One day, while surfing through YouTube in my boredom, I stumbled upon a Vlog that would bring hours of entertainment to my life. Andrew’s Blog follows Andrew Keenan-Bolger, a recently graduated actor from the University of Michigan. His vlog follows his adventures as he lives his life of an actor in New York City and on the road with a national tour of a Broadway show. He has seasons just like television shows, and when it is in season, there is a weekly vlog about life on the road. The most recent season has followed Andrew on tour with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
This vlog is appealing because it is like a reality show for theatre kids. It’s fascinating to watch the life of someone living the dream we want to pursue. When an audience watches a touring show in a theatre, they only see what is going on on the stage, but they don’t get to see what goes on behind the curtain. With this vlog, the viewers can see how the actors live while touring the country, which is very fascinating to aspiring performers as well as the average person. He doesn’t take any kind of serious stance as far as topics, and it is obvious that a lot of the events in episodes are staged. It’s not the sort of vlog anyone would watch for deep intellectual analysis or news, but it is extremely entertaining. He’s a really funny guy. Most of the time he just carries around his video camera while hanging out with his friends and then edits the film down to a ten-minute video with a catchy opening song and a quirky title.
Vlogs seem like a very productive way to get ideas and thoughts out, whether they are deep musings about life, or just fun thoughts to mindlessly entertain people. A video blog is much more appealing to me than a written blog. A video blog allows for better expression of emotion. It is helpful to see the speaker to see how impassioned they are about their topic and see the little nuances that make them unique. There are some feelings that are better expressed through body language and tone, which are nearly impossible to express in written blogs. When viewing vlogs it is much easier to connect with the speaker. While in written blogs stream of consciousness can be lengthy and boring, in a video blog it may be easier to hold the viewer’s attention because they are actually watching the author. As evident by Lemonette, we are much more likely to watch someone ramble on about random subjects than read pages and pages of rambling. While I think it would be less effort to make a video blog rather than a written blog, I also think it takes a lot more courage. These video bloggers cannot hide behind their words and false user names. They are putting themselves out on the World Wide Web for everyone to view. I think that demands a certain respect no matter how you feel about their vlogs or opinions.
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Hey Bruce,
I see what you mean when you say that “It’s fascinating to watch the life of someone living the dream we want to pursue”. I have a friend who is majoring in theater at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, and he would love Andrew’s vlogs! I watched Andrew’s SPELLING BEE Blog and I enjoyed watching his fast-paced New York lifestyle. Not many people, like you said, get to see the sort of things that go on “behind the curtain” when actors and actresses are just living their day-to-day lives.
I can only imagine what a written dialogue of a Lemonette speech would include! I picture pages upon pages of paragraphs with useless phrases such as “You know what I mean?” and “Ya’ll get what I’m sayin’?” - not a very interesting read. Vlogs allow us, the audience, to watch someone’s facial expressions and gather much more emotion from their words than if we were just reading them off a page. Andrew and Lemonette each share the ability to vlog, but they choose to use this ability in different ways. Andrew’s vlogs are more entertaining because they include little white dogs, an interesting variety of people, catchy music, and giant NYC-style pretzels. Lemonette is more of an ‘in your face’, ‘tell it like it is’ sort of person; the camera generally remains in one position the entire time while she rambles about some topic in a hilarious, enlightening manner.
I am curious to know why you consider people who vlog to have more courage than writers who blog. Is it because they muster up the gusto to put their face on camera or is it due to the fact that they are sometimes saying things off the top of their head, as if having a one-sided conversation with us? In my opinion, writers must be just as courageous as vloggers when submitting their blogs. Bloggers can gather so much criticism from, say, a mere two sentences in the introduction of their article. When a person visually and verbally receives information from another person, it is less likely that the viewer will interpret words incorrectly as they might when reading them. Maybe the courage factor among vloggers and bloggers is something to consider. From a blogger’s perspective, it seems to take a good amount of confidence to raise new thoughts or bring forth new ideas.
Not all vlogs can be taken seriously. You’re right in saying that vloggers deserve our respect, but I think you could go a little bit further to say that certain vloggers deserve our respect. For instance, if I watch a video blog of someone teaching me how to jump off a five story building and safely land in a nearby swimming pool, I would not support this person no matter how many minutes long his or her vlog is. On the other hand, show me a vlog in which someone expresses their honest opinions on the immigration law, I would definitely shut up and listen to what he or she had to say.
Thanks for spreading the word about Andrew’s vlog! I will continue to check on Youtube to see if he’s done anything exiting recently. Cool post!
- Mallory Durham
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