Film-sharing website YouTube unveils this year's winners of its awards celebrating the best home-made videos on the internet
THERE was a time when if somebody offered to show you their home videos, no matter how good a friend they were, it was an invitation to be avoided.
But with the advent of the internet phenomenon of YouTube, a video sharing website, home movies are
now not only encouraged, they merit their own awards ceremony.
The site, which allows internet users to upload film clips onto the web for others to view, was established at the beginning of 2005 and is considered to have fundamentally changed both the internet and television.
This is the second year of the awards, which has 12 categories taking in comedy, music, sports, instructional and short films, as well as more off-beat genres.
Though there are an estimated 72.1 million videos currently on the site, each category had just six nominees for users to vote on.
In the music section, 25-year-old Tay Zonday took first place for a clip of him performing his self-penned song Chocolate Rain. His clip received nearly 16 million views and he has since appeared on US television.
He said: "It's the new Emmys. It's the next Oscars, the next People's Choice Awards. It'll be interesting to see what happens five years, ten years from now."
Other winning footage includes skateboarders sliding through balloons, a small child laughing as he tears paper, a short drama about a girl coping with her mother's Alzheimer's disease and a Harry Potter finger puppet sing-along.
While all winners received a trophy – described as a large glass representation of the "play" button used on the site – Aaron Ferstman, a spokesman for YouTube, said a significant element was "notoriety".
"These are the (videos] that really will stand out and over time, you know, you'll say, 'Hey, do you remember the Laughing Baby?'" he said.
The awards focus only on self-generated footage, which represents just a fraction of the content available on the site – it also contains countless music videos and concert footage, as well as television and film clips.
Though secretive about the scale of its use, the company said in July 2006 alone more than 100 million videos were being watched daily, with about 65,000 being added every day.
In October that year, YouTube was sold to Google, the US search engine, for $1.65 billion (about £830 million).
The popularity of the site has seen political parties and advertisers using it to reach young people.
However, it has also caused controversy, not least because of content that breached copyright laws. Other issues have included the posting of mobile phone recordings of gang fights or "happy slapping" incidents.
New media commentator Professor Stephen Heppell believes the site's popularity stems from its "in between" status.
He said: "YouTube exists in the space between viewing and producing. On the one hand, people want to make videos and show them to others, but they don't necessarily want to work in television. This allows them to put out things that they think are interesting for others.
"And it's not just the high profile and daft stuff that's interesting. You type in 'mental arithmetic' and you will find screeds of clips offering 'how to' tips on the subject.
"I also think it makes people more critical of the larger media. If you learn to construct your own videos, then you can deconstruct how it's done on television and become much less likely to accept garbage from them."
ORIGINALITY PAYS OFFTHE breadth of content available on YouTube is illustrated by the diverse nature of the winners.
The winner of the Adorable category shows a small child laughing so hard he falls over, while a "how to" clip about the Rubik's Cube won the Instructional award.
Politics was won by a film calling for an end to violence in the Middle East, while My Name is Lisa, about a teenage girl coping with her mother's Alzheimer's disease, was named best Short Film.
A clip about a man who became a painter after losing his sight took the Inspirational title; a soap about online gamers took Best Series; an episode of What The Buck Show won Commentary; Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday won Music, and a human version of computer game Tetris won Creative.
Not pictured are the winners of Eyewitness (a baby buffalo surviving an attack by lions); Comedy (a Harry Potter finger puppet show), and Sports (skateboarders sliding through balloons).
The full article contains 765 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
