In Praise of Chris Brogan and Video Production Values
I’ve mentioned Chris Brogan here quite a few times. Sometimes, I praise him. More often, I call Mr. Brogan out for being disingenuous, or inauthentic. Once, I suggested Chris wasn’t very smart, which he didn’t care for (although I think he missed the context of my commentary).
Today, I come not to bury Chris Brogan, but to praise him.
Brogan’s trying to do video. Already a very successful blogger and business consultant, and well as a New York Times Best-Selling Author, Chris has decided that video is the way to go, moving forward. Despite my reservations on the subject of producing web video, I admire what Chris has done to improve himself as he starts down the video production path. And I commented on that at the page where Chris Brogan is showing his video production skills.
I was honest in my comments. And I hope supportive.
I offer Chris Brogan kudos for realizing that media production needs to meet certain standards to be worthwhile. He goes out of his way to write “well”, so I’m glad to see he’s bringing that level of attention to video.
But coming from the perspective of someone who did a radio program for six years (and streamed it in the ‘net before people knew how) and also did some TV as a commentator for CBS News Up To The Minute, I’ll say that there’s something just as important to pay attention to:
Media is entertainment, and unless you go all out to cast yourself as an entertainer, producing video is a bad use of time.
Video takes too long to watch, and requires that the viewer single-task. Words can be skimmed or speed-read. Audio can run in the background. Video isn’t like that. PEOPLE ARE WATCHING YOU.
To be fair, if you’re Chris Brogan you can produce complete garbage, and as he acknowledges here, people will still watch it. But I’m most impressed with Chris’ well-thought out road-map to improved video production, the fact that he knew he needed one, and his willingness to do the work necessary to make business change happen.
Fail to see the holes in your business processes and business change efforts, and questions like “are there too many blogs”? will apply to you — and not in a good way. Or worse, your work could turn out to be just one more cute kitten video.
