*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by UsesProzac.

Snuff?

Tricky if this is snuff. It's definitely people getting killed, yes, but every piece of it is historical in some way, and therefore somewhat educational. I'm actually leaning more towards the not snuff aspect for this one.

Pathe Newsreels presents: "Well, That Coulda Gone Better . . ."

That first clip seems snuffish. It's just a guy jumping off the Eiffel tower attached to some blankets.

I don't think that the simple act of showing death should be all it takes for a video to be labeled "snuff." In my experience, snuff is inherently grotesque. Snuff films are made by sociopaths for sociopaths, and they really only contain a morbid gleefulness. They depict brutal deaths only for purpose of portraying brutal deaths, and are essentially murder-porn.

This video, on the other hand, is solemn. It shows tragedies, and I think it does so in a pretty tasteful way. There aren't exactly close-ups of the bodies.

Every incident here is a part of the *history of transportation technology, and probably also the *engineering that goes with it.

As far as the question of snuff, I lean towards the opinion of @Procrastinatron.

Adding video to channels (Engineering, History) - requested by notarobot.

All we have to go on is this:

Note: The presence of human fatality is acceptable and not considered
"snuff" if presented as a limited, incidental portion of a lengthy educational, informative news report or documentary that encompasses a much broader narrative. Our definition of "snuff" does include but is not exclusive to any short clip in which a human fatality occurs whether or not any victims are actually visible on camera.

I don't know, I think this is absolutely nothing but short clips featuring human fatalities, and the only context is additional short clips with human fatalities. And yet, when it's in black and white and all from 50 + years ago, set to sentimental music, it seems rather artsy. Hard to say.

Its an interesting discussion... i didn't watch... really i just don't want to watch people die. My instinct tells me this is not 'snuff'... at least as i think of it.

My question would be this... What if these videos were all HD, or from a few years ago.

As mentioned, these are basically all historical footage of transportation accidents, and famous ones at that. There are definitely a couple in here that are straight up snuff by sift guidelines, but the entire piece as a whole is more of a documentary.

It's not just "Hey look, this guy got shot and now he's bleeding out, lets watch", it's more "This is a look at some of the most terrible accidents mankind has had, each with a backstory as to why it happened, and is generally part of a larger event."

I actually read up on practically every one of these incidents, and to my surprise each one I looked up had detailed information of events that happened up to 100 years ago. The first clip being of a man who wanted to test his parachute idea, so he convinced french authorities to let him test it by having it go over the side of the Eiffel Tower. What he didn't tell them until the day of, however, was that he wasn't going to use a dummy, he was going to test it himself. In a sense, it's the first ever Darwin award caught on film.

Each clip has history to it, and a timestamp / title allowing research into what they are, and is in a sense educational on the broader sense. Again, not just "Hey, this guy was flying too low at an airshow, so lets watch him crash."

*promote

Self promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, August 8th, 2013 11:32am PDT - promote requested by original submitter SevenFingers.

To not have this video on Videosift would be snuff.

Agreed. This seems to fit the Videosift definition of snuff, but it doesn't feel like it.

I do wish this was longer with more of the story of each event, not because it would more clearly distinguish this from snuff (which it would), but because it would make it a much better video. I would rather watch a 5-10 minute "documentary" about each of these than this highlight reel.

Because there's no larger story attached to any of them, I consider it snuff. Even though each of the incidents is historical, they've failed to add any context other than a name. As such, it's just 10 clips in a row of people being killed.

Well before reading all the comments, i went off to look into 3 or 4 of these that i didn't already know about.

Now i come back and find out i was enjoying snuff all along. I'm so confused.

What i think this shows is the kind of risks our race was willing to take to push further and harder, i think it's a testament to human nature.

Want to get a lot of long comments on a video on Videosift?
Show snuff.

Works every time.

@ 0:56 seconds, does a woman say "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Educational is educational, not dumbass-ed-ness; and some of these are definitely self-inflicted. Or at best a desire to have proven oneself...

I don't think people realize it but the sad music actually is the only reason we don't call this snuff. Put a heavy metal soundtrack and, same content, it's snuff.

Would you watch this if no one died in it? It's snuff.

*snuff

*discard

See: http://videosift.com/video/Homeless-Hero-Sacrifies#comment-1907231

Discarding this post - discard requested by member lucky760.