The Indie Dispatch - How to Launch Your Film Career Online by John Neely Published on Oct 9, 2006 10:00 AM

Dispatches from the world of independent filmmaking.

Go West, Young Filmmaker, and Launch Your Career

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By now it should be abundantly clear to any aspiring filmmaker with a broadband connection that the web is film’s new Wild West. It’s a world where opportunities abound, careers are launched, and – if you believe the hype – the right path leads to Hollywood. New boomtowns, in the form of video sharing services, seem to crop up by the week. Meanwhile, established communities like YouTube and Google Video are rapidly filling up with viewers who’ve heard that the new video frontier is rich with new and unseen content.

Just as any new frontier draws hordes of opportunity seekers out to make their name, film’s new Wild West is filled with producers who for a myriad of reasons, believe their ticket to success lies online. The question for indie producers who see the opportunities, but have yet to make the jump from traditional distribution and marketing to the web is: what works?

In this instalment of the Indie Dispatch, I’ll analyze three strategies that have launched successful online productions, and provide some thoughts about why a few online videos make it big.

Strategy #1 - Mining the Zeitgeist

Film’s Wild West of today bears some striking resemblances to the Wild West of the past. During California’s gold rush, tens of thousands of people from around the globe flooded the Sierra foothills in the belief that anyone could make it with a little persistence and luck. Back then, the road to riches meant staking claim over a rich vein of ore, and then mining it for all it was worth. A handful of prospectors did strike it rich, but most of them were people who knew how to read the landscape for signs that gold lay in the creeks or somewhere beneath the surface.

The rules of today’s Wild West are similar. You can strike it rich – or at least reap some financial rewards – by striking a vein with the online viewing public - but your chances of success are much greater if you know the cultural landscape. In the case of online producers today, that landscape is net culture.

Among the best exemplars of previously unknown producers who have made their name mining the cultural zeitgeist are Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, the mad scientists behind the Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments videos. On June 3rd 2006, the two Maine-based producers uploaded their Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment #137 - and all hell broke loose. According to the Wall Street Journal, more than 800,000 people had seen the video by June 9th – less than a week after it was launched - qualifying Experiment #137 as a bonafide viral phenomenon. As the Diet Coke and Mentos meme proliferated around the globe, TV networks began to take notice. Before long, Grobe and Voltz were contacted by television networks and made a number of appearances, including on The Late Show with David Letterman. Bolstered by that attention, the video has now been viewed over six million times, according to the pair’s website, eepybird.com.

Experiment #137 also produced a windfall profit, thanks to the manner in which the video was deployed. Rather than posting their video to the web’s most popular video sharing services, Grobe and Voltz opted for Revver.com, which operates according to a profit sharing model. Every time someone watches a video hosted by Revver, advertisements are displayed, and the company makes a small amount of money. Revver shares that ad revenue with the makers of the video – offering a simple way for video makers to get paid. Given the massive viewer numbers generated by Experiment #137, its not surprising those pennies began to add up. By the end of June, eepybird.com reported that Revver had paid them $25,000, though information about the video’s profits were subsequently removed from the site.

Months later, the producers have managed a rare feat: turning what appeared to be a one-hit-wonder into a real gig. Grobe and Voltz now perform their Diet Coke and Mentos experiments for live audiences around the US – and as far away as Istanbul. They recently teamed up with the Blue Man Group to produce a video accompanied by the performance group’s music. And, to support their continued experimentation, they recently received “several thousand Mentos” from the candy’s manufacturer, according to their newsletter.

Before adding the “Diet Coke and Mentos model” to your set of guerrilla tactics, it's worth pausing to consider a few things: Grobe and Voltz are not amateur performers or producers. Through an eclectic career, they had participated actively in local theatre and television for years; they planned their production meticulously, and invested a lot of time and some money in it; and they knew (or learned fast) how to turn a viral product into immediate profit, and had the savvy to leverage it into ongoing work.

In other words, these guys had a sound plan, and the ability to implement it – the same qualities that are required to get any production off the ground. They also knew how to read the cultural landscape expertly, and that’s a skill that comes only with experience, brilliance, or both.

