Man on a Mission, Dial’s documentary following gaming millionaire Richard Garriott pioneering private space travel in a quest to become the first second-generation astronaut, won Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival.

If you are interested in the future of digital video distribution and its impact on filmmaking, this AFS event is right up your alley:

Distribution continues to be an evolving beast. With the advent of streaming Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant and cable VOD, there are so many new options for audiences to access movies. We’ve invited three filmmakers who have gone down the digital distribution rabbit hole and are ready to discuss the experience.

Join us and panelists John Bryant (THE OVERBROOK BROTHERS), Bob Byington (SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME), and Brady Dial (MAN ON A MISSION) on Thursday May 3rd at 7 PM at the AFS Screening Room at Austin Studios (1910 E 51st St). Moviemaker Dialogues are FREE with your Filmmaker or higher level members, $5 for AFS Members and $10 for the general public.

-AustinFilmSociety.org

Date: May 3, 2012 at 7 PM

Location: Austin Studios Screening Room - 1901 E. 51st Street

Fees: Free to Austin Film Society Filmmaker or higher level members / $5 for AFS Members / $10 for General Public

Register Here

Caine’s arcade is a video about a young boy who built a mini-arcade out of cardboard boxes and supplies around his Fathers used auto parts store in East LA. After a local filmmaker becomes his first customer and decides to tell the world about him, Caine’s inspiring story has become a viral sensation.

In this case, the documentary had a somewhat controlled outcome. The filmmaker created the story arc using the flashmob event. Even though the video relies on unscripted interviews to deliver the information, the film still successfully integrates all of the essential elements that make a great story.

Story Elements in Caine’s Arcade:

Character: We are introduced to a 9 year old boy named Caine, who spends his summer building an arcade game out of cardboard boxes collected from his fathers auto parts store. We learn about his amazing cardboard game creations, attention to detail and general small business savvy. His ingenuity and resourcefulness connects with the audience.

Setting: We learn that Caine’s Arcade is located in his father’s used auto parts business in East Los Angeles. We see his makeshift office, tokens, homemade business cards, t-shirt, and learn of the coveted “Fun Pass” which entitles the lucky holder to a whopping 500 plays. Caine’s unique creations and systems offer a visual feast of cardboard gaming goodness.

Conflict: Even though Caine has put everything into his arcade, he has no customers. Because of the location of his Dad’s used auto parts business, walk-up traffic is non-existent. We watch as Caine sits in front of the store, dutifully working the traffic with his best pitch, only to be passed by. We learn that even the kids at school don’t even respect his effort. At this point, the audience begins to sympathize with Caine. It would be a tragedy for his hard work to go unnoticed.

Plot & Rising Action: Filmmaker Nirvan Mullick stumbled upon Caine’s arcade whille searching for a door handle for his ’96 Corrola. He is so impressed with the operation and baffled that the world may never see and appreciate this amazing effort, that he decides to throw a surprise “flashmob” party to get Caine a few more customers. His father doubts that many people will show up to a little auto parts store in East LA for this. Will people appreciate it enough to show?

Climax: We watches as Mullick promotes the event online and it becomes viral. The audience is suspended in the action as they watch Caine’s face brighten when approaches his arcade buzzing with hundreds of fans. The story peaks as Caine realizes that customers have come, and they are enthusiastically ready to play.

Theme: Caine’s arcade contains a few different themes. Caine’s character shows us that we don’t need much to create something amazing. Sometimes it is the lack of materials that spur creativity. Caine used boxes, old calculators, string and packing tape to create a nostalgic world that would make any cool-seeking hipster stand in awe. Caine did his best work with what he had, and eventually was discovered by the right person who tipped the scale and launched Caine into stardom. It illustrates the point that in the age of social media, if you make something great, people will discover it.

Forbes Magazine recently ran a story titled The Three Economic Lessons of Caine’s Arcade. The first lesson is that no man is an island.

Caine’s ingenuity alone was not enough, he needed a community to flourish….When we hear talk of pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps, it’s important to remember that one pair of boots is rarely enough for success. All the vision in the world amounts to nothing if you have no customers. The internet paves new inroads into niche commerce, bringing human potential and like-minded people together in new and exciting ways.

