Step 1, bore your audience away.

For the past three months, our bathroom floor had been converted from cream tiles to black and white, yet nobody noticed. Not sure why I didn't do an after shot, maybe I'm losing my vlogging touch. And yes, that is little Phoebe who makes a few brief appearances.

Each year it's our tradition to enter a short film into Sydney's Tropfest Short Film Festival. Each year we compete against 700 other entries, including at least 100 from advertising and television professionals who shit on everyone with their technical quality, but don't know shit about storytelling. Each year their biased judges pick an undeserving final 16, based on unspecified criteria, and more often than not they pick a random winner from countless equally deserving entries. And each year we get pissed off at the whole thing, yet still enter into competition anyway. Why? Because regardless of how many professional big budget films enter (some of the finalists have upward of 50 crew, which sort of defeats the purpose of the festival), regardless of the bias of the judges, and regardless of the fact that it's like sticking your art into a black hole (they never write back to you with anything other than "thanks, you didn't win"), it actually keeps alive, in a small kind of better than nothing kind of way, the ideals of independent film makers and film making. This year (2007) we decided to keep away from the typical Tropfest style cliched 7 minute redundant narrative with mandatory and expected tilt, and decided to remix someone elses work. Well, we'd originally planned one of those cliched short films, but for whatever reason we cancelled the shoot half way through, and decided to film our kitten Phoebe instead. Much more fun! So here it is, a remix of the old Jam Handy film Easy does it, audio all taken from the original, and the visuals shot on the set of our other incomplete short film. Never work with children or animals? Phoebe starred in both films, and fortunately the outtakes from the first could be remixed as the second. :-)

The video says it all really. They may be common elsewhere in the world, but this is the first time I've seen it in Australia. You drive into a car park, and you drive directly into the first available spot. Now if only they'd direct me to the closest to the shops available spot, I'd be a very happy man.

Back in October last year, 7 months ago, I introduced little Phoebe. Well, she's not that little anymore, and she's a bit of an adventurer at times, such as in this video. Cats generally can't work out the logic of going down things backwards, or backards as my mum used to say in our invented family language. She's hard to catch in the act, but basically she goes forwards down the wall at first, and then quickly spins around and lowers herself down backwards. It's funny, cute, and difficult to get on camera. Unfortunately in this case I only got the second part, but you'll get the idea.

It's a big site, with a lot of resources, yet their sign up form still crashes with a single text error "the parameter is required gender" if you don't select a gender. Well excuse me, I just thought the field without the mandatory field indicatory was probably not a mandatory field. Whatever happened to testing? The sign up form is probably the most used non-media display page on the site, it is the key page required to be functioning correctly in order to get users signed up. Signing up of course being an important part of their business model, so they can sell them to their advertisers. You would think that they'd want to actually test this page. Arrgh. Morons, with no clue, dominating a market which they don't understand, in a technical domain they obviously have no particular expertise in. But of course, it's also personal with me an them, isn't it. So I went to upload a video, the Bonny & Clyde trailer, and I bumped into their extremely liberal terms of use. Check this out: The IFILM Network, including all content, media and materials, all IFILM software, code, design, text, images, photographs, illustrations, audio and video material, media files, artwork, graphic material, articles, databases, proprietary information, writings, spoken statements, music, video recordings, audio-visual works and recordings, slides, portraits, animated and/or motion pictures, caricatures, likenesses, vocal or other sounds, sound recordings, voices, voice reproductions, computer graphics and visual effects, as well as any accompanying documentation, packaging or other materials, tangible or intangible, and all copyrightable or otherwise legally protectible elements of the IFILM Network, including, without limitation, the selection, sequence and 'look and feel' and arrangement of items, and all derivative works, translations, adaptations or variations of same, regardless of the medium, broadcast medium, format or form, now known or hereinafter developed or discovered, and regardless of where produced, on location, in a studio or elsewhere, in black-and-white or in colors, alone or in conjunction with other work, characters, real or imaginary, in any part of the world, are the property of IFILM and/or its Affiliates, and their Advertisers, licensors, suppliers, service providers, promotional partners and/or sponsors (all of the foregoing, individually and/or collectively, is referred to herein as "Content"). So basically, they own the world it would seem. Anyway, so I uploaded the video, which is already covered by a creative commons attribution non-commercial remix license, which leaves them in a bit of a dilemna doesn't it, because their rights can't override mine. So it's up to them to remove my stuff when they realise they don't own it. Meanwhile, I'm making use of their network for my own needs, and they can just go and get ...

