Vlog and Make Money – The Ninja Way

Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine (aka Ask A Ninja) gave a great session about their views on how to create a successful vlog. The session, called 45 minutes film school (a homage to Robert Rodriguez‘s 10 minutes film school, a fact that made me an immediate fan of the guys behind the black uniform), took place in IDC’s blogference, earlier this week.

The Ninjas gave many tips, but here are the ones I found most important:

Organize your operation early – create a legal entity, and divide responsibilities in your team

List what you stop doing as soon as you have the money to do that (did anyone say editing?). This list will make you happier in rainy days

Clearly define your audience and resources. when you have a big idea, amazing concept, always keep in mind what are your real abilities – including time, technical resources, money and such.

Audio is more important than video. People will see a crappy video with great sound, but not the other way around.

Shoot quickly, as much as you can in one session

And, the most interesting thing for me, was their approach to their site. Ask A Ninja started early with their site, and drove as much traffic possible to their homepage. There is an opposite view, that you should push your video everywhere you can in order to get noticed. I wonder if the homepage centric strategy will work well with less viral content.

Thanks Ninjas for a great session! – A rare picture of a Ninja – A look that can kill – Future Ninjas?

Technorati Tags: ask a ninja, blogference, Kent Nichols, Douglas Sarine, Robert Rodriguez, 10 minutes film school

What Old Media Can Learn from New Media Creators

The guys behind Something To Be Desired (STBD), Galacticast, and other great shows have one thing in common – they know how to create high quality content on the cheap. Most of them are not making a dime of their work. This is not their fault – it is a market that needs to mature. But still, they create great content in micro budgets.

How can STBD make a show for fraction of the cost of a regular TV show?

First of all they have one camera. Unbelievable, right? With smart editing they manage to make it look as if there are at least two cameras on set. Second, all their actors are volunteers. So, right, it is harder to do it for a long period with professional actors, but it is a creative way to do things. Third, they don’t have separate guys for editing, directing, sound, lighting, and overall production responsibility. It is all the same guy with the T-shirt. And fourth, their actors are involved in the script writing. Now compare that with the set of Studio 60….

As we all know, the world of television is changing. It is harder to get high rating for shows that are not event based. This viewership fragmentation reduces the economic value of single productions, and in time force old media producers to cut their budgets. So if there is one thing the old media guys can learn from these new energetic creators is how, with some creativity, to do things much cheaper than in the regular let’s-have-a-battalion-of-people-on-the-set-cause-everyone-does-one-thing approach.

This is not new. Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for 7000$, using the same concepts. Did it change the movie industry? No. but I am certain that when gross revenues will drop, the Hollywood guys will wake up. TV industry can do it now.

Somehow, I don’t believe it will happen…