If you are in or around the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area and have a new or continuing interest in social media as it pertains to you life (business or personal) I highly recommend you attend Podcamp Philly 2010.
Of course if you have a Podcamp ANYWHERE near you, I recommend you attend it.
The cost is only $20 (which basically weeds out the real attenders from the pretenders and makes headcount more efficient for the volunteer organizers) You can sign up HERE.
The one that started it all, Podcamp Boston, will celebrate its fifth anniversary this Saturday and Sunday, September 25 & 26, 2010 at the Microsoft N.E.R.D. Center (yes, you read that right).
That’s the good news. The bad news is it looks to be sold out and there is a wait list for tickets. So I guess blog posts like these for their event don’t seem so necessary anymore.
To be clear, I am not the first person to create a YouTube video for my voice over demo.
In fact, as usual, many have gone before me and probably done it better.
But while I am not first to the party (you know, where there’s that kinda awkward standing around trying to create small talk waiting for somebody…anybody else to arrive next) I certainly will not be last to the party.
So I hope you enjoy my stab at voiceover marketing sprinkled with a dash of humor.
If some group or organization wants to bring attention to a cause or event, the easiest way to do that is by celebrity endorsement.
If the famous person is well liked, chances of the group or organization’s “ask” being answered (donation, signature, whatever) are probably better.
Celebrities like to do this because many of them are big-hearted and like to help.
The challenge is so many celebrities are supporting so many causes, the message can fade pretty quickly.
To wit (don’t I sound ejukated) the Gulf Coast Oil Disaster – I’m sure there have been telethons and maybe a concert and I’ve been outta that loop (that’s the fade part I spoke about). Doesn’t mean I don’t care, it just means that their message (the event organizer’s message) didn’t resonate with me or get my attention. Theirs is a hard job.
But today I saw a YouTube video freezeframe (that still image that marks where a video screen is located) with Sandra Bullock holding up her index finger. That visual caught my eye and I watched. And I listened. And I thought you might want to too.
Theirs is a hard job – getting the message to everyone – but not an impossible job.
So I’ve been doing more videos on my YouTube channel, a channel some of you have subscribed to and others of you have totally blown off which is fine except you miss some OK content with more content still in development.
The videos I’ve been shooting (in HD no less) on my Kodak Zi8 have been OK quality and I am re-learning video editing on with Windows movie maker – which sounds about as painful as it is…I’ve not worked with it personally but I just have a gut sense that Apple does all this easier. Oh well, not going there.
Any way, lots of people (more than I realized before today) have actually watch this stuff. When I was at VOICE 2010 people said “hey, saw your videos on the blog, they’re great.” For some reason I thought they were kidding or being polite or politely kidding. They weren’t.
But I was a little nervous about the branding for all this. I’ve wanted to keep it low key but the purpose of social media is to get a bits of branding out there. I didn’t have a concept for how to do this until about a week or two weeks ago. At which point I imagined a concept and then imagined how much I’d have to pay some graphics person (or hobo with a mac) to create my idea.
Then I turned to the web and YouTube and realized how amazingly easy it was to execute my idea….which of course took me 3x longer than a smart, talented person but I’ll take my meager successes where I can find them. Plus I had to reload all the videos so my stats for these videos got zeroed out…but to those who watched, I say thank you.
So I finished my intro and added them to my three original shorts and will craft something for the voiceover demo pieces as well – although I just want to throw my name up there so it doesn’t look like I actually produced the videos I simply voiced.
To follow is likely amateurish and unprofessional to most but I was amazed it came out looking as good as it did anyway.
It’s at the very beginning of this piece and I didn’t have the budget to rent a lion like the folks over at MGM (I suppose you have to be of a certain age to get the humor in that). I hope you like it.
After the worldwide success of my YouTube debut a few months ago, while I had some time this week during a commercial session, I thought you would enjoy watching how I performed my parts for a radio spot I was cast in.
This again was a remote recording session but I think its great fun and at the end you hear the finished part – chosen not by me but by the producer of the spot. I hope you enjoy it.
