Thanks to Dr. Acton and everyone at Cary Family Dental.

The gang at Vision Park in Raleigh invited us to an eye wear trunk show. We saw the latest trends from OGI and JeeVice. We even had cupcakes with lemonade icing.

Special thanks to Elizabeth from Vision Park and Michele from the blog One Chic Mama.

The commercial was shot entirely on mini DV and edited in Final Cut Express.

Credits:

Director & Editor: Hal Goodtree
Media: Leslie Huffman
Music: Fool With Time

Thanks to:

Julie Hendricks
Mary Beth
Ashley
Dana
Emily

The spot is now running on What Not to Wear and elsewhere on Time Warner Cable in the Raleigh area.

Thanks to:

Wick Morgan
The Spectacle
Raleigh, NC

Brands in this episode:

Rayban
Persol
Barton Perriera
Paul Smith
Blind
Kieselstein Cord
Chrome Hearts

Music by:

Fool with Time

©2009 Goodtree & Co. Inc. All rights reserved.

• there are 2 billion Google searches a day (source)
• there are 78 million YouTube videos online (source)
• over 100 million YouTube videos are viewed per day
• 346 million people globally read Blogs daily (source)
• 77% of active internet users read Blogs
• Facebook has 175 million users from 170 countries (source)
• Facebook users have an average of 120 friends
• the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users are 35 years old & older

The old economy may be drying up, but the new economy is awash in opportunities. Need a lifeboat? Give us call.

From a viral Trader Joe’s ad that’s had 340,000 views on YouTube to TateShots from the venerable British museum, people are watching TV in a new way.

It’s true: they watch it on their iPhones and on their PCs. They watch at the airport, at a soccer game and at work. Television has become portable, and people watch it when they have a free minute, wherever they might be.

But new channels of distribution aren’t the whole story. A new class of producers is filling the void as the networks stumble and broadcast audiences erode.

Consumer cameras shoot hi-def. Video editing software costs a couple of hundred bucks and runs on budget laptops. And the technology has been around long enough that some people are learning how to use it pretty darn effectively.

We decided to enter the fray with a new show of our own: StreetStyleTV. It’s a quick hit of fashion, fresh off the street, real people wearing real cloths.

We were inspired by streetstyle photoblogs like The Sartorialist and Garance Dore. This is a similar idea, but on video.

We’ve started a website too: StreetStyleTV.com

It’s a WordPress site with a special theme designed for video. The theme, TV.Elements by Press75, ingeniously breaks a post into media and text elements. Take a look at how we deployed it.

The new television is already changing the way we watch. Soon, it will be changing the way we think and feel and act.

In our new video for Luxe Apothecary, a lot of techniques we’d explored came together in one perfect No-Budget Video (NBV) project. Our experience may be a model for others and has already inspired interesting discussions and new assignments.

The development of an effective No-Budget technique can bring television-quality web video to businesses and content producers of all sizes. Here’s what we learned.

RULE #1

You don’t need a crew and a lot of fancy gear to make quality web video. Here is the single most important technique:

Edit video and sound separately

Lots of inexpensive desktop editing programs provide this capability. For the Mac, we like Final Cut. Perhaps readers can share some favorite programs for the PC.

Once you are free from the tyranny of the soundtrack that is recorded when you are shooting, the whole world of filmic communication opens up to you.

SCRIPT

Even though you have no gear and no crew (and presumably no writer or producer) it does not pay to wing it. We script every project. Here are two useful structures for No-Budget Video:

INTERVIEWER TECHNIQUE

Interviews can be about discovery or they can be a vehicle for a marketing message (i.e. a testimonial). Either way, write out a list of questions.

• • If discovery: what do you want to learn?
  • If marketing: what can you ask that will motivate an appropriate answer?
  • Technique: always have the subject look at the interviewer, not the camera

Here’s an example of discovery that Hal produced for the National Football League. Players and fans were asked to name their “Recipes for Success” during the NFL season.

Here’s an example of the marketing technique in an interview:

Both examples used questions to motivate the subjects on camera. The first cost about $100,000 to produce. The second cost less than $1000.

NARRATOR TECHNIQUE

Another great technique for NBV is narrator-driven. The formula is very easy to shoot:

• • Introduce the narrator on camera
  • Use the narrator’s voice under a series of illustrative shots
  • Close with the narrator once again on camera

Here’s our video for Luxe, an example of the narrator technique:

Gear & Crew for the Luxe shoot:

• Camera - Canon 800 miniDV (costs about $250 new if you can still find it)
• Lights - None
• Crew - Just the director
• Editing - Final Cut Express on a laptop

Time - 1.5 hours to shoot; approx 4 hours to edit

PLANNING

Before you start shooting, look at the script and make a list of the shots you need. Plan a couple of backgrounds for your opening and closing titles. Make a thumbnail schedule of how long each shot should take to get.

