Everybody wants to video blog these days. From Dana White to the hipster grifter, people all over the world have awakened to the power of pointing a camera at their own face while they do/say things. But dammit, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. What you see B.J. Penn doing up there is the wrong way. Why? Because he’s just standing in front of the camera with the ocean as his background, talking for a minute and a half. Again we hear about Marv Marinovich’s revolutionary training methods, and again we see none of it.
Here’s the question you have to ask yourself when you video blog: am I doing anything here that could not be done in a really long voicemail message? If the answer is no, it’s time to rethink your approach. If the answer is yes, but only because you go on for way too long, then you are Mark Pavelich. You’ll see what I mean after the jump.
You remember crazy Mark Pavelich from the MFC, right? Dude who went off on Drew Fickett last summer, then wrote a letter apologizing for going off, but reiterating his reasons for thinking that Fickett was a scumbag? It doesn’t matter. The point is, this is his recent video blogging effort to drum up increased interest in the MFC. It’s basically him driving around for six minutes, talking about the MFC, fighters they’ve signed, and how you’ll never get the best of him or his family because they go to bed late and get up early.
Since I’m getting bored just writing about these boring video blogs, let me end by laying out a couple of ground rules for how to do this right. It ain’t that hard:
1) Do something. Move around, change scenery, encounter other human beings and interact with them. Anything.
2) Incorporate some kind of editing. Seriously, just giving us one long shot in which nothing happens? It was bullshit when Andy Warhol did it, and it’s bullshit now.
3) At least offer us the illusion of this as an unfiltered, fly-on-the-wall type look at your life. That’s why a guy following Dana White around and shooting him eating compulsively works, and why B.J. Penn telling us about his day doesn’t.
Simple enough? Good, now go out there and abuse the power of new media, you crazy kids.
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I used to be a huge fan of BJ, but every since he got his ass muscles used as a mop to clean the octogon by GSP, he has really iritated me with just about everything that comes out of his mouth.