Quantity over quality?

[jamesb]

Vlogs have become the new trend. They are easy to make in an afternoon, the riders don't need to push themselves and risk injury (most blogs), and they are entertaining! You feel part of the gang when you watch them!

But...

With so much focus on vlogs, views, likes and social media, where does that leave the legit video part? Real videos can take weeks of punishment (at least) to produce. There is no time to vlog here, unless you release constant teasers of what you were going to try. I know some bmx and skate parts take years. You know the feeling when, after seeing nothing from a rider for 6 months, he releases a kick butt video with a ton of never before done riding? I definitely still get that from some riders. It seems like viewers want weekly, even daily doses of vlogs more than they want full parts.

Views on this?

Vloggers: would you be out there clip hunting if you weren't vlogging?

I've thought about vlogging trials, and I am guilty of doing vlog style mtb trail reviews.

I remember a similar debate over web-videos vs DVDs. Times are changing!

[LEON]

Don't Vlog, yours and Andrew Dickey's vids are some of the only top vids that come out of nowhere and blow people away. No hype, no build up, it's just there one day and makes an impact.

Vlogs are mostly shit due to everyone just wanting to be "famous" on the Internet and quantity over quality. There's never any riding that's pushing the rider, they're just dragging out some of their average stuff with a load of talking and repeats/attempts and filler. I watch Ali's now and then (I skip the talking) because he's a top rider so even his diet moves are worth watching.

But now every kid with a poc lid wants to do the same. So we're drowning in 15min videos of half arsed riding and no one wants to take the time to  make a proper 3 minute video. John Shrewsbury's last vid was the best I've seen in ages, we need more like that and the trials kings era. Basically everything that's released these days is forgotten almost instantly.

Riders, take your time. Ride hard, make a good video, don't put spoilers and all this hashtag bullshit up. When you're just looking for likes, it shows. 

Edited February 15, 2017 by LEON

[niconj]

I agree to a certain extend with Leon. For riders like you James, please don't do vlogs. Your videos are that good, it's worth waiting for them. Ali's vlogs are interesting but I do the same as Leon, skip the talking.

For riders that have begun recently, some short vlogging isn't too bad. You can mostly see some progress in those videos, which for me is interesting to see (again for me, as I'm at the beginning as well and can compare myself to those riders). If you've got a rider that is already at the top, it's hard to see any progress, which is in turn is boring. 

p.d. There's probably not a single Vlog episode that's going to be posted in a "worthy repost" thread. So it's like Leon says:

5 hours ago, LEON said:

Basically everything that's released these days is forgotten almost instantly.

 

Edited February 15, 2017 by niconj

[AdamR28]

8 hours ago, LEON said:

Don't Vlog, yours and Andrew Dickey's vids are some of the only top vids that come out of nowhere and blow people away. No hype, no build up, it's just there one day and makes an impact.

Vlogs are mostly shit due to everyone just wanting to be "famous" on the Internet and quantity over quality. There's never any riding that's pushing the rider, they're just dragging out some of their average stuff with a load of talking and repeats/attempts and filler. I watch Ali's now and then (I skip the talking) because he's a top rider so even his diet moves are worth watching.

But now every kid with a poc lid wants to do the same. So we're drowning in 15min videos of half arsed riding and no one wants to take the time to  make a proper 3 minute video. John Shrewsbury's last vid was the best I've seen in ages, we need more like that and the trials kings era. Basically everything that's released these days is forgotten almost instantly.

Riders, take your time. Ride hard, make a good video, don't put spoilers and all this hashtag bullshit up. When you're just looking for likes, it shows. 

Couldn't have put it better

[Greetings]

Yeah, call it fame or something else, it's mostly about getting reactions. Raw footage seems to be what people like these days. We are bombarded with so much content that our attention spans shorten to something like 8 seconds when browsing. This is why quality doesn't matter anymore, I wouldn't attribute it to vlogs  

[Ali C]

As a vlogger here's my view:

I've always been a quality over quantity type person and never watched vlogs (I still only watch the very occasional one), I loved nothing more than going travelling with a filmer (mainly Mark) and finding interesting lines and busting my ass trying to land them and then having a quality video at the end of it that can be re-watched.

