The Streamys are web TV awards.

Please vote for “Roni On Location” for “Best Reality or Documentary Web Series.”

1) Go to http://www.streamys.org/submit/public-submissions/

2) Category: Best Reality or Documentary Web Series

3) Series Name: Roni On Location

Series URL: http://www.youtube.com/roniweiss

4) Click Submit.

5) Receive my thanks.

Remember, you can vote once per day. So feel free to keep voting as the days go on. But I’d be fairly happy if you got at least the one vote in.

And if you want to pass it on to other people, hey, that’d be cool, too.

Thanks,

Roni

http://www.youtube.com/roniweiss

The Streamys are web TV awards.

Please vote for “Roni On Location” for “Best Reality or Documentary Web Series.”

1) Go to http://www.streamys.org/submit/public-submissions/

2) Category: Best Reality or Documentary Web Series

3) Series Name: Roni On Location

Series URL: http://www.youtube.com/roniweiss

4) Click Submit.

5) Receive my thanks.

Remember, you can vote once per day. So feel free to keep voting as the days go on. But I’d be fairly happy if you got at least the one vote in.

And if you want to pass it on to other people, hey, that’d be cool, too.

Thanks,

Roni

http://www.youtube.com/roniweiss

My mother and I went to Rihanna’s Myspace concert in Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom. It was a cool experience if you like waiting in line in the freezing cold for hours just to see Rihanna for about 25 minutes lol sorry but that’s what happened lol yea..anyway I got really tired and sleepy and annoyed so we left early whatever ;0)

Enjoy!! Here are a few pics

I think it’s pretty obvious that I got really lusted….haha WASTED!!! I realize I have more fun when I’m drunk, but as long as I’m not alone

Enjoy!! Photos:

Me & my cousin Sasha

Me getting ready in my sisters room

I absolutely love my hair like this

Me and little sis by this time I was gone!! lol

These tools need to learn an epic lesson.

Warning: Despite Franny’s extensive censorship editing, the contents of this video may be offensive to some nice people. View at your discretion.
(For official disclaimer, see “About”)

My new Vlog/Web Show entitled “First of All”. In this special episode, a would-be day of Christmas Shopping that turned into only one gift, then a biz meeting with my good friend and colleague, Reid Johnson Rich, and a way-too-fattening dinner at Roscoes. Oh well, better luck next time. This is just a teaser from the first special episode. Keep sending those questions and the big debut is in January 2010!  Your topics, suggestions and questions go to:  AskToiTroutman at gmail dot com and it could be on the show.

Here is just another great example that the differences between what we PLAN and what we actually do are vast at best.  Like they say, “Want to make the heavens laugh/smile?  Make plans.”  All too true.   Happy holidays and stay tuned.  More of those shopping tips from a few days back are on the way.

Webisode 5

Mistress Dartmouth reviews the Turbo 8 Accelerator Double Vibro Bullets from Tabutoys.com.

Really really fun night on the town, my brothers and cousins are always fun, they crack me up <3

We saw “2012″ and it was incredible, I have never seen anything like it before in my life!! Regardless of the fact that it was all CGI and green screen lol

It was heart wrenching, it was melodramatic, and it was bloody. Dust to Dust brought all of these things and more to the story of siblings Nick and Sara.

Gina arrives at the house, startling Nick and George. She is still shaken up from the vampire attack, cleaning herself up in the bathroom. Something must have been going on between Nick and Gina, I hadn’t noticed the sexual tension between them until she mentioned that she knew where the towels were.

Is something burning?

Gina turns in the shower, startled and attacked by Sara. I admit, I was actually startled when Gina turned around as she felt someone watching her. Nick and George investigate, finding Sara and arguing over destroying her.

The vampires cut the power, attacking George and Nick while Sara is handcuffed to the shower. George gets manhandled by blond spiky vamp, who rips the combination tattoo from his flesh. The other vampire gets pushed outside by Sara who has escaped the handcuffs, where the sun is shining and he is destroyed.

Sara sacrifices herself against Nick’s wishes. Poor Nick, he is all alone. Until George stands up with his eyes completely black. Ole Georgie ended up a vampire after all, and the webisode ends with Nick pointing his gun at George.

Dust to Dust was amazing, it might have something to do with the melodramatic moments or it might have something to do with the level of carnage shown. It tugged at my heartstrings a bit, but it also delivered on the gore and the scare.

