Viewfinder: Painting the Electronic Canvas

Making video is fun because it enables you to direct the attention of an audience like few other avenues of expression. A quick review of the creative arts turns up few art forms that enable the creator to manipulate the audience's attention the way that video does. A painter, for example, has far less control over what even the most enthusiastic art patron will look at or for how long. Gazing at 3D art, in the form of sculpture, for example, may fascinate someone for a while as he or she explores the various angles, but again, the artist has little control over what the beholder will see or for how long he will be willing to look at it.
Few video producers would consider themselves artists, yet the desire to express oneself seems to be the core motive for artists and video creators alike. Musicians and songwriters may enthrall an audience with both audible and visual stimuli. If the lyrics are comprehendible, a good musical performance can be quite captivating as the members of the audience imagine, in their mind's eye, the story the performer sings. However, with video, the artist or producer conceives and controls the entire visual and aural portions of the message. When someone watches one of your videos, they are seeing and hearing exactly what you want them to see and hear.
No doubt this has been the driving force behind the careers of the great directors from D.W. Griffith to Steven Speilberg. When George Lucas, for example, imagined in his mind's eye, the recent Star Wars pre-quel, I am certain that he wanted to share that vision with the movie-going public. The attention to detail in that movie illustrated to what lengths George Lucas would go to mesmerize moviegoers.