HOWEVER

Those videos are easier said than done, if you don't have someone decent to film you then you're stuffed and won't be producing any content at all (although Flip, Ben Travis and yourself James seem to produce some high level self filmed edits so it is possible). Now I've moved to Scotland it's a lot harder to meet up and film with Mark. 

The other thing that made me go back on my quantity/quality opinion was that nearly every kid I met asked me if I've a Youtube channel....it's replaced TV for most kids and they are hungry for content. Remember when you were a kid and you would absorb ANYTHING your fave riders would put out? (for me it was any magazine with Martyn and Martin, any dvd, any TV programme with content would be recorded and I'd be on Trialskings every night to see if they'd released a new clip) Well kids are still the same, they get obsessed with riding and want to watch anything involving riders they like, the only difference is that they now have access to all the top riders at their finger tips with Insagram, Facebook and Youtube.

I resisted social media for a while but rather than sticking to the old ways I knew, I decided to embrace the newer ways for a few reasons:

1) It keeps me up to date with technology, I don't want to get left behind 
2) It gives new (and old) riders encouragement, the amount of messages I get from people who watch the vlogs saying they've either started after seeing one or it's given them hope after seeing that everyone crashes/take lots of tries is quite high.
3) It gives lots of sponsor promotion
4) it distinguishes me from other riders (mainly Danny....I'll elaborate below)
5) It grows my confidence
7) It fills my time productively 

As for point 4, that was one of the main reasons I thought to do my first vlog....Danny is obviously the top rider producing the top videos, he's got the whole "epic" video thing dialled! I see a lot of people trying to either emulate him or try to copy his style of video to get fame themselves.

The issue with this is that even if you did over take Danny's riding or video quality, you'll STILL be second to him! He's the original and he has gone beyond the riding, he's a personality now.

My thoughts were that if I wanted to be known as a rider in my own right, separate from Danny and able to earn a living where I can actually one day afford my own flat or a holiday etc I can't try and "beat" him at his own game, I've got to find my own way, a different way. The way I came up with was to go completely the opposite way he's gone and go really raw, show everyone that it does take 10/50/100 tries to land something.....show people that an every day ride isn't a death defying mission...I wanted to get back to basics and vlogging hadn't really been done in trials so I thought I'd challenge myself to do one year and see how it went.

I was prepared for a huge slagging, I expected negative comments, hate and bullying but actually, I've had non of that (though I'm sure there is some going on in some groups of riders), all my comments on my page or through personal messages have been extremely positive. Most of my sponsors have told me they love the vlogs too which is great. My friends and family say I'm more confident...I personally feel I've more direction in life now too and I suspect I'll continue vlogging after my one year anniversary.

Anyway I've blabbered on more than I planned, to sum it up, deep down I'm still a quality over quantity person but I also realise that times do change, the way people interact with social media has changed, people expect content and if you can't/don't provide it then someone else will. Ideally vlogs and video parts can live side by side, I plan on doing some bigger projects this year...to answer James's comments about compatability, I'd maybe not show lines that were video worthy but tell a story about what it takes to film, show how long it takes to set up a camera, show how you'd warm up for a line etc....there's more to filming than the riding and I think that's something that could be vlog worthy....we'll see though.

[Ali C]

13 hours ago, jamesb said:

Vloggers: would you be out there clip hunting if you weren't vlogging?

probably not, that's another reason why I started vlogging, I'd often not bother riding as I'd often just get frustrated, just going out and riding didn't seem have a purpose, I wasn't pushing myself, there wasn't a "goal"...it was just riding because that's all I knew and I found myself just staying inside playing on the playstation.

Now with vlogs, I'm enjoying riding as I have more of a "goal", I feel better riding if I have a purpose for it and as a result I'm riding way more often. I rode for 3 hours yesterday getting self shot photos and I'm off out for at least a couple of hours shortly to get this weeks vlog done

[Ali C]

Sorry, one more comment!

To elaborate on point 2 above "gives new riders encouragement".

