Citizen Videographer:
Citizen videography is an up and coming trend. With the advent of high definition smartphones and easily accessible social media outlets, the citizen videographer is on the rise. The everyday citizen is now a journalist.
Years ago, people were required to get an education in a particular field in order to partake in content creation for the media, such as generating material for newspapers and television.
With the advent of the internet, blogging slowly arose, which in turn created the phenomenon of the citizen journalist – the idea that anyone could write a newsworthy opinion piece.
Citizen journalists are general members of the public without any professional training that are able to gather news and report outside of the mainstream media institutions.
An example of this is the celebrity gossip site PerezHilton.com, which has now become one of the top-visited celebrity gossip sites on the net.
But times are changing. This is now the era for the ‘citizen videographers’. What is a citizen videographer? They are the ones at the scene before the real journalists arrive. Sometimes, they are actually part of the story they happen to be shooting (i.e. a witness), and lastly, they can be anyone who owns a camera.
There have already been videos hitting the internet on top newsworthy issues. Recently, a citizen videographer captured the last few moments of the police shooting that took the life of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim:
Citizen’s videos may be dark and blurry, but the public doesn’t care about that. It’s about being able to not just read the story, or see pictures. It’s about being able to see it and hear it at the same time.
Realistically, anyone can take a video and with the escalation of technology, citizens’ videos will continue to increase. But people shouldn’t confuse citizen videographers with the professional ones.
If a small business or large corporation wants a corporate video, or if someone wants an important event filmed like a wedding, they should go to professionals.
Professional videographers are experts in their field. They know the insides and outs of the camera, will use the right equipment (a real video camera, lights, microphones etc.), and actually, have years of experience shooting, and have a creative vision.
Key West Video is a corporate video production company based in Toronto with over 29 years of experience. Their videographers are professionals and are experts when it comes to producing quality videos.
