Thursday, September 25, 2008
Why Do Some People Get Millions of Video Views?
Over the last two weeks I've been traveling to meetings, events, pitches and consulting gigs in New York for the New York Television Fest, Las Vegas for Blogworld, San Francisco This Week In Media and a VIP Tour of Pixelcorps, San Jose for Streaming Media West, Emeryville for a VIP tour of Tubemogul and back to Los Angeles. 10 days on the road can make you really tired but not tired enough to miss TubeFilter's Hollywood Web Television Meet Up last night at the American Film Institute.
The TF boys rounded up the First Couple of online video Kim Evey and Greg Benson of Mediocre Films and one of Digital Hollywood's biggest power brokers George Ruiz of ICM for an intimate night of Q & A about making a living in online video.
Kim Evey and Greg Benson have a pretty impressive list of online video projects they have worked on:
Retarded Policeman
Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show
Two Hot Girls in the Shower
The Guild
Greg Hits Hollywood
Phone Call to God
Why are Kim and Greg getting millions of views?
Well in my opinion it's pretty simple. They have talent. They have lots of talent and their videos contain the secret ingredients of viral video success.
What are the secret ingredients of online viral videos?
1TimStreet's 5 Secret Ingredients of Viral Video Success:
1. Don't Suck
2. Move Two or More Human Emotions
3. Have Spectacle
4. Have Story
5. Have Talent
DON'T SUCK
Sure it's easy for me to say that but sometimes it's hard to understand if your videos suck. People don't want to admit they have an ugly baby and people that know you aren't going to tell you that your child could cause someone to gag choke and die.
I know that the little videos that I shoot for my blog aren't going to get millions of views because to most people they suck but I also know that to a small group of people who read my blog and watch my little videos the information on my blog videos is way more important than the episodes of French Maid TV that I create that get millions of views. I also know that even if I spent a lot of time and money lighting, shooting and editing my little interview videos I would never see a return on that investment.
MOVE TWO OR MORE HUMAN EMOTIONS
Examine any viral video and depending on who you are you will find that it moves two or more human emotions. What are those emotions?
The Primary Emotions are:
Love
Joy
Surprise
Anger
Sadness
Fear
Combining any two or more of them will get you views.
You are so full of crap Tim. There are no emotions in French Maid TV.
Sure there are, Lust is a sub-emotion of Love and Humor is a sub-emotion of Joy. French Maid TV is funny and sexy. There are however other people who find French Maid TV surprising. Some are full of anger, sadness or fear when they see sexy women dressed as French Maids explaining products and services to young men for money. C'est la vie.
HAVE SPECTACLE
I written before about how according to Hollywood screenplay guru Robert McKee, when ever there is an advance in entertainment "spectacle" comes first then "story." So go use the search box and to find some ideas for a great spectacle that will fit into your online video because you are still going to need spectacle if you want to get millions of views of your Internet video.
HAVE STORY
We are slowly moving into "story" in the evolution of online video as a form of entertainment and if you want your online video to have shelf life make sure it has a story element to it. Two years from now fewer and fewer people will be watching the Star Wars Kid on a daily basis.
HAVE TALENT
I can give you these secret ingredients but you may just not know how to cook. You may not have the talent or the vision to see what emotions are in a script when you read it. There are people that are tone deaf and I think there are also people who can't hear or see when something just "works" or doesn't work. Talented people have little voices that tell them when something "works" or doesn't work. Talented people know when they need to do better.
Being able to create something from nothing, building onto something and making it better or knowing when something sucks and having ideas on how to fix something when it sucks is talent. If you want to have millions of views of your videos you must have talent.
If you don't have talent you can always hire it.
For Sponsorship Opportunities or Online Viral Video Advisory Services Contact 1timstreet at gmail.com
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4 comments:
You need to host your own conference... you're the only one I want to hear speak at this moment.
Thanks Casey.
You are too nice to me.
I am thinking about having a dinner where I invite my list of Online Video Leaders and I get to ask them the questions I want to ask them in front of an audience.
This is a great blog post with some sound advice. Thanks for sharing. I almost posted a link to my own webseries but that would cheapen my praise for both of us :)
Plus - are Kim and Greg as charming in person as they appear to be?
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