SHOOTING

Here are a few basic guidelines to getting good results:

• Keep it simple - no fancy camera moves or zooms
• Get a wide establishing shot
• Tell the story in a series close-ups
• Use a mic if you can for important dialogue or narration
• Use available light if it is soft and indirect
• Get what you need, but don’t overshoot

EDITING

Lastly, a few conventions and helpful hints about editing.

Duration - Keep it short. Two minutes is a lot of time to fill.

Selects - when you load your video into your editing program, slice the raw footage up into “selects” or shorter clips. Label each piece descriptively, for example “Intro, Take 1.”

Grab the Main Pieces - You know you’lll have an intro and an ending. Drop those into place on the timeline. Look at your main selects again. Choose the best two or three clips in the project. Fit those on the timeline. Fill in and build your story.

Titles - Text on screen forms an important part of the message, but don’t overdo it. No one likes to read TV.

Wipes, Flips & Dissolves - Don’t use fancy transition devices like mosaic wipes and flips and cube rolls. It distracts from the message. Use a fade up in the beginning, cuts throughout the body and a fade out at the end. Dissolves are used to connect two same-sized shots or to communicate passage of time.

MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT NO-BUDGET VIDEO?

Are you producing No-Budget Video? Do you have an idea for your business but don’t know how to get it done? Drop us a note.

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Hal Goodtree's work has been honored with a Cannes Lion and Emmy®.

Credits:

• Fiquet, Luxe Apothecary
• Kristin Murray
• Production by Goodtree & Co.

Thanks to:

• North Hills
• North Hills Buzz

Thanks also to our friends at North Hills and, of course, to Fiquet of Luxe Apothecary.

We’ll post our own story about the video shortly: How to make quality TV with a home video camcorder and a mic from yoor band.

The term “social marketing” dates from the 1970’s and originally defined a concept of using marketing for social good. Today, social marketing means employing user-generated channels on the internet to achieve business goals like reaching a broader audience and motivating action.

Social Marketing Channels

Here’s a quick run down of some popular social networks and how businesses are using them as marketing channels:

Facebook - Businesses can create pages, groups and ads. The FB platform is 5 years old and boasts 1 in 5 internet users worldwide.

Twitter - Sometimes called “microblogging,” messages are no more than 140 characters in length and often contain links to more content. Great tool for a real-time interaction with your audience.

LinkedIn - This portal is all about business and networking. Its social tools are still pretty basic, but users can start groups, republish blogs, post status and employ several other useful features.

ActiveRain - A huge community of real estate professionals. Vibrant blogging community.

Flickr - Popular site for serious photographers (amateur and professional). Millions of users. Flickr is both a utility (a convenient way to serve pictures elsewhere on the web) and a social community.

Ning - Build your own social portal. Works well for niche categories.

YouTube - like, Flickr, YouTube is both a utility and a community. YouTube videos can have a profound effect on search results, catapulting your business to the top of page one.

Delicious - Social bookmarking is a way to share collections of links. See an example of how we use this for Julie Roland Realtor.

Blogs - A huge audience gets news and information from blogs, often without knowing it. Blogs provide businesses with a low-cost personal publishing platform that can accomodate text, pictures, video, links and comments. Blogs are easily shared and republished, making them a powerful social marketing platform.

Viral for the Masses

One of the key attributes of the new social media landscape is the opportunity to launch viral marketing initiatives. “Viral” simply means that you are relying upon your audience to circulate your message.

Where viral happened in the past, it was either carefully engineered or largely by accident. Viral marketing remained a small business.

But social channels including Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook all contain built-in features that allow anyone, anytime to start something viral. Example:

• “Share a link” on Facebook
• Retweets on Twitter
• Status messages on LinkedIn

What’s better than getting your audience to circulate your message?

Promote Engagement

Social media, which include blogs, promote engagement between marketers and the audience. It’s important to open up all the potential avenues (while protecting yourself from spam, of course). Make it easy for people to comment, share or email your content.

When people take the opportunity to interact with your brand, they are more likely to return, remember and purchase.

The keys to promoting social engagement:

• Real people, real names - audiences respond best to real people using their real names. “info@…” doesn’t cut it in social media.
• Many channels - it’s easy to share your content across many social marketing channels. Enter it once, it appears everywhere. In social marketing, you have to go where your audience congregates, not expect them find you on your outpost in cyberspace.

Those are just a few of the most popular ways businesses are using social marketing. We’d love to hear how you use social marketing to advance your message. Comment here or drop us a note.

• Producer: Hal Goodtree
• Director: Neil Tardio, Jr.
• Production Co: Bedford Falls
• CD/Art Director: Ron Thomson
• CD/Writer: Tom Daniels
• Agency: Siquis
• Music: tomandandy

We decided to look at the stats.

YouTube has a feature called Insights where you can see daily views, demographics and location data for your videos.

What did we learn? Well, 72% of our audience is male; the largest group is 45-54 year olds. YouTube Insights has a long way to go to become a truly useful statistical tool.