Part 1 looked at understanding your target audience, and some things to think about as content creators.  Part 2 looked at production quality, and in this final part 3 some tips on getting a better page rank for your video.

Less than 20% of marketer use keywords in the filenames of their videos, the number are even smaller for those that use advanced techniques like writing keyword-rich captions and annotations or creating online video libraries.

Blended Search is a method by which many search engines use now for videos, images etc.  By optimizing your videos you can more easily get your video to a first-page organic ranking on Google.

There are few interactive marketers that spend time on video optimization which means many of the videos in Google’s index are not well optimized – so if you do, you increase your chances significantly.

Tips to optimize your online videos:

• Insert keywords into your video filenames
• Host your videos on YouTube and embed the YouTube videos in your site.  Google algorithms look at how many times a video is viewed, and views from the embedded video on your site will add to your YouTube view count as well
• Optimize YouTube video by adding keywords into your video title, descriptions, and tags
• Embed videos into relevant text pages on your site.  The text on those pages will help the search engine figure out what your video is
• Create a video library on your site, so Google will know where to find your video content.  Add keyword-rich annotations for each video in the library.

Blog post by Juliette Tai, Director of Research & Competitive Intelligence, Greenlight360

Resources: paidcontent.org, streamingmedia.com, mashable.com, blogs.forrester.com

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FEARnet and Ghost House Pictures bring this webseries to a more personal level as Sara slowly changes into a monster and her dear brother Nick learns the truth about her condition from the aftermath of the prison transfer attack.

George and Nick escape the clutches of the vampire, giving ole Georgie enough time to explain to dear Nick that his sister is turning into one of those bloodthirsty creatures. Meanwhile, Sara is taken in by a concerned woman, controlling herself briefly before she chomps on the woman’s dog like a midnight snack.

Food better be on the table when I get home...

Nick traces where Sara called him before she was pulled out from the cold night, finding the dead body of the woman in her apartment. Gina surprises both Nick and George, which almost causes her to be the first meal of the newly turned woman. Gina lets both Nick and George leave, heading back to Sara and Nick’s home, which is familiar to Sara and where she might hide during the daylight hours.

We finally learn why the vampires are still after ole Georgie. He has a combination to a lock box tattooed on his chest, where footage that could expose them is stored. Nick and George make it to the house, but they won’t be alone for long.

I was impressed by the slow transformation of Sara, which is logically slower because it was a scratch rather than a bite. She keeps saying that she’s sorry to the woman who was trying to help her before biting her. But no matter how much she fights it, Sara is no longer human. Nick is going to have to kill his sister or allow another bloodthirsty creature roam the nights.

Dave Crosland (illustrator extraordinaire who I worked with on “Heaven, LLC” and “Bad Ideas”) recently appeared in a webisode of “The Variants,” a comedy web series put together by the fine folks at Zeus Comics in Dallas, Texas.

Dave costarred with “PvP” creator Scott Kurtz.

Check it out here:

Good… but not as good as his Rudy impersonation,

-Shady

SUPER WILLIE RULES THE WORLD…FOR 30 SECONDS.

Ah! The things I could do….

…if only I had enough time.

GoAnimate.com – anyone can animate

Sundance is commissioning filmmakers to create web videos.

There are some really great films, quick link here: http://www.sundancechannel.com/digital-shorts

Green Porno by Isabella Rossellini is one of those series and I really love that. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at the others yet, but I have a feeling they are worth checking out. I think it is really great that Sundance is doing this.

The events of Dust to Dust occur three weeks after the attack in Barrow, Alaska (the events of the film 30 Days of Night). George is back! Sadly, he is behind bars for the murder of his girlfriend even though she was already a bloodthirsty vampire. I was completely thrilled to see Ted Raimi as one of the prison guards, apparently ole Georgie is being transferred to another prison. Too bad the vampires are still after him!

We are introduced to three new characters: siblings Nick and Sara, and police detective Gina. Nick recently handed in his badge, and Gina is his former partner. Sara works as a nurse in the prison and is called in to sedate George, she is caught in the crossfire of the vampire attack.

Num Num Num

George escapes the vampire attack with the lone vampire tracking him. Sara runs after being injured by the vampire’s claws, but it would seem that Sara has bigger problems than a simple slit throat. Nick goes after George once he arrives on the scene, even when his former partner Gina discourages him. George and Nick’s paths convene at a local drug dealer’s home when the vampire attacks once again.

