Imitation or Innovation?

If you’ve been on YouTube for any length of time, you’ve most likely seen this series of edits:

  1. Person does something funny (says the wrong word, makes some physical mistake, makes a funny face, etc.)
  2. The same clip is then repeated.
  3. The same clip is repeated once more, but the edit is now a close-up and the whole thing is in slo-mo, possibly with a change to black and white or some other filter applied

It’s prevalent enough now that I can anticipate when a YouTube creator will employ it, and I know that in an average day of watching YouTube, I’ll see it in at least a few videos.

YouTube is a platform that is fairly democratic in many ways. So long as you meet a few requirements, you can upload videos on any subject, and as long as those videos don’t break any of the terms of service, anyone can watch them. This leads to a good number of people who would otherwise not consider themselves filmmakers or videographers, or might not have much interest in the craft of video editing to start channels.

This is a good thing! However, the main source of instruction for many of these new video creators tends to be the platform they’re uploading to. And as any student of film, writing, theater or other creative subject area knows, the first way of learning is often straightforward imitation. Fine art students will often learn the basics of their craft by copying other works of art. Film students can learn how to frame a shot by using the same techniques as the directors shown in film studies class. And YouTube creators will make videos that often look just like the videos they’ve been watching.

All of this is perfectly fine and perfectly natural. However, to grow as creators, we need to eventually find and embrace our own style. To do this, we need to go beyond taking the bits that are working for other creators and using them in their entirety, but finding the reasons why a certain technique works and what can be repurposed from it.

I find a good number of vloggers have what I call “Casey Neistat syndrome,” a proclivity to simply take the techniques of one of the most popular vloggers on YouTube and using them whole cloth in their own videos. The main technique from Neistat that is employed is in showing motion by placing the camera away from where they are, and walking past it, driving away from it, driving towards it, etc. This is basic film technique that, prior to Neistat, wasn’t employed all that often in vlogging channels, who tended to use static shots of talking heads or moving shots holding the camera while walking or driving.

By Till Krech from Berlin, Germany (self shot – walking Uploaded by perumalism) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The use of the technique can be quite effective, but only if the creator knows why the technique works. Shots of people walking past the camera or driving up to the camera in and of themselves don’t add anything to the story, but if they’re used in sequence to indicate a long journey being undertaken, or to show scenery in a more dynamic way, or to add rhythm by cutting on a musical beat, then these shots can elevate a video from bland to quite interesting.

Imitation is certainly the sincerest form of flattery, but if we, as creators, don’t move past imitation and into our own styles, then we risk being lost in a sea of similarity.

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One thought on “Imitation or Innovation?”

  1. usually i like everything you say, so i’ll say this:

    1) I honestly didn’t know about Casey Neistat’s thing but that’s lame, I like the basic walk and look at the camera thing. Why must vlogs be artsy now? They aren’t films… they’re… video BLOGS.

    2) nice words

    3) Puppets make children laugh, so does the thing you described. 😉

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