what the hell is FOOTAGE?

please explain me.
been reading half of gibson's "pattern recognition" and understood not a fuck of footage.
maybe it's a language problem.

so?

Did you not understand the term "footage," or what the footage described in the book was about?

the term. it's like I miss the point

The dictionary definition is:
1. An amount or length of film or videotape.
2. A shot or series of shots of a specified nature or subject

Footage refere to film, but has stuck around into the digital age to mean any bit of video. Video footage, news footage, television footage.

The Footage in Pattern Recognition is a series of video clips that have been uploaded to the net.

Did that help?

Footage is like saying "part of a film."

So when you're making a film, every day you produce "footage." In the book the term is appropriate since all the bits and pieces are not released in order; you don't talk about the "footage" of a finished film, because you're thinking of it more as parts of an unfinished product.

You might also run across the term in the context of a documentary: in that case, the "footage" is whatever real life events have been recorded and incorporated as part of the documentary. During the disaster in Asia, for instance, there was footage of the tsunami coming ashore.

ah ok. thank you all. that was helpful.
how can someone be addicted to footage?
I mean... why???

it's nothing bad, but what's cool about it.
damn, I feel like I am an idiot.

Well, now you're not talking about English, you're talking about Gibson.

<( WE HAVE NOT DETERMINED THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUERY. )

I think Gibson's idea is that the video is so intricate and mysterious that people are fascinated by it. In an age dominated by marketing and defined by copyright laws, here is something brilliant and beautiful that no one is taking credit for. It's mysterious and unique.

Media addiction is pretty common, or at least I think it is. People follow television shows, movies, books, comic books, even internet cartoons. They have to know what happens next, and they'll gather every bit of information available to understand this thing they've become fixated on while they wait for the next installment.

Incidentally, here's an audio interview with Bill made since the book came out:

IT Conversations

pretty interesting.

That's rad.

"We can't leave it alone .... Cool is too valuable."

[Edited on Jan 18, 2005 by oddyophile]