The vampire in Dust to Dust is not what I expected, seeing Blood Trails and the original film 30 Days of Night in the past, it might have something to do with his hairstyle (as weird as that sounds). It is blond and spiky. And I know what you all are thinking, blonds can be changed into vampires too! But his hair distracts me just a little bit. Overall, this web series seems much more action packed. And I was so excited to see good ole Georgie once again!

Starting off the trip with Tav

This blog entry corresponds to Episode #1 of my road trip, found here on YouTube.

I have wanted to go on a US road trip for a while.  Originally, I planned to go alone, take an indeterminate amount of time and potentially try to work at points, CouchSurfing along the way.  Then, while I was working in France, Tav invited me to visit him in Turkey.  That was a no-go for me, but I wanted to hang out again, as we had a great time the year before when we met during my first summer at American Village, my English immersion camp job in France.  So to make up for me not visiting him, I invited him on the road trip, thinking full well that he’d never do it.

Waiting for him to renege on his commitment, I proceeded to think of what I wanted to do on the trip.  In the end, he didn’t waver and after traveling solo in Eastern Europe for a month, I flew from Frankfurt, Germany to Anchorage, Alaska to start the trip.

The plan was that we would drive Tav’s car from Alaska to Everett, Washington, stay a bit in the Seattle area, pick up my car and continue onward.

I have also wanted to go shooting for a while.  So when I heard of the vague possibility of doing so with Tav’s friend Ben, I immediately jumped at it.  Shotguns are fun.  You hit things.  Without much training or adjustment, pistols are much harder.

After meeting a few of Tav’s friends and his mother over a couple days, we stopped at Three Bears, the local wholesale, Costco-like (without the membership) store.  I bought fruit snacks; Tav bought fruit.  I bought sliced turkey; Tav bought potatoes.

And off we went.

Roni and Tav re-meet, begin to prep for the trip and Roni goes shooting for the first time in his life.  Plus, dance breaks! [7:32]

I giggled at this because it speaks so well to the way men think vs. women.   Or maybe just moreso the reality of how relationships go.

Not to mention, if a girl sleeps with a guy early on does that mean she’ll never get to be wooed after that?  Does it speak too well to the whole Cow/Milk cliche?  Men hate the woo process that much?  We can’t like the woo AND the sex??  Gotta hold out on the sex to get the woo?  BOOOOOOOOO.  That’s no fun for anybody.

Webisode 4

Via Jezebel

Part 1 looked at understanding your target audience, and some things to think about as content creators.  This week production quality.

Content quality

In some cases you don’t want to overproduce, for example, a home movie clip that’s put up on YouTube shouldn’t be perfect and produced, it’s the imperfections that make the video authentic and connect with the viewer.

With the popularity of professionally produced media, e.g. TV shows now being available on the web – these videos have the eyeballs because they bring with them a built-in audience, and to protect their brand they have to supply high quality video online.

ESPN provides the same production value as they do on TV, but there are times where they may do things differently. “One size does not fit all.”  For instance, when they increased the production value of fantasy sport shows their eyeballs increased as well.  To the audience it meant that ESPN was treating fantasy sport shows more seriously like their NFL Countdown.

Major media companies have a distinct advantage – they really already have all the right “tools” – the production crew, the equipment.  These companies have realized that producing for online shouldn’t be any different than television.

Revision3 CEO, Jim Louderback contends that high quality isn’t important just to these major media companies.  If you want to create episodic programming and want to continually draw in viewers you need to maintain high quality.  If you’re a one-off video, then quality isn’t so important.

Richard Glosser, executive director of emerging media for CondéNet says it’s important to think about the shelf life of the video you’re producing.  Daily updates of what’s going on in the stock market are generally only useful for a certain amount of time vs. a How-To video which has a much longer shelf life.  So the key is balancing quality and cost, you want to produce the best quality you can at a reasonable cost.

Another thing to balance or think about in some cases is – some video is better than no video – this is particularly true for streaming live events such as a sporting event, a concert etc.  MTV had great success with the Jonas Brothers concert – they handed out a bunch of mobile phones including to the Jonas Brothers, and then streamed all the backstage mobile videos, and concert footage they got from these phones.

