Archive for Publishing + More
March 7, 2009 at 8:37 am · Filed under House Of Videos, Marketing + Selling, Publishing + More
You might well know how favourable uploading your businesses video commercial is. For a firm’s manager, short format videos are a helpful tool that can help to capture your potential audiences’ attention and significantly improve the overall amount of users to your site. Web video clips are tremendously effective in holding the target customers’ fairly short attention. Furthermore, if codes are integrated and online video sharing is promoted, promotional videos can be a superb way to get one-way inbound links and in so doing positively affect your organisations position on the search engines. Vidify are market leaders in short format corporate video production for small businesses.
In fact, online videos have become an excellent source for business or self-endorsement. The following are a number of tips to circulating your own video commercials.
Firstly, you can post your online video clips on your own website; however this would need you to make your own video hosting arrangements. Instead, ask your Internet hosting solutions business if video downloading or video streaming options are supported.
Video downloading is where your visitors are required to download your online video to their PC’s hard drive. They need to store the Web video clip to their own personal computer before they can play it using their computer’s video player or a downloadable video player device. There are countless video downloading service contractors that cost very little. There is also a progressive downloading mechanism where your web visitors can play the Internet videos at the same time as downloading them.
Video sharing streaming on the other hand completely does away with the requirement to download the professional videos and allows immediate playback so it gives the most value to your Web users. Of course, getting a video hosting provider that supports video streaming can cost you a pretty penny.
And finally, the more fashionable way to circulate short format professional videos is by posting your sites to video distribution sites which possess their very own video hosting infrastructure. These sites cost you nothing at all to become a member and will even sometimes pay you to post video material. They also have a large market base & reach; for example, YouTube gets around twenty million Internet users every month.
June 27, 2008 at 11:13 pm · Filed under Publishing + More
Lately I’ve been noticing an odd trend amongst the freelance writers who contact us every week: rudeness.
First there was the writer who accepted a job found on our boards and forwarded the completed assignment to the employer with the words, “Project attached. Email me payment immediately.” No please, no thank you - in fact, no niceties at all.
Needless to say, the employer wasn’t impressed (I know because he forwarded the email to me, asking if all of our members were quite so blunt.) He told us that although the writing was of an acceptable standard, and was delivered on time, he wouldn’t be using that person again. His reason? He didn’t like her manners, simple as that.
Then there was the freelancer who provided us the wrong paypal address for her payment. We paid her, not realizing the address was wrong, and it wasn’t until a few days later, when she emailed us again, that we realized what had happened. No problem: We cancelled the first payment and immediately reissued it to the correct address, along with an email explaining what had happened.
In response, we received a tirade of abuse from the freelancer in question, who had received the paypal cancellation notification, and not bothered to read our explanatory email before she decided to get nasty and assume we hadn’t paid her. This piece of vitriol was almost instantly followed by a second missive saying “oops, I’ve just realized that you did pay me after all.”
While we were glad that she’d realized her mistake, we were rather less pleased to notice that she made no apology for her first, highly abusive email. Needless to say, this isn’t someone we’ll be recommending to any other employers in a hurry.
Then there was the person who sent an aggressive email in response to our automatic notification of a new project - a notification which, I hasten to add, she’d signed up to receive. “This is the second email I’ve received from you today!” she said, “For god’s sake, stop emailing me!”
Now, I dare say that all of these freelancers are superb, highly talented writers. Unfortunately, though, I won’t be recommending them to anyone, and if their behavior towards us is typical of their behavior towards other employers, I doubt anyone else will either.
The fact is that freelance writing is a business, and it’s not just your writing you’re selling: it’s yourself. No matter how great a writer you are, if you’re rude to employers, or difficult to work with, you’ll find it very difficult to make a living from it. Above anything else, employers want writers they can work with. Professionals, who won’t react to a misunderstanding by lashing out in anger, who won’t just demand payment without at least checking that the work is satisfactory, who know how to say “please” and “thank you”, and when not to fire off an email that would be better left until the cold light of day.
As the actress Lillian Gish once said, “You can get through life with bad manners, but it’s easier with good manners.” It applies to freelance writing, just as much as to life itself. And if you don’t believe me, try cursing out the next editor who accepts your work, and see how far you get!
Amber McNaught is a freelance writer and editor and the owner of http://www.WritingWorld.org, an online agency for freelance writers, editors and proofreaders.
Amber is also a director of Hot Igloo Productions Ltd, offering press release writing and distribution, as well as website design.
June 3, 2008 at 2:25 am · Filed under Publishing + More
[From our deconstruction of hundreds of Hollywood blockbusters and sitcoms at www.clickok.co.uk and our isolation and identification of more than 188 stages of the Hero’s Journey that you need to know about…]
The Hero’s Journey is the template upon which the vast majority of successful stories and Hollywood blockbusters are based upon. In fact, ALL of the Hollywood movies we have deconstructed are based on this template.
Understanding this template is a priority for story or screenwriters.
The Hero’s Journey:
a) Attempts to tap into unconscious expectations the audience has regarding what a story is and how it should be told.
b) Gives the writer more structural elements than simply three or four acts, plot points, mid point and so on.
c) Interpreted metaphorically, laterally and symbolically, allows an infinite number of varied stories to be created.
and more…
Sample Stages: Alien (1979)
• Context using text and visuals [we learn about the Nostromo].
• Ordinary World: the crew wake up; calm before the storm.
• Introducing characters, motivations, status, relationships [Ripley et al wake up and eat].
• Herald: Ash tells Dallas that Mother wants to see him.
• Call to Adventure [Mother tells Dallas they’re on a detour].
• Hero’s capabilities [Ripley knows it’s not the right system].
• Refusal of the Call [Dallas tells the crew that they’re on a detour; they don’t like it; Hawks and Doves polarized].
Learn more…
The Complete 188 stage Hero’s Journey and other story structure templates can be found at http://www.clickok.co.uk/
You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.
Kal Bishop, MBA
**********************************
You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made, the author’s name is retained and the link to our site URL remains active.
Kal Bishop is a management consultant based in London, UK. His specialities include Knowledge Management and Creativity and Innovation Management. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached at http://www.clickok.co.uk/