To me it's important to appeal to younger riders (which is why I try keep my content fairly family friendly and to avoid swearing) as they are the future, they are the ones who are going to be buying products in a few years, they are the ones who are going to keep the sport afloat when the current riders fall away from riding. 

It's easy to stick with what you know and carry on doing things that appeal to the generation you grew up in and I have respect for those who stick to their guns and make things work, but for the most longevity I feel it's best to appeal to the next generation and more quantity/vlogs seem to be what kids want whether you like them or not.

My friend Par from the band Sabaton (name drop haha) had an interview where he elaborated on a similar point when asked why they try to appeal to kids as well as adults while being a metal band. I've started the link at the correct point.

https://youtu.be/w_-9axUulWw?t=809

I mainly started vlogging to help myself, only afterwards once I got a positive result did I realise that this is what kids like and now I vlog as much for them as for myself.

[Mark W]

15 hours ago, jamesb said:

With so much focus on vlogs, views, likes and social media, where does that leave the legit video part? Real videos can take weeks of punishment (at least) to produce. There is no time to vlog here, unless you release constant teasers of what you were going to try. I know some bmx and skate parts take years.

People still do full parts but release little updates/vlogs.  Kink did it a lot with their Kink House projects, Etnies put random things out, and a few other companies have done similar too.  There's always riding that happens that, if you've got QC, wouldn't make the final cut so that would be prime fodder for a vlog/video like that.  There have been a few DVD projects where people have posted up 'raw' footage where they show the build-up/crashes that led to a clip then the aftermath as a teaser, and also to show the battle the rider had to go through. 

I don't really see it as a binary choice of either you do one or the other, but it seems like it's more about balance.  It seems at the moment riders would rather have the instant gratification of likes/comments/shares on social media clips, but I think a well produced/made video will always have a place.  I suppose part of the problem for trials is that, compared to BMXing, skating and virtually all other things like that, the quality of videos has generally been pretty low.  To use skating as an example, there's a strong tradition of full parts, and so although there's a lot more stuff being burned on social media skaters still expect/demand full parts because they do stand out.  I don't really think that's the case with trials though.  That said, before his last video (I think...) Ben Travis was pumping out loads of good stuff on FB/Instagram that didn't make the cut for the full video, and with the amount he was posting on social media I wasn't expecting to see a full video suddenly appear so that was the icing on the cake.

In terms of vlogs, I don't really watch any apart from Ali's occasionally, mainly because it seems like a lot of people don't really have a purpose or direction for doing them so it's essentially 10+mins of rambling with no idea/structure behind it.  I'm one of the people who said Ali seemed more confident after starting his because I'd say it has had a positive impact on him personally and on how he's perceived online.  Despite him being a total fanny he does have some redeeming features, but I don't think a lot of riders really 'got' Ali, until he started vlogging and his personality started coming through more.  Him having a personality and being his own person definitely helps it stand out from other vlogs though where it's pretty clear the rider in question doesn't really have much going on and is just doing a vlog because they're the done thing.  That's always the way though - people get successful doing them, then that idea trickles down through the rest of the community and everyone wants a pop.  Same deal with road bike videos - no-one who's ever put out a 'trials on a road bike' video in the past few years would have done it had they not seen the success of Road Bike Party, so they all wanted to try and get a piece of the pie.  None of them really got the reason that it was popular though, so they just faded away.  See also:  Danny Mac, and everyone else who "has their own style" and "does their own thing" that just so happens to be a half-scale, styleless copy of what Danny does.

 

EDIT:  One thing I would say Ali is that you definitely need to strap a pair on, go through your vlog footage and pick out the best 2-3 clips of each one and maybe put a full 'best of' kinda video together.  When we all watch them here in the office, the usual thing is "Why doesn't he just put out a video of these for people like us?", so make it happen   There's so much good stuff that's buried in them that needs to be seen by more people.  It seems like the little taster videos work well (e.g. the skatepark one recently that made me watch the whole thing whereas ordinarily I don't think I would have done), so just do that, but more so.

