Here's a couple videos we did over the past few days to test the viral waters. Enjoy!
Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones are selling videos of themselves "chatting" about their sexual encounters with Bill Clinton. Huh? What else could this kind of wierdness need? A commercial, of course.
I cut this one today in response to E.D. Hill, host of the freshly canceled Fox News show, America’s Pulse, connecting presidential candidate, Barack Obama’s hand gesture to terrorism.
MobLogic took a crew down to Georgia to get a first-hand look at the Death Penalty and the execution of Samuel David Crow.
We've posted five shows so far, three of those were today(!) and we'll continue to post multiple shows daily through the week! They've sparked a great conversation on our site. I encourage everyone to come be a part of a very important issue and a landmark event in web video.
From the Good Hard Working People blog:
She asked some really great questions, not only about All God's Children and our process, but also about other projects and our thoughts on documentaries and changes in that market in general.
We talk rather candidly about some of the obstacles and frustrations in making this film. It makes it sound a bit worse than the experience really was. At first I wasn't sure if it's such a good idea to talk about the struggles, because it may make us or our film look bad. But then I think that it's important to be honest with other makers and the audience: it's not all just fun or easy and we all go through difficult times with our projects. It's probably one of the bigger frustrations when you think to everyone else it's a piece of cake and you may be the only one struggling.
When talking about how "ill-prepared" we were or how difficult it was to conduct the interviews with the abuse survivors because of how emotional it would be for us, I missed to emphasize that a lot of the difficulty came from realizing that this was causing pain to the interviewees and that we were lacking the psychological training to know if we were handling this and their stories well.
We found out today that this episode of Wallstrip that I produced and directed is nominated for a Webby! I blogged about this twice when we first posted it, because I was so very proud.
This was truly a collaborative effort. I'm sure I'll forget someone, but I'll try to remember how it all went down. The idea for a "We Didn't Start the Fire" parody came from the Executive Producer, Adam Elend, then his sister, Amanda, wrote the lyrics using only stock ticker symbols (deserving of an award in itself) and her husband, Jason, scored the music. Then I came up with the news anchor idea inspired by the brilliant R.E.M. "Bad Day" video, Lindsay and I decided what props would be best, Katie Ainslie bought them and wrote the cue cards (you can see her playing the make-up artist in the time lapse segments as well as the then newly hired, Clark Caldwell as the stagehand). Clark also served as our gaffer, confetti consultant and all-around, do everything guy. Terrence Elenteny, our badass, uber editor shot the scenic New York footage for time lapse, resident senior shooter/editor extraordinaire, Appolos Laurient ran camera and last but not least, the talented and freakishly proud K.U. graduate, Sean Smith, did all the editing, motion graphics and special effects. Go Team!
It's among five other videos in the "Best Editing" category for online video. Not to sound cocky, but after sizing up the competition, I think we have a very strong chance of taking it home. Just to make sure we go home with something, we would love for you to vote for the audience award. Once there, go to "Online Film and Video" and then to "Best Editing." Thanks in advance! Unfortunately, you'll have to register, but I'm sure it's to control the number of votes by any one individual.
I was trying to get as many things going on in the frame as possible. Let your eyes roam around and watch it again and again. I guarantee you'll see something different every time. Enjoy!
Two of our other entries received "honoree status." They are "Cal-Maine" for "Best Use of Animation/Motion Graphics" and "U.S. Dollar" for "News and Politics: Individual Episode". They are posted below respectively. U.S. Dollar rings even more true today.
Check out this new channel on YouTube called YouChooseCandidates. Here's the first video:
I'm no fan of Ron Paul, but I love this video. I highly encourage you to rate it high, make it a favorite and if you have a YouTube account, subscribe. There will be more coming.
It's been quite a great week at Wallstrip. Nearly every show has had amazing responses, comments, views and online coverage.
Our Facebook show made Michael Arrington's blog, TechCrunch. FB is one the blog's favorite topics to write about and with nearly 700k viewers daily, I was happy to be the daily pick. Silicon Alley Insider gave us some love too.
This was very difficult to direct, because we never had 2 actors in the same space except for the vampire gag. Green screen is so much fun!
And then there's yesterday's show. I'll just say I am very proud of this piece as well as the team that made it possible and now I'll let it speak for itself.
I have to give a big shout out to New TeeVee for doing THIS. Please go there and vote for us. The Huffington Post included us today as well.
We got in a little trouble with the lawyers with this one, but the short disclaimer up front cleared all that up. John Pieza turns in a stellar solo performance in another smart John Behlmann script.
Here John portrays his recurring character, Leslie the Vampire for our show on Abaxis, a blood testing company.
