Poptent is our new community site where brands and independent video creators connect.
[UPDATE: We've extended the deadline until Sunday, November 16, 2008]
We’re down to the last week to get your Brand Affinity Technology videos up on Poptent. The deadline is on Friday, November 7th. Make a funny, creative promotional video for Brooks Robinson, Robert Horry, or Carson Palmer before it’s too late. There is $6000 in guarenteed payments among the three assignments, as well as a chance for much more. Let’s see what you can do!
Right before the XLNTads Community became Poptent, we hosted an assignment called “Searching for Love”, to create great webisodes around the them of online dating. One of the three finalists was levoyage, and his quirky Santa show. We’ve gotten to know Rick over the months since, and love his work. I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions this week to learn more.
Poptent: How long have you been in the video business?
Rick Griffin: I’ve been in the video business professionally for about four years. I’ve spent about three years gripping, producing, writing and editing with a small production house in Atlanta, and last year I ventured out on my own.
I love seeing all the new creators that are signing up for Poptent!
PT: How did you get started in video?
RG: I actually started out making Super Bowl Commercials - well sort of. A few years ago my church decided to have a Super Bowl party. We were afraid some people might be offended by the beer commercials, so I wrote, shot and edited several commercials about various things going on at the church. We got more request for the DVDs we made of the commercials than any of the sermon series. That project awakened the “creator bug” within me.
PT: That’s great. How many DVDs have you sold so far?
RG: We sold out a couple of years ago. We ran about 100 copies the first run then another 50 after that…we’re a small church.
PT: Awesome.
RG: I guess you could say my DVD went “copper”
PT: At least getting a DVD into Second Pressing is pretty cool! haha! What kind of equipment do you use, do you have a favorite camera these days?
RG: Since we’re facing a High-Def future I recently purchase a Sony HVRZ1U - I love it! I have a Sennheiser ME67 shotgun mic and a couple of Sennheiser wireless lapel mics and a cheap light kit. Depending on the job and budget, I’ll rent whatever I don’t have.
PT: So what’s next for you?
RG: I like projects where I can be creative or help write the script. I’d love to make a feature film, or a TV show. I’m just waiting on that big budget.
RT: You were recently a finalist on our “Search for Love” webisode assignment. Where’d you get the inspiration for Santa?
RG: I’ve worked with santa on other projects. Since he (the actor) is single, I thought he would be a good subject for the Searching for Love project. He’s identifiable! He a character that I felt the audience would care about… I mean, who doesn’t love Santa Claus?
PT: Truth. So are you psyched about the Nattyism Assignment that just launched?
RG: Absolutely! It sounds like something I’d like to tackle.
Our friends (and return clients!) Anheuser-Busch have just launched a new assignment on Poptent to find your take on the ‘Nattyism’, a new ad campaign for the awesome beer, Natural Light. Don’t know what a Nattyism is yet? Watch this and you’ll get the idea:
Think you can do one better? Head over the Nattyisms Assignment and Poptent and get to work!
Now You’re Talkin’!
So you’d like to make some money on Poptent and join up a commercial assignment. Great! Let me walk you through how to do that.
First, from the homepage, you’ll see a button called “Show Me”:
When you click it, you’ll see a range of different things you can jump to. Click on ‘Assignments’:
That will bring you to a page with all current assignments. Browse through them until you’ve found one you want to check out. When you’re on the Assignment’s landing page, you’ll see a button at the top of the yellow box that says “Accept”. [Important: accepting an assignment does not mean you actually must enter it, it just means you've accepted the Terms and Conditions and can browse the material in depth as well as join the assignment's discussion thread.]
Once you’ve accepted the assignment, watch the introduction video, then download the Creative Brief which will give you all the details of what the brand is looking for in your videos. People who read the Creative Brief most carefully have their videos purchased far more often than those who don’t, so be sure to go over it closely.
When you’re ready to start making your video, you can download the assets you’ll need by clicking the Download link of each asset, or by downloading the asset directly from the asset page. Want a still image? Just need video? You can filter the assets by type by choosing an option in the drop down menu in the lower left. Or, click on the “See all…” link to view a list of all the assets in the tray.
If you’re looking for more information or you’d like to check out who else is working on an assignment, click the Creators tab. That bin will show you everyone who’s accepted so far.
And finally, if you have further questions or you’d like to discuss ideas or problems, follow the link to the Town Hall discussion and see what’s being talked about there.
