Our friends at ProQuo have set up a video page for folks to vote on their favorite ProQuo ads made by the awesome community members at XLNTads. Head on over and vote for your favorite!
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Poptent is our new community site where brands and independent video creators connect.
Archive for May, 2008
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Vote for your Favorite ProQuo Vids
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How to Make Winning Videos
One of our loyal videomakers here at XLNTads is Zack Scott. He’s a great guy, a funny fella and one smart videomaker. He recently earned some cash from us for his hilarious barfing mailbox for ProQuo and he’s written a great guest post for Nalts’ blog Will Video for Food about how he went about making his winning video.
Here are some of his main thoughts on how he did it:
- Parody - The main humor throughout the video is based on the fact the video is a parody without being a parody of the product. That way both the audience and the company executives can enjoy it. But who knows, maybe directly trashing the product is a better approach? I’ll try it next time.
- Bizarreness – Frankly, I think the talking mailbox is both creepy and bizarre (and maybe even cheesy), but it is essential for setting up ProQuo as something to treat various ailments. Although the first half of the video feels different from the second half, I think it worked out great. Samuel did a great job with computer effects and stop-motion.
- Randomness – I think random humor can be really funny when there can be a true connection to the topic. The scenes of Samuel looking cool, me being inept at sports, Samuel stumbling out of a portable toilet, and me pulling a huge weed out of the ground appear to be random. But if you look at any pharmaceutical commercial, there are always clips of people doing random activities from the mundane to the extreme. So why not just have us performing weird activities? It allows for some slapstick humor and a way to keep the video exciting while the voiceover discusses some important aspects of ProQuo.
- Punchline – Since XLNTads and ProQuo wanted funny, I felt there had to be a “punchline” of sorts. I don’t want to spoil it, but it is funny due to the parody aspect and the much-needed self-depreciating humor. Plus, it is true. I guess the main lesson here is that once you have an idea or a full concept, figure out how you can utilize it to its full potential.
Definitely head over and read the whole article. Zack’s a smart guy and certainly knows what he’s talking about.
Tags: zack scott, nalts, video, contest, how to
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XLNTads Interview with Phillypreneurs
My friend Dave has this great new blog about the start-up business environment in Philadelphia called Phillypreneurs. He did a short interview with me the other day over video iChat. We talked about some cool points in there, viral vids, business, and more. Have a look!
Tags: phillypreneurs, xlntads, startup, video, interview
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Where do they find the time?
Okay, this is a little heady, but we think it’s a pretty cool thing to share with you because we really feel like you guys (our community, our blog readers, our clients) are part of this revolution. Pardon me for being a bit evangelical about it, but this sort of thing sure gets us excited!
Listen to Clay Shirky - author, teacher, consultant, Internet evangelist:
Tags: clay shirky, web 2.0, internet
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ProQuo Loves You!
Amazing. ProQuo was absolutely floored by how awesome your videos are. In fact, I heard they had a company party, brought in pizza and beer, and watched through all the videos and chose their favorites democracy-style. Fun! Apparently, it was a pretty wild party. LOL! Well, okay, that last part I made up, but I can imagine. Viral videos always get people amped up.
Okay, lemme cut to the chase. Here are their Top Ten favorites! Congratulations to all these folks who are banking $1500 each! Stay tuned for the viral run-off to see which one gets seen the most out there in the videoland wilds. (note: they’re all embeded, so give them a second to load)
ZackScott’s Sick Mailbox
ej6inmiami’s Junk Mail Attacks
kevhdigital’s Medieval Junk Mail
JamesDierx’s Do Not Kill the Messenger
cydog’s Unsolicited
sakinnuso’s Devil Deal
MattyGahan’s Dirty Mail Lady
SlatersGarage’s ProQuo Poor Eddie
ThreeVolts’ Too Much Junk 3
kahit1227’s ProQuo ID Theft
Tags: xlntads, video, proquo, advertising, viral, commercial
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Creative Inspiration: Look, Ma, No Camera!
This music video for The Bird and The Bee goes to show, you don’t even need a camera these days to make a cool video. Oh, I know, I know, they used their web cam, but still…
Tags: creative inspiration, video, music, mac, viral
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What Amount Works Best?
Our friend and awesome creator Zack Scott suggested we ask you, the community members, about how you felt about different award amounts for our assignments. We’ve been mixing it up, and we would love to get your feedback.
Tags: awards, video, xlntads, assignments
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Rise of the Multi-Faceted Media Maker
Today, one of the biggest and best blogs on Earth (and one of my daily reads) Read/Write Web posted a long piece on YouTube ’stars’ and how they, and others, can parlay their fame and video skills into business. It’s a pretty basic primer on the things we know, but the writer did include a long bit at the end about prosumer video makers doing the commercial thing. They didn’t mention us by name, unfortunately, but I wrote this response:
We’ve built a whole business around the idea that there is a huge (and growing) market of semi-pro and freelance video makers who are more than talented enough to tell brand stories. We’re putting their work in front of our major brand clients like Anheuser-Busch and Nestle to great praise. I definitely believe that this kind of content has great potential because people have a thirst for creation. And they’re only going to get better.
I believe in the future, you will see a creative class of videographers who make money from several revenue streams. They’ll make video ads for their neighbor’s restaurant, commercials for Nestle through sites like ours, video blog segments for their friend’s band and comedy skits for their YouTube Partner channel - making money at all of them.
It’s the rise of the multi-faceted media maker.
What are your thoughts? Can it be done? Are we heading in the right direction?
Tags: video, xlntads, commercials, business
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Friend Us Up, Yo!
Just in case you hadn’t noticed the wee lil’ list on the side bar over on the right, XLNTads is all over the place on the interwebs. Why not head on over and share a little love and friend us up? We’re on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and more.
Oh, and in case you were looking for a little more social media humor, check this out:
[thanks, adpulp!]
Tags: social networks, xlntads, friending, video, humor
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48 Hour Film Project Goodtimes
We had an awesome time at the Philadelphia 48 Hour Film Project. Got to meet tons of new folks, great video makers all. There were 44 teams in this year’s event and since I was one of the judges, I got to watch them all. Pretty rad, huh?
XLNTads wanted to sponsor some top awards for the show, so we handed out these cash awards to the best films of the weekend:
$750 Best Film - “Kitchen Aide” by No Right Return
$500 Best Directing - “Dirty Dishes” by Psynema
$250 Best Writing - “Dancing with Myself” by SpoonfullofpooCongratulations to all of you who participated in this fun event. You’ll be able to watch all of the videos from this festival as well as those from the other 48 Hour Film Project events around the globe at their new video channel 48.tv. Also, they’ve got some blog action themselves. Check it out!
See you next year in Philly. And heck, we had such a great time, we’ll probably come to more events around the world!
Tags: 48 hour film project, xlntads, news, events, filmmakers, video
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Encoder Issues
Hey gang, just a heads up - we’ve been having some wonky encoder problems up in this joint. We’re working hard on getting all your ProQuo videos through, but some of them hit a snag and we’ve got our tools out and we’re greasin’ her up. Don’t worry, we’ll get all your videos in that are under the deadline. Hang tight!
Thanks. Give me an email if you’re still not seeing anything after today.
In the meantime, why not go watch some of the great videos that are up already? Wow. Impressive stuff, people! Y’all are getting better every time. I can’t wait to see the vids for Searching for Love.