Publishers continue to make small forays into using short videos to promote their books. This has taken every form from a simple talking head to an elaborate webseries.
According to AdRants, “Champagne-Fueled Jungle” a first novel by James Palumbo, is:
…about a society gone wrong. A society in which reality channel Shit TV (yes, that’s what it’s called) has overtaken the small screen and filled it with “homicidal dwarfs on rollerblades and obese mamas in tutus.” Title character, Tomas, has had enough and with the help of his tommy gun, he hopes to eradicate the world of this filth.
And if that doesn’t sound good enough for you, check out the lavishly animated promo video. Beware, while entirely in black and white, the violence is quite graphic:
It’s great to see this level of attention and artistry dedicated to a book promotion. Currently creeping near 4000 views, if just ten percent of viewers go get his book it would seem worthwhile. Of course, that might be asking a lot from your average YouTube viewer.
Still, the combination of great animation and a violent, sexy story make this a video that could catch on and spread to some potential new readers Palumbo would never reach through traditional marketing.
In addition to seeing the results on the site, there is a nicely produced short “making-of” that claims to tell us how they made their video for only $99.
The one thing that is clear from the featured “making-of” for the band La Strada is that they were able to make a gorgeous video for only $99 by have thousands of dollars worth of equipment and a large crew seemingly working for free.
What bums me out is that it could have been such a cool challenge if the bands were truly limited to what $99 can actually buy. It is watching people work within strict limitations that makes shows like Top Chef and Project Runway so successful and entertaining.
Yup. According to the exciting email I received from Demand Studios I could soon be a millionaire. With their amazing incentive program I would only need to submit 100,000,000 videos! Wow!
“Hello Filmmakers!
We are busier than ever at Demand Studios, creating more titles and assignments every day. As we mentioned in our newsletter, during the month of October we are rolling out a filmmaker incentive program. For every 100 videos you submit you’ll receive a $100 gift certificate to B&H Photo & Video!”
In the US, we’ve grown so accustom to product placement that some are wondering if it is even effective anymore. In the UK, however, they have some heavy rules about the separation between brand and content.
This has led to a censure of ITV for broadcasting episodes of “American Idol” featuring music videos that they claim overtly plug Ford cars.
Anyone who watched any of AI last year knows full-well that those music videos were so obviously Ford-sponsored that they could have been mistaken for ads themselves. I don’t think anyone thought they were trying to hide the fact.
Which makes statements like this so funny:
“In response, however, ITV said the music videos in question were included on their “editorial merits” in terms of entertainment value to audiences and were not the result of any relationship between the broadcaster and Ford.” (via TheStage)
There is a neat piece in NTV about the battle to be the #1 Most Viewed Video on YouTube. For quite some time that spot has been held by a video called “The Evolution of Dance” clocking it at 90,071,493 as of 6:00 PM on June 26th.
Avril’s “people” really want her to be #1 and they are willing to do anything to get her there. This includes:
“To fire up the all the Sk8ter Bois and girls for this web video battle royale, the somewhat-creepily titled AvrilBandAids.com has set up a “refresher” page to try and game the system. Keep the page open and it will refresh the Lavigne video page on YouTube every 15 seconds.”
This all begs the question, what do these views mean? And if you can trick the system so easily does your view rank even matter?
Obviously, legitimate metrics are going to be key to increasing our ability to cashify our new media content. For now, YouTube view count seems to be a respected number but if things continue like this it won’t mean much for long.
Here is the Evolution of Dance Video (the Avril video has embedding disabled at her request…)
This morning a watched about 20 minutes of MTV’s new morning music video block “FN MTV,” during which MTV brings back the music video but not without a few strings attached.
The videos are NEVER simply played on their own. There is always some sort of wrap-around, usually involving MTV viewers in small windows making soul-crushingly inane comments while the video is playing.
Oh, and you will not see the whole video, either. Most of the videos fade out after about 90 seconds.
Perhaps most annoying is the karaoke portion, where viewers record themselves singing over the video.
The point is, according to MTV, that music videos are simply too dull and the music too lame to keep the interest of their 12-24 demo. While that might be true, I find it hard to believe that obliterating the videos behind a constant flow of viewer commentary is the solution.
I loved this story in the Telegraph (via BB, again!) about the UK band The Get Out Clause that decided to take advantage of the huge number of CCTV cameras that blanket much of the country’s urban areas:
“They set up their equipment, drum kit and all, in eighty locations around Manchester – including on a bus – and proceeded to play to the cameras. Afterwards they wrote to the companies or organisations involved and asked for the footage under the Freedom of Information Act.”
While not all the companies complied they ended up with enough footage to make a compelling little video. The process itself is a great commentary on the proliferation of 24-hour surveillance.
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June 30, 2009 7:03 am | 
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