In thinking about developing some content and a major project in the videodefunct CMS, I made the following notes. The planned idea is to produce a larger-scale documentary type work in the system.

I now see this as possibly being multi-layered with multiple perspectives from the self-reflexive through to user-generated AV content. The benefit of the system compared to a television/cinema documentary edit is that the material that is valuable but often discarded can be included, which follows along the line of the hypertext projects being developed in Networked Media. This means varying layers can be included like self-reflexive notes on the process and the subject for example. User-generated content could be another layer in addition to planned coverage.

In contrast to the television/cinema documentary-factual approach this online system is very flexible where it can be adapted to work with content in an unscripted, non-linear way. This means AV content can be recorded in the field with very little planning as the scripting so to speak is done afterwards in the process of classification. Also, existing archives have the potential to be translated into a type of online documentary-factual form that responds to that content specifically.

This notion of a classification process rather than a conventional edit is interesting where the preparation of each individual clip/shot in pedestrian for example is like the logging process in preparing for an edit. Each shot is trimmed with an in and out point named (given a title), put in a category and then tagged. In the logging of shots the editor or assistant works out a way to name the shots in relation to planned scenes; when the footage was recorded or other idiosyncratic classifying system than can be used to help the main edit. The conventional main edit in a way, happens in the actual videodefunct player where the metadata that is added to each shot, along with how the player is configured influences the way the shots are brought together by the user. Actually editing a sequence within a clip (like in The Drunken Truth) creates yet another obvious layer ripe for exploration.

In Banter I was influenced by the neato plug-in Tag Managing Thing. This plug-in is used to tidy up tags afterwards where for example a tag that only features once may be folded into a tag name that is represented a number of times on varying clips. In terms of respecting the way tagging works I am not fully convinced that is appropriate to re-work the tagging process afterwards. But, I did find it useful to look at the tags and categories in the player as away to see how the individual clips worked as a whole. I actually skipped the plug-in and ended up re-working the tags, categories and titles manually. This was because the actual content together presented ideas I had not seen in the posting - tagging process. These ideas I was interested in bringing out with an eye on more content being added into the discussion. In a way this process has connections with a conventional TV/cinema edit where focus on a particular subject is nurtured and developed. By rearranging the metadata which is how the video content is classified the work overall is taken in a particular direction for the viewer.