November 10, 2006

Educating Dance Audiences with Video Annotation

With the proliferation of web-based video tagging and annotation applications, there's no reason not to use these software programs to educate audiences about dance, which can play a role in helping to grow larger audiences.

What I'm recommending is that dance writers and critics consider taking a fundamentally different approach to producing content about dance - one that will be more accessible and interesting to more people - both current and new fans of dance.

When it comes to the Internet, it does not really make sense to focus on words alone when video can often be a more powerful tool. By using the latest video editing tools, dance writers and others can provide compelling video examples of dance so that readers/viewers can clearly visualize specific elements of movement.

For example, if a video is online of a dance, why should a writer just describe movement when they can link to the movement itself? An expanded role for a dance writer/critic can be to educate readers/viewers about the meaning and context of the movement. (I don't really mean just movement - by directing readers to video clips, a dance critic can educate readers about all aspects of dance and help readers understand how to appreciate dance so that when they go to a performance they will have a much richer understanding of what they are seeing.)

Dance writers and critics don't usually see themselves in such an educational role, but I think this approach works very well online and, eventually, I think there is money to be made. For example, if a dance company is willing to put portions or all of a dance video online, then dance critics can annotate this video using the video tools that I include below. I would definitely pay a few dollars if I could see an annotated video about how to understand and appreciate a dance - either before or after I was about to see the dance.

Plus, it would be nice to see some decent dance videos online. On most of video sites below, I did a search for "dance" and the videos are for the most part terrible, silly and pointless.

Here are video applications/websites that have possible uses for educating audiences about dance:

- Google Video does not technically have a video tagging capability, but you can create a link to any point in a video uploaded to Google. (See my July 21, 2006 post.) The ability to jump to a specific section means that it's possible to write a description about a short section of video and then link to that section so readers can see specifically what you're talking about. So in a blog, for instance, there could be an article about a dance video consisting of ten paragraphs or so. Each paragraph describes a different section of the video and each paragraph includes a link to the specific section of the video.

- Mojiti is a video application that lets you add scrollable text banners with links to the bottom of videos from popular video hosting sites. So on Mojiti you can watch the excessively popular "Evolution of Dance" video with text captions at the bottom of the screen. You'll notice on the right-hand of this video page that there are multiple sets of "spot tickers" to select from. - in other words, one video can have different sets of captions created by different users. So this is essentially how a dance video can be annotated to provide viewers with background and insight about a dance. And you could even have two or more reviewers creating their own "spot tickers." [via Mashable].

- Veotag allows you to create a clickable table of contents and text comments for each video. As you watch a video, the table of contents scrolls up on the right-hand side of the video and you can click any section to jump to that part of the video. I actually found a video of a dance class being taught remotely that has been "Veotagged." But almost no use is made of the bottom right text box where comments can be added. As this dance video shows, you can break-up a video into sections and then add commentary to each section.

- I've been trying to figure out the feature-rich interface for ClickTV, which appears to offer a lot of options. But, realistically, if I'm having trouble with the consumer interface, there may be usability problems here. I'm writing about this service because it's worth considering some of its functionality. For each video, a transcript and user text comments with links can be added. Any number of users can create their on highlight reels, which means that you could select one user's selected video sections and just watch these highlights. So if a video were annotated using ClickTV, you could walk a viewer through just the sections of a larger video clip you want them to view along with comments about each section.

- Motionbox has a nice visual filmstrip tool at the bottom of each video that lets you block a section of video and generate a link for it. So just like with Google Video that I describe above, you could write about a dance video and at each point in your article, you could include a link to the relevant section of the video. (I had trouble using Motionbox with Internet Explorer. But it worked fine with Firefox.)

- Grouper allows viewers of video to leave both text and video comments. This applications probably has limited applicability for the purposes of this post. But it would be possible to leave a series of video comments that viewers could watch after seeing a dance video. But the video comments would not be linked to specific sections of the video. My guess, however, is that it won't be long before video comments can be left and linked to tagged sections within a video.

What I didn't discuss in this post is how video editing applications (both online and desktop) can be used to add new audio tracks to an existing video. This way, for example, you could add running commentary in the same way you can listen to directors and actors on a second audio track on DVDs. This is what I did with Peter DiMuro with some of the rehearsal videos from Funny Uncles. I'll write more about this topic in future post.

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