Where Do You Cast Your Online Videos?

Movie Studios and TV Networks hire production companies and those production companies pay casting directors thousands of dollars to use casting facilities where actors come in to audition for movies and TV shows.

Well, online videos only cost thousands of dollars - some even less. Where can you cast your online videos so that you don't look like some sleazy producer with a casting couch in your apartment?

If you're in Hollywood you can give the guys at CAZT a call or email and see if they have time available in their casting facility for FREE. That's right I said FREE. I'm using them now to cast new episodes of French Maid TV. Check out the above video for the deets.

CAZT enables casting directors, producers and directors to securely view audition videos online. CAZT profiles allow actors the opportunity to showcase their talent to casting directors, producers and director. AND with a CAZT premium membership (this is how they make their money) actors can watch their own audition video(s), read private feedback from the casting director, and post a "re-take" directly to the screen the casting director, producers and director use.

The CAZT model is different but it is allowing actors additional marketing opportunities that didn't exist before. It will be interesting to see how this works out and it it becomes a standard.

If you don't live in the Los Angeles area you might think about striking deals with local bars or churches that are closed during the day or offices with conference rooms that are closed at night.

Some people are even using the Internet and live webcams to audition people.

Where do you cast your online videos?

IHollywood Forum at the Roosevelt

So I'm out of the office today at the iHollywood Forum at the Roosevelt in Hollywood and the morning is filled with research and stats. Not my favorite thing about online video but hey someone's gotta do it.

There's talk about triggers in change of behavior and how the digital TV switch of next year will be a mover in that and some rumblings about the choking or throttling of bandwidth.

Charlene Li Principle Analyst for Forester and co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies talked about Kevin Rose and the whole HD-DVD Processing Key Social Networking. She said once you put something on the internet you can't take it back, "It's like trying to get pee out of a swimming pool."

Charlene also talked about Comcast and how the Comcast brand has been damaged by online social networking and how fans of Jericho sent 20,000 tons of peanuts to CBS to bring the fans back. It was a real recent history refresher course.

It's not about marketing anymore. It's about conversational marketing. Marketing is one way - yelling. There is no conversation.

How do you get the word out about your online video series?

So you've created an online video series and it's awesome. Your friends love it. Your cast loves it. Your Mom loves it (Don't forget to find some good gifts for Mothers' Day May 11th). And more importantly, you love it.

Now what?

What plan do you have for getting the word out about your new video?

"Oh, I'll just upload it to YouTube and I'll be famous"

Right.

That's like, "I'll just make an Independent Film and get it into Sundance and I'll be rich."

Yep.

Do you have a blog?

Do you have your own website?

Are you an active member of a Yahoo Group?

Do you have thousands of Twitter or Facebook friends?

Do you have one friend who has all these things?

What are you doing to build your word of mouth marketing network and more importantly what marketing tools are you creating?

Studios and TV Networks finance productions or acquire content and then licenses that content to other distribution channels or send it down their own. They also provide marketing and publicity for their library of content.

Studios and TV NETWORKS market first to the industry and then to consumers.

Every May the Cable and Network TV companies converge on New York and rent out big theaters and halls like Carnegie Hall to hold events that they call "Upfronts."

These conferences are an opportunity for networks to get advertisers and media buyers emotionally excited about current and new shows so that they will spend billions of dollars in advertising.

Each new show will have a new trailer cut for it so that advertisers don't have to watch the whole thirty minute show to decide if they want to buy the advertising inventory. That upfront trailer will then be shown to the packed theater. Sometimes the stars of the show will come out on stage and say a word or two. Occasionally with older shows a heart tugging recap reel will be put together and played for the theater of advertisers to remind them of all the great programming the TV Nework has done. Here's one of those from 2004:



This year, the TV Networks will be presenting online video content to advertisers with the same emotionally compelling creative marketing tools that they have used in television to go after advertising dollars for the web.

