Do you know those times when you check out one website “just real quick” and then follow a link to another engrossing site, where you find another link that takes you to yet another great page and suddenly you’re traveling through the web discovering one world after the other – and you totally forget you had work to do? Yeah, I just got sucked into one of those joyrides.
I thought this interconnected string of websites is totally worth sharing – especially because they all fit so nicely into one fascinating category. If only I could come up with a nice title for that category… my attempts: time-restricted city-video assignment, journal-ism, city v-log, (collaborative) city portraits, day-life-city portraits… Basically all these websites host very short videos that portray a day or a moment in the life of a certain location (mostly cities) – some are all by the same creator and some are by different people from all over the world. All of them however feel personal and not like “a web show”, but they also aren’t all about the videomaker as in the typical vlog fashion.
Hopefully you’ll enjoy the ride as much as I did and discover some new worlds for yourself… or be inspired to make your own video…
First, I just stumbled upon 30 Second Life: A Series of 30-Second Shorts About My Life in Park Slope, Brooklyn by Greg Reitman, who’s married to Erica (one of the people behind the blog Fucked in Park Slope, which provided the first link). This one feels a lot like someone’s personal journal – but made more universal by using a music soundtrack instead of personal narration.
I was sidetracked by V.log Lady, who makes enthralling and somewhat experimental videos about life in Argentina: “a video per week, a week per video.”
Then I discovered my favorite: 2min15. It is the epitome of random creative people giving you a glimpse of their city – with no commercial purpose and with refreshingly different perspectives and visions. Very cool!
Video by Fabian Neuhaus in London
That then led to city one minutes. A great concept coming from a documentary TV channel in Holland (Holland Doc 24) and The One Minutes Foundation. Unfortunately, some videos didn’t load in smoothly but came in stutteringly.
That site actually also led to The One Minutes, which is a list of all the other One Minute assignments, like: countries one minutes, train one minutes, abstract one minutes, etc.
The One Minutes Projects are going on right now – you can still submit to be considered for the Awards by January 15th.
Last but not least, I went digging for a true travel video site, where any traveler can share videos of their observations and adventures: the video page of TravelPod, the social-networking site for travelers.
I’m sure there are a lot more sites like this – but I need to get back to work! If you know of any or have your own, please add them through the comments function.