Hip hop video culture has interested me for as long as I could remember: the theatrics, the sense of crew, the flash, the grit – elements a prep school kid from suburban Pennsylvania doesn’t see day to day. This summer I was lucky enough to meet Kevin Lopez, a new director at Fifth Column, and work with him as he hustled and grinded away on hip-hop music videos. The opportunity to work with Kevin taught me about how with the right resources and the right people, a high quality product can be made with a good prosumer camera and some creative innovation.

While some consider the music video a dead art as it relates to television, social networks like MySpace make the creation of videos and music content absolutely essential. They provide eye candy in a world where visuals are undeniably key to getting your message across. They influence our culture and fashion (from Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” dance to Slim Thug’s Gucci shades.) With the right amount of ingenuity, some music videos can be huge viral successes, such as Ok Go’s YouTube hit “Here It Goes Again” A digital camera, one static shot, and 4 treadmills = over 43 million views.

We recently completed “Hot Pair Nikes” an impressive low budget music produced and directed by Kevin and edited by myself with Kevin’s help. Shot on a Panasonic HVX200 and a digital SLR, it is a great example of innovation in our field. Be on the lookout for the next six months as Kevin and I continue to develop innovative music videos. For now, make sure to check out our latest music video for EJoox of the Bronx, “Hot Pair of Nikes.”

In my last two blog posts, I discussed how the internet has become a battleground for both distribution and marketing of television shows. A growing part of issue is the use of unique web content to market television shows to new viewers or to develop deeper relationships with current viewers. Here are some examples of television shows that do this right.

The Office, Blackmail

The Office always does a great job bringing to life the mundane absurdity of the corporate workplace and this webisode focuses on exactly that. The webisode grants writers the opportunity to focus on minor characters that are not often featured in their own plot lines, in this example Creed. The storyline is a lot of fun and is an overall great watch.

Battlestar Galactica, Face of the Enemy (NSFW)

In other cases, webisodes can be used to give background on charecter’s history and motivations. Battlestar Galactica created three series of webisodes meant to run off season. Each series focus on upcoming storylines by presenting a deeper understndng of the world in which the charecters reside. The series, Face of the Enemy, foreshadows an important character arc that takes place in the fourth season. This clip is NSFW so please be cautious.

Rescue Me, Juiced

Because of the WGA strike, more than eighteen months passed between the airing of season 4 and 5 of Rescue Me. In order to bridge some of that time, a series of ten webisodes were produced. The episodes give us some insight in to the past of the characters. This episode, Juiced, takes one of the most significant events in the series and puts it in the context of the mundane.
What are your favorite television webisodes?

As I mentioned in my last post, SAG and AFTRA are now focusing on getting independent producers to use union contracts on all projects. In fact since January 1st of this year, both unions are enforcing Global Rule One on all internet projects. Global Rule One states that any union performer can not enter in to a contract with “any producer who has not executed a basic minimum agreement.” Until now, unions have allowed internet projects to slip under the radar.

So for independent internet producers, there are three choices: 1) Work strictly with non-union actors, 2) Convince union talent to perform without a contract, effectively asking them to violate their union responsibilities or 3) Sign a union contract. Using non-union talent is an unsavory prospect. I’ve found some great non-union actors but it often takes too much time to find these diamonds in the rough. Convincing union talent to work without a union contract is shady and may hurt your reputation. While non-union producers are not obligated to ensure performers meet their union responsibilities, any successful producer will have to use union talent at some point and this could come back to haunt you.

Both AFTRA and SAG offer generous new media contracts. We chose to go with an AFTRA contract for a few reasons. 1) We think the terms are better. As long as the product is under $25,000 per minute, everything is negotiable between the actor and the producer on consumer pay products. 2) AFTRA has always been helpful with finding out information. Calling a SAG office is like getting frisked in order to pick up your dry cleaning. They make it impossible to get information in a timely fashion and you are constantly being yelled at for asking questions. 3) SAG may or may not go on strike and I can’t deal with a work stoppage.

Check below the fold for a side by side comparison. Any producer looking in to creating media on the internet should consider becoming a signatory of one of the two contracts.

(more…)

Until recently, New Media production has been the Wild Wild West; a lawless new frontier allowing for the possibility of innovation and abuse. The acting unions (SAG and AFTRA) had, for the most part, made few attempts to govern New Media and allowed their performers to strike their own deals with producers. The money involved in New Media was so small and participation in contracts for every YouTube video would be a waste of resources.

As New Media has evolved, SAG and AFTRA’s position has changed. To some extent, this is largely due to television and film producers using online content to promote their programs and create new revenue streams. To the unions, this type of revenue should also be under their jurisdiction. They’re right. Thus, it’s no surprise that both union’s New Media deals focus on the reuse of programs in New Media and “Derivative New Media,” New Media based on an existing television or film.

But the unions’ New Media contracts also include provisions for original online content including every project from a studio backed web series like Gemini Division to a low budget YouTube video. The reason for this? Clearly not financial. A $3,000 YouTube video is not going to be able to pay union rates. The real reason is to bring creators of New Media, the future writers, directors and producers of film and television, into the process of using and paying for union actors. The biggest fear for these unions is not receiving a bad contract from the AMPTP. It is that, in an industry with low barriers of entry and a free distribution network, unions will no longer be necessary.