What marketing tools have you put together to go after advertising?

If you don't have any marketing tools, you better start thinking about creating some because just having a great video that you believe in and your friends and mom like doesn't mean an advertiser is going to watch it. They don't even watch the TV shows they buy advertising on - even if they have big stars. Why would they waist their time watching your online video series?



If you have any links to your marketing tools or know of some good marketing presentations for other online videos please post some links in the comments of this post.

What Questions Should You Ask an Online Video Portal?

If someone emails or calls you and tells you they love your videos and want them on their site what questions should you ask them?

Here are Tim Street's 7 questions you should ask an online video portal:

1. Do you have a way I can make money if I give you my videos?

2. Do you have advertisers on your site?

3. Do you have a rev share deal?

4. Do you have a licensing deal?

5. How much do you pay and how often do you pay?

6. Do you have a control panel where I can login and see my revenue?

7. Do you have other producers that have already paid money that I could speak with?

If they have trouble answering these 7 questions be very careful about placing your videos on their site.

Marketing with Outtakes - Cameron Diaz and Aston Kutcher Drunk

This is supposed to be an "outtake" from the movie What Happens in Vegas, which comes out next weekend is climbing the online video charts today.

It looks as if the footage is "leaked" or "stolen" by leaving timecodes windows on the footage but it seems to me that there has been some editing done and sound FX added to the footage.

My guess is that the movie studio marketing team has tried to make it appear this way in order to have the video go viral.

It will be interesting to see how well this clip does as getting people's butts into the theater seats.

About the movie:

Two strangers (Cameron Diaz and Aston Kutcher) awaken together to discover they've gotten married following a night of debauchery in Sin City, and one of them has won a huge jackpot after playing the other's quarter. The newlyweds devise ever-escalating schemes to undermine each other and get their hands on the money -- only to find themselves falling in love amid the mutual backstabbing.

What Would You Say To CEOs?

Kent Nichols of Ask A Ninja twittered, "I need your input" and posted a link to a new blog entry where he asks for help as to what he should say about small media to a bunch of CEO's at an upcoming conference.

Here's my comment to his post:

I think I would find a correlation between small media and the word processor or some other tool of democratization and show how CEOs have benefited from previous revolutions and project how they might be able to benefit from this one.

Last night I had drinks with a music producer who has produced over 150 albums for many artists that you have heard of and he was telling me about the music industry when he started producing back in the 1960's at the age of 16. The stories he told about that time made me think of our online video community now and about the time of Ernest Hemingway's A Movable Feast in the 1920's.

The revolutions of the 20's and 60's changed the way people used their artistic voice to write books and write music that had passion and that passion changed those market places to the benefit of corporations.

Once corporations got involved and tried to replicate the passion of the artists with the skill of trained craftsmen the "soul" of the artist's message was lost and the mediums took dives.

As online video creators we now have the opportunity to spill our passion to a global audience with no one standing in our way and it's all thanks to the tools that corporations and individuals have created to use on this thing we call the Internet.

You can ignore it. You can pretend that it is just a fad but as I sit on the couch of my living room and pound out these words using technologies that CEO's approved and sent to market I know that my words will reach 100's of people maybe 1000's and my words will effect people in a way that will bring about change. Maybe these words will inspire some new online video that will lead to something new, something exciting, something passionate and something meaningful...and I'm not talking about a new episode of French Maid TV. I'm talking about something artistic and truly meaningful.

As an artist I've been sitting on my hands waiting, waiting for all the tools to be in place to be able to create and make a living off my art. For me French Maid TV has just been a test in spectacle but now I feel we are at the point that we can tell stories online and monetize them.

I think the new stories that we produce will lead us to new formats and new creative ways of telling stories that use technologies like Twitter, IM, SMS and Video Chat to entertain in ways not possible on traditional TV or DVD.

We are now entering a new age of emotionally engaging interactive entertainment and the CEO's will have much from which to benefit.