Interesting article in today's New York Times on efforts by Russia, China and USA to reach agreement on war in cyberspace.
What occurs to me is that success in future (cyber)warfare might be more about intellectual superiority than physical strength.
This would make improving the education system a national security issue as well as an economic and social issue.
Perhaps now is a good time to divert money from building more prisons to house the poorly educated and illiterate and improve education to match the world's best?
This past year I've been working with the guys over at Viralskool, a new creative community that's looking to pay filmmakers, animators and so on for making viral videos for top companies.
Here's some advice based on the work I did. Note that it relates to creating "branded entertainment" for paying clients rather than, say, creating a movie trailer that you want to "go viral". I've addressed that a little before in other posts but I'll make a new post specifically about creating trailers for the web.
What is A Viral Video?
So first, let's define what I mean by a viral video... It ought to be a video that becomes popular because one person recommends it to their friends and they then recommend it to their friends and so on until the video views grow exponentially. So let's say a cool clip that people want to share.
There are those who argue a video is only viral after it's been shared or if it has several hundred thousand views. But I think it's more helpful to look at "viral video" as a genre - just like music video or short film or feature film.
Note that just uploading a clip to YouTube won't make it "go viral" and those popular clips from well-known brands all have additional marketing support (PR, paid advertising etc) and what's known as "seeding" - outreach to blogs and destination sites asking them to feature the clip.
So How Do You Make Your Videos Sharable?
You have to put yourself in the shoes of the sharer and the receiver. Nobody wants to be associated with lame content, right? So don’t create anything that’s lame, self-indulgent, pretentious or badly acted unless it’s for humorous effect!
Ask yourself these questions. When I send someone a link to this video:
Will I look cool for sharing this video?
Will it strengthen my friendship with the person I’m sending the video to?
Will they look cool passing it on?
Unless you can answer “yes” to all the above then revisit your video idea until you score 3 out of 3.
So here's my advice for optimising your video to make it spreadable:
Spend more time thinking up a great idea than you spend shooting it. This will keep your costs down, keep your enthusiasm high and is most likely to yield the best results.
Grab attention in the first 5 seconds. Be surprising, be funny, be shocking or tease. Just make sure you grab attention or else you’ll be dead in the water.
Finish with a punch line. There has to be a reward for anyone that’s given you up to 30 seconds of their life! Make the last 5 seconds more surprising, funnier, more shocking or more provocative than the first 5 seconds. You want someone to finish the video and think “OMG I have to send this to ….”
Use the middle part of the video to engage. The part between the beginning and the end is the part that needs to keep evolving the idea or revealing something new. If you look at the Levi’s viral Guy Backflips into Jeans, it’s only about someone jumping into a pair of jeans but the team tries to keep the idea fresh by using different methods and places to jump. It’s the same for the Ray-ban Never Hide videos.
Although there's no limit to how long your video can be, it's better to get in, do the job and get out within 30 seconds... 90 seconds tops. Sure, you'll find videos that are longer but you'll find that your time and money is better spent getting those 30 seconds the best they can be than making the video longer.
Invoke a primary emotion in the viewer. Think about which emotion you're trying to invoke in the viewer. Research on viral marketing from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University found that the best emotions to invoke were surprise & joy. Others possible, although less effective, were sadness, anger, disgust, fear. Although not essential for the viral spread of your video, it's important for the client that the emotions invoked and the connections/connotations brought to mind are consistent with the brand's image and what their fans believe.
Don't make an advert:Your goal is to entertain, not to inform. An advert is different from what I'm defining as a viral video in that it has overt branding, slogans, product details. Virals are much more subtle in their selling - they're entertainment first and a sales pitch a distant second. Creating a great advert is really tough to achieve and if you have limited resources or lack experience then there's a risk that your "viral" will look like a poor advert... which is unlikely to spread. So concentrate on making something entertaining that people want to share.
Viral Video Styles and Further Tips
As the world of viral video evolves it's possible to see some similarities among the types of content that's popular online. Note that the styles are not mutually exclusive which means a video's spreadable potential is often helped by combining several styles.
There's also a short discussion here, Cool But Not Viral?, about why these popular videos are not "viral" in the definition I've given above.
Repeat and innovate: keep it fresh Videos that fall into this category are the Levi’sGuy Backflips into Jeansand the Ray-ban video Guy Catches Glasses with Face. The Levi’s viral is only about someone jumping into a pair of jeans – each jump shown as one shot - but the team tries to keep the idea fresh by using different methods and places to jump and different angles. The idea (of jumping into jeans) is big enough to sustain several iterations. Ditto with Guys Catches Glasses with Face but note how in both the videos the best feat is saved until last – it’s the pay-off, the reward for watching until the end.
