Author: leahstern

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Where Should You Host Your Videos?

We recently conducted an (unscientific) survey of media professionals to answer the question “Does self-hosting videos on a website make them appear more professional than embedding them from a service such as YouTube or Vimeo?”  Responses fell into three major categories:

  1. “Use a video hosting service.”

    A plurality of respondants felt that there is no longer a stigma of hosting videos on external services like YouTube and Vimeo and that, in fact, using these services provided additional benefits such as ease of accessibility and avoided the undesirable characteristics of a walled garden model.  They strongly preferred service-hosted to self-hosted videos.

  2. “It doesn’t matter how you host it.”

    The second, smaller group were agnostic to the hosting method as long as it was quality content.  They asserted that the credibility stems from the creator, not the delivery mechanism.  This suggests that while the hosting of your videos may not matter, the rest of your web presence should project an air of professionalism if you want your videos to be viewed that way.

  3. “It depends.”

    The final group of media professionals felt that the circumstances mattered a good deal.  One respondant pointed out that signalling theory (as in economics or biology) applies to the degree that if an organization can waste money on self-hosting, then they are signalling economic health by showing that they have money to waste, in the same way that an opulent lobby is a signal of economic prosperity. While this might be of important to some organizations (investment banks for instance), others (such as non-profits) might be negatively impacted by the appearance of profligate spending.

    As for individuals and job seekers, the entire third group agreed that YouTube, Vimeo, and other video hosting services were perfectly acceptable solutions for portfolios of creative work.

While perceptions of self- vs service-hosting may be different outside of the media industry, it does seem that, among media professionals, there is only a percieved benefit to self-hosting in very specific cirumstances.  In general, the old adage still reigns: Content is King.  So focus your efforts on creating good content, and take advantage of the work others have put into providing ways to host it.

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What We Can Learn From P*Star

When I say “rapper”, what do you think of? Probably not a preteen girl spittin’ rhymes about how she isn’t ready for a boyfriend yet. This documentary might change that.

PStar (Photo Credit: ewphoto on Flickr)
PStar (Credit: ewphoto on Flickr)

P*Star Rising is a documentary by Gabriel Noble that follows the growth (literally) of a 9-year-old female rapper from Harlem named Priscilla Diaz, stage name: P*Star.  While I don’t know if I would have picked a name for a 9-year-old that produces google searches about the adult entertainment industry, I was instantly won over by this little girl’s wittiness and extremely apparent charisma.  The film recently premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.  Check out the trailer.

We can all learn a few things from P*Star, the artist, and Priscilla Diaz, the girl.

Connections make you or break you. P*Star wasn’t born rapping (although that would be pretty sick).  She didn’t get signed by a record label because of her musical genius.  She got signed because her father, an ex-rapper from the 80s, knew the right people.

While most of us aren’t lucky enough to be born into families with connections in the field of our choice, we can use social media to forge connections with people that will help advance our career.  Start seeking out people on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter that will provide you with an outlet for your work.  Maybe it is a museum curator, or a record producer, or an employer.  Join the communities that these people are part of and start a conversation.  Make a connection by asking questions or establish yourself as competent by answering other people’s questions.  The questions can lead to an email, the email to an interview or audition.  Most successes don’t come from luck; they come from someone saying “Hey, I know this great person you should hear about.”

You can’t do it alone. There are going to be hard times.  Really hard times.  I don’t care how strong you are, you can’t believe that you are going to make it without some support system.  Whether it is monetary or emotional support, you need someone that will always be stable, because there will be times when everything else is not.

Have an interesting story. The thing I like most about P*Star is that she has a story.  She grew up in poverty with a heroine-addicted mother and cocaine-selling father.  Her father cleaned up his act and took her in, teaching her how to rap.  She had her first gig when she was 6, was signed to a record contract at 10, and now has a leading role on PBS’s revival of The Electric Company.  Find some things, or a series of things that make people go, “Cool!”

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5 Rules for Artists Using Social Media

In my last post, you learned that no one cares how good you are if they don’t know who you are.   Social media literacy is an essential skill for all artists to master.  And by social media literacy, I don’t mean being able to create a facebook event, or tweet about your breakfast, or add friends on Myspace.  My 10-year-old cousin can do that.  I mean being able to effectively use social media to self-promote and create a lasting, active community that will continue to support you.