Poptent has lined up several great assignments for the independent videographers in our community. Right now we are running three current assignments with our friends at Brand Affinity Technologies. BAT is a new company that is matching up advertisers with great professional athletes and celebrities for quick and timely ad creative. They’re looking for videos to promote a couple of athletes as brand spokesmen. Interesting and creative ways to sell products and services is what Poptent creators know best, so get out there and get creative!
BAT wants to buy two videos for each of their three player assignments live now: Carson Palmer, Brooks Robinson and Robert Horry. They’ll be paying $1000 for each video they buy.
We would all love to see what ideas you come up with. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions if you have them.
Stay tuned, we’ll have another big brand launching assignments very soon!
When you upload media to Poptent, you’ll notice several buttons just below the video when you’re signed in. We’re hoping you find them useful. Let me explain what each of them do.
The first button you see from left to right is the ‘Share’ button. Simply, this allows you to send this media to another Poptent community member directly, email it to someone outside of Poptent, or grab the permalink to the media’s page. Remember, if you want to embed a Poptent video to your About Me section or your blog for example, all you have to do is hit play, then click the “< / >” button to copy the code to your clipboard.
The ‘Submit’ button is an important one as it allows you to enter an assignment with that piece of media. If you don’t see any items in that drop down menu, it probably means you haven’t Accepted the assignment, which you’ll need to do before you can submit to it.
The little mountains icon is where you can choose the thumbnail for your video. This is the image that will appear before a video gets played. Obviously, videos with catchy thumbnails are more likely to get watched. You can pick one from the video, or you can always upload your own as well. Your choice. But be sure it’s something eye-grabbing.
The ‘Versions’ button is perhaps one of my favorite features. This allows you to upload a different version of the same video without having to redo all the meta data like tags and titles.
This will be a powerful tool for you to use when working on projects. Imagine uploading a rough cut of a video to send to your friend. Once you work out some changes, just upload your new version. Then, by clicking the check mark, you can watch either version, giving you the ability to compare and contrast your work.
The wrench icon allows you to change the privacy settings for your media. You can also allow or block downloading of your original source file which can be handy if you’re collaborating on a project with friends in distant places. In the example above, you might not want the world to see your rough cut. Keep your video private, and change the setting to public when you’re happy with the version you have uploaded. Or, you can simply share a video with your followers to keep it limited from the outside world, but not completely hidden.
The last two icons should be self-explanatory. The red X button deletes your media. And the down arrow on the right side of the toolbar allows you to download the source video, if its allowed by the media owner.
As always, let me know if you have further questions about these icons and how they can help improve your workflow.
A lot of you who have been with us when XLNTads.com was our main community site are probably like our friend Jared Cicon who emailed me today to ask, “How is Poptent different than the old XLNTads site?” Well, I’m glad you asked! ‘Cuz there’s a whole lot of new stuff.
In fact, we’ve got so many new features, I’m going to start rolling out posts to highlight them, as well as some of the dreams we have for the future of Poptent. Believe me, we have lots. Every time we go out to lunch we can’t stop talking about the potential. Maybe I should video that sometime and share with you.
Okay, so first of all, you’ll notice that a lot of what Poptent does is similar to what XLNTads.com did. That is, you can accept and join assignments for making branded video content for brands.
One thing you’ll notice right away is our new video player. It’s pretty great, and I’m not just saying that because my brother Paul built it. 
The video player’s time code bar goes down to the millisecond (1), it can be embeded and shared by automatically copying the code when you click the buttons (2), and it has the ability to go full screen (3).
The video player is also now HD-compatible. All you have to do is upload your video at least 720 pixels tall, and Poptent will automatically recognize it as HD and offer viewers the option of playing back in high resolution.
One of the best new features of the new player is the ability to add credits to your media. This crediting system will travel with the video. Anytime someone clicks “Show Credits” in the title bar, the credits pop up and link back to that creators Poptent profile. You can add actors, editors, gaffers, whatever! You can add as many credits to your media as you want.
Friends not on Poptent yet? Why not invite them to join? It only takes a few seconds to sign up, and they’ll get that additional exposure for helping you make your video.
And now, see it in action!
We’re very, very excited to announce the public beta launch of our new community site, Poptent!
We’ve all worked incredibly hard on this project and we couldn’t be happier to have this baby out in the open for eveyone to check out. Please feel free to poke around and give us feedback.
We built Poptent based on the lessons we’ve learned over the past year from XLNTads, and feedback from creators like you. Stellar new features, full networking capabilities and a beautiful new HD-capable video player will provide all the tools you need to manage projects, build your portfolio and get your work seen.
Be sure to check out all our New Assignments!
