Comments on: Halleleujah, I’ve Seen the Light

By: Dave Weigel

Dave Weigel — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 08:13:18 +0000

I liked that the two books I could kind of identify on the shelves were Plato and a Marvel trade paperback.

The Marvel is mine – it’s the “X-Men Encylopedia” released to cash in on the second Bryan Singer film.

By: Lester Hunt

Lester Hunt — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 21:53:41 +0000

Nice going, Julian! The competition is dining on dust!

By: mattsteinglass

mattsteinglass — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:44:29 +0000

For me, blogging from Vietnam, the potential advantages of vlogging are all bound up with being able to post more weird videos of shamanistic rituals and Hmong kids. But I suppose I don't actually have to vlog to do that - I can just post the videos in the middle of my regular blog. Vlogging would only be advantageous in order to promote my own personal brand in an egotistical and performative fashion. Which means I better get right on it.

By: Jacob T. Levy

Jacob T. Levy — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 15:55:33 +0000

I have seen the future, and its name is Julian…

I liked that the two books I could kind of identify on the shelves were Plato and a Marvel trade paperback.

By: Julian Sanchez

Julian Sanchez — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 06:59:58 +0000

I think what I might try next time, instead of just a flashing link icon, is a hyperlinked subtitle that actually provides some description of what you’re clicking through (“Click to see my previous vlog”; “Click to read The Wealth of Networks“; “Click for more on director D.W. Griffith”) so that people maybe get a better sense of whether that’s something they want to have waiting for them in another window when the video finishes. And where appropriate, I’ll time that to come up and linger a bit *after* I’ve said enough about the relevant topic to provide the viewer with the context to decide whether they want more information.

By: laurex

laurex — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 06:53:51 +0000

So what you've got is interactive short-form documentary, albeit of the polemical variety and of course, without those pesky cleasances documentary makers are always having panel discussions about. If well-done, I'm sure they could prove interesting and add value- on the other hand, I doubt I would follow a blogger who utilized this style frequently. Practically, I can't read a vlog on my blackberry (and even with the capability, it would require an environment suitable for video-watching); viewing is time consuming; and ultimately there are few bloggers I can think of who can pull this kind of thing off without being dull, smug, or awkward. Making movies is fun, though! With the bandwidth barrier weakening, I'm sure there will be a lot of people trying this out.

By: Julian Sanchez

Julian Sanchez — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 06:46:06 +0000

Chris-
Hmm, good point. I’m not sure there’s a good way to do that with the available overlay programs (or at any rate, a way that could be kludged together within the amount of time I’m disposed to devote to it) but even with the system I’ve got set up here (1) the links open in another tab/window (depending on your settings), so you can always click and take a look later, and (2) I’ll keep the index of references below the video, so you can always refer to that at the end of the video. Of course, (2) is less helpful if your’e looking at it as an embed on someone else’s site… I’m still playing with the overlay programs, and will see if I can’t figure out a better method.

By: Christopher M

Christopher M — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 06:21:23 +0000

Very nice! One technical complaint: the hyperlinks disappeared too soon. If a hyperlink only stays up while you’re in the middle of discussing something, that’s not very useful — I don’t know whether I want to bother clicking the link until you’ve gotten to whatever point you’re making about it. Were it technically feasible, the ideal might be to have a list of hyperlinks that either scrolls slowly by (so that I have a minute or two after you mention something to click on the relevant link) or simply gets longer and longer as the video goes on (so that all the hyperlinks are visible by the time the video concludes).

By: Anthony C

Anthony C — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 18:40:34 +0000

“The setting is particularly nice. I find myself searching your bookshelf. Keep these things in mind as you cultivate your persona.”

You can tell a lot about someone by looking at their book shelves (or lack of them), I find. When I find myself in somebody’s office or study, I generally take the first opportunity to scan the shelves and see what’s what.

Unfortunately, in this instance, Plato was the only thing that was in big enough print to catch my eye…

By: tom

tom — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:52:51 +0000

Yes! Julian, that was great. I've been bitching and moaning about the video infestation of Matt's site, pointing out that talk of getting in on the ground floor of an evolving medium is silly so long as none of the participants are taking actual steps to *make* it evolve. But this clip does, and so I'm pretty pleased. A lot of these developments have already happened in the parallel video podcasting world, but if political vlogging picks them up I'll be pretty happy. Two quick things: first, if you've got Parallels, BootCamp or access to a PC, Wax is a handy (and free) post-production tool. It let me do a few things that iMovie didn't. Second, there are a couple of sites that let you add flash overlays to your videos, providing the sort of clickable video bookmarks you talked about in this clip. BubblePly is one; Mojiti is another.