A couple weeks ago a media type in his 20’s came into the office to have a look around the “world famous” Raindance Film Festival. I showed him around and then asked what he did, and he responded: ‘I’m a Youtuber’.
Geez, if I had a dollar for everytime I’ve heard that in the last 15 months I’d be driving a Cadillac.
So I asked him when he last put a film on Youtube. It was a Tuesday, and he said the last vid went up on Friday night. I asked him how it had done, and he responded “Not very well – it only had 900,000 views by Monday morning.”
Thinking I had misheard so I asked what he normally got after a weekend, and he told me “4 million plus”. I now thought I had totally misheard him and politely ushered him to the door. as soon as he had left, I googled him and OMG – it was Tom ‘Ska’ Ridgewell – a Youtuber with over 350,000,000 views – thats right -= over a third of a billion views!
I then stumbled on a fascinating article by blooger Hartley Brody who writes for one of my favourite social media websites, Hubspot. His fascinating article, How To Approach The Creation Of Viral Marketing has several key points.
The Definition Of Viral
Hartley wisely defines virality, not as a piece that gets millions of views, but a piece that gets an extremely high number of views in a short space of time. He also stresses that blog posts, infographics and images on social media can also go ‘viral’.
He also makes this very important point:
“remember that there is no way to predict that a piece of content will definitely go viral.”
Hartley then follows with examples of current well known viral campaigns including Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake.
What follows is a textbook examination of viral content and this article has mush to offer filmmakers.
You can read the entire article, How To Approach The Creation Of Viral Marketing here
About Elliot Grove
Photo Credit Jay Brooks / BIFA 2015
Elliot Grove is the founder of Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards. He has produced over 700 hundred short films and also five feature films, including the multi-award-winning The Living and the Dead in 2006, Deadly Virtues in 2013 and AMBER in 2017. He teaches screenwriting and producing in the UK, Europe, Asia and America.
Elliot has written three books which have become industry standards: Raindance Writers’ Lab: Write + Sell the Hot Screenplay, now in its second edition, Raindance Producers’ Lab: Lo-To-No Budget Filmmaking and Beginning Filmmaking: 100 Easy Steps from Script to Screen (Professional Media Practice).
In 2009 he was awarded a PhD for services to film education.