When using any social media tool, there are 5 important rules to follow:

  1. Don’t lead with tools, lead with relationships. You aren’t going to get anywhere by blindly twittering promotional material 20 times a day.  In fact, that’s probably a pretty good way to annoy your fans.  Instead of looking at these tools as a platform solely for spewing content, think of them as a way to get involved in the conversation of your community.  Amanda Palmer, lead singer for the Dresden Dolls, is a great example of what an artist should strive for.  In May, she made $11,000 in one night. She twittered her fellow “Losers of Friday Night” (fans who had decided not to go out on a friday), got together a group of people to hang out on the internet, chatted about stuff, made a t-shirt on the spot about the stuff they were chatting about, and sold over 400 shirts in the next few days.  That is how you harness the power of a community.
    2. Great Big Sea (Photo Credit: Cindy Funk on Flickr)
    Great Big Sea (Photo Credit: Cindy Funk on Flickr)
  2. Use tools as an aide to build community. When you are an artist, community is everything.  It is your bread and butter and if your fans are not strong and loyal, you will not survive.  You do not have to be a household name to be successful if you have a strong community.  Have you heard about Great Big Sea?  Probably not.  They are a Canadian celtic-rock band.  Last summer I went to one of their concerts and then saw the Backstreet Boys the following weekend at the same venue (don’t judge!).  Can you guess which concert was sold out and which one wasn’t?   It’s hard to believe, but a Canadian celtic-rock band actually beat the Backstreet Boys in ticket sales. Great Big Sea enjoys consistently sold out concerts because they have an active fan base that will travel thousands of miles to see them and they recognize the power of having this community.  An example: their website is titled “The Community of Great Big Sea.”
  3. Tell your story. You want to use social media to connect and engage with your audience on a personal level.  There’s an Indian Proverb that goes: “Tell me a fact, I’ll learn.  Tell me the truth and I’ll believe.  Tell me a story and it’ll live in my heart forever.”  People remember stories, so why not tell yours?  And I don’t mean a stale bio that you find on all these artists’ websites.  I mean something personal, written by you, about you, that readers will want to tell other people.  One interesting and memorable anecdote or fact makes it easier for your fans to promote you.  I can’t count how many times I’ve bragged that Lady Gaga was one of 20 applicants accepted into Tisch early decision ever.
  4. Create an incentive for users to come back. There was a Mashable post a few weeks ago about 5 great Facebook fan pages.  They all had one thing in common:  original content.  You want to make content that is not available elsewhere.  We yearn to be on the inside, getting the “exclusive sneak peek”. Make your fans feel special and give them something they can’t get anywhere else.
  5. Don’t sign yourself up for more than you can maintain. Having 8 different profiles on various media platforms won’t do any good for you unless they are all well developed and updated frequently.  If you have enough time to maintain 8 accounts, then that’s great.  However, if you are an artist, you probably are busy working on your, you know, art.  Focus your time on one or two platforms (using points 1-4).  And don’t ever hire someone to maintain your profiles.  There is nothing that will make you look more out of touch with social media.  Your fans want to connect with you, not your 20-year-old intern.  The whole point is to engage people, and you can’t do that if you are spread across eight different platforms or aren’t even using the tools.

Building community, making a personal connection, and actively engaging your audience is not only important, it is necessary to set yourself apart from everybody else. Be authentic and be yourself.

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Why Artists Need Social Media

Editor’s Note: I’m happy to welcome Devon Hopkins to Still Indie.  He is an undergraduate at a competitive liberal arts university studying social psychology and group dynamics through choreography.  He also manages and promotes an a cappella group and a dance troupe. We hope you will enjoy his insights on collaboration and the use of social media for performing artists.

This is my first blog post.  I’ve shied away from the idea in the past because of something I think all artists have: self-doubt. Because we grow up in a highly competitive atmosphere, we are constantly questioning ourselves: “Why do I deserve to do this?” and “Why should I succeed over that person?”  What I have come to realize is “Who cares?”  You probably aren’t unique, but even if you are, it doesn’t really matter.  The focus should not be on whether or not you deserve to succeed, it should be on how you can succeed with the skills that you have.  That’s where social media comes into play.

Movement (Photo Credit: Oneras on Flickr)
Movement (Photo Credit: Oneras on Flickr)

No one cares how good you are if they don’t know who you are. From a very early age, in any art form (dance in my case), we are taught that the only way to survive in the world of art is to be the best.  “Do you think people will pay to see that pirouette?!” “You think you can fill seats with that documentary?” We are constantly pushed to be the “best”, when in reality, many of the best artists fail. So You Think You Can Dance just started its 5th season and after auditioning thousands of dancers over 5 years, they are still finding exceptional talent, enough so that the show is already auditioning dancers for a 6th season in the fall.  There is an endless pool of talented artists in all fields and your job is not to be better than your peers.  Your job is to get noticed first.

