YouTube

One of the big things that I got to help participate in was creating a short video to use on youtube. Our main objective was to get my main boss more into the public eye. We wanted her to become a host on a show on QVC and in order to get the job, you have to send in a two-minute clip of you to show your on-air quality. We decided that we could hit two birds with one stone by just creating a video for both the QVC application and to post on youtube, which was our latest idea.
Youtube is a place that anyone can put anything. It is free and it gets tons of hits everyday, so promoting our business on the site seemed very logical. In order to cut costs we enlisted the help of a student at a nearby film school (and of course we didn't pay her -- interns don't get paid. period. I'll get into that rant in a later blog...). So we shot the video with the idea to create a short version to send to QVC and a longer 8-9 minute video to be aired on youtube. We had the idea that we could create a bi-monthly segment that we would air on the website.
The summer was spent planning for this and towards the end we finally got the finished QVC video. It looked really good, and I was really excited to see it posted on youtube and to hopefully see my boss someday on QVC. But alas, I searched for the company on youtube just the other day and found nothing... maybe they are still working on it, but I'm guessing that along with many other great ideas, it got shoved to the back-burner so they could focus on another great idea.
But I thought posting on youtube was an inexpensive, ingenious idea and I would suggest people think of that as an alternative way to reach the public. But beware -- you must be original and creative when making your video or you will be left in the dust. People go to the site to be entertained, so you must find a way to keep your audience's attention.
Think about that, and if you know of any aspiring filmmakers, perhaps you can get them to do a little something for you before they become great :) It could happen.