Frame Rate

This news may be a few months old, but it’s important to note. YouTube is now the second most popular search engine, right behind Google. Just type in “YouTube second most popular search engine” and you will come up with dozens of articles. YouTube has surpassed Yahoo! which is now in third place. This should be an eye-opener for everyone who has considered the use of online video, but hasn’t made the investment. Worth considering.

I was listening to a recent episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and heard an interview with the marketing director of E-Lance. It sounded interesting, so I went over to the site today to check it out. Here’s how E-Lance works, according to their website:

Elance is an online workplace where businesses connect with qualified professionals to get work done.

With the largest network of certified technology and creative talent, Elance helps businesses succeed by connecting them with the people they need to get work done. Elance facilitates the entire work process from hiring to collaboration to payment.

Businesses use Elance to get work done by qualified professionals whenever they need it. Service providers use Elance to meet customers and get paid for doing what they do best.

To be more specific, E-Lance is a place where freelancers can go, create a profile, upload references, skill sets, portfolio pieces, etc. and network with businesses who are interested in hiring freelancers to complete certain jobs. Let’s say Company X needs some graphic design work done and they’re looking for someone with a specific style or a specific set of skills. They can head over to E-lance, peruse the directory of available freelancers, and hire one for the job. It’s a way for companies to keep overhead costs by employing someone only when they need them. And it’s a great place for freelancers to find work. I just created my profile today, so I’ll have to wait and see if it pays off. There are a number of different categories in which you can create your profile. It might be worth investigating. Every little bit of exposure for you and your business can pay off.

Before any marketing and advertising project, it’s important to do the research. Find out all that you can about your client and how they do business. Find out all that you can about how they perceive themselves and how they want the public to perceive them. Find out about their short and long-term goals and their overall mission. But most importantly, find out all that you can about your target market.

Yes, it’s important to learn about your client, but it’s more important to learn about your audience. If you put together a great ad, but it doesn’t speak to your audience, then you haven’t accomplished anything. In fact, you might do severe damage to your client’s brand and create a PR nightmare. Consider the online Motrin campaign from last fall that offended so many moms. In the ads, Motrin speaks to the audience from the perspective of a mother — a mother who needs pain relief from carrying her baby in a sling or papoose, or other baby carrier. It sounded good, right? Moms need relief sometimes. However, for moms who actually use and love their baby-carrying devices, the ad completely missed the mark. They found it offensive and insulting and Twitter feeds lit up with posts from moms who have nothing but great things to say about their baby carriers. Motrin may have had a decent idea, but they seem to have fallen way short of connecting with their demographic.

More and more people, businesses, organizations, etc. are using Twitter to communicate with the world. Using a maximum of 140 characters, users answer one simple question, “What are you doing right now?” It’s another form of social networking, but many are now using it in their own marketing efforts. I currently have a Twitter account, and although I’m fairly new to the Twitter-verse, I’m hoping that it can be another way of getting my company’s name out to the public.

Type in “Using Twitter for Marketing and PR” in your search engine and you will find a number of web pages giving out advice on how to use Twitter to market your business. Of course you will also find a number of people who feel that Twitter should be used as a social outlet only, not a selling platform. Just look at the advice from the site HowToUseTwitterForMarketingAndPR.com

Regardless of where you fall in the debate, it’s obvious that some business owners have seen tangible results from utilizing Twitter. A coffee shop owner in Houston, Texas credits Twitter with doubling his clientele. News outlets use Twitter for keeping the public up to speed on the latest headlines. Job sites around the world are now using Twitter to help people find the job they’re looking for.

The bottom line is that social networking is still in its infancy and there are no hard and fast rules for what you can and cannot do with a utility like Twitter. However, social etiquette that we use everyday in our face-to-face conversations should certainly carry over to a portal like Twitter, if you hope to gain a following and expand your network. Consider these Twitter Do’s and Don’ts.

The panelists of Freelance Radio frequently discuss social networking sites on their podcast, and they have some great insights into what you should and shouldn’t do with these tools. Bottom line is that if you want to be listened to, you have to contribute something to the conversation. Don’t simply set up a blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, etc. and sit back and wonder why you have no readers. Get out there and write comments on other blogs. Contribute. Become a part of the conversation.

In my little part of the world, film fanatics just aren’t exposed to much independent cinema. So, they want to know, “Where can I go to find documentaries?” “Where can I go to find movies that aren’t part of the mainstream?” “Where can I find funny movies — comedies other than the usual films that play every weekend on TBS?”

I recently came across a website that offers filmmakers the chance to self-distribute their work. It’s called CreateSpace. I mentioned this site in an earlier post during a discussion on my efforts to self-distribute my short, Collection. However, the site also offers movie-lovers the chance to browse thousands of independent titles and make purchases. This is a great site if you’re interested in finding films that you just might not find anywhere else.