Caine’s Arcade is important for more than merely the viral nature of the story itself; it shows how the internet community can be tapped into using social media, nostalgia, and some traditional networking. More importantly, the internet is changing how the whole world does business by bringing the whole world closer together.

The End Result

I can’t close this post without mentioning how this story effectively deepens the audiences relationship with the Caine’s Arcade “Brand”. Editing is often referred to as an invisible art.  When an editor does a great job, you never notice, because you are sucked into the story .  Nirvan does a great job layering and revealing details from during the 10 minute build. After watching the video, it is undeniably hard to shake the sense that you know Caine, his father, and the filmmaker.  You feel like you were a part of the celebration.  You may even feel entitled to tell people about it.

This is the power of storytelling through video.  It doesn’t matter if you are producing a short commercial, full-length documentary,  editorial news report, indie drama, or Hollywood sci-fi, story matters in every case. Interesting stories like Caine’s Arcade are everywhere.  They become something bigger when someone recognizes them and skillfully tells them.  As of this post, the new Caine’s Scholoarship Fund has raised over $170,000.00 and Caine’s Arcade has gained 97,281 fans on Facebook.  They are even selling T-shirts.

To understand story, you must understand writers

A writer is tasked with holding attention with the simple written word. Great writers understand the basic storytelling elements, and can use them to not only get readers to pay attention, but transport them to fantastic worlds, get to know rich characters, shift perceptions about life and inspire.  Good stories lead to a final resolution.  The length of story delivery can be expanded depending on the layers of complexity you can apply without becoming redundant. Whether it is a poem, play, short story, novel, or series, writers rely on a general storytelling framework to help keep the story moving and digestible for audiences.

Story transcends narrative film

At Cognitive Films, even though we primarily concentrate on documentary video production, we do our best to apply these principals in both the planning phase and the editing room after the shoot. By building to a resoultion (AKA Theme) and layering the information in logically, a documentary can edited to follow basic story structure. Even when relying on unscripted interviews, a skilled interviewer can craft questions that help the “characters” collectively tell the story in the editing room. If you examine award-winning documentaries, you will find that most of them are edited to allow events to unfold logically toward a resolution.

Digging deeper into the storytelling craft:

I recently stumbled across this great little collection of video lectures from the Life, Universe, and Everything Symbosium, a conference for fantasy/science fiction writers in Utah. Although the content is geared toward writers, the content is useful in a multitude of storytelling scenario. Any filmmaker, presenter, or business owner that is interested in learning to tell better stories will consider these lectures very interesting. Warning: Long attention span zone ahead. These videos are lengthy and detailed…

Dan Wells on Story Structure

In this presentation, Dan Wells ties his simplistic storytelling formula to popular books and movies to prove that many of the best stories are based on a common structure.  To build a story using this formula, you have to start at the resolution, and build up from there.

How to Write a Story that Rocks

This is a great workshop where John Brown and Larry Correia, both horror writers, share their story-building process.  Check it out to get a nuts-and-bolts look into writing a story.  I’ve embedded part 2, because I recommend starting there to get going quickly.

Story Structure and Plot – Advanced Lessons

Bonus: If you have another hour to spare, dig into an advanced storytelling tutorial on story structure and plot. This 12 part youtube series by MasterEdit.net

I hope you liked this information. I’ll be posting more storytelling videos soon. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know below or by emailing me at carson@cognitivefilms.com.

-Carson

Day 1 – Friday | Film Frenzy Kickoff

• NOON – Inhale. The starting gun officially kicked off the competition. We decided to start with the interviews to serve as a backbone for our film.
• 1PM – We met at the Cognitive Films studio to shoot our initial interviews with the team.
• 3PM – We headed to the Badgerdog offices to observe their American Short Fiction editors meeting.  Here we captured office b-roll as well as meeting clips.
• 5PM – Returned to the studio for the day to encode the video footage for editing.
• 7PM-2AM – Started initial editing of the footage captured thus far, synced audio, and started pulling usable clips and sound bites into a sequence.

