What is the Perfume Project?

This blog is a constantly evolving forum for thoughts on perfume, perfume-making, plants (especially orchids and flora of the Pacific Northwest) and life in general. It started out chronicling the adventures of Olympic Orchids Perfumes, established in July 2010, and has expanded in other directions. A big part of the blog is thinking about the ongoing process of learning and experimentation that leads to new perfumes, the exploration of perfumery materials, the theory and practice of perfume making, the challenges of marketing perfumes and other fragrance products, and random observations on philosophy and society. Spam comments will be marked as such and deleted; any comments that go beyond the boundaries of civil discourse will also be deleted. I am grateful to all of you, the readers, who contribute to the blog by commenting and making this a truly interactive perfume project.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

VIDEOS AS COMMUNICATION OF INFORMATION?


I have a confession to make that may be surprising to many of you. I have never watched a perfume video review. Never. I know they exist, and I see links to them all the time, but somehow the idea of watching a film of someone telling me what I could read a lot faster just doesn’t appeal to me. I have the same reaction to video news items and videos on how to do various things. Unless there’s some technique that needs to be demonstrated in real time, that can’t easily be described verbally, I don’t see the utility of them. The proliferation of how-to videos is mind-boggling, covering everything from “how to have a relationship” (really!) to “how to defrost food" (really!)

I’m sure it’s easier for many people to simply talk in front of a phone or a camera than it is for them to sit down and try to actually write out their thoughts in a coherent way, but the result is much harder to process for those of us who grew up reading. The new generation of students in my classes have started getting information for their research papers from videos of lectures and other video sources. Some of them write formal documents in the same conversational style that was undoubtedly used in the videos they watched. It takes them much longer to write a paper than it does those students who use written sources of material. It makes me wonder how many generations it will take for everyone in the world to become illiterate in the sense we currently understand literacy and illiteracy, with only a few elite scholars being  able to access any documents produced before the 21st century.

I often wonder why I find informational videos so aversive, and I think it has to do with the fact that one’s progress through them is necessarily linear. In a hard-copy or online written document, it’s easy to skip from one section to another at will, skip over all of the uninteresting or irrelevant parts, and get the gist of the desired information extremely quickly or - as is often the case - see that the whole thing contains no useful information at all. Having to watch a complete informational video is frustrating to me because I can’t see the whole picture at once, to spot the nugget of information that I want. Fast-forwarding is not the same as skipping around in a written document, since it’s also a linear process. This observation is particularly interesting given that I have no problem reading a whole novel from page 1 through to the end, or watching a film made for entertainment from beginning to end. 


Do you watch perfume review videos? Do you like them? Do you find them more or less useful than written reviews? 

[Pictures randomly chosen from online videos and modified for the purposes of illustration] 

8 comments:

  1. There are only two video reviewers I watch -- Katie Puckrick and Portia Turbo. In both cases it's for pure entertainment, but even then I get antsy if the video is longer than 3 1/2 minutes, and I have a harder time staying interested when Katie is doing them via Skype as production values matter.
    It's not that I don't learn anything (I do from Katie) it's that I don't retain as much as I do from reading.

    -- Lindaloo

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    1. One of these days I'll have to watch Portia's videos. They do look entertaining. I agree that production values matter.

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  2. Here I thought it was just me! I really cant get into the video reviews. Barring something complicated that I need to see to learn, like a tough crochet stitch, I generally avoid youtube and video instructions/reviews.

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    1. Michael, no, it's not just you. It seems there are a lot of us out there who don't care for video reviews or how-to videos.

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  3. A few years ago I tried watching a video instruction guide on tailoring. From that experience I discovered that when I am trying to learn a new skill on my own I do much better with pictures and written instructions than I do with video demonstrations. However, if a live teacher does the demonstration I learn the fastest...

    I feel the same way about perfume reviews. I tend to retain the information better when it is written down. A hard copy is such an easy reference. Also, I often don't care for the personalities or personas of the video reviewers so, I usually just don't bother with video perfume reviews. Gail

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    1. Gail, the reason why written instructions and pictures work better than videos is that you don't have to go through them in a linear way - they're all there at once. Of course a live teacher is best for learning any sort of skill - another non-linear way of communicating information.

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  4. I watch Portia and Katie's videos, too, they are a riot! But for those who just aren't true talents in the world of the video, please keep to prose only. It's just better that way. And I agree that written instructions are generally better (perhaps with photos) so you can skip around as you need to.

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  5. Marla, I really do need to watch Portia's videos.

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