romancing the moneyshot

now, here’s something of value, at least i found it so.

the great entertainment democracy that is youtube is truly a wonder to behold, an endless parade of the good, the bad, the lovely and the ugly from every corner of creative pursuit. it is nothing less than a redefinition of global communication…

and before too long, i predict, even the old guard behemoths of television will come begging for distribution. the comeuppance of the gatekeepers as they peer through their peepholes and discover precious few still waiting to enter their paradises of privilege.

a far cry from viacom’s present – and very disturbing – lawsuit forcing google to spit up enough zeros and ones to circumnavigate the universe. what will they find? wow! what’s popular on tv is also popular on the web!

(i know it’s big part of making their case, but you take my point.)

despite the whirlwind of this revolution, and to shift now to a nuts and bolts issue, i must say that i find the new, two-tier video quality that youtube is offering its viewers deeply problematic.

yes, the high-quality versions of our favourite three-minute trifles are a fine improvement. standard play, however, can be akin to watching sewage bubble from a backed-up storm drain. the resolution is even worse than it used to be. and that’s saying something.

so when rudy informed me that there are tricks to this trade and that our little vignette, ‘i have bonbons’, could take advantage of them, my heart sang.

with a turn of this knob and a flick of that switch (if you need the details, all is revealed here), my encounter with the mysterious creature in the forest this time out made for such a happy and sludgeless youtube upload that i believe even the ancestors are proud.

our joy in this victory, however, was short-lived when we arrived at the matter of the promotional still that accompanies our humble effort.

this is the so-called ‘moneyshot’ that entices youtube viewers hither from thither in choosing what they wish to see. in a word, and in the parlance of bobo jr. and his friends, the still sucked. akin to a blurry fecal stain on a silk handkerchief. and, in fact, all three still options youtube arbitrarily selected for us, sucked.

this is hugely important. because a good moneyshot is worth its weight in gold. these days, it is child’s play to find an outlet for a song, video, book or whatever. how, however, does it get noticed? here, the dinosaurs of the entertainment community still have the upper hand.

but here, too, rudy came to the rescue.

stick with me on this. and no glazing over.

youtube samples its uploaded videos at three precise intervals to create the three choices of promotional video cap – the said moneyshot still. so, what you want is control over what that image will be.

in this example, we extended monkeyhowl’s cinematic debut by five seconds. that took the clip to 80 seconds and a mathematically managable length. and this then meant that youtube’s still sampling would occur precisely at the 20, 40 and 60-second marks.

so good, so far. but what exactly should the new moneyshot be?

luckily, i was able to take a quick snap of a close friend who happened to be lounging nearby. and to complement that vision of pure and virginal innocence, i added a lick of our favourite song.

next, the fresh footage was inserted to span the minute point of ‘i have bonbons’. we uploaded the new version and there you have it… a moneyshot for the ages. thus endeth the lesson.

and, of course, ‘i have bonbons (shameless moneyshot version)’ is now far outstripping the original in youtube views.

p.s. it’s been a couple of weeks and the real action has been at liveleak. the next lesson – and maybe i’ll dig deeper on this in future – is finding your demographic. it’s not necessarily how many you reach, but who you reach.

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