For about the last 18 months or so, I've been working on and off on (sic) a new video series called Bonny & Clyde. While other projects came and went, many actually paying the rent, Bonny & Clyde just sat there, slowly ticking away in the background. Until now. We've finally locked in a release date of 14th May 2007, which coincidentally is either Mothers' Day or the 52nd anniversary of the signing of the Warsaw Pact, depending on which way you're inclined. Bonny & Clyde is a weekly improvised serial, so up to 4-5 minutes per episode per week, with each being mostly improvised by the characters. You can find more detail on the Bonny & Clyde Production Journal. If you enjoyed our Frank & Dale, I'm pretty sure you'll also enjoy Bonny & Clyde.

I don't know how many strays I've videoed and posted here, but every one was deserving of a home, and most likely didn't have one. Having to fend for themselves in an unnatural environment, we have only ourselves to blame. And so it was that my own stray, Macro, died last month, living to the ripe old age of roughly 88 years in human terms. Then last week, Heather from my girlfriend's work, brought in three 4 week old stray kittens she'd found in a local park, so... I present to you, the latest edition to the family... the beautiful Phoebe. I shot this video yesterday, her first day off the baby formula and eating solids. I'm very proud. :-)

A few weeks ago, we went scouting for locations for one of the later episodes of Bonny & Clyde. This is our archived footage.

A few days ago, Adrian Miles wrote a good post titled Being on the television, and while I'm not sure whether he's referring to me specifically, or the general populous on the videoblogging email list when he says a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, it is one of the few arguments I've seen which holds against videoblogging being a genre. His point is this: Television is the complex assemblage of production, distribution and consumption. Now, if a video blog (specifically its video content) is broadcast through this apparatus, it is television. Theres no ifs or buts about that. Which is why content based definitions of what a videoblog is dont work since it is the fact of broadcast and reception that constitutes television, not what is chosen to be broadcast and received. The problem however continues to be with the analogies that are still being made with other mediums or genres. I can't flaw Adrian's argument, it is completely sound, if you consider this a new media delivery mechanism, and that we should continue the historical practice of labelling them such. My point though is that it still comes down to this (which is discussed in my recent post on definition): Video on the Internet is just that, video on the Internet, and in a few years, every piece of content on the Internet will be interconnected with all the technologies which are commonly used to label videoblogs: feeds, enclosures, chronology. In the same way that Adrian defines television, soon every web site will be technically defined as a videoblog. Thus we have two options, either every web site on the Internet is a videoblog, because it will soon conform to the technical definition of videoblog, or we just call it what it is, video on the Internet. Perhaps I am as Adrian says, the one with little knowledge, however nobody has yet been able to reconcile for me, the above issue with a technical definition for videoblog. Although I'm assuming that what Adrian means by little knowledge, is that I'm not an academic, which could in fact actually be much of my problem.

I thought I'd take a break from filming cats, but the other night this kitten not only followed me home, but followed me into my house. It's a long one, so hang in there. And as always, you gotta ask, ITAVB?

One of the annoying things about 9/11, or 11/9 as we prefer to call it outside the U.S. in modern ISO standard notation, is the token posting of security guards around our big monuments. In particular the Sydney Harbour Bridge, this whopping great mechano set built in 1932 and still the world's largest single arch bridge. Meet the little guy assigned to protect this great national asset. More significant though is the fact that I've filmed this, and joked about destroying the bridge, which is arguably in this day and age, enough to warrant a visit from the bridge police. Just don't tell them OK?