[cwtrials]

The reason I have started watching vlogs, good vlogs capture biking lifestyle.  In my mind they are a completely different genre of video.

[Ali C]

2 hours ago, Mark W said:

EDIT:  One thing I would say Ali is that you definitely need to strap a pair on, go through your vlog footage and pick out the best 2-3 clips of each one and maybe put a full 'best of' kinda video together.  When we all watch them here in the office, the usual thing is "Why doesn't he just put out a video of these for people like us?", so make it happen   There's so much good stuff that's buried in them that needs to be seen by more people.  It seems like the little taster videos work well (e.g. the skatepark one recently that made me watch the whole thing whereas ordinarily I don't think I would have done), so just do that, but more so.

I almost did that for new year but then got lazy and didn't bother, editing sucks and I didn't fancy doing any more work when it came time to do it. Now I'm planning a one year anniversary video in a few weeks with a "best of" my previous year. 

[Ross W.]

I have to chime in, as a comp rider who can watch comp footage all day but normally gets bored with street trials videos pretty quickly (yeah, blasphemous I know), I have enjoyed watching some of your vlogs Ali. It's fun to watch the process and it seems like you're genuinely enjoying making them as well. They have motivated me to get out and ride even if my riding style is nothing like yours whatsoever. I appreciate that you're taking the time to make them, I know what a pain in the ass filming can be.

I also agree that vlogs are a good way to appeal to younger riders.

[Mark W]

4 hours ago, Ali C said:

I almost did that for new year but then got lazy and didn't bother, editing sucks and I didn't fancy doing any more work when it came time to do it. Now I'm planning a one year anniversary video in a few weeks with a "best of" my previous year. 

Good shit.  How organised are you being with clips/naming of clips?  Archiving stuff in a reasonably organised manner or just freestyling it?

Only reason I ask is that if you're all over the place atm, trying to get to grips with copying your best clips into a dedicated folder wouldn't be a bad shout.  It's a little more work now to save a lot of work later.

[Ali C]

23 minutes ago, Ross W. said:

I have to chime in, as a comp rider who can watch comp footage all day but normally gets bored with street trials videos pretty quickly (yeah, blasphemous I know), I have enjoyed watching some of your vlogs Ali. It's fun to watch the process and it seems like you're genuinely enjoying making them as well. They have motivated me to get out and ride even if my riding style is nothing like yours whatsoever. I appreciate that you're taking the time to make them, I know what a pain in the ass filming can be.

I also agree that vlogs are a good way to appeal to younger riders.

This pleases me, cheers Ross!

 

1 minute ago, Mark W said:

Good shit.  How organised are you being with clips/naming of clips?  Archiving stuff in a reasonably organised manner or just freestyling it?

Only reason I ask is that if you're all over the place atm, trying to get to grips with copying your best clips into a dedicated folder wouldn't be a bad shout.  It's a little more work now to save a lot of work later.

I've got every original clip saved on external hard drives but they're not named and are not trimmed. I was going to just use the edited vlog which again are all saved and just cut out the clips from those. That would be a good shout to do, it IS a lot of work though  

[jamesb]

Yeah, for my best of edit I just grabbed clips from the edited vids. Saves a ton of time!

Good stuff in this thread! Ali, I totally get what you're saying about needing a purpose to ride and being more productive with your time. Since I've been on vacation I've needed that. When I'm working though, any time on my bike is pure fun. Camera or no.

I'll be back on the trials bike less than a month from now, which is why I brought this thread up. I have a list of never-seen tricks I know I can do with some pain and suffering haha! It's hard for me to sit on footage long enough to put out a banger video, which is why vlogs came to mind, and my videos are never very popular anyways.

There is something about going through all the crashes and 100 attempts, multiple times for different clips, that is satisfying though. When I filmed "you cool man?" I really got that since I'd been off the bike for some time and had all these tricks in my head. Part of the problem is that I need to keep outdoing my last video for personal and external reasons. It's HARD! Now I need to do better than "Danger is my Business" and "Playing the Arcade," both of which had things in them that scared and very nearly injured me, and took a lot of creativity.