I just recently jumped on the Twitter bandwagon in a continued self-marketing effort. You can follow Parc Entertainment on Twitter by clicking here. As businesses start to slow down for the holidays, it’s a perfect time to examine your own identity and marketing efforts. So, I’m staying busy writing blogs, uploading reel samples, and increasing my web presence. I’m also looking into self-distributing one of my short films for through Create Space. It’s always easy to get discouraged during slower months, but there are still plenty of ways to keep busy and generate income. Take a look at the Freelance Switch blog and their recommendations for staying busy in the midst of a downturn.

And my apologies for the look of the blog. My new website should be up and running soon. After which, this blog will be located on the new site. Stay tuned.

Yes you can waste a lot of time on YouTube watching videos with little to no commercial appeal. However, many filmmakers, cinematographers, etc. are using YouTube and other online hosting sites to promote themselves and their work. The goal is to get as many views as possible and to drive people to your site. Now you have the option to embed a link directly into the video. You can do this through a site called Linked Tube. Here’s how it works: When you go to Linked In, you will see a sample YouTube clip on the left and a series of blank fields on the right. Here’s what you need to do to embed a link into your own YouTube clip:

1. Open up your YouTube video and grab the designated YouTube ID. Enter that series of letters and numbers into the first field.
2. Enter the text for the link into the second field.
3. Enter the URL of the website to which the video should link.
4. Enter the “hover title.” This is a brief description of the website that will appear when a user’s mouse hovers over the link.
5. Click “Save & Get Code.”
6. Copy and paste this code into the video when you embed the video onto other sites.

The great thing about this widget is that whenever someone embeds the video to their site and shares it with others, the link you have embedded goes with it.

When it comes to marketing yourself and your business, the internet offers a wide range of outlets, many of which cost little to no money. Among such outlets are social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. I use MySpace to promote my production company, as well as my domain, ParcEntertainment.com. I also maintain a YouTube channel for my demo reel and I post to this blog.

Facebook and MySpace have, in the past, primarily been used on a personal level. However, more and more businesses, individual artists, musicians, and non-profits are using these sites for promotions. LinkedIn is a site geared more for businesses, enabling users to avoid some of the more juvenile content that pervades the other two sites.

Regardless of what social networking site you utilize the most, it’s important to remember to conduct yourself in a professional, courteous manner when posting to these sites. Word of mouth is still the most effective means of gaining new business and you don’t want an off-color, offensive post to jeopardize your reputation. When someone is reading words typed on a screen, it’s easy for that person to misunderstand your original intent, even if it was simply a joke. So what should you do? Crawl under the proverbial cyber rock and abandon the web? I think that decision would be a little too extreme.

The point of blogging and commenting is to give potential contacts and clients the opportunity to learn about you on a more personal level — your likes, dislikes, your insights. You will simply have to come to terms with the fact that there are some overly sensitive people in the world. No matter what you publish online, someone somewhere will be offended.

However, you must also use restraint when posting comments to another person’s website, blog, Facebook page, etc. If you don’t really know the person very well, don’t assume that they’ll understand your sarcastic joke if you decide to post it underneath a picture in their album. They may be offended. Reserve such jokes for people you know really well; people whom you know will not get their feelings hurt. But also remember that these comments are public. Any rude comments, bad language, or off-color remarks reflect on you, despite your intent. Perception is reality.

If you looked at video footage side by side with footage shot on film, the average viewer would probably tell you that film just looks better. They may not be able to tell you why, but most will be able to tell that there’s a difference between the two mediums. That’s why videographers have employed techniques to make their footage look more like film, including shooting at 24 frames per second.

Shooting at 24fps is the film standard, while the video standard is 30fps. A few years ago, companies like Panasonic introduced 24p into their video cameras — a setting which allowed video cameras (for the first time) to shoot at 24fps, just like a film camera. The letter “p” in “24p” stands for “progressive,” meaning that an entire frame of video is captured at once, just like it would be in a film camera or a still camera. Before the introduction of 24p, interlaced video was the standard. Interlaced video means that two “fields” are blended together to create one frame. First, the odd numbered lines in a video field are scanned, then the even numbered lines. Put them together and you have an entire picture.

Making 24p available to videographers was a step toward making video look more like film, but there are many more techniques that must be employed besides 24p, like proper lighting, camera movement, and depth-of-field. Now with the rise of HD, 60p is not too far away. 60p means that 60 progressive frames are captured, not just 24. Now there’s a debate on the rise as to whether 24p is a limitation in the face of higher res HD video. Take a look at this article from Videographer and leave your comments.

When I was in college I had dreams of hosting a top-notch radio show at the campus station. A good friend of mine (and roommate) worked up a concept for the show, but never could get our schedules coordinated. However, thanks to Al Gore and the internet, he and I now have the opportunity to fulfill those once lost dreams of radio stardom.

“Big C and the Beast” is available on iTunes and the weekly podcast will hit on a variety of topics, so there will be something for everyone. We’ll be discussing politics, offbeat news, sports, and entertainment news. Each week’s show will also feature “The Rock Poll,” a listing of the top 5 events, people, stories that “rocked.” You can email the show at bigcandthebeast@gmail.com. If you have show suggestions, email us, or tag interesting stories in Delicious with “bigcandthebeast.”