Day 2 – Saturday | In Full Frenzy

• 10AM – Walked 2 blocks (that was convenient) from the studio to Write By Night, where the Young Writers Workshop was being held.  We captured video of the students learning.
• NOON – Met the Badgerdog team with students at the Blanton Museum of Art to film a live reading event.  We were lucky that this took place during the weekend of the competition.
• 2PM – Interviewed various students and an AISD Elementary Principal in the museum exhibit lobby.  Captured museum exteriors and establishing shots
• 4PM – Returned to Cognitive Films studio to encode the footage and sync audio to get ready for editing.  Busted out the French press.
• 4:30 – My good friend Krystle Copulos stopped by with her 2 daschunds (last minute decision) to get a real badgerdog for the final logo screen.  Unfortunately, they didn’t make it in the final cut because we had a hard time getting the shot long enough (see photo).  Krystle is a foster for the Central Texas Daschund Rescue and VP of Platinum Realty in Austin.
• 6PM – 2AM.  Editing, editing and more editing.

• 2AM – 4AM. Still editing from the night before. Coffee #6.
• 4AM – 7AM.  Even more editing. Sun rose.  Zero sleep.
• 7AM – 10AM. Still editing.  Working in music. Coffee #10.
• 10AM.  Rushed color correction and noise removal.  Added titles.
• 11AM – Export the final movie ready to turn in.
• 11:10AM – Noticed a mistake in the “final movie”, panicked. Fixed quickly  and exported again.
• 11:35AM – Added to flash drive and ran out the door. Rushed to Alamo Drafthouse to turn in the final movie.
• NOON – Exhaled. Passed out.
• 8PM – Woke up and returned to Alamo Drafthouse for the official screening and judging.

The competition was fierce.  We were up against nine experienced video production teams working with nine other very worthy nonprofits.  In the end, I am happy with our film.  We chose to create a documentary-style video with faster cuts than usual and used a hip-hop soundtrack to give it energy.  The sound output  and music was mixed a bit low, which affected the impact, but I was satisfied otherwise.

The Winner:

So did we win?  If you mean “win” the way Charlie Sheen would mean “win”, I’d say yes.  But the panel of judges officially chose Core Media Enterprises‘ “A Unique Look at Austin Bat Cave” as the Film Frenzy Winner… And rightly so.  They did an excellent job in every way (cinematography, interviews, content, editing and sound).  A very worthy opponent.  Whole Planet Foundation’s “Clarity” was the audience choice winner.  Its Portlandia-esque jab at the Whole Foods culture really connected with people, even though it didn’t really explain how the Whole Foods Foundation alleviates poverty or touch on the microcredit concept.  It was fun.. It did the job by getting attention, and we can Google for more information if we really care.  I’d say it worked overall.

Guiseppe Taurino and the team at Badgerdog were a big help and made producing the video a pleasure.  They were articulate and very accommodating to the process.    I would also like to thank Anna Ogden, who assisted me throughout the weekend. It wouldn’t have been the same without her.  Not only did she help with lights and sound, her editing feedback was invaluable.

See you next year…

Carson

About the Reel Change Film Frenzy

On January 13-15, ten nonprofits will team up with ten filmmaking teams to make amazing cause-driven films here in Austin, TX. The contest will highlight Austin’s talented filmmaking community and the awesome organizations working to improve our world. The Reel Change Film Frenzy will start with participating nonprofits and filmmakers getting paired up at a kick-off happy hour (RSVP here) at The Highball at 5:30 on January 5. The filmmaking race officially begins when the teams convene in front of the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar on Friday, January 13 at noon to get final instructions and GO!

Films will be due Sunday at high noon and then shown before a live audience and panel of judges at the Alamo Drafthouse that same night. Winning filmmakers win bragging rights and ALL participating nonprofits win a great short film that highlights their great work.

The winning film (picked by our jury) will also be screened at the 2012 Lights. Camera. Help. Nonprofit Film Festival on September 12-14 here in Austin, TX.

What if a film challenge was not only fun, but also helped a cause?  When I found out that Lights. Camera. Help. and the Alamo Drafthouse were putting together another 48 Hour Film Festival devoted to making films for non-profits,  I was all over it.  It’s called the Reel Change Film Frenzy, and it’s right up our alley. 