Look closely. I'm rockin' out with the best of them. Our Lower East Side neighbor, Pianos (as well as a slew of other bars across New York) host a weekly Guitar Hero "party." This was fun... and a little weird.
If you listen closely, we have three of my favorite bands playing in the background. That'd be (in order of appearance) White Stripes, Bloc Party and the Beastie Boys. This was another one that we all got involved with. You'll see Adam Elend, our Exec Producer, myself, Terrence (as Val Kilmer doing Jim Morrison doing Jose Cuervo) and of course, Lindsay. Does it make anyone else hang their head in sadness that we ran into "brokers" and "traders" at the venue? Sigh.
Guitar Hero, like most games these days, is all about finding the "sweet spot" of the game's responsiveness to succeed. Honestly, it did nothing for me. I think I might be in the minority with this one. Judge for yourself:
Lindsay Campbell, our big-hearted host of Wallstrip, spearheaded the "Wallstrip 5k Challenge." Despite its marathon-like title, it's really Web 2.0 philanthropy at its best. Just in time for the holidays:
Invest in something that will always have positive returns! We've collected 12 amazing teacher-initiated projects which aim to teach students about money laundering...er...sorry, money and its many uses. Please help us meet our goal by the end of 2007. CLICK HERE
From their site: DonorsChoose.org is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At this not-for-profit web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund.
Karina Longworth, author of the Spout blog and New TeeVee's, feature series, "Karina's Capsule", had this great analysis of the "Speechless" videos being hosted on Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog over the Thanksgiving weekend. "[...] Speechless, a series of short videos starring A-list talent that was produced and conceived by B-list talent and designed to promote United Hollywood’s position by dramatizing the impact of the writers’ strike on the art form."
The "Speechless" videos achieve many things on many levels and are definitely worth a quick look. The series has an exclusive deal with Deadline Hollywood, so I couldn't embed the videos. Instead, I decided to do my part of the blog chain and provide links to all them below:
I directed this Wallstrip homage to a favorite SNL skit, "Bill Swerski's Superfans." This was green screen madness at it's best. Oh yeah, and beer, beer, beer. Is it obvious I'm having a blast?
From left to right, there's Jason Hall, Roman Bodnar (our post-production supervisor), John Behlmann (who also wrote this episode) and Sean Tice our Web Producer on the far right.
Incredibly enough, a New Yorker in Orlando saw a friend's suicide video "note" posted to YouTube. He then called the police and they got in touch with the Australian police in Melbourne where they busted down the door, took the guy to the hospital and saved his life! The power of the World Wide Web.
READ MORE or WATCH the guy's video. Be warned: he's pretty crazy.
So I've been tight lipped for the last few weeks while my paperwork went through, but now that my background check is clear, I can finally blab about my new position. As of Monday, October 29th, I will officially be the Senior Producer/Showrunner of Wallstrip!
While I've had some influence on the past 2 weeks worth of shows, I'm really looking forward to this week's shows, because I've been more integral in their production and creative direction. I really hope I can make an already well-produced show even better.
Here's today's show. It appropriately falls on my "first" day. I feel like it's my first show that I produced from concept to finish.
I've been working on and off with Jeff Marks and Adam Elend since they started Wallstrip a little over a year ago. CBS recently acquired the show, so I'm now working for the newest old media company in town, CBS Interactive.
Our immediate future plans are exciting and I'll post as they develop.
Please tune in and enjoy!
Here's a show from last week. One of the first shows that I really got my hands dirty with:
The article sums it up on my side: Although we are slightly more optimistic about Hulu's chances to build a profitable, stand-alone business, we're still skeptical. Hulu may eventually have some negotiating leverage as a third-party aggregator, but in the meantime, NBC and News Corp hold most of the content and most of the cards. The biggest problem? There are dozens of cooks in the Hulu kitchen--and not enough food.
Matt Dentler started started a conversation right off the bat on his BLOG.
Another Online Series, Mash-Ups, the First Amendment and Acting 2.0
I haven't blogged in a while because I've been working incredibly hard to kick off a couple new projects. First, I have been hired to produce another series for Magnet Media. Whereas the first series is about the tech behind post-production houses, this one spotlights the hottest producing talent of the music industry. I'll have more details when we get closer to launch.
I was also recently approached by my friends over at CBS Interactive to edit some mash-up videos of their TV shows. So far, I've concentrated on David Mamet's foray into television, "The Unit". I have total freedom to be as creative as I want. So far it's been great to just let my imagination run wild. I'm not sure how these will be promoted or what the master online plan is, but stay tuned.