“Department of Babies” (Cannes Lion winner) is the most popular spot followed by “Warren Sapp” for the NFL (above).

Thanks to everyone for viewing our YouTube channel!

Producer: Hal Goodtree
Director: Kevin Smith
Art Direction: Scott Skaggs

From start-ups to superstars in five years, social networking on the internet has swept across the planet, embracing the youngest users (teens) and washing upward like a tide. The tide has finally reached the baby boomers.

Last year, adults started watching YouTube in large numbers. This year, Facebook has surged since it opened it’s ranks to everyone. And Linked In, which was always about business, has added some significant new features that will advance it strongly into the future.

Every business has a story to tell and web video is the most powerful, persuasive way to tell it. YouTube is far and away the preeminent channel for serving and sharing video online.

It started as a network for students. It’s had its share of controversy. But in 2008, adults have been joining Facebook in a stampede. Reasons why FB is a must-have for business:

1. More wholesome than MySpace - FB feels like a giant picnic for family and friends. MySpace feels like a bar.
2. Real Names, Real Friends - With its emphasis on real names, FB lets you re-connect with your real-world friends, relatives and colleagues. These are people who already know you and trust you.

While not as mature as the first two, Linked In has become a very popular network for renewing business connections. It’s skewed toward people with longer careers - they tend to have more connections, recommendations and better resumes than younger workers. Today, LI rolled out some huge new enhancements to Linked In Groups. More about LI’s new features next week.

Participating in social networks increases the reach of your personal and professional message. It raises your rankings in search. But it’s also a time consuming process.

That’s why it’s good to see the dust settle a little, and three networks emerge as clear winners for business. Other portals have their charms, but people in business need to be on The Big Three In to stay relevant in a Web 2.0 world.

Hetal Gordon and Tonia Lipscomb from Google covered two broad topics - AdWords and content networks like YouTube. The information was flowing fast and furious, but here are a few interesting items we managed to capture:

• 100 Billion - the number of search queries Google gets in a year.
• 8 Seconds - how long it takes for a viewer to decide whether or not to stay on your site.
• Time of Day - using Google Analytics, you can see precisely when people are spending the most time on your site and adjust an AdWords campaign to maximize this window of opportunity.
• “Feed what’s Working” - Google’s advice about keywords. In a nutshell, when you create an AdWords campaign, focus on what gets the most clicks .
• Google Trends - this is part of the Google Labs suite (it’s a beta product). See what key words and phrases are moving web traffic and adjust your approach accordingly.
• The World’s Largest Focus Group - with Analytics, that’s certainly one way to look at Google.
• 54 Percent - that’s the percentage of people 18-54 who use YouTube. Pork & Beans, anyone?
• Meta Tags Still Matter - So many websites don’t use meta tags, and so many people claim that they don’t matter, I just had to ask the folks from Google: are meta tags obsolete? Answer: Yeah, totally obsolete. Unless you want the search engines to find you.

Thanks to the crew at TIMA and Google for the great seminar!

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* Pictured above (L–>R): Laura St. Onge (TIMA), Louise Gordon (TIMA), Tonia Lipscomb (Google), Hetal Gordon (Google) and Amy Boaz (TIMA).

In this new spot for Upstate Carolina Radiology, one boy tells the other “My Mom’s a Radiologist.”

“What’s that?” ask his friend.

“I don’t know,” the first kid says with a shrug.

But it turns out that radiology is fascinating - it has the ability to see inside the human body. In “My Mom,” radiologists explain what they do - screen women for breast cancer using digital mammography, open arteries to the brain, kill cancer.

The new spot is currently airing on Lifetime, Food Network and HGTV. You can also see it on YouTube.

Special thanks to the doctors, nurses and staff at Upstate Carolina Radiology, St. Francis Bon Secours Hospital and Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.

Credits:

• Director of Photography: Kenneth Wilson
• Gaffer: Randy Whiteland
• Key Grip: Steve Cabinum
• Sound: Sid Williams
• Stylist: Lorrie Hobler
• Editor: Joshua Steadman
• Writer/Director: Hal Goodtre

In this spot, the mission is to explain endoscopic laser ablation. That’s a procedure to treat varicose veins without traditional surgery. With an incision the size of a pencil tip, special doctors called Interventional Radiologists operate from inside your veins while observing the procedure with x-rays.

How to bake a little charm into the message? And how to get the actress (Kerry Murphy) to wash my pickup truck? See the spot on YouTube and find out.

Also airing on Lifetime, Food Network and HGTV.

Special thanks to my friends at Southern Vascular Institute.

Credits:

• Director of Photography: Kenneth Wilson
• Gaffer: Randy Whiteland
• Key Grip: Steve Cabinum
• Sound: Sid Williams
• Stylist: Lorrie Hobler
• Editor: Joshua Steadman
• Writer/Director: Hal Goodtree