For the Reel Change Film Frenzy, ten video production teams are paired up with ten local non-profits to produce a completed (under 5 minute) short film, and it must be shot, edited and delivered in 48 hours.  Although it is a challenge, we were allowed to meet with the nonprofit a week before, to hammer out any details and do the proper research.  No filming is to be done until noon tomorrow.

Film Frenzy Timeline

• The contest will start with a kick-off happy hour for the filmmakers and nonprofits to meet the week before on Jan 5th at 5:30pm at The Highball on South Lamar.
• The contest will launch Friday, Jan 13th at noon outside the Alamo Drafthouse South. The teams will have 48 hours to write, shoot and edit their films.
• Films are due Sunday, Jan 15th at high noon at the Alamo Drafthouse South.
• Then all ten films will be shown LIVE! before an audience that same Sunday, Jan 15th at 6:30pm at the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse.
• Three expert judges will determine the “jury prize” for the top film and the audience will determine our “audience choice” award.

Cognitive Films + Badgerdog Literary Publishing

I am proud to announce that Cognitive Films has been paired with Badgerdog Literary Publishing, a nonprofit group aiming to build literary communities in Austin.  Badgerdog publishes American Short Fiction, a quarterly literary journal publishing short stories from emerging writers.  Our pairing for this film festival is the perfect marriage of passionate story advocacy and video production.

Badgerdog aims to amplify the voices of the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the international, and traditional writers of all ages whose literary work should have a larger audience, whose work may not have come to the attention of, or may have been ignored by, market-driven publishing houses, and whose artistic vision can expand the vista for readers in the Americas and the world.

The frenzy begins tomorrow (Jan. 13th) at Noon at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.

See you on the other side…

A great story can work to help potential customers pay attention, connect with your company on a deeper level, and spread your message virally through word-of-mouth. A business story can be told in many different ways.  Whether it is through text, speech or video, the elements will stay the same.

Going beyond the basics

Scan any brochure or about page online, and chances are that you will soon be greeted with a formulaic mission statement or cv-style founder biography.  If you are lucky, you’ll learn the basic who, what, where, when, why and how of the company.  It is usually very brief, and focused more on the who, what and where and when rather than the why and how.  What is wrong with that?  It’s more of a news story than a narrative, and usually it will bore you to tears.

Making it interesting

If you are attempting to market something, if you don’t at least have interest, you fail.  You may be thinking: “I sell socks, this isn’t The Lord of the Rings.”  You are right.  It isn’t Lord of the Rings… It’s Lord of the Socks.  Establishing a good business story will permeate through your company and can buffer the establishment of real company culture.  Nobody will voluntarily remember a mission statement or a set of guidelines.  They will remember a story.  Not only will they remember it, they will communicate it more willingly due to the nature of a story.

The elements of a business story

Every story has five basic elements: Characters, settings, conflict, plot, and theme. Your story may not seem too exciting, but it can be very interesting when the right elements are revealed.  In building a story for your business, it is best to start with the basic story elements, and go from there.

1. Character: Who is involved?

Who is behind the company?  Where did they come from and what characteristics do they have?  Are there any events or circumstances that helped shape who they are today or became the reason for starting the company?  If the company was a character itself, what kind of personality or charateristics does it have?  Is it old and wise with plenty of trials and tribulations behind it?  Is it out to change the world like a superhero?  Is it an enemy of the status quo, disrupting its industry at every turn. Think about how this character (whether entity or individual) has changed or had revelations in the past, and how does this change relate to their current philosophy?

For instance, your sock company might have been founded by a local entrepreneur who was originally a traveler/adventurer/mountain climber that started in the sock business because he couldn’t find a double reinforced sock to support his ankles on long trips.  The business has grown to become large but the founder has refused to change the way he made the original socks despite enticing profits from mechanized processes.  This is a stubborn, old fashioned business started by travelers, not businessmen.  There’s your character.

2. Setting: Where and when is the story taking place?

This one is easy, but can become complex very quickly.  Setting is essentially the time and place the story takes place.  Where is this business located and what area does it serve? Is it set to go global, or is it confined to the town it is in?  Where and when did it start? Where is it now and where does it hope to go in the future?

In a business story, setting isn’t always a physical location  or time.  What part of the industry does your business reside in (any niche?).  How does the “landscape” look in the industry?  Is it growing or shaking out?  How does it relate to other businesses both competitive and complementary?