Both of these videos have the Did They Really Do That? engagement too which prompts viewers to stop, pause and rewind the video – spurring conversation and more sharing.
Thorton’s “Stuck” by Harmony Korine is also in this repeat and innovate category but rather than go for amazement and laughs, it’s wonderfully touching and by returning to the boy on the bench we get the sense of a story unfolding. The limitation of Stuck is that it creates a warm feeling inside rather than the uplifting rush of success (as with the Levis and Ray-ban videos) and this potentially contributes to less sharing.
Guy Backflips into Jeans
Guy Catches Glasses with Face
Thorton’s “Stuck”
Do This At Home/Mash-Up The benefit of a simple idea or a very clear concept is that viewers can spoof it, parody it and mash it up to produce spin-offs that further spread awareness of the original video.
For an example in this category, take Cadbury's Eyebrows. It's impossible to watch and not feel invited to move your eyebrows as the two kids do! Not only does it offer excellent potential to parody with different music and/or different characters but it also invokes the Did They Really Do That question - don't those eyebrows move to fast not to have been enhanced with computer graphics?
Cadbury's Eyebrows
How Did They Do That? Did They Really Do That?
Kobe Jumps Over Speeding Car doesn’t have a powerful grab in the first 5 seconds but because it’s Kobe Bryant, it’s his celebrity and the promise of the video title that gets us hooked. Then he jumps the car and we wonder, did he really do that? Whenever you can provoke a comments war about whether the clip is "fake" or "real" then you've engaged an audience!
I've also included in this style T-mobile's Life's for Sharing although in truth it's a combination of many styles. For example, it's surprising, it follows the Repeat and Innovate model - frequently changing songs and dance moves to keep it fresh, it begs the How Did They Do That? question to stimulate conversation and further enquiry, it even has a just little of the Do This At Home going for it. It's main failing is the weak primary emotion (wonderment) and the lack of a punch line. However, the strength of the Repeat & Innovate and the How Did They Do That? vibes probably overcome the weaknesses but even so, when everyone stops dancing and walks off it's a bit flat after all the energy in the video.
Kobe Jumps Over a Speeding Car
T-Mobile "Life's for Sharing"
Outrageous (ly Funny) The perfect example of this is the Durex Get It On. This viral scores on so many levels: it’s funny because it’s taboo (sex, animal sex) yet cute (balloon creatures) so doesn’t become gross-out funny and it’s technically cool and makes viewers ask “How Did They Do That”?
I've also included in this category a music video for the group Make The Girl Dance. Although not outrageously funny, it's outrageous in the sense of three women walking nude through Paris! The video works not just because of the nudity but because it's excellently executed in one continuous shot (very difficult to achieve), it innovates with different girls, it's humorous & engaging to watch at the bystanders' reactions and it's amazing that they got away with it!
Durex Get it On
Make The Girl Dance "Baby Baby Baby"
Sensational Story For this format to work, at its heart there has to be a story that generates conversation around the water cooler - it has to be a sensational story. It's the kind of tale that passes for "news" in the tabloids and gossip magazines - we know it's unimportant but it's fun to talk about. The stories provide light-hearted "humorous shock" and there's often a sense of schadenfreude (which kind of means laughing at someone else's misery).
This is a tough category to get right. A great example is the video below for Triumph Boats. It looks like a candid clip because it's taken in one shot, the picture quality isn't so great and at the end the camera operator runs away leaving the camera running. But it was actually created by an ad agency to highlight & promote the strength of Triumph's boats.
Another, less effective example, is Leaked Assassination Footage from Russia for the video game MIR-12. The problem with this "viral" is that it doesn't invoke any strong primary emotions and it isn't surprising or shocking enough. It succeeds in part because it has a "Did They Really Do That?" interest: it makes the viewer consider if this is actually real footage (although it had us immediately shouting "fake" - the acting & action is too poorly staged and executed to look "realistic"). It's doubtful that this video was actually shared among many friends.
Triumph Boats
Leaked Assassination Footage from Russia
Surreal
This is my last category and ought to be used with caution. It's very easy to say "my video is surreal" when what really ought to be said is that it's confusing! In many ways, most viral videos have some surreal quality to them but it's worth looking at a couple of the best examples.
A classic example of this style is Cadbury's Gorilla. This viral was so ahead of it's time that it generated incredible off-net conversations around the water cooler that further fueled its online growth. More than just surreal though, the video is inventive, engaging, humorous and touching. Investing the gorilla with human traits gives us a warm feeling inside but it also acts as a hook to keep us engaged and in suspense wondering what's going to happen.
Still great but a little less successful is Ray-ban's Cow Gives Birth to Dude. Although it's surreal, it's surprising, it's humorous... it lacks a real feel-good vibe or laugh-out-loud punch line. Massive Yarn Ball Rolls Through San Francisco is better although in a similar vein - it's cool, it's surreal, it's makes you smile but the punch line could just be a little better.
