CREATIVE MEDIA PRACTICE: YOUTUBE ANNOTATION

Before I start I must say one thing: I love YouTube.

I love it as a fan, I love it as a media student and I love it for what it stands for as a platform. It gives so much in terms of procastination, inspiration and the hope that I can make someone and broadcast it to potentially millions is something I find fantastic.

The other thing I'm a fan of is interaction - giving the audience the chance to become involved or even in control of a story is someone that excites me and in this day of media with the technology we have avaliable to us is something that is getting more possible every day.

The fact in this module I had the chance to explore both of these things coming together was a dream to me.

YouTube Annotations are, in short, a link that can be programmed into the video player. They have been used in many different ways from what I have seen. They can be used as links to other videos, advertisments to other channels or even a means of way to subscribe. This creates an easy way of navigating the network systems which most 'YouTubers' like to do. In the past the audience would have to scroll down and try to find the links in the small and complication 'info box' which may have previously been lost in a variety of text and mass of hyperlinks but now with annotations there was now a simple and easy way to do this.

The other possibility created through annotations was the interactive video. This is something I wanted to look into the most. My main source of inspiration came from the works of 'WheezyWaiter', a YouTube comedy blogger who often dabbles in multi choice adventure videos from time to time.

 

From this me, Josie Webster and Ian Gardner ("Why's it alway us three?") decided to do something similar about an issue that reigns supreme in our flat: washing up.

 

We decided to make a short interactive video in which the viewers aim is to try and get my character out of doing the washing up. We were quite proud of what we did for a first time effort but looking back there were many things that I wasn't happy about. For me it was too simple and that the idea of 'multi choice' wasn't really that obvious as the viewer was forced to go down one particular path. I also felt upon realising how easy it was to make one how much more complicated and expansive we could make the experience. It was these doubts that played a great influence in me picking my final project.