Short-form content
Video clips are short clips in video format and predominantly found on the internet where the massive influx of new video clips during 2006 has been dubbed as a new phenomena having a profound impact on both the internet and other forms of media. Sources for video clips include news and sporting events, music videos, television programmes, film trailers and vlogs.
The term is also more loosely used to mean any short video less than the length of a traditional television programme.
On the Internet
With the spread of broadband Internet access, video clips have become very popular online. As of mid 2006 there are millions of video clips available online, with new websites springing up focussing entirely on offering free video clips to users.
While some video clips are taken from established media sources, community or individual-produced clips are becoming more common. Some individuals host their created works on vlogs, which are video blogs.
Clip culture
The widespread popularity of video clips, with the aid of new distribution channels, has evolved into clip culture. It is compared to "lean-back" experience of seeing traditional movies, refers to an internet activity of sharing and viewing a short video, mostly less than 15 minutes. The culture began as early as the development of broadband network, but it sees the boom since 2005 when websites for uploading clips are emerging on the market, including YouTube, Google Video, MSN Video.
Those video clips often shows a moments of significance, humour, oddity, prodigy performance. Sources for video clips include news, movies, music video and amateur video shot. In addition to the clip recorded by high-quality camcorders, it is getting common to produce clips with digital camera, webcam, and mobile phone.
Rise of amateurs
Unlike traditional movies largely dominated by studios, clip movies were overwhelmingly supplied by amateurs. In May 2006, The Economist reported that 90% of clips on YouTube came from amateurs, a few of whom are young comedians. It, in effect, also brought amateur talents.
In 2005, two Chinese students Huang Yixin and Wei Wei, now dubbed as Back Dorm Boys showed their talented in lip-synching in a song of the Backstreet Boys, with their self-conscious grimaces in a video uploaded to some clip websites, has instantly become renown. Not only did they appear on television shows, concerts, but were also granted a contract by a media company in Beijing for lip-syncing for cash.
Earlier celebrity of clip culture includes David Elsewhere, a prodigy in popping and liquiding. His performance at Kollaboration Competition in 2001 was widely spread in the internet and was later hired to participate in advertisements for Heineken, iPod and Pepsi.
Citizen journalism
Citizen video reporting dates back as early as the development of camcorders, but all videos were screened by the local media outlets of the time, until its spread has been aided by free upload websites in which censorship is limited to make a vast amount of videos available to anyone who wants it. Scenes rarely broadcast on television, and many first-witnessed scenes have since become publicly available.
Notably, in December 2004, tourist videos on the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami offered worldwide audiences the first scenes of the disaster. In Decemeber 2003, videos in Hong Kong showing the bully in De La Salle School has outraged the public, raised a wide concern on school violence and led to the arrest of 11 students.
Vlog
In late 2005 to 2006, new form of blogging emerged as a vlog. It is a blog that takes video as the primary content, often accompanied by supporting text, image, and additional metadata to provide context. Su Li Walker, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said that like blogs, which have become an extension of traditional media, video blogs will be a supplement to traditional broadcasting. [1]
Convergence with traditional media
The potential markets of video clip has caught attention from traditional studio. In 2006, the producers of Lucky Number Slevin, a film with Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu and Bruce Willis, are going to make 8-minute clip to YouTube, but celebrity in traditional media is proved to be able to gain a bigger popularity in clip culture.
Emerging Trends
A recent development is the appearance of curated, or programmed, blogs such as Viewtube, Tuberaider and a host of others. Made possible by the embedded player function on sites like Youtube, these newcomers are seen by certain industry watchers as examples of a new trend. Differing significantly from Digg based aggregators such as Videosift, or commercial prank and shock sites like Ebaum's World, these new sites function more like repertory movie houses in that they tend to be quirky, thematic and aimed at a dispersed but similar audience.
Cyril Takayama, a Japanese-European magician, became famous by showing his theandric skills in Japanese TV magic show in 2004. His fame was achieved only in Japan and the international magicians' culture, until his video clips were later spread across the Internet.