Video and the Web

[craigbowman]

Last fall I started working with interactive video which quickly morphed into Intermedia and then more recently doing HDC, (High Dynamic Content), projects. I'm finding a much higher percentage of my work with digital video is happening online and the pure digital video only production projects are being squeezed out along with their dwindling budgets.

Is this just my perception or are any of you noticing the shift?

 

[roxics]

I do mostly web destined video myself. Not interactive. But clients who want videos for their websites. A lot of talking head CEO stuff. My boss is constantly trying to turn every video project into a motion graphics animation piece with narration. As a result I have come to loathe animation. I just want to be out in the field or in the studio shooting, not sitting behind a computer moving keyframes around. I'm not graphic design savvy enough to produce high quality work that way. But for him it's cheaper than putting stuff in front of a camera.

 

[Pickthorne]

interactive video which quickly morphed into Intermedia and then more recently doing HDC, (High Dynamic Content)

When you say Interactive video, do you mean video with clickable hotspots, or something more complex? Also I can guess at the other two terms' meaning, but could you clarify/give examples?

But to answer your question, I am finding that clients like pitches that include more than just talking heads. Since there is now an actual position called "Social Media Officer", clients now tend towards projects with elements that can link up to infographics, Facebook badges, etc. The video is going to be part of a larger campaign, and they want a cohesive look and feel.

Craig

 

[craigbowman]

Yes, the interactive video I'm referring to both clickable hotspots and also where the timeline activates other webmedia on the fly like a googlemap or wikipedia reference etc. I found where the interactive video for Intermedia involving other devices like tablets and stuff get even more restrictive. Originally I was using straight CSS3 media queries but found that wasn't really good enough so switched to a RESS approach which is a combination of responsive design and server side components to pinpoint device types. ie. When needing reference to a youtube video on an iPad, the iPad can't handle autoplay but many other tablet devices can so you need take that into account in your code. For the two modes which video can playback, inline and fullscreen, only inline lets interactive video happen visibly in front of you. Full screen only allows the video layer to predominate and thus anything which normally might have layered over top is hidden. Smartphones are designed for any kind of video content to playback in fullscreen mode making Intermedia with video a waste of time. The interactive video is actually still functioning but you just can't see it. Laptops and traditional desktop computers use inline mode as their default and therefore full Intermedia projects are fully functional right out of the box. I have some old examples I was first mucking about with last fall here: http://drupalcalgary.org The video in the example is some stuff I shot from a previous project.