3. Conflict: What problems are happening?

Every good story needs a conflict in order to be interesting and move the story along. They can be external or internal. Your customer is facing some kind of conflict.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t need you.  Your business is meant to solve a problem.  What is that problem?  In the case of the sock company, nothing was available for the traveler who needs everyday support without having to wear a special support wrap.

Your business also faces conflicts in the decisions it makes.  Should you expand or stay small?  Should you diversify your offerings, or stay focused?  Should we outsource this process or keep it in-house?  What are the pros and cons of these decisions? This is internal conflict that makes for great drama:  Socks are easier to make if automated, but too many quality issues can arise if they are not tested.  The company had to make the decision to stay with handmade, despite the temptation of healthy profits.

4. Plot: How do these problems get solved?

The plot is the combination of the above elements.  Within the setting, how do the characters overcome the conflicts? In other words, you may solve a problem in this space, but how do you do it effectively?  Given the circumstances, notions, challenges and character history, how does your company do what it does better than the competition?

The plot helps you establish your “line in the sand” and gives you an opportunity to communicate your unique competitive advantages in a compelling way.  Think about how interesting your business could be when it is fighting a heroic battle against all odds!

In a world of ill-fitting and cheaply-made socks (outsourced with low-quality cotton and non-reinforced seams, as well as no foot support), one company has recognized this (visionary leadership that came from another industry when they saw a problem) and emerged from the ashes of it’s past (a former shoe manufacturing business that went south) to change the idea of foot protection as we know it (hand-stitched socks with reinforced arc-support put through 3 inspections), and possibly change the world as we know it (Millions of people all over the world are living in pain when a simple support is all they need.).  This may seem silly, but are you starting to see where this can go?

5. Theme:  What is the point?

The theme answers the “why” question.  After your audience hears your epic, what are they left with?  This is often referred to as the moral of the story.  It really has nothing to do with morals though.  It is a principal your audience can relate to.  It can be as broad or specific as you want, but it must always be relevant to your audience. One example could be: “You can’t do everything the best, so focus on one thing and do it really well so that you can be successful.”

For the sock story, it may be: “Don’t overlook the small things (socks), because they can make a big difference in life over the long run”. The theme can run even deeper than that.  “Don’t accept things the way they are, because if nobody questioned the status quo, we would still be living in the stone age.” might be a relevant theme that someone can identify with

This isn’t a tag-line, and doesn’t necessarily need to be overtly stated.  Your story can contain much more than one theme.  This is what will make your story resonate in your audiences mind, and breeds loyalty that can’t be broken easily.  People identify themselves often by their purchases.  Give them a reason to choose you with a meaningful theme to your company story.

“Documentaries have become more popular as a distrust of mainstream media has grown…Viewers see documentarians as truth tellers. Documentaries make a different promise to viewers…A promise of a story told honestly with goodwill about something real. But the techniques used to tell the stories in fiction and nonfiction are the same. Editing, photography and sound techniques are just as important for documentaries as they are for fiction.”" -Patricia Aufderheide, an expert on documentary film at American University’s School of Communication.

Austin is home to many documentary filmmakers, and many documentaries have been filmed in the Austin area.  Here is a short list of Documentaries filmed (or at least partially filmed) in the Austin and Central Texas area.

The Unforeseen (2007)

A documentary about the development around Barton Springs in Austin, Texas, and nature’s unexpected response to being threatened by human interference.

Echotone (2010)

Echotone, a documentary about music culture in Austin, can best be described as a cultural portrait of the modern American city examined through the lyrics and lens of its creative class. Join us for the Echotone Sneak Preview Tour this Oct. 4 – Oct. 10 as we visit the west coast with the film and featured artists Sunset, The White White Lights, and Dana Falconberry.

American Drug War: The Last White Hope (2007)

Inspired by the death of four family members from “legal drugs” Texas filmmaker Kevin Booth sets out to discover why the Drug War has become such a big failure. Three and a half years in the making the film follows gang members, former DEA agents, CIA officers, narcotics officers, judges, politicians, prisoners and celebrities.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)

Daniel Johnston, manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist is revealed in this portrait of madness, creativity, and love. The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a stunning portrait of a musical and artistic genius who nearly slipped away. Director Jeff Feurezeig exquisitely depicts a perfect example of brilliance and madness going hand in hand with subject Daniel Johnston.