Here are some of my latest online favorites:
"Don't Tase Me,Bro!" - or - what I like to call, "Celebrating the First Amendment: Southern Style!"
John Kerry was speaking in Gainesville, Florida where Luci and I met and were married. This is the same University where I saw Spike Lee and Timothy Leary speak.
I still don't understand why the cops were there in the first place. And while his rant is a little annoying, convoluted and aggressive, if you're giving a lecture at a state university and provide an open mic for audience questions, freedom of speech is kind of on the table.
The funny thing is, I don't think he was speaking out against Kerry at all. This kind of fascist behavior by police makes my stomach turn. They actually charged him with inciting a riot! Escort him out, ban him from lectures, but a TASER?! Come on.
I wish I could embed this video, but the proprietary people over at Cadbury, won't allow it. CLICK HERE!
I'm very excited to be going to Canada to cover the Toronto Film Festival for the Reeler. Our weekly show will become a daily for 5-6 days. It will have a similar format to the Tribeca episodes, except this time, we have Karina Longworth from Spout Blog wrapping up each episode with S.T. VanAirsdale discussing the festival's films.
This will be my first time to Toronto and I'm really looking forward to it. I've heard only good things. I imagine I'm going to be super busy shooting, editing and encoding daily episodes. Luci will be holding down the NY headquarters and posting the videos in all the usual places for your viewing pleasure.
OTHER NEWS:
We began to work the Super 8 footage into "All God's Children" the other day. It's going to be a big improvement. While looking for potential places to overlay b-roll, Luci and I started playing with the structure of the ending. An edit here and a copy-paste there and it feels like a whole new film. Luci is going to continue to work on it while I'm gone. We hope to have it locked and finished soon after I get back to New York.
My Miss South Carolina video has hit another milestone: it's over 2 million views! I still can't believe the amount of people clicking in.
With some camera moves and screen capture functionality, we could see the birth of a new sci-fi filmmaking movement. Maybe it'll be called Galacticore.
Lock Your Post Production Doors! Good Hard Working People Are Knockin'
Luci and I are producing a new series with Magnet Media for Zoom-In Online. We're producing 12 episodes (season 1) of the most entertaining post-production-tech-geek-fun that can be found on the Internet.
I know that's a big claim, but we just shot our pilot and I started editing it today - it's going to be great. The plan is to tour the most exclusive, highest profiled, post-production and studio spaces. We'll examine their gear under a microscope making sure the hype and budget is all what they say it is. And we've got the guy to do it.
I'm sure he knows what this is a picture of (I don't. I just thought it looked tech-y) and not only that, he probably knows what piece of equipment would be newer, better and faster.
Our host is Evan Schechtman, the boy genius who dropped out of film school to open Outpost Digital and eventually sold to @Radical Media before he was 23. He claims he can't be out-teched. From what I've seen, not only does he know his gear, but he can recite model numbers and specs for minutes at a time without breaking stride. On top of all that, Evan has impeccable comic timing and camera presence. He's a natural and we have great things planned for him.
He really won me over while pointing to an array of 10, 500 GB LaCie back-up drives, Evan said, "...These things might as well have an expiration date on them. It's like playing Russian Roulette with your data." I couldn't agree more. (SEE MY EARLIER RANT/POST)
The release date for the series is still to be determined, but be sure that when it is, I'll be blogging all about it. We're very excited with this new venture with Magnet Media. We all feel like it's the beginning of a great relationship.
And here's something funny from Black20. This is the episode that hooked me for good.
Revisiting All God's Children and the blog got some press
We are making yet even MORE changes to the film. Or at least, we will be soon. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of a video tape full of Super 8 footage of children at Mamou!! This is what we feel our film has been so desperately needing and we can't wait to integrate it into the cut. We hope it will really liven up some of the interviews and replace some of the static photography.
Having migrated to Final Cut Pro from Avid, I feel lost going back to the interface. It feels so archaic and clunky. Avid requires you to click so many times before you can do a task, whereas Final Cut, you can one-click the same task most of the time. I really don't know how I ever did it and liked it so much.
I feel like I've been out of the doc scene for a while since I've been concentrating so much on online video production. I just came across this mention in an indieWIRE article from March -
Here's an excerpt: And let's not forget about some of the fine doc-focused blogs housed right here on indieWIRE, including Steve Rosenbaum's Docu-Blog/Steve's POV. Although there is a lot about documentary film in the blog, Rosenbaum also offers his unique take on everything from Web 2.0 to the fate of television as we know it. Amy King, Associate Director of SILVERDOCS, provides her own fresh perspective on the world of documentary film on King Blog, managing to incorporate welcome doses of humor while writing about festivals, seminars, and things in the news of interest to doc makers and lovers.
