Blame YouTube.
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Stephen Colbert’s idea was clever. The Decemberist’s music clip laughable. In a new twist, Southwest Airlines has launched their own “user generated” contest - a chance to produce A SPEC AD in order to win a (2) night vactation for (4) people to anywhere the airline flies - PLUS! - the commercial will be shown on NATIONAL TELEVISION! (….at 3am….shhhh….).

From the Southwest Airlines “Wanna Get Away” prize page:
“You are now officially the newest star in the broadcast solar system, which is way cooler than being a reality TV star, and almost as cool as being a rock star. Tell your family, prepare your friends and inform your mailman that your commercial will be shown on national television. Lookout Hollywood, here comes Marvin!”

Condescending much? Or, is this contest aimed at high school kids? This copy was either written by, A.) a Dick, B.) a Typical Ad Executive (also see answer A.), C.) an Idiot.

So what’s interesting about this?
THE OBVIOUS: How weird is it that a company I already produced a SPEC AD for launched a contest calling for SPEC AD production? No doubt, the “wanna get away” tagline is very recognizable and offers up inviting creative territory. However, it’s not hard to believe that a simple YouTube query birthed this contest idea rather than it coming from the result of mediated corporate brainstorming. Additionally, the new vanity trend on the InterWeb may no longer be self-Googling (don’t sue me), but rather seems to have shifted into self-YouTubing (anyone have a better verb?). As evidence, I point to this message sent to me via YouTube from the Marketing Manager of THULE:

I was laughing today, becuase your spot has more hits than the Yakima spots that they used as the backbone of their ad campaign

For the record, THULE found the SPEC AD I directed for my REEL, wrote me, asked for more info, then failed to promote it on their ailing “blog”.

Am I upset? No. The clip was never meant to be “promoted” by the company at all - sure if they found it and liked it - cool - but lets just call a spade a spade - I needed more content for my reel so I made some $0 commercials. From this point, you could see how this situation leads back to the Southwest Airlines contest: A company with a larger marketing budget and recognizable, non-threatening brand sees a bit of user generated content online - launches contest/ campaign/ experiment to see how far they can stretch the relatively free content. No harm right?

NO. I DON’T THINK SO. I SEE THIS AS A BAD TREND.
It’s as if “reality tv” has transitioned into “reality advertising”. Content for the lowest bottom dollar - exploitation be dammed. And who’s to blame, really?

Well, I am. It would seem from my rampant free production give aways that I’m dying for a break to “get it”, “get seen”, or “get noticed”. Time Magazine blames the collective we (us).

The reason asking for user generated sales tools forecasts a bad trend isn’t because it’s exploitative - it’s lazy, and depending on the “reward” - patronizing. Hey, if there are legions of the enchanted sending in demo tapes for THE REAL WORLD AIMES, IOWA, why wouldn’t a big company take advantage of that opportunity. Not only are users/ consumers of the media willingly exploiting themselves (is that even possible), they’re proving in unison that there’s also a market for this type of programming. Plus, reality TV is fucking cheap to produce.

Thing is, cheap, user submitted offerings rarely equal up to interesting, intelligent, or meaningful content. The concept for The Decemberist’s video is not only arrogant, it’s also been poorly executed.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The Decemberists shoot a video for their song, “O Valencia!”, something gets botched, new concept is created in conjunction with MTVu, crappy TV channel and cheap record company ask “fans” to create their own background for a horribly composed and utterly uninteresting green-screen video. This faux contest entry by “Fungible” sums up the mess quite nicely.

Regarding the Southwest Airlines contest, GOLDFISH is not faring so well, and it shouldn’t. It’s not a very good commercial. If I were to drop anything from my REEL it would be this commercial - I only keep it up because I’m somehow locked into the idea that I need (5) FAKE commercials to don said REEL and currently not interested in expending any more energy and resources into shooting another SPEC AD.

Regarding the Value Of Spec Ads: I’m the canary in the coal mine at this point; while not choking thus far, my yellow feathers are covered in soot and I’m growing tired of bumping my head into the ceiling.

Hey, these were fun to shoot. I like cameras. Beneficial? I’m not so sure. Two inferences can be drawn at this point - either this foray into testing the waters of the commercial world has been misguided, OR , I’m going to need a bit of luck to get any mileage out of these productions.

Time Magazine got it wrong. No one gives a crap about YOU. The ones who do care, don’t really - they’re just looking for some cheap time wasters. Hopefully you don’t want money.

These two revelations are liberating - allowing now for more time in productive ventures such as writing and panhandling.

Go ballot stuffing. I’ll split First Place with you.

For the record, you should never ever place your talent this close to the Green Screen. However, for this project, speed and stealth are the answer (that includes skiping the ironing and proper lighting stage).

Campy-Fun Goodness. Details in ‘07.

And I went from a one of these…

before

to this…

after

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And no, I don’t expect you to care about my haircut. I’m trying to tell you to go check out this addictively-cool website: www.sp-studio.de.

Doing some end of the year blog-cleaning.

This post reflects a whole series of info I was originally going write titled “The Art Of Interview (Parts 1-3)” concerning interview shooting/ editing techniques.

I’ve been Mr. Interview Director/ Editor lately - Shooting 6 or 10 a month since September. In the process, I thought I created a few timesaving tips to share especially when you as the editor get dumped with a mountain of unlogged interview tapes.

In addition to the interview library I created, I also scripted, recorded VO, and screencaptured some FCP movements but never got around to editing these tutorials together. Dedecated to comments/ feedback/ and interaction as I am….well, lets just say TIME is now my most valuable resource.

So, these tutorials will never get made.

I know many were enjoying the HDFORINDIES LIGHT AND IN PRACTICE motif we’ve had going on here, but expect to see JODOTCOM version 2007 focus on larger and more interesting projects at the expense of infrequent posting.

That’s a G O O D thing.

Anyway, here’s a sliver of what I was working on, for you. It’s only an example piece, but perhaps you’ll get the idea. Click this picture to view the QT movie, and if you do want to learn more, feel free to ask away.

trt = 2:41 / size = 15.6 MB

For certain applications, less can be more - JO MiniSite: www.joshoakhurst.com/minisite

A little bit of new stuff there. Variations you may not have seen. Nothing too spectacular - new intro titles, pics perhaps. A goofy logo I’m using on DVDs for reel 2007.