Week 5 EOC: The Making of Our Trick Shots Video

Our assignment for to form groups amongst ourselves, shoot a video, edit it, post it to our blog and twitter accounts, and get 5,000 hits. Ray Aronda and I decided to partner up.

Ray and I first discussed what to film, and that initially presented a stumbling block; with viral videos being so random in nature, we weren’t sure how to proceed. We took a few days, and independently researched viral marketing, watched many videos that had achieved viral status, so by our second brainstorming session, we each came to the table with ideas. We reviewed each, and decided on the Trick Shots concept as our subject matter. This would allow us to work alone, shooting videos separately, and required no other cast or crew to help us. This would streamline planning and scheduling, and allow 
us to finish on time.

We agreed on a timeline, and started shooting. I’m a novice in video. This was actually my first one, that involved any planning, editing or teamwork. Shooting proved enjoyable, as my wife was out of town, and it was a cool project to keep myself busy with. Ray soon shared his first few successful shots with me, and we went back and forth a few more times, until we’d captured enough raw footage to fill the time we needed; 1 minute. Ray did a great job on the final edit, added music from publicly licensed material on Google, and posted the finished product on YouTube. 

Not long after, we learned an intricacy of YouTube’s counter calculation, where if you reach 300 hits fairly quickly, your counter is temporarily frozen. I was alarmed when I noticed this, and it turns out Ray was on it as well, as we both looked up explanations of the phenomenon on (you guessed it) YouTube. We learned the freeze was only temporary, until an actual human can go into your web stats and verify you’re not using some browser-bot to falsely inflate your count. We learned this is because on YouTube, hits are currency. Wow. That was en eye-opener to me. I had no idea of the actual monetary value inherent to a successful video, and that might have been the most valuable lesson learned in the whole adventure. Though it was also cool to now feel able to shoot a rough video and assemble it into something specific. This is a new tool in my design arsenal that I look forward to using again soon.