Justine Larbalestier

reading, writing, eating, drinking, sport

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Video blogging

I have a confession to make: I was mean to John Green.

I was scathing about his whole Brotherhood video blogging thing. This was mostly because I am a fan of his ye olde written blog. I missed it. I resented that he’d stopped proper posting to make stupid videos. In my defence at the time I was staying somewhere with less than fabbie bandwidth so even if I’d wanted to watch his videos, I couldn’t.

But the fact remains that I didn’t want to watch them. I even intimated to John as how his video blog was not nearly as interesting as his written blog when I had not watched a single one. How mean was that?

I also think part of my reaction was on account of the idea of video blogging fills my heart with horror. Me, I don’t even like having my photo taken. But that’s become a bit of an unavoidable occupational hazard. (Worse luck.) The thought of having to be videoed as well? Gah! Clearly John and his brother are made of sterner stuff than me.

At the urging of a certain person, I finally got past all my resistance and took a wee squizz at the Brotherhood thing. I was only going to look at one, but somehow—wham!—my whole afternoon disappeared.

So, um, John, I apologise. Unreservedly. You and your brother Hank are—along with Cecil and Maureen1—the most entertaining video bloggers I’ve seen. And the Brotherhood ones are getting better and better as you guys learn the medium and get kickarse at the whole editing thing.

Colour me, dead impressed and the latest convert to the Brotherhood bandwagon.

Mea culpa.

I take back every mean thing I ever said about you, John. I was wrong.

So what do you lot think of video blogging? Who are your favourites?

PS Sorry I’ve not been responding to as many comments as I’d like and that I’m so far behind with email. It’s crazy busy around here right now and I don’t see it easing up till June. Sigh.

  1. If only Maureen and Cecil would do the video thing even half as frequently as John and Hank! What heaven it would be! Of course, I’d never have time to write another word . . . [↩]

Posted by Justine at 16:10, 28 April 2007 under Bloggery, Young Adult literature | 16 Comments »

Comments

  1. rachel Says:

    Maureen is teh best!!!!!!!!!

    April 28th, 2007 at 4:43 pm

  2. Ally Says:

    haha at the bottom you called hank maureen! i think anyway

    April 28th, 2007 at 5:28 pm

  3. 3. Justine Says:

    Ally: Fixed! It’s my subconscious taking over—I really really want Maureen to make more videos.

    April 28th, 2007 at 5:33 pm

  4. alisa Says:

    justine,
    you’re the one who got me hooked on brotherhood 2.0. my kids and i are unabashed nerdfighters these days. but i didn’t know maureen had a vlog! i must go check it out! :D

    April 28th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

  5. 5. Justine Says:

    Alisa: Ha! I’m glad my evil deeds were all offline.

    Sadly, Maureen doesn’t have a vblog yet. But she has made a couple of awesome vids. Link in post above.

    You could always go over to her blog and demand that she start a proper vblog. In fact I encourage you to do so.

    April 28th, 2007 at 8:28 pm

  6. Little Willow Says:

    I showed one of the Brotherhood videos with the writing group to a customer, and her mind was totally boggled: “Oh my gosh, they all KNOW each other?” It was rather fun.

    April 28th, 2007 at 9:29 pm

  7. Ally Says:

    haha i was reading your “author photographs” section thing and i like photography and im in my early teens but my old sister is waaaay to evil to let me even get one picture of her..i have tooken a few pictures of my little sister and turned out really good but that was only once. so i’m stuck taking picutures of places and random objects..very little people involved :(

    April 28th, 2007 at 10:45 pm

  8. Dawn Says:

    YAY! I’m so excited that you’re addicted as well. I LOVE love LOVE the brotherhood. But no, its not obsession. ;-) I think Maureen has declared that she is now Hank and John’s secret sister, so I think that we will be able to see vlogs a lot more frequently! (Unless she steps on her videocamera and breaks it too…) I was wondering why we didn’t actually get to see you on the day that John took his video camera to work. It made me sad, but if you’re really uncomfortable with it, then I guess that’s okay. Of the pictures that I have seen of you, I think you’re beautiful! You should have more confidence in yourself. :-)

    April 29th, 2007 at 12:41 am

  9. maureen Says:

    I just bought the camera today! A note on that: the staff at the Best Buy here are maybe the least knowledgable people I’ve ever met. What fun it was!

    April 29th, 2007 at 12:58 am

  10. Rebecca Says:

    ^ yes!! more mj vlogs! :D

    hehe. i discovered brotherhood in late february, maybe early march, and spent two days watching all the back videos to catch up (coincidentally, this was while i was making a video of my own). it was a wonderful two days. i love the idea of a vlog, and may even try to do a few myself. although, at the moment, i’m not too keen on being on camera either.

    justine, you should do a vlog. :D you don’t have to be in it, you can just do like you did before and talk from behind the scenes. hehe. :D

    and, um…. you do know that people can look at the backs of books on amazon, right? ;)

    April 29th, 2007 at 3:13 am

  11. 11. Justine Says:

    Dawn: Hah! That’s sweet, but it ain’t about confidence which is definitely not an issue :-) I just don’t like cameras pointed at me. It’s prolly the soul-stealing aspect of it. My response is very atavistic. Comes from way down deep.

    Maureen: Yay! But why did you go to Best Buys? When you could have had actual good advice from the folks at J&R or B&H? What were you thinking?!

    Rebecca: I’m a word girl. The whole v thing is not for me.

    I have no prob with photos of me existing. I just don’t like being filmed. Makes my skin crawl. If there were some way for the photos to be taken without me being actually present . . .

    April 29th, 2007 at 9:09 am

  12. John Green Says:

    Apology accepted, Justine. As writers, we must of course guard against the death of text, so I don’t blame you (and never did!). One of the reasons I love you so is because you never bullshit anybody. It’s such a charming character trait—all the more so because I lack it entirely.

    jg

    April 29th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

  13. alisa Says:

    lol john!

    April 29th, 2007 at 3:00 pm

  14. 14. Justine Says:

    John: Phew! But I did bullshit you! I pretended to have watched Brotherhood when I hadn’t and then dissed it! I was bad.

    I am so pleased to be loved for my complete lack of tact. Oh, hang on . . .

    Not to mention that you’re prolly bullshitting about loving me for my lack of bullshit cause you’ve just admitted that you’re a bullshitter.

    Okay, my head hurts.

    April 29th, 2007 at 7:05 pm

  15. carrie Says:

    actually… i think i’m the last convert to the video blog. i still haven’t seen any of the brotherhood 2.0!! i can’t watch at work (everyone around me doesn’t need to know when i’m goofing off) and the speakers are busted on my computer at home.

    i know i’m missing out…

    April 30th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

  16. John Green Says:

    okay well maybe what I love about you is that you’re a liar like me, but you’re a cranky liar, instead of an ass-kissing liar like me.

    Although I can be a cranky liar, too, come to think of it. As previously discussed on this very site, there aren’t a lot of lies I won’t tell.

    jg

    April 30th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

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