vog (a BETA videoblog)

Mouse into individual panes to hear specific commentary.

From the original post:

It has been way too long since a vog appeared on the main rationale for this blog, so last night I finally made sure I had the time to complete one. The rule of thirds. I shot it on a new iSight that I've got, specifically for trying to ramp up some informal vog material. Three dialogues to camera, sliced in Cleaner, compressed into MPEG4, and then very simple scripting in LiveStage Pro. The scripting is simply on a mouse enter event for each video pane, turn one sound track on, turn the other two off:

TrackNamed("LeftSound").SetVolumeTo(0)

TrackNamed("CentreSound").SetVolumeTo(0)

TrackNamed("RightSound").SetVolumeTo(255)

The work discusses the three things that went on recently (thrombosis, hard drive failure, sick children). Trouble usually travels in threes, and of course the rule of thirds is also a simple photographic come cinematographic rule of thumb (derived from the Golden Mean but that's questionable mathematics) about decent composition.

The work is deliberately fragmentary. The video panes only run at 12fps as I was seeking a stuttering, collaged mismatch between voice and face. Stuttering as the condition of the network ("will it arrive? where does that link take me?"), progress bars parading as interaction to hide the fact of these stuttering fragments. This cinematic vog practice is not wannabecinema. It lives and stalls on the network. It consists of three videos with three sound tracks. Mousing into each video pane allows you to hear the commentary for that individual video pane. Very straightforward.

This vog is simple in design and execution, didn't take very long to script (took me longer to get the iSight and QuickTime Broadcaster happy), and continues the vogs continued insistence on exploring vernacular interaction as a viable methodology for desktop video on the web. The question or problem it poses is suitably simple: if you had a video with three simultaneous soundtracks what would you narrate? How? Why? I think I'm thin on answers, but thick on problems.