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Lion eyes TV, film and commercials production company, Manchester

You may remember before Christmas I was spouting off about Shayne, 17 from Blackburn and how he was coming to take over the media-planet, and that we should all be quaking in our boots as creatives and creators of video content in the face of these bright young things with their shaky camerawork and macbook pros hooked up to their eager eyes. Well I think I’ve changed my mind, stop that boot quaking right this second folks. Now I know what you’re thinking:

“Lioneyesblogger’s getting older and grumpier and is turning into one of those media stalwarts who thinks that just because she’s been around for longer that she can get away with resisting change. Don’t worry she’ll be out of a job before you know it. Holding on to old ways of thinking and refusing to move forwards with the times, there are a million people who can take her place, easy.”

And yes, there probably are a million people waiting to take my place, and yours, in the crazy video world we find ourselves in at the moment, where nobody is safe and everyone younger than you is a threat. But really, come on. I’m not that old, and not even that bitter….yet. I work for a young company with young people! The reason people come to us, and probably to you, is our experience and ability to produce quality content and adapt it to these new technologies that the young’uns apparently have a better grasp of.  The new attitude of producing hacked together, cut and run content can work, I agree, for certain purposes. However, to be honest if broadcasters and advertisers are happy to put badly shot, badly lit, badly written material out there then do you really want to be part of it? I suppose the question is, do we have to be part of it to pay the bills and therefore sacrifice integrity and quality? I don’t think so.

It will be interesting to see how the apple’s tablet fares, the ipad’s large screen makes it ideal for viewing video on the go, and I wonder how the compressed, pixelated youtube videos will wash with the content monster consumers. I know that personally, up to a certain size of screen, I’m more than happy to watch pants quality video. It’s when you want your video to entertain for more than two minutes at a time, or inform or have a certain amount of clout that you start to question how important it is that you film it well, produce it well and put at least a little bit of love into the process of creating a finished piece.

The reason I’m not scared of Shayne and his teenage pals fresh off their university courses is this. If you went to university yourself you’ll know that over 60% of the people on your course didn’t end up doing what they studied, and a good chunk of those people were also incompetent and would have had trouble applying themselves to a career in anything, never mind the constant onslaught to your confidence that that our business has. You can’t put a price on experience and competence, but you can put a price on training. As long as those of us who have experience in what works for an audience know that we have to be open to embracing and assimilating new technologies and skills we’ll be fine. Just the same way that those fresh faced graduates who will do well are the film geeks and enthusiasts who learn what a white balance is before they attempt to turn on a camera even though they can output films from final cut pro for an iphone blindfolded.

The future has to be about learning from generations, a bit like that Clint Eastwood film Gran Torino.  And yes I know that this blog topic is very similar to the last one, and the one before. I’m trying to hammer it home to you because we all need reminding again and again of what we need to, strike a balance, not just with you January diet, but with your training and learning, the only thing I can’t tell you is whether you need to learn the old ways first, or the new.

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