Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition
vlogger on a recording food cooking vlog.
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vlog is a video blog (video blog), originated from the video website, is a set of text, images, audio in one of the content form, the main function is to record life, can be simply understood as a video diary. A handheld gimbal and a micro-single constitute the basic working conditions of vloggers (vlog creators) ... The location is not important, the time is not important, the lens is not important, and the act of "recording" itself becomes the focus of attention. In recent years, with the rapid growth of mobile Internet users and the explosive development of the domestic short video industry, more and more people tend to record and share their lives in this "image + music" way. Text blogs are moving away, short videos are weak, and as a way to show life and express opinions, the era of vlog seems to be quietly coming.
Record your life and share your experiences
vlog is not a new concept in China, and in recent years it has been widely popular in the social circles of video practitioners, photography enthusiasts, equipment enthusiasts, and self-media bloggers. In 2018, actress Ouyang Nana posted a series of video logs of her study in the United States on the Internet, which made people widely understand the "new species" of vlog. With the characteristics of "recording life and sharing experience", vlog has set off a big wave in the short video industry in 2018.
During this year's Spring Festival, Wei Yuqi, who has ten years of experience in learning English calligraphy, began to try to record his creative process with vlog, "In the past, I also published video tutorials on English calligraphy on platforms such as Baidu Tieba and Weibo, but the effect was not as good as vlog." He said that vlog can more intuitively and multi-faceted display the whole process of calligraphy creation, including the use of brushes, the collocation of paints, the choice of drawing boards, etc. "English calligraphy itself is my profession, and it is a good choice to record life in the form of video." ”
There are also many North Drift artists who are also committed to recording their lives with vlogs. Taking the Fire Emperor as an example, he already has four or five years of experience in short video production. "Compared with Douyin and Kuaishou, the duration of vlog is less limited, and it is easier to tell a complete story of flesh and blood through the combination of lens language." He admitted, "The material accumulated by more than ten years of 'North Drift' life is not something that can be loaded by the 1-minute video length of Douyin or Kuaishou." ”
Chen Yi, associate professor of the School of Media of Soochow University and dean of the Institute of Media Development of Soochow University, believes that from the exaggerated, funny, and more performance-oriented short video types to the current personalized, small and fresh vlog, the style orientation of the short video industry has shown obvious changes. Vlog and short videos are the essential difference between "sharing" and "show", "If we say that Vibrato and Kuaishou are filmed for others to see, vlog is more about shooting for yourself." ”
Platform layout, subsidy support
In September 2018, Weibo issued a formal summoning order for vlogs: in the past 30 days, more than 4 vlogs have been published, and they are eligible to apply to become vloggers certified by Weibo and enjoy Weibo support. Almost at the same time, today's headlines and some artists jointly launched the first star vlog plan, and the number of vlog views in 6 issues has exceeded 30 million. In December, Bilibili Animation (b station) launched the "30-day vlog Challenge" activity. At the same time, Tencent's yoo video, with the content innovation of "vlog +vstory", guides vloggers to enter the creation through creation subsidies.
"The spurt of vlog development in 2018 is inseparable from the beginning of the layout of major platforms." Fu Yifu, a senior researcher at Suning Institute of Finance, said that many people in the industry regard vlog as the next outlet after short videos. Taking the rating system subsidy adopted by Tencent Yoo Video as an example, the higher the platform rating, the more creators will benefit. According to reports, vlog has passed the official review of the platform, priced according to the account rating, and each video can be subsidized up to 30,000 yuan.
According to industry insiders, the hot development of short video today, has been douyin, Kuaishou and other large platforms to divide the market, vlog has also become an important breakthrough for many new short video platforms, a series of vlog as the core of the video editing app (application), such as a flash, cat cake, small shadow, vue, second beat to make the threshold for shooting and editing vlog greatly reduced, prompting more lovers to join vlog.
For the strong support of the platform, Wei Yuqi, who first tried vlog, is also very familiar. "Station b will also give the creators corresponding prizes based on the number of views of the video." He said that making a two- or three-minute vlog requires about five or six hours of video footage, and it is almost impossible to make money from this. Experts pointed out that unlike the more mature commercial promotion and monetization model that has been formed by short videos such as Douyin and Kuaishou, the long-term production mode of vlog is doomed to be unable to produce rapid mass production, thus restricting its commercial monetization efficiency.
Intensive cultivation, content is king
As far as the field of short video is concerned, since a group of short video Internet celebrities represented by papi sauce swept the Internet in 2016, they have experienced the iteration of short video products such as Meipai, Second Beat, Kuaishou, and Douyin, and short videos have gradually entered a stage of high-quality development of intensive cultivation.
Experts pointed out that vlog has rapidly entered the public vision from small circles such as international students and self-media people, which is closely related to the increasingly diversified spiritual and cultural needs of people. "When people are used to watching cool, fast-paced and very handsome Douyin videos, they need something that can resonate with life", Huohuanghuang pointed out in combination with his industry observations for many years, the reason why some users have switched from Douyin Kuaishou to vlog is that people have a great demand for life-oriented and story-based content.
"No matter what kind of media form, high-quality content is always a scarce resource and a core competitiveness of creators." Chen Yi said that in the Internet era, the standard of good content is equally important in addition to novel subject matter and excellent shooting. As Sun Dongshan, the "first person in China's vlog", replied on the knowledge: vloggers and fans are more likely to form an "intimate relationship", the boundary between virtual social and reality is gradually blurred, and fans become long-term followers, gradually achieving the essential purpose of social networking.
"vlog has taken a different route from traditional short videos, and its simple and authentic content style just makes up for the shortcomings of short videos." Fu Yifu said that the development prospects of vlog are worth looking forward to, and in the future, we must continue to make efforts from reducing the shooting threshold, cultivating users' shooting habits, and exploring diverse commercialization paths.