Thousands of people are competing for the same success that you are. Marketing yourself effectively is about making people remember who you are in a crowd of people.  I recently got to work with a choreographer, let’s call her Anya.  After college, Anya knew that she didn’t have the years of technical training necessary to become a well-paid professional dancer, so she decided to try out choreography.  She, like dozens of other dance hopefuls moved to New York, put together a show, and invited critics and members of the dance community to view it.  She, unlike the dozens of other dance hopefuls, fed her audience food and got them drunk on cheap alcohol, convincing them it was “part of her Estonian background.”  Was it illegal?  Probably.  But by marketing herself and turning her art into an event, she enjoyed consistent rave reviews while most of her hopeful dance buddies did not.

Art is not just about creating something.  It is about effectively sharing that something with a larger community. Anya acknowledges that she is not the best dancer now, nor was she ever in high school, college, or in her graduate experience.  Yet now Anya is a very successful professor at one of the best liberal arts schools in the nation.  How?  She knew how to market herself and her works.  What Anya did to make her art look like more than just another post-modern dance piece, you can do using social media.  With all the social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, Digg, Flickr, Youtube) freely accessible, it is now your job to distinguish yourself from all the other artists doing what you do.  Independent artists and labels won half of this year’s grammy awards, due in part, no doubt, to their talent, but also to their access to and skilled use of online social resources.  It’s easier now than ever to make a name for yourself, by yourself.

“How?” you might ask. Well, that’s what I’m here to tell you.  Subscribe to Still Indie so you won’t miss my next post.

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Shorts from 48HFP:DC

Two weeks ago, we featured a series of interviews with the team leaders of three films entered in the 48 Hour Film Project in DC. Two of these films were selected for a second screening in the Best Of DC series, but all three are now available online for your viewing pleasure. The perfect distraction for a Friday afternoon. If you don’t see the clips embedded below, click through to our site.

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Trent Reznor Adds Value for a Good Cause

Stan Schroeder posted a story on Mashable today about Trent Reznor raising over $850.000 for a fan who needs a heart transplant. Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction set up a site to take donations for Eric De La Cruz and offered special gifts and access to the bands for larger donations.

Trent Reznor by bampop
Trent Reznor by bampop

Schroeder’s insights about NIN’s business model are enlightening:

“Once again, NiN prove that fans are very willing to give money (even significant amounts of money) for CDs or digital downloads, if they come with added value that seems fair to them.”

Likewise, his analysis of the mainstream music industry is biting:

“The music industry, on the other hand, has been doing exactly the opposite for years…they even tried to decrease value by introducing DRM to digital copies, which is now a scorned and widely abandoned tactic. No wonder they’re now complaining about how Internet is bad for the industry.”

Do you agree with Schroeder’s analysis?  Would you consider a similar fundraiser/giveaway?

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Introduction to Getting Your Own Website

Several people have asked me recently about setting up their own website, so I though I would consolidate my explanations here.  When you set up a website, there are several different parts to getting it up and running.  We can think of these in terms of their analogs for setting up a physical place of business.

Address

On the web, unlike in real life, your address is not tied to the physical place where you (or your files) reside.  A domain name is your address on the web.  Our domain name is stillindie.com.  You can purchase a domain name from a domain name registrar, like GoDaddy or NetFirms.  Domain names are unique, like addresses.  Only one person can own a given domain.  A domain should cost around $7/year.

There are typically three parts to a URL, the subdomain (e.g. www), the domain name itself (e.g. stillindie), and the TLD, or top-level domain (e.g com).  These three pieces are separated by periods and make up a URL (e.g. www.stillindie.com).  You can think of these as your apartment number, your street address, your city, respectively.  You chose what city to live in, then buy a unique street address, and manage the apartment numbers in your building any way you want.

A TLD is the universe from which you pick your domain name.  The most common three TLDs in the United States are .com, .net, and .org.  Generally these are thought of as commercial, network, and organizations, but there are no rules governing which one you can use.  Generally, if the domain you want is available in the .com TLD, you should pick that one.  There are many other TLDs available, if you want to go exploring, but remember that most internet users assume a website ends in .com unless you tell them otherwise.

Subdomains are governed by the owner of the domain name, so you can create any number of subdomains and point them to different places if you choose.  www.yourdomain.com might point to your website, while mail.yourdomain.com might point to your webmail interface.  Some websites will also give you a subdomain on their domain for free (e.g. http://www.webs.com/).  Be aware however, that having your own domain name is generally viewed as more professional.

To explore what domain names are available, I recommend DomainTyper, where you can see whether a domain name is available as you type it in.

