Beastmaster
Viral Videos: From the other side.
I never set out to make a viral video. Really, I think a lot of the stuff caches on for just the wrong reason. Taking a look at the top videos on YouTube always seems to be a race to the bottom. Looking at the all-time top YouTube videos doesn't get much better. Don't get me wrong, it's really funny to see somebody make a complete idiot out of themselves or a crazy commercial from Japan, but since the advent of YouTube and the whole coining of the term, we're in a complete sea of these sorts of videos. How many three-year-olds dancing to pop songs and cats falling off of shelves can you watch? There's also the glut of YouTube celebrities, which I really don't even pretend to understand that bit. It kinda makes me feel old.
So of course when a video that I co-directed with Thomas Humphreys starts to go viral (go to 3:25)... I can't help but try to push it along, get it out there. Being on the other side of the viral video gives an interesting perspective on the whole situation - it's hard to get stuff out there. A complete uphill struggle if you're trying to get things moving. I think now that we're trying to push the video that it's slowing down the viral progression. When we didn't do anything, it caught on.
The irony of the situation is that the video that we always felt had the most potential to go viral, to spread, to be a joy in people's lives - Beastmaster, Jr - has never caught on. Powder 2: Powder 2 The People had a limited scope and took off to a limited degree - people got it or they didn't, I Love You, Jean Claude (which, funnily enough, is a title that none of the websites featuring it has used) has the sort of pop-culture baiting that people love, so I can see it's spreading around. The Steve Wiebe "Don't Talk" trailer has a celebrated icon in the Donkey Kong world (I'm not making that up) doing his thing. Beastmaster is just family friendly fun, has some pop culture, even has a celebrity cameo, and, I think, is a really good video. But so far it sits at around seven thousand hits on YouTube.
Now, I have to point out, my life doesn't revolve around YouTube hits. I had this conversation with a friend of mine who put it simply - "They're not your audience, Nick. Don't worry about them." He's right, of course, but... with these videos, I kind of feel they are in some little way. Long term, wide scope of things, yeah, it's not important, but I would like for people to see these videos. A lot of work went into them, and they're better than somebody's crappy Batman fan film.
So, with our JCVD video getting attention, we're trying to segue that attention to Beastmaster, which stars the same kid, Eli, who's becoming a pretty great actor. (Although, when we asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said that he'd like to act in movies. I feel bad about sending him towards this difficult life.) So, you'd think that people who liked one video would be willing to check out the next, right? Well... it's not quite so easy. Here's the challenges we're running into:
1.) Time - As we all know it's hard to get your friends to sit down and watch anything that you ask them to. I still have friends who haven't started on Mad Men despite hearing me talk about it endlessly. I'm the same way - I've been told about some movies that I know that I would love that I just haven't gotten around to for whatever reason. It's difficult to get a friend to watch something - getting a stranger to see something is nigh-on impossible.
Now that said, this is the internet, which has become the de-facto place to go when you're bored, which leads to...
2.) The finicky nature of link sites: You know the sites, the BuzzFeeds and IamBoreds of the world. It's interesting when it's just a random video that's pretty fun, they're quick to put it up. However as soon as you try to follow it up, they see you as trying to use them as a promotion tool... Which is, basically, what they are in the first place. They need links, they need content, but will only take it to a certain point. If I was trying to sell a product, I could understand a "No Free Advertising" policy, but I'm just trying to get people to watch a kid shoot fireballs that set a man's jacket on fire.
Of course, with the link sites comes the...
3.) The Rebranders. Some sites will feature your video, but host it on their site and with their logo. So people are seeing it, but you're not getting the hits that you deserve and it looks like they produced it. We've found a site doing that and just aren't really sure what to do. Yes, they've given us some eyeballs, but they've basically hijacked it. I'm told we can get a free t-shirt by contacting them. I guess the desire for free advertising goes both ways.
There's a lot of difficulties in the viral process. I've started to read up on the process more. Granted, it's not something I really want to be pursuing for a while, but it's an interesting world and interesting process behind it all.
So of course when a video that I co-directed with Thomas Humphreys starts to go viral (go to 3:25)... I can't help but try to push it along, get it out there. Being on the other side of the viral video gives an interesting perspective on the whole situation - it's hard to get stuff out there. A complete uphill struggle if you're trying to get things moving. I think now that we're trying to push the video that it's slowing down the viral progression. When we didn't do anything, it caught on.
The irony of the situation is that the video that we always felt had the most potential to go viral, to spread, to be a joy in people's lives - Beastmaster, Jr - has never caught on. Powder 2: Powder 2 The People had a limited scope and took off to a limited degree - people got it or they didn't, I Love You, Jean Claude (which, funnily enough, is a title that none of the websites featuring it has used) has the sort of pop-culture baiting that people love, so I can see it's spreading around. The Steve Wiebe "Don't Talk" trailer has a celebrated icon in the Donkey Kong world (I'm not making that up) doing his thing. Beastmaster is just family friendly fun, has some pop culture, even has a celebrity cameo, and, I think, is a really good video. But so far it sits at around seven thousand hits on YouTube.
Now, I have to point out, my life doesn't revolve around YouTube hits. I had this conversation with a friend of mine who put it simply - "They're not your audience, Nick. Don't worry about them." He's right, of course, but... with these videos, I kind of feel they are in some little way. Long term, wide scope of things, yeah, it's not important, but I would like for people to see these videos. A lot of work went into them, and they're better than somebody's crappy Batman fan film.
So, with our JCVD video getting attention, we're trying to segue that attention to Beastmaster, which stars the same kid, Eli, who's becoming a pretty great actor. (Although, when we asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said that he'd like to act in movies. I feel bad about sending him towards this difficult life.) So, you'd think that people who liked one video would be willing to check out the next, right? Well... it's not quite so easy. Here's the challenges we're running into:
1.) Time - As we all know it's hard to get your friends to sit down and watch anything that you ask them to. I still have friends who haven't started on Mad Men despite hearing me talk about it endlessly. I'm the same way - I've been told about some movies that I know that I would love that I just haven't gotten around to for whatever reason. It's difficult to get a friend to watch something - getting a stranger to see something is nigh-on impossible.
Now that said, this is the internet, which has become the de-facto place to go when you're bored, which leads to...
2.) The finicky nature of link sites: You know the sites, the BuzzFeeds and IamBoreds of the world. It's interesting when it's just a random video that's pretty fun, they're quick to put it up. However as soon as you try to follow it up, they see you as trying to use them as a promotion tool... Which is, basically, what they are in the first place. They need links, they need content, but will only take it to a certain point. If I was trying to sell a product, I could understand a "No Free Advertising" policy, but I'm just trying to get people to watch a kid shoot fireballs that set a man's jacket on fire.
Of course, with the link sites comes the...
3.) The Rebranders. Some sites will feature your video, but host it on their site and with their logo. So people are seeing it, but you're not getting the hits that you deserve and it looks like they produced it. We've found a site doing that and just aren't really sure what to do. Yes, they've given us some eyeballs, but they've basically hijacked it. I'm told we can get a free t-shirt by contacting them. I guess the desire for free advertising goes both ways.
There's a lot of difficulties in the viral process. I've started to read up on the process more. Granted, it's not something I really want to be pursuing for a while, but it's an interesting world and interesting process behind it all.