friends and colleagues by words, actions - and the subtle hints of body language, facial expressions and the intangible "vibe."  In most films, we don't have the time to gather those signals - dialogue, camera placement and a well-written screenplay provide impressions to complete the experience.   After all, films by their very nature provide a shorthand perception of the world.  That said, I wonder if certain films lose some potential impact neglecting to craft an opportunity for the audience to  "read" the visual cues the govern human relationships.

Movie Moguls and YouTube Subversives

I recently finished watching TCM's seven part documentary, "Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood," which traces the history of the film industry from its earliest days all the way up to the final fade out of the mogul era in the late 1960's.

While it didn't really cover any new ground, it did provide a great overall look at the evolution of the industry, and the unique personalities that built the early industry.  These pioneers - from Louis B. Mayer to the Warner Brothers, to Darryl Zanuck - not only invented (and continuously reinvented) the movie industry, but achieved success with pure tenacity.  That may sound somewhat cliche these days, but these guys (and women, the program illustrates) really did it.

For me, the most fascinating part of the program is the earliest episode, "Peepshow Pioneers"which looks at the industry in its very earliest days, from 1889 - 1907, when peepshows - those machines that individuals would peer into to view 10 or 20 second short films - became the craze.  The program reports that Thomas Edison's  studio (really, the first of its kind) produced close to a thousand of these short films in a single year.  In the beginning, these films consisted primarily of simple improvisational skits created by Edison's studio workers themselves.

I can't help think of parallels to the social media / YouTube world today, where so many are experimenting with a form of expression which is both an evolution of motion pictures, and it's own unique creation.  Of course, in those early days, a single man, Thomas Edison, who invented (or perfected) much of the technology that made the birth of the industry possible, and tried to hold onto a monopoly in the creation and distribution of content.  Today, media creation is open to all, and there are limitless variations on creating YouTube content - some for nothing more than self-expression, and others as entrepreneurial ventures.

The film industry wasn't invented by individuals from the theater world - it was created by people from unrelated worlds - or dirt poor kids  -  who created an opportunity that others may have ignored in their own sophistication.   If the social media platform does evolve, the driving forces that make it stand on its own will not, ultimately come from the existing media industries - but from the individuals who are creating audiences where none existed.

I suspect that most, if not all of the top YouTubers are individuals without filmmaking backgrounds.  Even though I'm a filmmaker, I love the subversive irony...