Strategy #2 - The Soapbox

Preachers and politicians used to stand on a soapbox in the town square to give them a stage from which to deliver their wisdom to the people. The simple soapbox elevated them above the crowds, providing a modest platform. Today, the web is the platform, and video blogs are a new and influential form of address.

There are many examples of folks who’ve found some level of success online. Among the first and brightest stars in the firmament of web video was Amanda Congdon, whose telegenic good looks and sassy delivery as the host of Rocketboom.com fuelled the daily video blog’s success. Each episode of Rocketboom is a short newsy digest, and Congdon served up commentary about political events, tech innovations, and pop culture trends. It's a simple format, and it worked.

Rocketboom was launched in October of 2004, and quickly became the most watched video blog on the web. Congdon departed from Rocketboom this past July; Potentially, Congdon was ousted by co-founder and majority owner Andrew Baron. She continues to release video blogs as part of her Amanda Across America series.

Congdon isn’t the only video blogger to parlay online video into a career, but any video blogger who has achieved some measure of success – from Ask a Ninja to video blogging pioneer Steve Garfield – has done so by finding a format that works, and producing a steady stream of new content. In this sense, video blogs have much in common with serial television, and other than the obvious differences – distribution method, production budget, show length, etc. – they are essentially micro-TV series.

Because new content is their life-blood, video blogs require a significant investment on the part of producers to make them work. Online, it takes a while to build an audience, so if you think video blogging is your ticket, you’d better be committed to what you’re doing. In the case of Rocketboom, Congdon and Baron were both committed enough from the start to turn the show into a daily production. The collaborators also had some skills: more than just a pretty face, Congdon graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern University, and Baron had an MFA in Design and Technology. The takeaway here is, yes, anyone can video blog, but it takes persistence and sweat to make it work.

Strategy #3 - Staging a (Soap) Opera

The latest genre of web video to garner public and media attention is a form of amateur soap opera, epitomized by the online and real-world drama of lonelygirl15, one of YouTube’s most popular posters ever. Her video’s fit squarely in the genre of serial confessional video posts, with lonelygirl15, aka “Bree,” musing about unrequited love, her admiration of Richard Feynman, and the trials and tribulations of being home-schooled by religious parents. Lonelygirl15’s personal stories struck a vein with the YouTube viewing public, no doubt aided by the fact that she’s not just attractive and vulnerable, but also geek-friendly.

As her video diary viewership swelled, savvy YouTubers noticed a few things about lonelygirl15’s video posts that made them suspect there was more to Bree then met the eye. Wikipedia’s article on lonelygirl15 lists some of the evidence that led some netizens to investigate, including:

• The website lonelygirl15.com, supposedly created by a fan, was registered in May 2006, a week or two prior to Bree actually uploading her first video.
• And A US federal trademark 78957059, for the term lonelygirl15 was filed on August 22, 2006, stating that it had been used in interstate commerce since May 24 2006. [lonelygirl15’s first YouTube post was made on June 16, 2006]

In early September 2006, lonelygirl15 was outed after an amateur investigation revealed that “Bree” was an aspiring New Zealand actress named Jessica Rose. By mid-month, just days after Jessica Rose was outed as the real/fake lonelygirl15, she and the producers – Miles Beckett, Mesh Flinders and Greg Goodfried – were swept up in a media circus that included appearances on CNN and The Tonight Show. Revver.com, host of the Diet Coke and Mentos videos now hosts to lonelygirl15.

The fictionalized confessional story of lonelygirl15 not only vaulted the makers into the spotlight – it also launched yet another model for leveraging web video into a career. According to the L.A. Times, the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) of Los Angeles, one of the film industry’s most influential talent brokers, now represents Beckett, Flinders and Goodfried. Meanwhile, the lonelygirl15 drama continues to unfold off-YouTube.

Yep, these sure are heady times on the frontier, and there are fortunes to be made for sure. But is this really the right time to heed the advice offered at the dawn of another gold rush, to “Go west young man, and grow up with the country”? The short answer is, it’s never a good idea to enter an unknown country without a plan and a few dollars in your pocket – but staying home might be an even bigger mistake.