Quibi has finally arrived! I know it’s funny, but maybe it’s genius, maybe it’s not; maybe, it dies a death without anyone taking notice of it, but we have now. I first heard about Quibi via The Verge, and for those of you who don’t know anything about it, Quibi is meant to stand for “Quick Bites”. I know, that’s a bad start, but stay with me. These “Quick Bites” is meant to be consumed on your commute to work. I know what you’re thinking - how long does it take to walk from one’s bedroom to the living room? This was designed for a time before the coronavirus and our quarantine life, when you know, we went t these places called ‘offices’, a separate building that workers would go to just to be on their laptops.
Anyway, Quibi is a streaming platform for short form video content that lasts for about 10 minutes each, thus creating a headache for content creators who are used to creating what some would say is more traditional long form content that has enough breathing room for - let’s say - a story, or well-drawn characters, or a beginning, middle and end. That’s unfair, I know, short films exists and they are absolutely valid forms of content that tells a story in under 10 minutes. It would perhaps, have made more sense to have Quibi function as a platform for short film makers like myself, in which case this new short form video streaming platform would be providing a valuable service to all the under-appreciated short film makers out there, and I know so many myself. But then again, short films, even in this day and age, is not seen as commercially viable content and so what we’re actually going to get with Quibi are well produced YouTube and TikTok videos. Hurray!
I’m an avid consumer of YouTube content and there are so many talented YouTubers from Marques Brownlee to MrMobile (Michael Fisher) but I have never touched any of the content from the YouTube Original section, because I consume media on YouTube not just because of the production values but for the niche content that I’m personally interested in. YouTube is able to do this because it serves up User Generated Content or UGC. How a platform like Quibi intends to serve content tailored to individual users when all of its content is produced like a normal production with traditional talent and crews, I have no idea.
Apparently all content on Quibi will be filmed in such a way that it works on your phone in both portrait and landscape formats, which again, is a headache for traditional productions but does at least, sound kind of innovative. Maybe we go back to traditional square-ish formats like 4:3, so that scenes are framed in such a way it works for portrait, landscape and Instagram, that might be winner. For now, however, we get to enjoy quality content like Chrissy’s Court starring former model Chrissy Teigen in a judge show parody which does actually, sound like it could be quite good, thanks mainly to the talent involved and not because the idea is objectively good on paper.
Then, there is the question of whether it is a good idea to release Quibi when everyone is in quarantine, and everyone has all the time in the world to consume traditional long form content, but that may prove to be the ingenious move of all. When everyone is stuck at home consuming content, suddenly content is a blue ocean where every format has a place. When we are time rich and have no need to choose between different types of content, we are free to try everything - it’s time for us YouTubers and short film makers to try shooting vertical video.