Cadbury's Gorilla.
Cow Gives Birth to Dude
Massive Yarn Ball Rolls Through San Francisco
Cool But Not Viral?
There are many (award-winning) commercials that get shared on the Internet but that doesn't make them a "spreadable". For example, Air New Zealand Nothing to Hide creates a stir because of the nudity/cheekiness and it's certainly inventive but the overt branding and advertising limits it's spreadability - how many more people would have forwarded this video were it not an advert?
The same can be said of Gucci’s Flora by Chris Cunningham. Again it's a wonderful video but it’s not a viral. Quite apart from the fact that it ends on a pack shot, it doesn't invoke a strong enough primary emotion - joy maybe but it's more of wonderment than happiness.
In a week when the Swedes elected the Pirate Party to Brussels it's interesting to read Phil Hawkin's blog about how he's been robbed by pirates.
I posted this lengthly post as a comment on Phil's page but thought I might as well share it here as I've not posted anything for a while :)
Unfortunately piracy is here to stay and is going to get worse. The only thing limiting it now is spread of broadband and technical knowledge.
To the person "yomamma" who writes they're an avid fan of media so should they miss out because she can't afford the DVD?. LOL Are you kidding me? Would you think about going into a shop and running out with a Mars bar shouting "but I'm an avid fan of chocolate why should I be denied?" Come on, piracy is theft plain and simple, end of story. All the other fluff and nonsense around the benefits of increased exposure is just that - a fig leaf to cover the naked stealing.
But here's the thing. Piracy is here and what motivates it is not only the desire to have something for free, it's the immediacy and convenience. Your strategy Phil should have been to make the film available as a paid download before or as the DVD came out - at least then downloaders can buy a copy to watch there and then. Without making the paid download available you're not satisfying a need.
Unfortunately just as we get the Government we deserve, we get the films we deserve. Piracy is killing the industry - no doubt about it. Distributors have gone out of business and retailers are dying too. All that's going to be left is PG films that the advertisers are prepared to sponsor and Hollywood blockbusters from major studios who can make their money on merchandising and licensing.
For indies it's almost game over. There's a lot of talk about building a community around your movie and building a fan base etc and some will be able to do this but most won't because doing that marketing work takes a special set of producing & social media skills that haven't typically been those of the filmmaker.
For those that talk about the donation model - that's f**ked too. Look at the example of Steal This Movie - 2 million or more free downloads and only $40k back (maybe it was £40k?). I suspect that some of those downloaders were like me - downloaded with good intention to watch but still haven't got around to it yet :)
Phil, my recommendation is quickly make it possible to buy a downloadable version of your movie - there's lots of options, including download to burn the DVD. Check out my latest feature http://www.mind-flesh.com to see what we've done. I'll be honest with you, our DVD is outselling the download but folks are buying downloads - thank you everyone :)
You can't beat the piracy Phil, wrong though it is and there's no appealing to anyone's good nature or better judgement. You've got to go with the flow and make money in spite of it.
I had to create an intro video for a start-up I've been working for and one of my bright ideas was to shoot some footage around town, handheld, and the track the company logo into billboards and buses.
I have to say that the results with Mocha are amazing and much quicker to achieve than in After Effects. However, I did run into a few teething problems so I thought I'd post them here for others.
All this is probably covered in the very slim .pdf user guide but if you're someone like me that likes to dive in and just give it a go or skim read, here's a few highlights so you don't run into problems:
when you import your clip into Mocha, make sure you set the frame rate correctly. For some reason the default was 10 fps. I was expecting Mocha to look into the clip and set it automatically
make sure you take a little care to define the plane correctly and the surface. The user guilde gives the impression you can just sling up a spline and it'll magically do everything. Well it's almost as good as that. You don't have to worry about tracking points but I got the best results by checking the spline sides ran as paralllel as possible to my plane. And make sure you define the Surface - those corner points are what's used to corner-pin your graphic/overlay in AE
make sure the timeline cursor is at the start of the clip. When I cut and pasted the tracking data into AE I'd accidentally made the work area one frame bigger than the graphic I wanted to track - hence the tracking data was a frame too many and incidentally a frame out. It's easy to adjust of course but I didn't catch the problem straight away - can look like it's way off
you'll need to position the corner-pinned graphic in AE. When I first cut-and-pasted the tracking data into AE it sent the graphic off screen and I wondered what had happened to it. I had to zoom out to find those corner pins and then use position to drag it back to the visible screen area.
That's all for now. Writing this as the clip renders out :)
Just for reference, I worked at 1920 x 1080 throughout on an uncompressed .avi file.