Fifth Column recently signed a New Media deal with AFTRA and I think the deal is a fair one. If you are an independent producer, I suggest you look at the New Media contracts offered by SAG and AFTRA.

The layout of this blog, the shape of your keyboard, the color of your ipod. These are all very specifically engineered arrangements of nature’s perceiveable colors and raw materials, in order to attract a somewhat primitive aspect of human rationale. We call it collectively, design – something that has potential to be incredible effective visually, and in turn financially favorable for those who are innovative enough to keep pushing conventional boundaries.

With the advent of prosumer-created motion graphics, made possible through accessible and inexpensive programs such as Adobe After Effects, it would appear as if there is an overabundance of design in the commercial world of film and video. In fact, it is now notable that agencies create incredibly flashy and motion design oriented ways of channeling info through video, simply under the notion that style is substance.

Much in favor of the lifestyle versus feature list approach to commercials, motion graphics can evoke human emotions that even the most expensive HD camera couldn’t capture. Take for instance YouTube hit “Did You Know 3.0″. Created by Xplane, an American design firm based out of Portland, the video is essentially a visualization of international and sociological statistics, based on world populations, technological trends, and their meaning for the future. The simplistic animation style and color scheme employed offers a unique and evocative feeling. It is in this manner that the style truly becomes the substance for the feelings and ideas this firm wishes to employ, overall more important than the facts and text that we most likely will forget the next day. What is important is that the style through which the content is employed, is lasting.

And while in the foreseeable future, as animated products such as “Did You Know”, as well as motion graphic infused commercials, will continue to flood the industrial output, it’s likely that this style will be more suited for a technology far more advanced and engrossing than video, something not completely bound by a two dimensional screen. At the speed we’re moving, it’s coming sooner than later.

An interesting article in the London Financial Times last Friday discussed the growing trend of advertisers using user generated content to promote their product (Thanks @digprof). As a self described heretical and subversive organization, Fifth Column naturally embraces the increased use of fan produced content as a part of advertising strategy. While this won’t be the death nell of advertising or the modern advertising agency, there are a lot of positive results of this growing trend.

1) New Voices – UGC promotes content developers that don’t have other avenues to distribute their content to a mass audience. Allowing for the development of creatives in this manner promotes creative merit as well as allows new ideas and viewpoints to enter the creative advertising space.

2) Better Content – UGC forces traditional advertising agencies in to greater competition, not only with other agencies but potentially any content creator. This will result in better creative advertising.

3) Smaller Agencies – In order to compete with UGC, agencies are going to have to become smaller and leaner organizations, focusing on adapting quickly as the industry rapidly evolves.

Agencies have been rolling with the punches of new media for quite some time and I’m sure they will find a way to make UGC work for them (as many of them already have). But there certainly are some interesting effects to UGC proliferation. How do you think UGC will effect the advertising industry?

I have three twitter accounts that I post from as well as a number of blogs and social networks, all of which need to be constantly maintained. But I’m sure most people in this space can relate. With all of the places on the internet where your personal/company brand is stored, organizing, updating and fostering conversations on all of these different websites is stressful and frustrating. Here are a few things we use in the office to keep things under control.

Know Em – Know Em is a service that searches every social network and tells you if your username is taken. They also offer a service that will automatically reserve your name on social networks as soon as they are created. This can come in real handy when deciding on the name of one of our properties.

Tweet Deck – Tweet Deck is a great program that organizes the people you follow on Twitter in to groups. This can allow you to keep the people who are a priority, friends and business contacts, in a separate groups from the people you follow for fun. They recently released an iPhone app that allows you to sync groups between your computer and your phone. Here is what mine looks like:

It also will allow you to update your Facebook status and to tweet from multiple accounts fairly easy.

Google Profiles – Ever wish someone could easily find you on every social network? Google Profiles allow you to tell everyone searching for you on the internet where they can find you. Here is my profile. Since everyone is already “Googling” you to find out your information, this is a great way to control what the first thing they will see is.

What do you do to manage your iLife?

Two weeks ago, I got my first shoeshine. Now let me tell you, I’m not very comfortable with the process. The whole thought of being pampered and waited on just makes me anxious and edgy. It fills me with the feeling of complacency and entitlement which is the very opposite of what drives me. What does drive me: curiosity about other people and how they go about their lives. As I sat there getting my shoes buffed, waxed, and shined I had about three conversations. One with a venture capitalist, another with an executive from Microsoft, and most interestingly, with the owner of the shoe shine business.

Needless to say, I walked away with two business cards and a very inspiring story about an immigrant who came over from Vietnam, started shining shoes, and now owns a chain of shoe shining locations all across Seattle. He attributed his success to simply developing close relationships with his employees and customers. He greets very customer with a big smile and a question about how things are going in their life.

While I’m still not comfortable being waited on and taken care of, I am certainly comfortable with taking 5 minutes out of my day to sit down and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. If I walk away with a great story and shiny shoes it certainly makes the experience worthwhile. Who knows, I might also have a new business card in my wallet and one less card to hand out.