By Margaret Wong
Do It Your Damn Self!! National Youth Video and Film Festival created
a web site at www.doityourdamnself.org
to advertise and inform participants of their annual festival, held
at the MIT Bartos Theater. The catchy name certainly captures the
attention of the average surfer.
Organization wise, the site provides the imperative information on
the front, making sure participants and spectators receive the pertinent
information. However, the presentation of information is not the most
pleasing to the eye. The front page has less than half of the screen
devoted to the event location, time, and logo. Navigation is set on
the left column, which is perfectly acceptable, but the sponsors are
listed in an overflowing column on the right. This creates an asymmetrical
page in addition to a crowded feeling created by the clutter of all
that information on the front page.
Beyond the presentation of the site itself, the content is useful
for its informational purpose, but not much of anything else. From
what I could gather, the site is promoting the creation of video and
film from the amateur standpoint. However it does not seem to encourage
the audience much through the presentation of the site. Due to the
amateur quality of the site, one is more discouraged about amateur
work in general. If the original design of the site was to promote
the amateur perspective and show potential participants the friendliness
of amateur work, it has achieved that effect. However the effect is
not very positive due to contrasts with professional sites.
In comparison, amateur video and film makers are now faced with a
blatant truth: amateur work is noticeably much less effective than
professional work. In that sense this site has backfired. Although
the original purpose of creating the site through amateur hands is
only a guess of mine, this is the way the site is being perceived.
And often in society, what is perceived, is. Therefore, even if the
site has been created by professional hands, the job does not appear
so.
What this implies is a gap unbridgeable in the digital world. The
promotion of amateur work helps promote equality on the Internet.
If quality of work by amateurs is comparable to large scale studio
work, the film and video medium would change in its place in society.
Large production studios and other middle man agencies would be eliminated.
This site has actually revealed more blatantly the large gap between
amateur work and professionals, therefore maintaining the original
separation of large studio productions versus amateur video and film.
This overall scattered effect could have been remedied a great deal
if the width of each page were set and equal uses of color was used
throughout. The ridiculous amount of scrolling required to go through
the site really could be remedied slightly if it were not so noticeable.
A way that could have been avoided is through the use of frames. Keeping
the navigation static would have made a difference. As a final ramification,
the site really should have been truer to its use of colors. If the
entire site was done in black and white, it might have been more effective
and more impressionistic. The amateur effect would have been eliminated
and it would not appear as discouraging to potential amateur video
and filmmakers.