Columbia partners with YouTube to help nurture budding new filmmakers

New 'Tube

03/16/2011 10:00 PM

By BEN MEYERSON
Editor

No Comments - Add Your Comment

A cat playing the piano. A laughing baby. Justin Bieber.

These are the things that quickly pop into your mind when YouTube comes up — not necessarily high-class entertainment.

But the Google-owned company is aiming to bring attention to a different side of its site: Professional quality video. To do that, they’re teaming up with Columbia College to form an eight-week program that will train promising YouTubers some professional production skills.

It’s called the YouTube Creator Institute, and Columbia will debut the program this summer along with the University of Southern California.

“We’re all very excited to work with YouTube,” said Columbia’s television department chairman, Michael Niederman. “It puts us at the forefront of what’s next.”

The class won’t be for Columbia students, though. Instead, anyone who wants to be a part of it has to apply through YouTube itself and go through a winnowing process that’ll combine professional scrutiny with judgment from the ever-unpredictable site’s community.

As many as 10 winners will come to Columbia this summer for an all-expenses-paid, eight-week program at the school, where they’ll learn how to combine their ideas with production skills and technical know-how.

Wojciech Lorenc, an assistant professor in the television department, said the program will build off a concentration in Internet and mobile media that the school has had since 2007.

“A lot of what we talk about in our curriculum with our students has to do with creating content and finding other ways of reaching out,” Lorenc said. “We don’t want to just teach them the old model of TV, where you go and pitch your idea on a show to a network.”

So Lorenc reached out to YouTube, with hopes of maybe co-sponsoring a conference with the company or something similar. Instead, they started working with the company on a bigger idea — the Institute.

“It’s on the top of their priorities to increase the quality of their content,” Lorenc said. “They’re putting an emphasis on educating people and making more professional content. People are still thinking about America’s Funniest Home Videos, and I think YouTube is very serious about changing that perception.”

There is already plenty of good content on the site, Lorenc said. You’re unlikely to make a mainstream hit on the website, he thinks, but its strength is in its ability to appeal to a specific group.

“Under the surface, there’s a lot of content that’s really good,” he said. “I think the strength of online is smaller shows for niche audiences. I’m not expecting YouTube to create breakthrough mainstream content.”

One local art critic, though, is skeptical of the corporate nature of the program. YouTube is just one of the many video-sharing sites out there, said Chicago Art Magazine Editor-In-Chief Kathryn Born, and the school shouldn’t be catering to the brand.

“It seems a little like if Kraft Foods came in and it was teaching people how to make iPhone apps about Kraft,” she said.

Many serious filmmakers tend to use competing sites like Vimeo to upload their content, and Born said it looks like YouTube is making a push for that space.

“YouTube’s basically trying to win this space, and I think they really want the space that Vimeo has,” she said. “I always thought there would be a day where people would be courting the artists and the content. I just wish Columbia would make it look more like a sponsored program and not like a class.”


No Comments - Add Your Comment