Viral Videos 101

This week I taught a brand new class here at WCAC called Viral Videos 101. The class is designed to take students from the concept phase, through production, and finish with the delivery of the video online.

I’m happy to report that class No. 1 went off without a hitch and my first students are on their way into the production phase of the course.

Although it’s advertised as a video production course, we didn’t actually discuss or work with any cameras or lights or microphones at all. That’s because viral videos are anything but typical productions. Whether or not a video gets 15 million hits on YouTube almost never has anything to do with production value. Nobody is watching babies laughing, or children bite each other’s fingers because the camera work is so amazing. Often, the most viral of videos are shot on cell phones or computer cameras, with absolutely no technical considerations whatsoever.

This can make teaching a class about viral video production a bit of a challenge, and that’s not the only hurdle either. On top of the fact that there’s so little “production” in viral video production, it’s extremely difficult to bottle up the elements of successful viral videos and replicate that success. It is far from an exact science.

Many times companies will spend tons of money creating viral marketing campaigns that completely bomb. Touching that elusive nerve that makes a video explode virally is a very difficult thing to do.

As a result, we spent a good part our first class watching successful (and unsuccessful) videos, examining them for their commonalities. As a group, we tried to identify the reasons why some videos garner millions of hits, while others flop.

Once we had a good working list, we got to work on the individual concepts of each student’s video. I had asked everyone to come to class with something they wanted to promote with a video – a cause, a service, a company, etc.

Once we refined the concepts for the individual videos, then we began to discuss the technical aspects of production. Each concept dictated how the video would be shot.

For example, one person’s concept required their video to be shot completely on hidden cameras. Another required an under-water cam. At the end of the day, none of the videos were being shot traditionally.

Next time we will be covering post-production and most importantly, delivery and sharing. We’ll be addressing things like tagging, keywords, blogging, and posting.

Soon thereafter, the videos will hit the web, and with a little luck, someone will share them with you!

If this class sounds like fun, that’s because it is! Come and join us. Admission is rolling so shoot me an email and sign up!

E-mail me at erich@wellesleychannel.tv