• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, September 6, 2011

Let me wax nostalgic.

For true video-holics like myself, the obsession with the moving image far pre-dates its staggering new accessibility. In fact, part of the allure of video for me growing up in 1960s three-network, one town movie theater America was the inaccessibility of the material. Sure, TV was always there, and the flickering black and white image was so intoxicating to a vid-kid like myself that watching art lessons on public television could pass for entertainment at the time. But I also recall how hard some of us had to work to get our hands on the good stuff. If you were a film buff like myself, you often resorted to the back pages of monster magazines and comic books to find 8mm reels of old Abbott and Costello shorts or clips of Frankenstein peddled by the likes of Blackhawk or Castle film companies. These highly abridged and usually silent 250-foot plastic reels of stock were like stag films for movie buffs - grainy glimpses of a full experience that existed somewhere elsewhere. The magic of film was such that we would struggle to recreate that experience even in a pale version in our basements on rickety old 8mm projectors.

For over a century, video experiences generally were exceptional and ritualistic. Early silent film brought large groups of urban audiences together in a way that actually frightened social reformers. The situation of viewing a film (dark rooms, unaccompanied ladies, immigrant audiences) was of greater concern than the content to town prudes. Later, film was viewed in virtual "palaces," designed to transport the viewer somewhere else even before the first frame was shown. Even in the age of the multiplex, the blockbuster opening day lines became communal special events. The medium kept struggling to keep itself special. Even TV was appointment viewing, tied to a night and time where a nation watched Lucy, Archie, and Hawkeye at once, together - only to be repeated haphazardly if at all in summer reruns.

We applaud the democratization of video production and distribution (as we should) because it makes the tools of production now accessible to anyone with a smartphone and the trove of video history now available from any search box on any digital screen. We are shortsighted if we aren't cognizant of the costs attached to progress.

This struck me the other day when I was on the hunt for a DVD of the famous rock and roll broadcast The TAMI Show, a 1964 concert film from indie, low-budget distributor American International Pictures. The legendary performances in that film by James Brown, The Rolling Stone and The Supremes made 16mm copies a cult favorite at colleges for years. I got a jones for seeing the TAMI Show again the other day, and went on a hunt for the DVD that ultimately led to Best Buy. I was overjoyed to see the disc package, and for a few minutes caressed and read its contents. I was anticipating sending an email to my boomer pals that I had found a copy of The TAMI Show and organizing a cultish viewing that mimicked perhaps those basement screenings of 3 minute Abbott and Costello routines or Dracula clips. I got my hands on a stash of the really good stuff. Want a drag?

But as I turned the DVD in my hands it also occurred to me to pull out my iPhone and search "TAMI Show" in the YouTube app. And there it was - in seconds. Virtually every performance I had been anticipating seeing for days - all in a neat line of video search results and thumbnails. Within a second or two I was streaming James Brown's incredible set in the aisles of Best Buy. I could save the clip and all the others to my account for viewing later full screen on my YouTube app within Apple TV.

It was all so quick...so easy...so solitary. It was video without any effort. Video without anticipation. Video without a larger ritual to give the experience richer meanings. I put the DVD back on its shelf.

My point is simple, but it merits greater thought by an industry that relies on video content. By dislocating media from time, place, circumstance, and by making it effortless, we also diminish other qualities that gave the medium its original power. We risk not only commoditizing content but undermining value.