Plot of Land

Just like you need a plot of land to build a house on, the physical space where you store the files that make up your website is your web host.  Some domain registrars also offer web hosting, and while the integration may be appealing, it can make it more difficult to switch if you should have problems with either in the future.  Web hosts come in a variety of flavors, but most small sites just getting started will choose shared hosting.  Shared hosting simply means the web host is using one server to host multiple sites.  This makes it less expensive.

Other options are VPS (virtual private server) or dedicated hosting (your very own private physical server).  If you don’t have a specific reason to need VPS or dedicated hosting, you should stick to shared hosting, as it will be much cheaper, and unlike in the physical world where your house is pretty much tied to its plot of land, it is very easy to move your files from one web host to another, should you decide to switch.

A couple of businesses that offer shared hosting are BlueHost and DreamHost.  Shared hosting for either of these runs about $6/month, and may require a one- or two-year contract.  While both of these companies offer unlimited bandwidth and storage space, you should check these two numbers if you choose to find a different host.  Storage  or hosting space is the equivalent of our square footage, and simply governs the amount of stuff that you can put on your web host.

Bandwidth doesn’t have a direct analog in our physical building analogy, but in talking about web hosts it is a measure of the amount of data transferred to and from your web host in a given month.  A large number of people downloading large files from your website will use a lot of bandwidth.

Once you have both a host and a domain name, you can log into your registrar’s control panel to point your domain to your new host.

Building Architecture

Now that you have an address and a plot of land, the next step is to build the house to hold your belongings.  In web terms, the architecture that holds your information is usually a CMS (content management system).  Just as different types of buildings are suitable for different kinds of businesses, different CMSs are better suited to different types of websites.

Many CMSs are open-source, which means they are free, both in the sense that your don’t pay for them, and in the sense that the way they are built (source code, or blueprints, if you will) is available publically.

There are commercial CMSs available too, but they are not necessarily better than the open-source options.  Some of the largest companies in the world use open-source CMSs to run their websites, so don’t worry about using an inferior product.  Celebrate the fact that some generous programmers volunteered their time to create great free tools for you to use.

For most small sites and blogs, I recommend WordPress.  Some web hosts can automatically install WordPress for you, and if not, it is still a fairly simple process to do in only a few minutes.  In my opinion, WordPress is one of the easiest CMSs to use.  There are numerous free plugins available to add additional functionality and free themes to change the appearance of your site.

Other open-source CMSs you might use include Joomla or Drupal.  Also, the more technically-savvy may build their own CMS using a framework such as Ruby on Rails or Django.

Merchandise

Once your building (CMS) is up and running, the last step is to move in.  Add content to your site through your CMS and check out your new website!  Tell all your friends.  Add links to your website to your profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

There are limitless possibilites for what to do next, but this is the extent of this primer.  If you have questions about anything you read here, please leave a comment and we’ll try to answer it or point you to some more comprehensive resources.  I hope you found this introduction helpful and wish you the best of luck in creating your own home on the internet.

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Interview with Amanda Hirsch

This is the third and final interview in our series talking with filmmakers who led teams in 48HFP-DC 2009. In our first two interviews we talked with Jasmine Bulin, a first time participant and Ishu Krishna, a long-time veteran. Today we bring you an interview with Amanda Hirsch of CreativeDC, who entered her team for the second time this year.

Amanda Hirsch, 48HFP-DC Team Leader
Amanda Hirsch, 48HFP-DC Team Leader

Still Indie: Amanda, how did you get involved in the 48 Hour Film Project?

Amanda Hirsch: I perform with Washington Improv Theater (WIT), and they’ve been participating in the 48 hour film project for years. The WIT community has gotten so big, though, that it doesn’t make sense for everyone to work on one film anymore, so last year, a bunch of us decided to give it a go on our own, and we had a blast, so we did it again this year.

SI: What genre were you hoping for and which one did your team draw?

AH: We were hoping for anything but “mockumentary”, and we drew “mockumentary” 🙂 As improvisors we just thought that was low hanging fruit (we play with that style of storytelling a lot on stage), and wanted to challenge ourselves to stretch a bit more. So we put it back and ended up with “surprise ending,” which was the only other genre we really didn’t want — so it goes.

SI: What story did you tell?

AH: “Happy Hour” is about a lonely, lonely guy who so longs for friendship that he convinces himself he’s friends with complete strangers, creating elaborate back-stories in his head. The “surprise” is that for the whole movie, you think these people are really his friends, and then you realize they don’t know him from Adam. We tried to play with tone to underscore the element of surprise — you think it’s an upbeat episode of Friends, and then it gets really depressing and creepy really fast (we hope).

Production Still from "Happy Hour"
Production Still from "Happy Hour"

SI: What was the biggest challenge your team faced?

