The reading for this week, Bourne's Web Video, was quite technical, but useful as a reminder for me. I know I've mentioned that during undergrad here at Clemson I worked at Video Production Services (VPS) as a Video Editor/Digitizer (apparently that's the "official" job title). Reading this week, I see how useful this would have been to me when I first started out (although it is quite helpful now as a refresher course seeing as how I have since been moved to CCIT to work on websites). When I first started out, all of my training was "on the job" - thankfully I had great teachers! A lot of people have no idea that the department is down there or even what the department does. Let me explain what we do: everything; sports, documentaries, morning news-type shows, whatever you can imagine. We even work with big time Hollywood groups from time to time. One thing we didn't do while I was there, however, was create web videos.
Web videos were more of an afterthought for me. When I left VPS I didn't have a Mac (yet) or Final Cut Pro (yet) and had no idea how I was going to save some of the videos I did "for fun" on slow days at VPS. Then it hit me: post them on Youtube. So I did. I got responses on the videos I uploaded that I had done for previous projects, so I started to create videos explicitly for Youtube in my downtime. Some of these videos were created with B-roll that we happened to have around the office and royalty free music that we had in our rather large collection of royalty free music (once I realized Youtube would yank my videos down if I didn't use royalty free music and the artist objected to my video using their song...). My videos did fairly well, but had no clear audience. Then I did what Bourne says you should do: "[T]hink about how you plan to use the video and who will be watching it." (p. 19). It only took me a second to think, "Hey! We're in Clemson. Lots of people like Clemson. Lots of people like football. Lots of people LOVE Clemson football!" And my most successful (although still not viral) video was born. Maybe if I had marketed my video like Bourne says you should (p. 25), I would have enjoyed a larger viewership.
At any rate, I only have four videos on my Youtube channel, but my first video (which I did market to friends via email and on facebook) that was posted 3 years ago now has 35,508 views. Considering that video was made to put in a graduation video compilation my undergrad roommate and I had made to chronicle our years at Clemson and I had no intention of marketing it, it has done fairly well (not viral, of course, but well enough). I tell you this story to illustrate how easy it is to get a high number of viewership on a rather mundane video tidbit that wasn't intended for mass consumption -- now imagine how many more viewers I could have had, had I been able to read this book three years ago in time to properly make and market these videos that I put on Youtube. After reading this week, I feel the need to update my Youtube account and post more videos...except this time I'll market them better and maybe give myself a fighting chance for a viral video.
No comments:
Post a Comment