It's hard to get motivated to go through that when I might only get 2000 views and a high five. I'm sure my music/editing preference has something to do with it haha!

[Ali C]

More vids from you is always a winner in my eyes! The things with views though is that unless you've built up a fanbase with other social media (facebook and instagram) not many people will know you've had a video out, then you're purely relying on one going viral which is less likely to happen anyway if fewer people are sharing it.

If you're riding for fun then I'd recommend you don't worry about views, hunting for them is a full time job and not guaranteed to pay off. Make videos for your own satisfaction and if they get popular then that's a bonus. 

[Mark W]

1 hour ago, jamesb said:

It's hard to get motivated to go through that when I might only get 2000 views and a high five. I'm sure my music/editing preference has something to do with it haha!

Nah, your videos are cool   I just don't think there's the same audience for it these days for a few reasons, one of which being FB f**king around with how people's news feeds work.  They made a big change to how they operated and I heard a good few people say their video reach totally bombed (mainly because FB wanted people to pay to receive the same level of exposure they'd worked to generate previously...).  This just means if you're not set up right on FB/social media, you just don't get the same level of exposure as you would have done a couple of years ago.  I've found it with my own videos, and with videos I've produced for other people.  I don't feel there's a big difference in terms of style or whatever between videos I've done before that got over 100k views, and now ones I've done (e.g. the last Clean video which has some of the best riding I've ever filmed in it) which barely scrape 5k or so.  The difference in views seemed to correlate to the change in views that other people had too so I think it's an across-the-board thing.

[jeff costello]

weren't your tutorials a bit of a go at vlogging? (i liked them btw. would watch it if there were more)

only vlog i ever (occasionally) watched is ali's. thing with vlogs is, if i don't know you or know beforehand that you're really competent at something, i won't watch you talking on youtube, period. so for me, watching a vlog has a pretty high threshold. 
for unknown riders, i might watch a few minutes of a riding video. but i definitely won't watch a vlog. even if an intro is too long/ there are too many jokes, i will start skipping forward. 

Edited February 16, 2017 by jeff costello

[aener]

13 hours ago, jamesb said:

It's hard to get motivated to go through that when I might only get 2000 views and a high five. 

I sadly understand what you're saying about feeling the actually-non-existent-pressure to outdo yourself, and I appreciate this may be you being candid but the sentence I've quoted just really upsets me.

I really don't like that, even the people that try to give off the impression, or have a reputation for being innately progressive and good can only do it because they want notoriety.
It's a tricky parallel to draw but plenty of people refer to videos they really like as "art". I'm not entirely sure on the point but it takes enough of a semantic root in me that I'd roll with it. Where are all the Van Gogh's that basically didn't show anyone a picture during ten years of practice and only really appreciated posthumously? And bought paints and canvases instead of food when the money was almost out.

Obviously, with today's standards of living that extent isn't really necessary, and I'm not for one second you shouldn't strive to better yourself/your abilities, and the more people that CAN see it the better so don't pointedly not broadcast your efforts, but I find it most distressing that almost no-one does it in the avant garde sense and that now the market is flooded with... mercenaries.

(Note that this isn't specifically directed at you - your sentence just summed up what seems to be 90-95% of peoples' approach so succinctly that I was kind of taken aback by it.) 

 

Sorry - I think I'm going to regret posting that, but I'm going to click Submit anyway as it's a point that's been floating in my mind for a long while.

 

Edit: With regards to the vlog thing... I tend to not enjoy them as they're mostly filled with stuff I'm not that interested in. 20 minutes per episode seems to be the going length, but I feel that the majority of them could happily be condensed to 5 and be more enjoyable to watch as a result. 

...But then I appreciate I'm not the type of person they're aimed at.

Edited February 16, 2017 by aener

[AndyT]

I'd never heard of a VLOG before Ali C made one.  

 

I love his, I'm interested in the riding and  the sights and sounds of another country. 

 

As for trials videos, I stick to trials kings and older videos. I f**king hate drones, drone shots, selfie sticks, 40000k super HD, gimbals any other new bullshit gimics people are using to make their video look like that sick Red Bull "edits".  Just make a video that shows something with heart, that the viewer can be somewhat inspired by (pun intended??).