AH: It’s hard to assess how effective a surprise ending is when you’ve been so close to writing, shooting and editing the “surprise.” When we watched the first rough cut, our hearts sank – the surprise didn’t have any impact. We realized it was because there wasn’t enough of a tonal shift, so we redid the voiceover. When we watched again, we all had this moment of, “Ohh, wow, that was CREEPY.” So we were pretty sure it worked. But I’ve seen it 15 or 20 times now and I just have no idea if it works or not – I can’t tell! I need some distance.

SI: What was the best moment of the weekend?

AH: There were a lot of them – having everyone get really excited and on the same page about the story on Friday night was really cool. Then getting to see our editor, Jon Reiling, work his magic – seeing how he wove in b-roll and music to really bring the story to life on-screen. And he and our other director of photography, Bryce Whittaker, got some really cool shots looking in through the window of the bar where we shot, which were pivotal to conveying this notion of a stranger looking in on something he doesn’t have, and coveting it.

SI: Will you be participating again next year?

AH: Abso-fucking-lutely!

That’s the spirit! Thanks for taking time to answer our questions Amanda and keep up the great work!  If you still think DC is just a mainstream city, stop by Amanda’s site at CreativeDC.org and find out what you’ve been missing.  If you missed our first two segments this weekend, check out Jasmine’s perspective as a first-time participant and our interview with 48HFP veteran Ishu Krishna. If you’ve got questions for Amanda’s team, leave them in the comments section below.

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Interview with Ishu Krishna

Today is our second in a series of three interviews with team leaders from last weekend’s 48 Hour Film Project in DC.  Yesterday we talked with Jasmine Bulin, a first time 48HFP participant, and today we bring you an interview with a old hand at the 48HFP game, Ishu Krishna.

[Interview edited for clarity.]

Still Indie: Ishu, how did you first get involved in the 48 Hour Film Project?

Ishu Krishna: Five years ago my friend Courtney Davis was in a 48 Hour Film and I went to watch it.  I was so impressed that I decided to do one myself the following year.  I loved the experience so much that I started doing it every year.  The last two years I did both DC and Baltimore.

SI: What genre were you hoping for this year and which one did your team draw?

IK: We were hoping for Thriller, Romance, Mockumentary, or Superhero.  We drew Thriller.

Ishu Krishna, 48HFP-DC Team Leader
Ishu Krishna, 48HFP-DC Team Leader

SI: That’s a fortunate turn of events.  What story did you tell?
IK: A man wakes up after a party and has blacked out of the events from the night before.  Things that people say and things he finds triggers memories of the night before.  He doesn’t remember what the lady he met looks like, so each vignette in the flashback is played by another woman.  Eventually he regains memory of what happened the night before, and the ending is very thrilling.

SI: During filming, what was the biggest challenge your team faced?

IK: An ambitious shoot schedule with 4 locations all over Virginia and DC.  During the export of the edit we started downconverting to Standard-Definition from High-Definition as per regulations listed on the website.  After we finished it ended up being 10gb.  Too big for a DVD.  I quickly tried to burn it onto a dvd and it burned in like 3 minutes. I am pretty sure I burned the wrong thing.

After we got there we found out that 48HFP-DC accepts HD entries.  We would have been able to view the product to see if it output correctly, had we known.  They also said no one was allowed to render in line.  We had rendered hours ago, and were exporting in the Subway a couple of doors down.  Other people were exporting in line.  If only we had done that too, we would have had more time to spare.  If by a miracle, my DVD is good, we’ll be on time.  Just in case it’s wrong, I dropped off a backup with Nicole, the festival editor, to be counted as a late film.   If it is a late entry, we are hoping for the Audience Award and to make it to the “Best-Of”.

SI: What was your favorite part of the weekend?

IK: The final product and the synergy of the group.  Everyone just worked really well together.  The concept came together pretty quickly.  We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about many ideas.  We picked one and went with it.

SI: Will you be participating again next year?

IK: Why yes of course!  It was a very fun experience and I love doing something artsy in DC, since we lack that scene here.  The people are great and the reward is even better: A finished film.  We don’t have to sit around with our friends just talking about making a movie.  We actually get to make one.
 
Thanks Ishu for sharing your experience with our readers and best of luck making it to the “Best-Of”!   Check out videos from Ishu’s team Writing Meeting on YouTube. Please send us your questions for Ishu or her team in the comment section below.

If you missed yesterday’s interview, check out Jasmine’s perspective as a first-time participant. Check back tomorrow to read our interview with a team leader, and local arts-scene maven, who entered her team for the second time this year.