Louderback believes what’s even more important than high quality video is audio.  If the audio is crappy, no one will want to watch it.  So having good mics is very important as well as knowing or understanding the acoustics of your studio or shooting location.

Steve Garfield, a well respected video blogger agrees and lists:

1. Think about audio
2. Think about framing
3. Think about holding the camera steady

Be it an expensive camera or a mobile phone camera – he puts a lot of consideration into video production.

Oh the flip side, Kevin Nalty, marketer and YouTuber, thinks differently -

“I try to work on my production quality, but it’s not a high priority,” says Nalty. “I don’t give a crap about lighting, and I’ll put my camera on a tissue box to get a shot. Where I work hard is on the editing and timing because that’s what can harm videos. I probably spend zero time planning a video, 10 minutes shooting it, and an hour or so editing it. And I think that’s kind of right, though maybe I should spend less time planning. I’m not like Hitchcock, drawing up a storyboard. I’d never start if I did it that way.”

HD or not

This too is a matter of shooting the highest quality possible as it’s easier to compress from high quality, but you can’t get HD out of standard definition.  For major media companies it’s easy for them to do HD for everything; for the rest of us, it’s a matter of where you plan to distribute.  Many sites do not yet support HD so if you have no plans to ever distribute to an HD site then it’s not particularly necessary to shoot in HD.

Video length

One thing’s for certain – the shorter videos have a better likelihood of going viral.  These are the ones that get shared, get blogged about, and put on social networks.  These are also the videos we would watch in our extended viewing hours, e.g. in the office during lunch, or for a brain break during the day, or even on our mobile phones.

Long form has its case as well.  Events definitely keep viewer attention.

New media is not the same is traditional TV, so don’t expect the TV format to necessarily work – 22 minutes of content with several ad blocks.  Louderback states –

On the internet you can be 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever. Just do enough for what you’re trying to do and the story you’re trying to tell. People say it’s got to be short-form, but we’ve found that if it’s the right content and the right host, people will watch for half an hour and even longer.”

This is what it all really comes down to.  The Internet is not television.  So it does give us the freedom to do so much more than what is done on television currently.  If all we need is 8 minutes for a storyline, new media can do that.  We should be happy that the Internet allows us that freedom.

Formula

Well, there is no formula for success in this space, not yet anyway.  Major media or not – everyone is faced with the same issues – providing content that draw in viewers, keeping abreast of viewer feedback to assist with production decisions.

This is a new frontier that we’re in, and it’s great!  It can be daunting, but look how exciting it is, the creative freedom we have by not being boxed in to a 22-minute slot.  Interestingly enough, it almost puts us on even standing with the major media companies.  Yes, they have mucho budget, equipment and crew, but for those of us just emerging into this business, we’ve put out some pretty amazing content and have had to be more creative about it because of lack of funds.  We also have the flexibility of not following traditional rules…major media has to be pretty sure of something before they decide to move forward.

In the end…

For the major media companies – quality is of utmost importance because they need to protect the brand, also they have the manpower to be sure their videos meet their network minimum standards and requirements.  It’s also important that they put out content regularly so they can build a following, have people subscribe or bookmark it, and then it must be distributed so that viewers can access it when they want it.

For the emerging new media companies – I couldn’t have said it better than Revision3 CEO, Jim Louderback

To new media startups: “Here’s the thing—we all think we’re really smart, but we’re not,” says Louderback. “We create a lot of stuff, and we think it’s really good. But the audience is really smart, and you’ve got to listen to them. Some stuff we’ve done and [we] think, ‘Oh we’re brilliant.’ Other stuff, we think that, but we put it out there and say, ‘Oh, we’re so stupid.’ The important thing is to not sit around and tweak and hone and make it the best it can be. If you’ve got a good idea, put together a pilot and get it out there. In the end, it doesn’t matter how smart you think it is—the audience is going to tell you what they like.”

In Part 3, a few tips to get your videos found on the net.

Blog post by Juliette Tai, Director of Research & Competitive Intelligence, Greenlight360

Resources: paidcontent.org, streamingmedia.com, mashable.com, blogs.forrester.com

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EARLY ONE MORNING…

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

Dame Dash x Black Keys’ BlakRoc album hit stores yesterday. Cop that

Listen up, Dartmouth chicks!

*BONUS*

Paisley crack: