Here's an mp3 of my bit but the full show can be found here.

This past year I've been working with the guys over at Viralskool, a new creative community that's looking to pay filmmakers, animators and so on for making viral videos for top companies.

Here's some advice based on the work I did. Note that it relates to creating "branded entertainment" for paying clients rather than, say, creating a movie trailer that you want to "go viral". I've addressed that a little before in other posts but I'll make a new post specifically about creating trailers for the web.

What is A Viral Video?

So first, let's define what I mean by a viral video... It ought to be a video that becomes popular because one person recommends it to their friends and they then recommend it to their friends and so on until the video views grow exponentially. So let's say a cool clip that people want to share.

There are those who argue a video is only viral after it's been shared or if it has several hundred thousand views. But I think it's more helpful to look at "viral video" as a genre - just like music video or short film or feature film.

Note that just uploading a clip to YouTube won't make it "go viral" and those popular clips from well-known brands all have additional marketing support (PR, paid advertising etc) and what's known as "seeding" - outreach to blogs and destination sites asking them to feature the clip.

So How Do You Make Your Videos Sharable?

You have to put yourself in the shoes of the sharer and the receiver. Nobody wants to be associated with lame content, right? So don’t create anything that’s lame, self-indulgent, pretentious or badly acted unless it’s for humorous effect!

Ask yourself these questions. When I send someone a link to this video:

• Will I look cool for sharing this video?
• Will it strengthen my friendship with the person I’m sending the video to?
• Will they look cool passing it on?

Unless you can answer “yes” to all the above then revisit your video idea until you score 3 out of 3.

So here's my advice for optimising your video to make it spreadable:

• Spend more time thinking up a great idea than you spend shooting it. This will keep your costs down, keep your enthusiasm high and is most likely to yield the best results.
   
• Grab attention in the first 5 seconds. Be surprising, be funny, be shocking or tease. Just make sure you grab attention or else you’ll be dead in the water.
   
• Finish with a punch line. There has to be a reward for anyone that’s given you up to 30 seconds of their life! Make the last 5 seconds more surprising, funnier, more shocking or more provocative than the first 5 seconds. You want someone to finish the video and think “OMG I have to send this to ….”
   
• Use the middle part of the video to engage. The part between the beginning and the end is the part that needs to keep evolving the idea or revealing something new. If you look at the Levi’s viral Guy Backflips into Jeans, it’s only about someone jumping into a pair of jeans but the team tries to keep the idea fresh by using different methods and places to jump. It’s the same for the Ray-ban Never Hide videos.
  
  Although there's no limit to how long your video can be, it's better to get in, do the job and get out within 30 seconds... 90 seconds tops. Sure, you'll find videos that are longer but you'll find that your time and money is better spent getting those 30 seconds the best they can be than making the video longer.
    
• Invoke a primary emotion in the viewer. Think about which emotion you're trying to invoke in the viewer. Research on viral marketing from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University found that the best emotions to invoke were surprise & joy. Others possible, although less effective, were sadness, anger, disgust, fear. Although not essential for the viral spread of your video, it's important for the client that the emotions invoked and the connections/connotations brought to mind are consistent with the brand's image and what their fans believe.
   
• Don't make an advert: Your goal is to entertain, not to inform. An advert is different from what I'm defining as a viral video in that it has overt branding, slogans, product details. Virals are much more subtle in their selling - they're entertainment first and a sales pitch a distant second. Creating a great advert is really tough to achieve and if you have limited resources or lack experience then there's a risk that your "viral" will look like a poor advert... which is unlikely to spread. So concentrate on making something entertaining that people want to share.

Viral Video Styles and Further Tips

As the world of viral video evolves it's possible to see some similarities among the types of content that's popular online. Note that the styles are not mutually exclusive which means a video's spreadable potential is often helped by combining several styles.

Here are the styles/models I've identified:

• Repeat & innovate: keep it fresh
• Do This at Home/Mash-Up
• How Did They Do That? Did They Really Do That?
• Outrageous (ly Funny)
• Sensational Story
• Surreal

There's also a short discussion here, Cool But Not Viral?, about why these popular videos are not "viral" in the definition I've given above.

Repeat and innovate: keep it fresh
Videos that fall into this category are the Levi’s Guy Backflips into Jeans and the Ray-ban video Guy Catches Glasses with Face. The Levi’s viral is only about someone jumping into a pair of jeans – each jump shown as one shot - but the team tries to keep the idea fresh by using different methods and places to jump and different angles. The idea (of jumping into jeans) is big enough to sustain several iterations. Ditto with Guys Catches Glasses with Face but note how in both the videos the best feat is saved until last – it’s the pay-off, the reward for watching until the end.

Both of these videos have the Did They Really Do That? engagement too which prompts viewers to stop, pause and rewind the video – spurring conversation and more sharing.

Thorton’s “Stuck” by Harmony Korine is also in this repeat and innovate category but rather than go for amazement and laughs, it’s wonderfully touching and by returning to the boy on the bench we get the sense of a story unfolding. The limitation of Stuck is that it creates a warm feeling inside rather than the uplifting rush of success (as with the Levis and Ray-ban videos) and this potentially contributes to less sharing.

Guy Backflips into Jeans

Guy Catches Glasses with Face

Thorton’s “Stuck”

Do This At Home/Mash-Up
The benefit of a simple idea or a very clear concept is that viewers can spoof it, parody it and mash it up to produce spin-offs that further spread awareness of the original video.

For an example in this category, take Cadbury's Eyebrows. It's impossible to watch and not feel invited to move your eyebrows as the two kids do! Not only does it offer excellent potential to parody with different music and/or different characters but it also invokes the Did They Really Do That question - don't those eyebrows move to fast not to have been enhanced with computer graphics?

Cadbury's Eyebrows

How Did They Do That? Did They Really Do That?

Kobe Jumps Over Speeding Car doesn’t have a powerful grab in the first 5 seconds but because it’s Kobe Bryant, it’s his celebrity and the promise of the video title that gets us hooked. Then he jumps the car and we wonder, did he really do that? Whenever you can provoke a comments war about whether the clip is "fake" or "real" then you've engaged an audience!

I've also included in this style T-mobile's Life's for Sharing although in truth it's a combination of many styles. For example, it's surprising, it follows the Repeat and Innovate model - frequently changing songs and dance moves to keep it fresh, it begs the How Did They Do That? question to stimulate conversation and further enquiry, it even has a just little of the Do This At Home going for it. It's main failing is the weak primary emotion (wonderment) and the lack of a punch line. However, the strength of the Repeat & Innovate and the How Did They Do That? vibes probably overcome the weaknesses but even so, when everyone stops dancing and walks off it's a bit flat after all the energy in the video.

Kobe Jumps Over a Speeding Car

T-Mobile "Life's for Sharing"

Outrageous (ly Funny)
The perfect example of this is the Durex Get It On. This viral scores on so many levels: it’s funny because it’s taboo (sex, animal sex) yet cute (balloon creatures) so doesn’t become gross-out funny and it’s technically cool and makes viewers ask “How Did They Do That”?

I've also included in this category a music video for the group Make The Girl Dance. Although not outrageously funny, it's outrageous in the sense of three women walking nude through Paris! The video works not just because of the nudity but because it's excellently executed in one continuous shot (very difficult to achieve), it innovates with different girls, it's humorous & engaging to watch at the bystanders' reactions and it's amazing that they got away with it!

Durex Get it On

Make The Girl Dance "Baby Baby Baby"

Sensational Story
For this format to work, at its heart there has to be a story that generates conversation around the water cooler - it has to be a sensational story. It's the kind of tale that passes for "news" in the tabloids and gossip magazines - we know it's unimportant but it's fun to talk about. The stories provide light-hearted "humorous shock" and there's often a sense of schadenfreude (which kind of means laughing at someone else's misery).

This is a tough category to get right. A great example is the video below for Triumph Boats. It looks like a candid clip because it's taken in one shot, the picture quality isn't so great and at the end the camera operator runs away leaving the camera running. But it was actually created by an ad agency to highlight & promote the strength of Triumph's boats.

Another, less effective example, is Leaked Assassination Footage from Russia for the video game MIR-12. The problem with this "viral" is that it doesn't invoke any strong primary emotions and it isn't surprising or shocking enough. It succeeds in part because it has a "Did They Really Do That?" interest: it makes the viewer consider if this is actually real footage (although it had us immediately shouting "fake" - the acting & action is too poorly staged and executed to look "realistic"). It's doubtful that this video was actually shared among many friends.

Triumph Boats

Leaked Assassination Footage from Russia

Surreal

This is my last category and ought to be used with caution. It's very easy to say "my video is surreal" when what really ought to be said is that it's confusing! In many ways, most viral videos have some surreal quality to them but it's worth looking at a couple of the best examples.

A classic example of this style is Cadbury's Gorilla. This viral was so ahead of it's time that it generated incredible off-net conversations around the water cooler that further fueled its online growth. More than just surreal though, the video is inventive, engaging, humorous and touching. Investing the gorilla with human traits gives us a warm feeling inside but it also acts as a hook to keep us engaged and in suspense wondering what's going to happen.

Still great but a little less successful is Ray-ban's Cow Gives Birth to Dude. Although it's surreal, it's surprising, it's humorous... it lacks a real feel-good vibe or laugh-out-loud punch line. Massive Yarn Ball Rolls Through San Francisco is better although in a similar vein - it's cool, it's surreal, it's makes you smile but the punch line could just be a little better.

Cadbury's Gorilla.

Cow Gives Birth to Dude

Massive Yarn Ball Rolls Through San Francisco

Cool But Not Viral?

There are many (award-winning) commercials that get shared on the Internet but that doesn't make them a "spreadable". For example, Air New Zealand Nothing to Hide creates a stir because of the nudity/cheekiness and it's certainly inventive but the overt branding and advertising limits it's spreadability - how many more people would have forwarded this video were it not an advert?

The same can be said of Gucci’s Flora by Chris Cunningham. Again it's a wonderful video but it’s not a viral. Quite apart from the fact that it ends on a pack shot, it doesn't invoke a strong enough primary emotion - joy maybe but it's more of wonderment than happiness.

Air New Zealand Nothing to Hide

Gucci Flora

Have spent the evening creating materials for my film directing course in Bangkok this September with Learn Film Asia.

I know it's basic stuff but it's nice to sex it up a little - just like the report on weapons of mass destruction.

This is a slide for the usual shot sizes.

And this is the one for 3-point lighting. Might need to click this image to view it properly.

Unfortunately piracy is here to stay and is going to get worse. The only thing limiting it now is spread of broadband and technical knowledge. 

So, first I'd like to thank the Deviant Ninja Show on Pirate Cat Radio for inviting me to be interviewed on June 27th - thank you. I'm looking forward to it. I picked up this opportunity I imagine through writer William Scheinman's appearance on the show some time back on Feb 14th (Valentine's day?!). You can check out previous shows here or you can grab edited highlights from Bill's interview here. He talks about self-publishing his novel, getting into the industry as a writer and experiences along the way.

Also on the radio this week was my friend Martin Stitt talking about indie films and the Cannes Film Festvial. This time it was BBC 5 Live. Seems like most of the people I usually see in Cannes didn't go this year - this is the first year in four years I didn't go and I have to say I did miss it. Have been thinking I'd better book accomodation for next year already!

And finall...

There's an interview with yours truely in the wonderful Scars Magazine - it's the May issue. There are some great interviews in there for genre filmmakers and I love the magazine layout - loads of color photos.

I also thought it was cool marketing for the mag to email this small ad graphic.

With the launch of the Kindle DX and a new cut of London Voodoo, I thought I’d re-publish (for the Kindle) the anthology we put together for the movie’s original UK release. And here it is:

SIDE BAR: Kindle for iPhone
Note that if you don't have a Kindle, there is a Kindle iPhone app which works really well and you can sample some of the book for free.
Download the app and sign in. Then, when on Amazon, push the content to the phone. 

Note too that you can listen free to Stepping Offby Mike Davis read by Doug "Hellraiser" Bradley by clicking here for the MP3 or here for the podcast in iTunes.

Continuing....

The biggest problem for an indie film is discovery. That is, having the audience/consumer know that you even exist!

Sure it’s a good move to build an audience early – before shooting – but after the film has been released and the initial buzz dies away it’s very difficult to maintain momentum. After all, if you have engaged an audience before the movie release, part of the thrill for the film fan is being first in the know; maybe influencing the project development in some way. With the movie out, there’s only so much evangelizing the core audience will do before they go off to find new projects.

Although the Internet and digital media has allowed many opportunities to get your work out there, just “getting it out there” doesn’t mean anyone’s searching for it and among those who are, will they find it?

Discovering new media

There are many ways people discover new books, music or films and there’s a good overview of the different systems here. I looked back at the media I’ve bought over the past month and it’s possible to see a combination of discovery methods at work from reviews to technology-assisted finds to friend recommendations. Here’s a quick summary:

• Gray’s Anatomy (book of essays by John Gray) and Nudge (audiobook, reviewed here) – discovered by my listening to the excellent podcast (radio show) Start The Week by Andrew Marr

• Tech Noir (book) – browsing book section of Forbidden Planet, London.

• Altered Carbon (audio book) – downloaded from iTunes. I actively looked for something outside the most popular titles. The synopsis read like something I might like and it had great reviews.

• The Inbetweeners (TV series) – recommended by two friends. It is hilarious. I’d guess that only a friend could have recommended this because you’d have to know about my social references and sense of humor. I’m not sure what movies or TV series in my collection would have given a clue to this… I love Gavin and Stacey, maybe that’s a clue? I doubt it though.

• The Baader Meinhof Complex (film) - good review on the Mark Kermode podcast and the kind of movie I like (political/historical/thriller)

• Let The Right One In (film) – a friend mailed the DVD from Sweden. It was also subsequently and independently recommended to me by a friend.

• Screamers (film) – recommended by Jinni (discussed more below).

• Death Cab for Cutie (music) – recommended by Pandora after I said I liked The Kooks. I’ve since bought all their back catalogue and these are now possibly one of my favourite bands in recent times; so great recommendation

• Matchbook Twenty (music) – I heard a tune in a store and used Shazam to tell me what it was. I bought the album

Looking at the above list, quite a lot of my recommendations come from friends and "curators" or what might be called "trusted sources" - many more than I would have thought actually. So while I'm about to criticize movie recommenders, don't forget the power of the social network (word of mouth) and PR.

So what’s the problem with movie recommendation systems?

Although many rave about Netflix because “there’s so much choice”, most members still continue to choose from the top ten. In fact, at a presentation by NetFlix, their man told the audience that people on all-you-can-eat subscription plans, members will watch what’s new, then the “classics”/cult films and then finally search further afield to more obscure titles. On the subscription plan, there’s no cost to trialing something new but that indie film is still at the mercy of the recommendation system. Netflix says it wants customers to find hidden movies because customers who can’t find anything to watch cancel their subscriptions. In fact, Netflix launched a competition to find a better recommendation algorithm than its current one, Cinematch. There’s an excellent article on the competition here at the New York Times.

The problem (for indie producers) is that most movie recommendation systems work on the basis of trying to match your likes and dislikes with another person (with the same or similar likes) and then assuming that if you both have the same tastes on films it knows you‘ve seen, you may also like films your doppelganger has seen but you haven’t. In the jargon this is called collaborative filtering. MovieLens works this way and Amazon works in a similar way with its “people who bought that also bought this”. This sounds like a reasonable approach but it means someone – anyone? - has to watch and/or rate your indie film for it to be discovered by others. Further, the more people that watch and rate your movie, the better chance of discovery you have. … and there’s the problem. Even with “so much choice” available, online markets are making blockbusters bigger and indie titles weaker. In fact, online recommenders are killing the niche.

Why?:

• because collaborative filters work better with more data… and where’s the most data? With the blockbusters

• even though there’s little or no overhead in selling “the long tail” it’s still in the online store’s interest to sell the most popular title.. the blockbuster

• fashions & fads and opinions on what’s cool and what’s not are being exchanged faster and wider than in the off-line world and this is actually contributing to an apparent homogenisation of taste… again, tending towards those blockbusters.

For an indication of how perilous life is going to become for the indie film business, look as usual to the music business. In an MCPS-PRS (UK music industry representing artists) study of one download site, from 13 million available tracks, 0.4% represented 80% of the revenue! This is corroborated by other studies by Nielson.

