On its Weddings/Celebrations page, The Times is asking couples if they’re interested in creating a 1 to 3 minute video story about how they met. Times editorial director for television and video Ann Derry tells Andy Plesser in a video interview:
Four years ago or five years ago we started web video. Our first web videos were Vows; it was like the easiest thing to do. We did them, like, the how-we-met story of one couple. But recently we decided we wanted to expand on that and try something new. So we’re still doing [Vows videos] ourselves, but we’re also soliciting from people who are going to appear in the paper. We figure they have little cameras, they have iPhones. …They’ve seen a lot of Vows videos so they should be able to figure out how to do one. But what we learned about user videos is when you ask people to do things, sometimes they listen to what you say and sometimes they don’t, and sometimes when they don’t that’s really interesting.
Plesser reports the Times’ first user-generated wedding video will be posted this weekend.
