Re: Brickfilming Discussion Week 5: For Mature Audiences Only
I wonder, did YouTube change our expectations of what a brickfilm ought to be? Back in the heyday of Brickfilms.com, there weren't any streaming websites to host your animations on, people had to download your video off of some server space that you bought. This contained the audience to members of the community, like, "hey guys check out this thing I made," and a hundred people might end up downloading and watching it. I think that imposed fewer internalized restrictions than a website like YouTube inherently does. When you upload to YouTube, anyone in the world can watch what you made, and while this is true of methods of old, streaming video is much less personal, at least in my opinion. There is no difference between a video on YouTube and a video accessible only by downloading the RealMedia file, but the audience in the latter format is so much more contained that more people felt like they could do whatever they wanted with their film.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there has been a paradigm shift in our expectations and self imposed restrictions due to the way we access brickfilms. Only in the past few years have THACs begun to allow YouTube uploads (albeit unlisted) as submissions. I'm sure most members remember compressing their THAC entries to some ungodly format, uploading it to Mediafire and praying it would work for the judges. Those days are over now; I can't remember the last time I saw someone on the forum post a download link for their animation, and this shift in content accessibility has some effect on the creator. I'll try to illustrate this possible effect below.
A young teenager starting to animate in 2014 watches brickfilms on YouTube, sometimes Vimeo, but never as a download (unless they peruse the old forums for hyperlinks but that's an aside). The nature of YouTube is that the uploader makes a video, and YouTube gets to watch it. You have a worldwide audience at the tips of your fingers. An audience. When this new brickfilmer starts animating, they're likely making subconscious alterations to their stories so as to appease this potential audience. They filter their ideas a bit more to cater to the public, which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but certainly reflects on a change.
Compare this to an older teenager, maybe 19, way back in 2005. There is no YouTube to watch videos on, no Vimeo, but Brickfilms.com exists. This newly appointed adult decides to make a LEGO video with that collection sitting in the back of their closet after finding the website and being inspired by the work that others are making. A key difference between the brickfilmer in 2005 and the brickfilmer in 2014 is that their perceived audience is so radically different. The brickfilmer back in 2005 won't have the potential for a thousand views, the only people that will see their video are the voice actors, maybe family, and a couple strangers online. The brickfilm they are going to make is unaltered by societal pressures, it's just a thing they want to make for themselves and share with a couple people. That's how you end up with brickfilms like Taco Trouble and For Trubador. For Trubador is a more recent example but it was made in the early days of YouTube where this paradigm shift hadn't yet occurred.
I have little concrete evidence for my thoughts and I wasn't even around in 2005, but I do think YouTube has had a more resonating effect on the brickfilm community than one may perceive at surface glance.
Last edited by NXTManiac (June 3, 2014 (01:15pm))