What makes a good #lifecaster?
Operating as a 1 woman camera crew in 2008. That's the web cam, attached to a netbook, which ran off of a sprint air card. Awkward situations not included.I've been racking my brain all day trying to figure out if there is such a thing as a "perfect lifecaster." I have 3 people I already know I want to come on board to lifecast, just because I know I find them to be great storytellers and incredibly interesting people overall ... but there is no formula for this type of shit yet. Which is kinda awesome ... gives you room to play. MTV's Real World pretty much solidified the reality TV stereotypes ... "the hot chick, the dumb jock, the thoughtful one, the class act, the gay one, and the two that always ended up dating for the entire season." But what the hell makes a good lifecaster? It's definitely not something everyone can do. I've tested that theory, it's just not pretty.
First off, I've just been thinking about what the hell is a lifecaster? The best definition I could come up with is someone who dictates their life across the workable elements of social media. That's my standard definition when people ask me what I do. At any given moment, you can find out what I'm watching (via @gomiso), where I am (via FourSquare), what I'm listening to (via pandora), what I'm thinking (via twitter) ... and be told the entire story combing all of those elements via this loverly little website.
I tell good stories. No joke, I've been waiting for something like this to happen my entire life. A lot of weird, crazy, random shit happens to me. For reals!!! I've been like this little magnet forever and a day for interesting situations to just be attracted to. Total awesome sauce! But just having interesting things happen to me doesn't make a good lifecaster. You have to be able to tell the story.
In reality TV you have producers, editors, directors, a whole SLLEEWWW of people behind the scenes that watch what you do and figure out a way to tell the story with the footage they've captured. Lifecasters have to be able to tell the story in real time as it is happening in 140 characters, followed up with either a video or blog post after. It's night and day. I think eventually this art form will have producers, directors, and whatever else ... but we're currently in the trenches. So, we've got to figure this shit out for ourselves.
I'm totally figuring this out today, so if you guys have any ideas on what makes a lot of this interesting, and what doesn't I'm totally game to hear it. I need to write up these guidelines to give the lifecasters before they officially begin ... and I'm kinda just stuck.