My cat Macro was a stray, born into a litter of four, on the roof of a shopping centre, in a depression around a storm water drain pipe which dropped two stories into the basement. At the age of about one week, Macro rolled over and fell into the pipe, getting trapped in an S bend between the first and second stories. I was working in an office on the second floor, the pipe running down the inside of our front door, and for several days we could hear meowing from the pipe. Not figuring there was a problem, we let it be as we went home for the weekend. Arriving back at work on Monday, the meowing, now sounding more desperate, continued. While my boss was more concerned for the possible stench when the kitten would die, I couldn't stand by while a cat suffered. So we found our way to the roof, and dumped a huge bin of water down the drain. Unfortunately it didn't free him. Meanwhile the folks in the shop downstairs had called the fire brigade, who turned up several minutes later and blasted the shit out of him by sticking a high pressure hose down the drain from the roof. Out in the street, they removed the storm water drain grill to look for the remains, and we all watched as a soaking wet shivering little ball of fluff marched triumphantly out of the storm water drain and into the street. I took the little bugger home, and he lived out the rest of his days the way he walked out of that drain pipe, loving life, violently playful due to his stray background, and a great licker of anyone who would come near. He was a great friend for half my life. Last Friday, 25th August, almost 17 and a half years after that fateful day at the shopping centre, Macro was put down, having discovered in him an advanced cancer. After scouring the house, these photos and video footage are all that I have. In some ways, that was so Macro. There isn't enough time in the day to stop for photos, when there's a whole bunch of fucking trouble to be made. A great friend. He will be remembered.