Also housed on indieWIRE's servers are blogs by Scott Westphal-Solary (no link necessary) and Morgan Spurlock, both of which generally focus more on the filmmakers' work, and the wild roller coaster ride that goes along with making a documentary film. Readers got to follow Westphal-Solary's three year journey from the early stages of his project "All God's Children" through to its recent completion [SEE ABOVE]- with an honest look at all the struggles in between. Spurlock's fascinating story has also played out on his blog for the past three years, from touring the festival circuit with "Super Size Me" to his appearance on "Oprah" to the explosion of his "30 Days" TV series - and the many ups and downs along the way.
So where is this vibrant online doc community headed? "I think it's clearly moving towards online distribution and exhibition of documentary content," says Block, who also maintains a personal blog called Around the Block: Doug Block's Doc Blog. "And I think creative collaboration across geographical boundaries will be increasingly viable. A lot of smart folks are searching for a paradigm of online distribution that combines the best aspects of successes like YouTube and MySpace within a serious documentary framework, where it's not just a playpen for self-promotion or goofing around." Stay tuned...
i was thrilled to read this article and quite honored to be mentioned along side all these other bloggers. It gives me all the more reason to commit to updating more often.
High Quality Online Shows. They're Out There...you just have to leave YouTube to find them.
Welcome to the first installment in a forthcoming series featuring my favorite online shows. I'm going to call it: "My Favorite Online Shows" (genius, huh?)
blip.tv is a video hosting site that we try to use to it's fullest. If you're in the "business" of doing shows for the web, they're the closest thing to 1-stop shopping for your web uploading and distribution needs. blip's a favorite for people like myself because they don't restrict you to 100mb files like most (if not all) videosharingsites AND they'll host the Quicktime file (almost unheard of). They have a plethora of online series. Many of them seem to share the same regard for clean compression, high production values and quality content that we at Good Hard Working People strive for.
I figured I should start sharing some of my favorite quality online shows instead of showing yet another viral video that's received 1,000,000+ views. Like this guy:
Don't get me wrong, I'll be posting plenty of those as well. They don't call them "viral" for nothing. And we are far from perfect in our shooting and encoding process, but we're quickly improving and have been since we started.
Because of the shear size of YouTube's audience/users, you kind of have no choice but to syndicate there. But if you want the video to look good, you don't make YouTube your only host. What differentiates our aesthetic from the typical "YouTuber" is the care, knowledge, technology, money and sweat we put into our online video. The shows I'll be featuring will do the same and you guessed it, they all host their shows on blip.tv. Coincidence?
#1 Wallstrip. Where stock culture meets pop culture.
For those of you who know me, you know I've worked closely with Adam Elend and Jeff Marks since they began this show. They've been doing this show DAILY for nearly a year and were recently bought by CBS. They've produced, written and directed everything you see. In other words, I've seen them first-hand busting their butts and they deserve all the success they've had. I'm sure the outstanding acting chops of their host, Lindsay Campbell had a little to do with their success as well. Check it out :
#2 Make. The Makezine Podcast shows you how to make things! Bre Pettis makes something every week and shows you step by step how to do it. This is one of my favorites.
And one more. Goodnight Burbank A short, smart comedy set behind the scenes of a local channel's newsroom. Really funny stuff. Jet Set's Zadi Diaz has a cameo in this episode. Jet Set is one of the most popular and well-produced online shows, but more on them later.
Blog's Grand Re-Opening! Come on in! More than just reading!
If you don't see the right column-->>
CLICK ON THE "MAIN" LINK ABOVE TO GO TO THE HOME PAGE.
The last tweaks (for now) are finally on the blog just in time for Monday. While you're here, leave a comment letting me know what you think.
CHECK OUT THE NEW FEATURES:
- Video introduction featuring me. Be kind.
- I've got links! Click around. Be my friend.
- We've got shows. Shows from the past and more to come in the near future!! Click 'em. Watch 'em. Let them entertain you.
- Subscription services. RSS or email updates delivered directly to your inbox. Never open your browser again!
- MyBlogLog. Something fun for all you fans of blogs. Check it out!
- Recent posts. In case you don't feel like scrolling.
- Look! I've got categories now. Want to read only about my personal faves? Now you can.
- Search! For what? I don't know.
-Technorati tag cloud. This is what the people are looking for. Are you?
- A lengthy Archive list by the month. Not sure I'm going to keep this here. I'm definitely going to shorten it.
- That's right. A Creative Commons License. It's cool. Read about it. Use it. Support it.
and more features to come... I just have to figure out more secrets of the code.
