Video production is a broad term used to refer to the process of creating a video by capturing moving images. Productions range in size and shape, from commercials to business marketing to music videos to films. But what about homegrown personally-produced videos? They may not hold as much weight in terms of production value, but with the increase in consumer cameras, GoPros, smartphones, and laptops, this subcategory has boomed, allowing for a new type of video production: video blogs, or vlogs.

A vlog is essentially just what the name implies: a form of a blog in which the medium is video. More and more people are flipping the camera on themselves and “writing” their blogs by speaking about a topic or simply recounting their day. Basically, if I was to turn a camera on myself, speak my blog aloud, and post the video online, I have just created a vlog...voila! (Although, I much prefer to stay behind the camera!)

You probably have never heard of the name Adam Kontras, but he is credited with creating the world’s first vlog. Kontras set off on a cross-country road trip to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of being in show business, and he wrote blog entries along the way to inform his friends and family of his adventures. On January 2, 2000, he posted a video with his first blog entry, and there was born the first vlog. “The Journey” videos, as they became known, always accompanied a blog entry, which was a more in-depth account; the videos simply began as supplements to the written stories, but nevertheless, he has still been credited as the first vlogger.

Below is the video that accompanied Kontras’ Entry #1 article, becoming the world’s first video blog. The video shows Kontras smuggling his cat into a hotel with a “No Pets” policy:

I know. It doesn't seem like much now. But at the time, adding video to a blog was groundbreaking stuff! And, of course, he didn't know it then, but “The Journey” became the first video blog of all time. Kontras still continues creating vlogs today, and (as of this writing) has now reached entry #1760 on his YouTube channel.

Speaking of YouTube, vlogging saw a strong increase in popularity beginning in 2005, likely due to the launch of YouTube in February 2005, which has since become the most popular video sharing site to date. By July 2006, it had become the fifth most popular web destination, with 100 million videos viewed daily and 65,000 new uploads per day.

We even took a vlog-style approach in the introduction to a Gain spec commercial we created about four years ago. The video starts in the now standard vlog setup, with the vlogger speaking directly to camera. Check it out below:

The more research I did, the more interested I became in vlogging, and it dawned on me: why haven’t I combined our video production background with these blog entries yet? Perhaps a Motion Source vlog is in the near future...