I feel that I'm at a point where I need to make a statement on the definition of videoblogging, and find some closure in what I've been pushing for, these last 20 months. And with Wikipedia now a lost cause, let's go back to basics, a blog post. When I got into videoblogging at the end of 2004, I was working in the blogging, microcontent and citizen media space, and it was like a light bulb had been suddenly switched on. I subsequently started the original Vlog entry on Wikipedia, pulling together several disparate articles about the space, into a single definition. The key point however, was that videoblogging was still defining itself, and the overriding opinion on the videoblogging list, was that it was personal media, which distinguished itself very clearly from podcasting and other forms of amateur reproduction of traditional media forms. It was a socialist's dream come true. In recent days, the videoblogging article on Wikipedia has descended into a fight between too many self interested people with rather limited foresight. So much so that the article has even been marked for deletion. You'd have to be a complete moron to involve yourself to a degree where Wikipedia would prefer no entry, than have whatever they think they currently have on their hands. The last time I checked, the article went on about why citizen media exists, and what it hopes to achieve, which is about as far away from defining the term videoblog as you could probably get. The stupidity continues. Having spent the best part of 18 months following, and at times pushing the debate, I think it is time to get back to that original dream. Everyone seems to have their own opinion of what a videoblog is, mostly based on personal bias, what they've read in the media, and the few discussions they've read on the definition. The following is a summation of pretty much every argument and definition that I've seen or heard regarding videoblogging, and in many cases the typical rebuttals for each. You can skip to the bottom if you just want my opinion on what a videoblog is. Blogging roots A blog is typically defined as a web based log of diary entries, which by nature are dated and displayed in chronological order, hence the term blog, short for weblog, and originally web log. The most common argument for the definition of videoblogging, states that because the term videoblog is derived from video and blog, then it must be a blog, but for video instead of text, or more simply, it is a video version of a blog, whatever that may be. This ignores the fact that the term blog does not define itself as being textual, and thus a blog could in fact contain video, or could be primarily video, which makes the term videoblog redundant. Additionally, it is commonly stated that because a blog is a chronologically displayed log, that a videoblog must therefore be chronological as well. Does this mean that a site which displays personal videos by tag cloud instead of date, is not a videoblog? Doubtful. For a while last year, there was such a thing as an audioblog, which was to a blog for audio as a videoblog is for video. While opinions vary, it is arguably difficult to have a podcast without an RSS feed with enclosures, which is the mechanism which allows it to be downloaded and transfered to an iPod. So the term audioblog was soon dropped, in favour of blog, with a podcast now assumed to be a blog with audio which includes an RSS feed with enclosures. Structural definitions Videoblogs, it is commonly stated, must be viewed chronologically, for it is time which makes these videos so transient and "of life". Yet as the amount of video on the Internet continues to increase, time will be but one of many ways to catalogue, discover and display video. Content is now permanently archived for eternity. In late 2005 we saw the rise of revlogging, and as recently as June 2006, the videoblogging revlog project, where for 7 days, videobloggers would repost a video from their back catalogue. We are starting to keep and rewatch videos we like, which is a significant change in the way we interact with online media. The management of which will certainly not be the domain of chronology. Some have tried to define a videoblog post by lenth of time, for example no more than 3 minutes in length. Like most arguments about the definition, the reality is not so black and white. What about the videoblogger who posts 2 minute 59 second videos for a year, and then accidentally posts one of 3 minutes and 1 second? Where do you draw the boundary? With the rise of aggregators, how do we define aggregated media? The PAN publishes a daily video of around 15 minutes in length, an aggregation of other videos from around the web. If it only aggregated videoblogs (by a certain definition of length), then would their 15 minutes be or not be a videoblog? Some days they don't contain videoblogs, so does this mean that are only sometimes a videoblog? Or perhaps never a videoblog? When we have the technology and bandwidth to reduce the between video presentation time to zero, we will no longer have any clear user discernable boundary between items of video content. We will have our single aggregating feed, an intelligent agent which sucks down video content from wherever it finds "a video that I would like", and we will sit down to watch a non-stop video stream, for as long as we wish to watch. If these are all videoblogs, are we watching a videoblog? What if this aggregation is done on the content providers site? Is it still a videoblog? Another argument states that the majority of video posts must be videoblog posts, for the site to be called a videoblog. Yet others say that one videoblog post maketh a videoblog, regardless of other content. To assign minimum numbers becomes problematic when blogging software provides options for how many posts are displayed on the home page, or how recent the posts need to be. Go on holidays for a month and your videoblog becomes empty, turning you back into a normal blog again. What of a web site (which is not a videoblog) which includes video in a feed, and a custom client does not display the content in chronological order? If a 3rd party client decides to read the feed and display the content chronologically, does the display by the viewer automatically make the site a videoblog, even though the publisher of the site has changed nothing? Intent If CBS puts video copies of their nightly weather report on their web site, does this mean they are a videoblog? Even though the entries would be displayed in chronological order, and they would be relatively short? Would it be a problem that the content was all created in a studio, designed purely for television broadcast, and is being dumped onto the web as an afterthought? What if they include a textual transcript of the video? What if instead of being the weather, a copy of their nightly 3 minute "what's happening in your town" segment which comes on before the news, is published as a videoblog? What if they took their nightly 30 minute news program, and released each news item as a separate video, whether in or not in chronological order? Amateur vs. professional, .org vs. .com Should a videoblog which is designed as a marketing tool for a large sporting good manufacturer, be considered a videoblog? Should we be concerned that they have no interest in citizen media, personal blogging or community communication? Buy this. Buy this. Buy this. Is this a videoblog? Some say it isn't, but where do you draw the line between subtle product placement and unintentional shooting of a product in a personal video? Is it the intent, or is it the result? Audience reach Do we begrudge a fellow videoblogger because they are able to attract millions of viewers? How about tens of thousands? How about a thousand? What if they attracted every single person in the world that was interested in snail carpentry, all twenty thousand of them? Does a percentage of total possible audience dictate whether they are a videoblog? Technical definitions The common thread here is usually the requirement for a feed of some kind, usually containing enclosures, as opposed to embedded hyperlinks to the media file. Feeds are typically displayed or used chronologically, however they do not necessarily need to be. The inclusion of a date, does not make something chronological. It is the sorting by date which does. Some definitions of videoblogging state that a feed is chronological and that a videoblog must have such a feed, without stating whether they must use the date specific aspects of the feed as an integral part of the web site, or not. RSS and Atom are not structurally chronological. While they include dates for each entry, along with other metadata, which allows the viewer to programatically display them chronologically, they still do not need to be stored nor transmitted cronologically. Some define a videoblog as a blog with a feed which has at least one media file, or video file. So, does a web site which is not a videoblog, which includes a videoblog post video file from an actual videoblog, in their feed as an example of a videoblog, automatically become a videoblog? Read that one back slowly. The gatekeepers One of the original drivers for videoblogging, was to bypass the traditional media gatekeepers, the media corporations which control the distribution and consumption of television, radio and print media. By creating and publishing our own content on the Internet, we are bringing an end to big media. We assume this is a good thing, although few people are able to say why. However, there are and have always been other methods for bypassing the gatekeepers, such as fanzines and local newsletters, community/college TV and radio and Internet broadcasting, which makes it difficult to use this as a definition for videoblog. The grays No definition of videoblogging is going to be black and white, much like genres. e.g. if this is a videoblog, then surely this must be? Does the aggregation of videoblogs make blip.tv a videoblog? Is the aggregated chronological viewing list created by FireAnt, a videoblog? If I have a blog, and paste the URL of someone elses videoblog or feed in my side bar, does that make me a videoblog? It does by some of the definitions above. The future of web based video In the near future, video will be everywhere on the Internet. It will be as, if not more prevalent than text, and it will all be connected together by feeds and other APIs. It will be a massive store of connected video content, upon which will be built discovery and management engines free from dated diary style data structures. Blogs will continue to explode, and include all manner of information, whether it be text, audio, visual or audiovisual/video, if indeed the term blog will continue to be used as it is today. Using the technical definitions above, in a few years, all web sites with video will be videoblogs, because all video will have the technical requirements commonly used to technically define a videoblog. Thus any technical definition of videoblogging, must be incorrect. The technical definition is typically used by videoblog aggregation sites, to categorise as many web sites as possible as videoblogs. This increases their potential market size, and in many cases justifies the reference to "vlog" or "videoblog" in their domain name. With the rise of aggregated content and the soon to be non-existent boundaries between video content, as well as these new forms of media discovery and management, there will soon be no websites which do not contain video, displayed chronologically, with a feed containing enclosures. To call every web site a videoblog because of this, seems a little over inclusive to me. What is a videoblog? As you can see, the lines between various definitions are blurred, and in many cases are either contradictory or redundant. They span from big media's interpretation that everything is a videoblog, through to Adrian Miles, who says vogging is a very specific form of hyperlinked media content, and everyone in between who has their own definition. For every definition, there's the tendency to virally include other examples. Is this a videoblog, is that a videoblog, "but that means this videoblog must also be a videoblog"... and in the same way that the lines between genres are blurred so are those of my definition of videoblog. There are some videoblogs which fall outside of my definition, which probably are videoblogs, and some which fall inside my definition which probably aren't. Where we cannot objectively draw the line, I'm suggesting that we subjectively draw instead upon the spirit of videoblogging: Individuals creating personal media of a new genre and form, not being controlled by big media, and not simply reproducing that which is traditional in big media, such as television and movies. So, for the sake of a definition, this is roughly what I think a videoblog is: Short, personal, not for profit, mostly non-fictional, video on the web. Snapshots of life. The last part is important. Last year I tried to popularise the term instant videoblogging. The idea being that videoblogs are created on a whim, not preplanned, just snapshots of life. I still believe this to be an important aspect of videoblogging. A brief summary Must it be viewed in chronological order? No. It is generally posted in chronological order, incrementally as it is created, but it need not be viewed that way. Must it have a feed? No. It is about the content, not the technical, nor the structure. Removing my RSS feed would not suddenly make my site not a videoblog. Must it be about a person? No. It could be about a dog, or a tree, or a shoebox, or it may not be obviously about anything. Videoblogging is a genre This doesn't mean that only videoblogs are worth watching. Most of my favourite online video content, I no longer consider a videoblog. But who cares? Like any genre, just because I like comedy, doesn't mean that I don't also like science fiction. The next step, is for people to get over the fact that not everyone is a videoblogger. Videoblogging isn't the be and end all, contrary to what the media and the majority of people on the videoblogging email list say. In fact I would consider it simply an entry point, a simplistic and user orientated genre which helps introduce people to the big wide world of self created online video. One need only look at the current projects being created by the original wave of videobloggers, to realise that there's so much more to create and consume. Videoblogging is an entry point genre. Then you get to see what happens next!