Big thanks go out to Brent, my code guru friend who helped put the icing on the cake! He taught me some killer tricks and cleaned up my wretched code. He did it all for a few homemade brownies and some Gorilla coffee. My kind of friend. This was light work for him and he caught a mean sugar/caffeine buzz in the process. He and his wife, Teresa, have their own web design company. They custom build and design all their stuff. Tell them I sent ya and he'll work for you too (he'll have to charge $$ though). Check 'em out: Mimo y Mima
I hope to really start utilizing this blog as it was meant to be used. No promises, but I'm going to really try to update more frequently and work as much vlogging in as I can stand (it still pains me to be in front of the camera). We were joking earlier that maybe I'll cast an actor to play the part of me for the vlog stuff. Stay tuned.
Oh, and I promise to fix that whole "MAIN" link thing too. Sorry about that.
For the past three days, I have been fumbling my way through remodeling the blog. Despite all the problems and frustrations, I'm so much happier with the new look and feel. The page is so much more open and airy than before. I've wanted to shed the confines of the text boxes and color scheme of the old blog for a very long time, but in order to do that, I would have to venture into the treacherous waters of HTML and CSS code (read previous post). This weekend, I jumped in head first wearing concrete shoes and what you see are the results.
Perhaps the biggest change is that I put myself in front of the camera and posted it online for the world to see (if they were only watching). When I had to decide on which picture I would use in the right-hand column, I figured why just have another headshot? Why not make my headshot speak? The results are waiting for you to click on to the right. If you haven't already, check out my video introduction.
I have a new found admiration for all the vloggers who make it look so easy. I thought it was a unique opportunity to introduce myself and the freshly painted blog with a video. Kind of like a Grand Re-Opening of sorts.
I don't want to make any claims, but I haven't ever seen someone do this before. Usually it's one or the other: a text blog or a video blog. I'm hoping to find the time to integrate the two. And to do it often.
MY BLOG was in A FOG!!! or How to Customize Movable Type Templates - the easy way
For the past 2 days, I've been trying to undo an attempt to spruce up my blog. It was a disaster! HTML and I are mortal enemies. What you see around this post is the result of battling both HTML's unreadable language (I know, it's not THAT hard) and CSS's proprietary nature.
I consulted all my closest sources (thanks Jimmy, Stu and Brent) and even put a question out into the LinkedIn cosmos, but to no real avail. You would think that there would be endless posts by bloggers using Movable Type ("the most difficult blogging software to customize") with template code and style sheets, but NO. Just the opposite is true. What there is is a lot of inside speak about tags and headers and such. You have to have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS to understand and perhaps if I did, I would've had this thing back up and sailing in an hour instead of the 2 days it took me.
Then I finally came across this STYLE GENERATOR! It took a few tries of customizing to get the CSS that worked, but this is the "code generating savior" to all people like me who find HTML a daunting enigma.
(IMPORTANT: Before you go changing your code, open a Stickie, Word Pad or Doc and paste the old code into it. If I would have done this, I would not have been in this situation in the first place. Once you have all the code in a safe place, do what you want, because you can always go back! )
Once you have generated the code, paste it into the template called "STYLE SHEET". Check all your templates, Go to the pull-down menu and "REFRESH TEMPLATES" & "REBUILD TEMPLATES". I don't think both steps are necessary, but that's what I did. I then clicked "REBUILD SITE". Refresh the blog and voila!! A "new" blog.
After that worked, it was time to try and tweak the HTML again. The "Monthly Archive" was above the "Recent Posts" and "Categories" was after that and there was no field to insert a picture. I opened the MAIN INDEX template and found the blocks of HTML that mentioned the aforementioned sections and started re-arranging (cut and paste) them in the order I preferred. The "Search" field seems to hold all the info for the column and couldn't be moved easily without messing the whole column up, so I left it there. I also decided to paste the code that MT generates when you upload a picture with the "Search" code. It worked!!
I hope this info helps others like me who are not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination.
** obviously some of this has changed since I first publish this post. The search box doesn't hold the info for the column. The column info was just directly above it. Your best bet is to have someone that can come over and decipher the code. This will work if you find yourself in a bind like I was. Good luck.
What does "Chocolate Rain" mean? How about "Vanilla Snow"?
Can 5,518,225 people be wrong?
Tay Zonday's performance ran long on the Jimmy Kimmel Show and bumped Matt Damon. It's a great day when a Hollywood superstar gets bumped by an internet grad student celebrity. Sometimes I really love the here and now. I think what made this video so ubiquitous is trying to figure out the meaning of "Chocolate Rain".