 

haven't watched anyone one else's vlog that I can really remember...they go along with today's eat crap and make a lot of trash society.

[niconj]

55 minutes ago, AndyT said:

Just make a video that shows something with heart, that the viewer can be somewhat inspired by (pun intended??).

And it has to be filmed with a potato? If there is the possibility of having high quality images, why not use them?

[Mark W]

Relevant.

 

There's nothing inherently wrong with using new, jazzy camera equipment (there are videos out there that do), but quite often it just becomes an exercise in using new, jazzy camera equipment for the sake of using it, or just to 'Look Pro'.  Overuse of drone shots is a prime example, such as the slew of drone-only trials videos that came out when they first became more affordable.  Similarly, depending on how they're used gimbals can quite often mess up composition - I've seen a bunch of videos which become frustrating to watch because although the footage is super still and level, you don't always want to be looking across perfectly horizontally when someone's riding.

There's definitely a happy middle ground between lo-fi and high tech, in just the same way there's a happy middle ground between 'avant garde' and more standard stuff.

Related to the 'avant garde' thing you mentioned before Flipp, it's always going to be the case that there are more people in the mainstream rather than doing that kind of thing.  To use your Van Gogh example (even though from my understanding he tried being commercially successful in his own lifetime, and still did commissions/sold work while he was alive?), how many Van Goghs were there?  Or Picassos?  Or... and so on.  There will always be the people who lead, then the people who follow, then the people who take elements from the leaders and elements from themselves and synthesise them to create their own new thing, and the cycle continues.

I definitely get what you mean about the 'mercenary' aspect of it, but at the same time I think it's just because a lot of people don't really think too much about videos as to them it's now just a simple commodity rather than trying to make a statement.  For some people as well they just want to make videos that look like their favourite filmer/editor/riders videos, and there's nothing really wrong with that either.  As an example, your videos stand out from most others on here stylistically in terms of filming/editing, but then I've seen a couple of videos from people who admire you that clearly take a lot of hues and elements from your videos, from shot composition to clip length to music choices.  That's cool too as it's just someone who is into what you're doing and wants to follow the new path you're creating.

[Davetrials]

Just quickly, that video just had me in full tears.

[ItsMatt]

I was just looking for that video, Bring back Zoot Alors! 

Also on the topic, Quality > Quantity.
Hold back clips or else you're just another kid with a GoPro and a Poc helmet.

Edited February 17, 2017 by ItsMatt
added some spice

[AndyT]

7 hours ago, niconj said:

And it has to be filmed with a potato? If there is the possibility of having high quality images, why not use them?

No, but high priced cameras  don't make a good video..

 

watch ANY Red Bull video, they are so painful and they are showing people what a video should be like, super slowmo high res of dirt and tires, drone shots of a nice pier... barely viewable actual riding.

 

For my Kenny B video I borrowed a 7d and kit lens ($0), my gimbal was a $5 thrift store tripod with a shirt wrapped on the end for weight balancing and filmed it in one day with no planning- just drove around and filmed.. That video had $0 budget, and has combined over 400,000 views... because I know how trials riders should be shot. Red Bull came out with a Kenny B in San Francisco a week after my Los Angeles video- it couldn't get the hits even though it was filmed with $$$$$ and the  Red Bull machine promoting it.  Doesn't matter when you can't relate to the riding, and while you watch the video you get the feeling of being in an elevator instead of shredding a bad ass city.

 

I prefer to watch Danny mac on an echo with shit mini dv quality than some elaborate go to another country get cray shots plan for a long time, take time filming.. make sure big sponsor logos are seen..

 

one day is all you need for a good video, especially if the rider is capable.

 

I know you will disagree with me and that's fine..everyone has their beliefs. We are being bombarded by total SHIT constantly, if you watch television you're already used to it.... disposable world.

 

james b bids are a favorite because the riding is ridiculous, the filming is all it  needs to be- you can see what is happening... and they are real bangers that pop out of nowhere. 

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