Every now and then I upload a video, or make a post, which I secretly wish would get BoingBoinged. You know the feeling, you sit back thinking "Yeah, this is pretty cool, a nice commentary on pop culture", hoping that someone will think to submit it to Cory and Co. Of course I'd never submit it myself, that would be cheating. There are about 3 or 4 I thought might get a look in, but no, I've never been BoingBoinged. I reckon I got close with Five Minute Matrix, but when it got ripped without credit and uploaded to iFilm, that pretty much ended that idea. I even considered my Images of Culture video might get a look in, but no... So, figuring that my best bet would be a follow up of another BoingBoing story, instead of trying for a story of my own, I remixed an answering machine message from BoingBoing, where a reader was complaining that they showed how to detect counterfeit U.S. money. I didn't know what to put in visually, so I reused an idea I had about a year ago, that Google Images, and now Flickr, are snapshots of our culture as at now, sort of like a web based MD5. You basically take each word from the audio track, and match it with the first result for that word in Google Images. I admit it, I was grinning a little, thinking this one might just get BoingBoinged, but then the archive died, and I couldn't upload for two days. Then when it came back up, there was a backlog of a few days. Then when the video cleared, it disappeared altogether. So I checked Ourmedia, because I use their front end, and they said the tool may not be working, and to use SpinXpress, which had just been updated to support the archive. Anyways, I had problems with that as well, it wouldn't upload both my format files, and even then it didn't appear on the archive. Grrr. Today four copies suddenly appeared on the archive, so here it is, a week too late to get BoingBoinged, and yet again, foiled. By the way, here's the original video on scanning money.