Killer at Large (2008)

Killer at Large begins with a local obesity story from Austin (which made national headlines) and transitions into the epidemic of obesity in the U.S. Killer at Large 2008 An overview of the politics, social effects and problems associated with the rising epidemic of American obesity. Exploring the issue from individual, political, scientific and cultural perspectives, the film features appearances by Bill Clinton, Ralph Nader, Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona and others.

New Orleans Music in Exile (2006)

A documentary about the many well-known New Orleans musicians who were forced to leave the city by Hurricane Katrina, where they wound up, how (and if) they plan to return to the city.

Before the Music Dies (2006)

Made by Austin filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen, This documentary tells the story of how the music industry has abandoned both artists and fans in its single-minded pursuit of corporate profits, the reason why so few companies currently control the music played on the radio and for sale at retail stores, and whether corporations really have the power to silence musical innovation.

The quality score

Google’s algorithm can track the amount of time a visitor spent on your page, and uses this time as an indicator of the overall “quality” of the page. If a user spends more time on your site, your quality “score” will increase, and you end up ranking higher. Google defines quality score as “a dynamic variable calculated for each of your keywords. It combines a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query.”

The goal of a search engine.

The goal of a search engine is to provide the most relevant results pertaining to a specific search query. If you type: “How to make visitors stay on a website” in the search bar, they want you to be able to find a relevant answer to your question. If you click the first result, and it doesn’t answer your question, you will naturally click the back button and continue searching for your answer.

Back is bad.

When you hit that back button, it tells Google (or any other search engine) that the page you clicked did not provide you with the information you were looking for. When enough people do the same thing, it will indicate that the page is not relevant to that particular keyword string, and the page will eventually be demoted due to a lower “quality score”.

If you click the page and spend 5 minutes on it, and continue to click within that site for even more information, it will indicate that you probably found what you are looking for. Therefore, that page becomes more “relevant” in regards to the algorithm’s result for that keyword string.

How can video help your quality score?

Countless studies have shown that visitors spend more time on pages that offer streaming video. An study by Comscore in August 2010 shows that on average people stay on a website two minutes longer when a video is included on the page.

“Retail site visitors who view video today stay two minutes longer on average, and are 64% more likely to purchases than other site visitors.” -Comscore

Aside from the increase in conversion rates, video helps increase the time spent on a website.  It doesn’t take a scientist to understand how this can happen.  We are naturally drawn to moving images and enjoy the convenience of being “fed” information.  A video will keep visitors on a website longer than text alone in most cases.

The longer a visitor spends on your site, the more valuable it will appear to the search engines.  Adding video will dramatically increase your average time spent and ultimately make your site rank higher in the search engines.

You may be curious about what major movies were made in Austin.  Here is a list of the top (US) grossing films, ordered by total box office sales, that were produced (or at least partially produced) in Austin, Texas.

1. True Grit (2010) $171M
2. Spy Kids (2001) $113M
3. Spy Kids 3D (2003) $112M
4. Miss Congeniality (2000) $107M
5. Phenomenon (1996) $105M
6. Michael (1996) $95.3M
7. Spy Kids 2 (2002) $85.6M
8. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) $80.1M
9. The Rookie (2002) $75.6M
10. Sin City (2005) $74.1M
11. Mortal Kombat (1995) $70.4M
12. Kill Bill Vol 1 (2003) $70.1M
13. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) $69.7M
14. Road Trip (2000) $68.5M
15. Friday the 13th (2009) $65M
16. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) $63.1M
17. Friday Night Lights (2004) $61.2M
18. Hope Floats (1998) $60M
19. Courage Under Fire (1996) $59M
20. Varsity Blues (1999) $52.9M
21. Predators (2010) $52M
22. Secondhand Lions (2003) $41.4M
23. The Faculty (1998) $40.1M
24. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) $39.5
25. Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl 3D (2005) $39.2
26. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011) $37.8M
27. The Ringer (2005) $35.4M
28. Where the Heart Is (2000) $33.8M
29. A Perfect World (1993) $31.2M
30. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) $30.9M

You may have noticed that a rather large piece of the box-office pie went to Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios, producers of the Spy Kids franchise.  Although box-office success isn’t going to get any easier, we have yet to see the best movies come out of Austin.