That says to me that you shouldn’t rely on technology to get discovered – especially not collaborative filtering. What we need is the film equivalent to Pandora where content is broken down to “genomes” that enables a much finer tuning and isn’t biased towards viewing figures. One such system I’ve been using is Jinni which claims to be just that. I have to say it’s pretty good. But there’s still the problem that adding a film to the database requires a human to classify or code the movie into all its genes. A solution would be to allow producers to add metadata for their films that did this codifying or to automate it – using an AI program to scan through the film and code it (probably a long way off).

If we can’t rely on technology alone, we’re left with friends (social networks) and “curators”. Curators are respected sources/reviewers: you find a film critic that likes the films you like and then trust their judgment. The problem here is that with more and more films to review, getting a well-known or respected film critic to review your film is very tough and usually impossible without a theatrical release. It’s slightly easier in the horror genre I’ve found to get reviewed because many reviewers are fans of the genre and like to find and discover new material. But even with a review, when someone is sat in their armchair ready to watch a movie, will they really go searching for reviews? No. They’ll find the film first and then check the reviews.

So what’s the bottom line for indie producers?

Don’t believe the bullshit about the long tail and how great it is for indies. With all the DVD stores closing or tending towards selling only the top tens, it’s harder than ever to get discovered.

So, if you’re going to spend advertising dollars, do it to get into a top ten. The higher you can get placed, the more likely you are to get recommended – the system is stacked in favour of the best selling titles and you need to be there. Although there are many sites that will create your DVD for you, few people will buy direct from your site - most prefering to buy for Amazon and iTunes. They're trusted and buyers already have their purchasing details stored there (credit card, shipping address etc.). So that’s where you need to be and you need to work on your sales ranking.

Social media (twitter, widgets, youtube etc.) can definitely help but social media can only work for you if there’s something social about your media. Widgets and trailers are only going to be shared and embedded if it enhances the embedder’s/sharer’s credibility – there’s got to be kudos in sharing your widget.

Don’t be a guilty pleasure and don’t be lame. Recognize that owning or recommending your movie says something about the buyer/recommender – and that “something” has to have value in that person’s social network (cool, funny, concerned). A “guilty pleasure” is a film that someone likes but is afraid to come out and say it because they know (or think they know) what popular opinion is! Helen and I love the film Armageddon but I rarely mention it in my social circles ;) You’ve got to be the film people are afraid to recommend.

Get reviewed. I’ve sent out DVD screeners to most people who ask and I’ve been active in finding cool sites that look like the sort of place our audience hangs out. The reviews help with the film’s discovery but they also give a potential buyer clues about whether they’ll like the movie or not.

Make it easy to be recommended. Provide easy URLs for your film so that if someone does want to recommend your film, it’s easy for them.

I don't very often do book reviews but I can really recommend this one. Its full title is "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness".

I want to point out upfront that I bought the audio version of the book so I didn't actually read it, I listened to it. And I bought my version from iTunes which was far cheaper (by about $10) than Audible or Amazon.

I found this book fascinating and entertaining. The first part of the book describes all the ways in which humans are fallible and how we often don't behave rationally in the way that economists would like to model our behavior. That is, our decisions and conclusions are often sub-optimal because of all kinds of bias, lazy thinking, social norms/coercion, emotions and more. It's incredibly thought-provoking and insightful and packed with tons of examples to illustrate the points.

I was only into the first chapter when I decided it was well worth the money and by the time I was half way through I thought it was one of the best books I've read... er.. listened to :)

So, given our human nature, the authors argue that care must be taken when organizing and offering choices and that public policy makers and businesses ought to "nudge" us in the right direction or at least take care not to nudge us in the wrong direction.

The second part of the book looks in detail at some pretty weighty issues such as opportunities to increase the supply of organs for transplants and improving environmentally responsible behavior. Even if examination of these issues doesn't float your boat, it's still worth buying for the first part of the book.

Music Downloads example

One of the many very interesting insights was a discussion about an experiment with music downloads. The experiment took 14,000 people and randomly signed them up to eight different "worlds" (think "online stores") in which everyone was free to download unknown songs from unknown bands. The results are interesting: songs were more likely to be downloaded the more popular they became (ok, you might expect that) but those popular songs were different across the worlds- people followed the herd and choices were heavily influenced by the first downloaders. In the control group - where nobody could see how many times a song had been downloaded - outcomes were very different. I haven't read the original study but I did find it here ;)