An update on where I am right now. Lots happening, just nothing visible yet.

It's just art, interpret it as you will.

This one's for Josh. Via my sister.

45th in a series of 160,000. Yes, another cat video. Am I a real videoblogger yet?

Yes, another cat video, in my quest to become a less controversial videoblogger.

After a five year break, we're bringing back our old radio show A Walk in the Black Forest, and what better way to have a preproduction meeting than in front of a bowl of butter chicken and cheese naan. There was a black out in Newtown this night, which was the night after I got back from Vloggercon 2006. Never found out why, maybe the Newtown Jihad...

Most large cities around the world have a well designed and popular public transport system, because we don't need no steenkin' automobiles...

Waking up on Sunday morning, expecting to head on over to Schlomo's for a brunch get together of the vlogtheory Yahoo! group. My brain doesn't work that early, even if food is somehow involved, so it was just as well that nobody talked about vlog theory. What's videoblogging? The voices were somewhat less passionate in person than behind the safety of an email list. Personally I spent most of the time speaking to Randy about scrambled eggs and Andreas about bacon, and it was lot more interesting and productive than the usual brow beating that happens online.

Here's a summary of most of the footage I shot at Vloggercon 2006. Dedicated to everyone who's in it, most I know, a few I don't. The song is Rocker by AC/DC, one of our greatest exports, from the album Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap. And I finally figured out how to properly letterbox the iPod (m4v) version correctly, to preserve my widescreen aspect ratio. Amusingly, the 512x288 H.264 version is only slightly larger (17.6 MB) than the letterboxed 320x240 (MPEG4) version (14.6 MB). Remember to expand the window in FireAnt!

I don't know how many people noticed, but the main hall of vloggercon had this amazing bright red tinted skylight. This, and the colour of the seating, carpet and wood panel walls, brought this amazing warmth to the space, bathing it in the colour of revolution. Which was nice, considering it was so damn cold outside. As for the blue/grey, this was the backdrop for the Intel booth. And while I loved Ted's idea that they just come and listen, as the weekend went on we started to hear rumours of them not taking the listening too seriously, and in fact making fun of videoblogging and videobloggers in general. Obviously it takes more than a career in microprocessors and a bowl of choc chip cookies to understand how the world is changing. No matter, we'll see them again in Oktober.

Out front of Road Node 101 House, there was this amazing tree, which refused to be shot front on.

Of all the footage I nabbed on my trip, I'm particularly proud of the 30 minutes of aircraft noise. If I had to sit through it, then so should you... accompanied by footage of our Thursday night dinner. Chicken Massala, yum yum...

I went to Vloggercon 2006. Did you? Here's the first in a series of videos I shot while I was there. Special thanks to Jan and Markus who let me sleep on their floor, Jen and Jan for helping me get around, Dave, Markus and Ryanne for various lifts in automobiles, Jay for the invite and support, all the people who were offended by me over the past year and yet still welcomed me, Josh, Andreas, Jen, Jan, Adam and Michael for their friendship, Chuck the peacemaker who made peace from peace, and all the nice folks I spoke to over the whole weekend, too many to mention, you know who you are. Let friendship not detract us from the goal. We are the media.

I'm sort of regretting naming this one the way I did on the Internet Archive, because it may not last there very long. Could you please email me if it suddenly won't load anymore. So I aint going to explain this video. In response to a thread on the videoblogging email list, Brittany posted a video response. You don't really need to watch it, as most of it is in my video. I sort of rushed it out the door, so it looks at first like I'm commenting on hypocrisy, but then for some reason turns to conservatism masquerading as feminism. Whatever. It's a video, just watch it then delete it. Consume and move on.

From Wikipedia: Preening is the art of cleaning, grooming, and maintaining parts of the body. Among animals, birds must preen each of their feathers once a day to remove parasites, keep them in good aerodynamic condition, and oil them.