This is not easy, especially if you are trying to publish videos with any sort of frequency.  Here are a few ideas for publishing ongoing, relevant and useful video content that your audiences will want to watch. Disclaimer: These video examples here are not produced by Cognitive Films. They are only good examples of content, not production quality. The quality level of your production will depend on your skills, time and money invested. 

1. FAQ Videos

Create an ongoing series of videos where you answer specific questions. You can create a single short video for each answer to build a nice collection of video content you can add to your blog and Youtube/Vimeo channels. FAQ videos not only help your prospects get the answers they need, they can help free up the valuable time you or your staff spends answering them.

Lowe’s created a series of videos offering answers to common household maintenance questions. This particular video would also work well for a pool builder:

2. Products and Service Review Videos

Think of products and services you may recommend to your customers. Would a quick video review over a product be useful to them? Do a video review on product benefits and features. Don’t just read the specs… Add your real opinion in order to make it useful. If you can, find other review sites and offer a “critics summary” of your findings as well. This can help you get in front of new audiences looking for products or services that compliment your own.

BHPhoto offers detailed reviews of the more popular products they sell. Here is a great example reviewing Manfrotto Tripods:

3. Business Vlog or News Update

Create a simple and accessible setup that allows you to give regular updates on your business. Think of it as a video newsletter. Depending on how you do it, it could be much easier and quicker than putting together a print or email newsletter. Commit to frequent updates and be spontaneous. Don’t worry about perfect production quality.  If you over-think it, it will never get done.

Here is a company news update example. It’s pretty difficult to deliver this amount of information in a single cut, but kudos to this guy for pulling it off almost flawlessly:

4. Tips & Tutorial Videos

Are you an expert? Prove it. Offer up tutorials, tips, and case studies to your audience. Creating a how-to video tutorial that helps your audience learn something useful is a great way to become more engaging and relevant to them. Screencasts are very helpful for explaining how to use software or specific website features, and don’t even require a camera.  Just download screencast sofware and you are on your way.

In this tutorial, Samson Inc helps customers learn how to use the Zoom H4N Recorder that they manufacture (Warning: 80′s hair rock ahead):

5. Video Interviews

Your audience may be interested in watching interviews with key people in your industry or staff. Set up and record interviews with people your audience may be interested in knowing more about. Let the interviewee offer his or her expertise and insights. If you are crafty, you can set these up virtually through Skype or Google Plus Hangouts for group interviews remotely.  This is an excellent option if you are camera-shy but still want to produce great video content.

Salesforce.com decided to interview Google CEO Eric Schmidt to quickly give his 2 cents on the Salesforce/Google deal.

6. Event Videos

Use video to cover a local or industry event. This is also a great way to network offline, as it will give you an opportunity to meet new people. Capture the spirit of the event with b-roll, and combine it with interesting “on-the-street” style interviews.  When you publish the video online, make sure and send it to the people who may have been present.  Chances are, they will add it to their blog and you may even get a link or two.

Hosting provider MediaTemple makes its presence known at various local web developer gatherings and offers them time in front of the camera. Brilliant.

7. Testimonial Videos

If you are really charming, you may be able to get customers to offer glowing testimonials on camera. For the sake of authenticity, treat the shoot as an interview, and ask about what their experience was like when working with you or using your product.  Cut one or more testimonial videos together to make a testimonial mashup, or publish them individually. These will be dramatically more effective than boring plain-text testimonials.

B2B Bonus: Client Co-op Testimonial video

In a B2B scenario, you may want to kill two birds with one stone by creating a testimonial video that also works to promote your client’s business. This is a great way to get the full context of the product or service in use, since your customer will be explaining in detail how you really help them work better. This may take a bit of creativity to make it a win-win for both parties.

Shopify, an e-commerce platform for businesses, pulls this off well:

With a little creativity, you can come up with dozens of ideas for great video to put on your sites.  You don’t need to plan out an entire season to start a video campaign.  Start with one and go from there.  Get your first video published and solicit feedback.  You can fine-tune your content strategy from there.