Going viral

I had one video that gone viral. Actually I gave failblog my gymnastic stunt that went horribly wrong. It got like 1 million views in one week. Right after, i got messages from different TV networks wanting to use my clip. In the end, my clip was shown on TruTV, Spike TV, MTV, and FOX. Not sure where else it's been aired. Totally unexpected but it was a fun run.

link: This is the second link, The first one on failblog got deleted not sure why but they uploaded again and it still got a million views. pretty crazy.



ps: This is me in high school and yes I am the one who got hit. Some of the comments are pretty freakin funny.
 
Last edited:
BLUESPIDER said:
I had one video that gone viral. Actually I gave failblog my gymnastic stunt that went horribly wrong. It got like 1 million views in one week. Right after, i got messages from different TV networks wanting to use my clip. In the end, my clip was shown on TruTV, Spike TV, MTV, and FOX. Not sure where else it's been aired. Totally unexpected but it was a fun run.
Click to expand...

Link? :)
 
Jawa Ex Machina said:
btw why is everybody talking about Batman Forever? Batman and Robin was the one that preceded Batman Begins...
Click to expand...
140mi cost vs 240 rev. That seems more like it. I mentioned the last batman film, because it has made WB to change the director for the series, wich lead me to believe it wasn't so good finnancially and I was right. It was not a failure, but, as WB demonstrated recently, Batman is too valuablke a franchise for this "timid" success. Wich means, If you get a batman to direct, you better perform like a superhero if you intend to please the investors. So my point stays: Getting a franchise to base a film on, is not a solution to any problem, in fact, it is another difficulty on it's own...
 
Kholi said:
Taubkin-- Yes. We are eye to eye. Even on the success of certain viral videos.

I have no objections or questions about anything you just stated.

Now the question is: how do you apply this to marketing your feature film?
Click to expand...

I know we're not in disagreement, just getting deeper in the argument for the sake of shelling out some useful information in the process.

I couldn't possibly disagree with you, I'm a huge fan! :)
 
taubkin said:
I know we're not in disagreement, just getting deeper in the argument for the sake of shelling out some useful information in the process.

I couldn't possibly disagree with you, I'm a huge fan! :)
Click to expand...

The conversation has definitely been pretty useful to me. I was actually going to pull out of a certain marketing scheme I had for Superseeds, I think I'm going to try my best to make it happen.

Jawa is right-- How do we apply these things on a low budget? I don't think NOT spending money is a reality... but how do you keep costs down and get to your 1 million views?
 
Kholi said:
but how do you keep costs down and get to your 1 million views?
Click to expand...

Which is no longer "viral marketing". Now it's just marketing 101.

I've been following this thread a bit and it seems as though the operating definition of viral here is general popularity that builds quickly. Basically, this discussion would be better titled "getting viewed". So long as "viral" is in the mix, I think we'll be going in circles.

Like I said, there is a pretty big difference between viral marketing and a popular video. Viral spread seems to be more of what is being discussed here. Of course, definitions of "viral" differ. I personally believe there is a marked difference between a popular video, a viral video, viral spread, and viral marketing.

But generally, if you want views, you have to use appropriate platforms. Maximize your impressions. Use Youtube, Megavideo, Vimeo. Embed, embed, embed. Use Reddit, Digg, 4Chan, Facebook, Twitter, and applicable forums. Those are all free methods of general marketing. Not saying it is easy, but if you have material that people want to watch, the more eyes the better. Then hopefully they start sharing it on their social networks and *poof, you have viral spread of a video. Eventually, that video becomes popular.

Like I explained before, a true viral video is discovered organically and is shared unexplainably at an exponential rate. Usually, viral videos don't have marketing campaigns. They are picked up, for whatever reason, by the masses and shared in numerous social circles. Which is why viral videos are unpredictable and can't be readily replicated.

Popular or trend videos can be replicated with a little bit of thought and effort.

Hit generation can be pushed by increased impressions, but view count hardly matters. Sure, the video was clicked on 1million times, but what was your view-through rate? Where did people drop off? 1million views that watched 3 seconds of a 60second long video isn't the same as a video with 500,000 views and an 85% completion rate.
 
Mattykins said:
Hit generation can be pushed by increased impressions, but view count hardly matters. Sure, the video was clicked on 1million times, but what was your view-through rate? Where did people drop off? 1million views that watched 3 seconds of a 60second long video isn't the same as a video with 500,000 views and an 85% completion rate.
Click to expand...
Well, it is and it isn't.

If I got a trailer for my film, or a teaser, or a video that works as a trailer in the sense that it informs people of the existence of my film and they'll know the title of it, they don't really even need to click the video. It's enough they're on a forum and someone starts a thread saying "hey guys check this out, it's a video for a movie called Marianne" or something.
If they enter the thread and read that, they will have heard of the film thanks to the video without even watching anything.
 
Jawa Ex Machina said:
Well, it is and it isn't.

If I got a trailer for my film, or a teaser, or a video that works as a trailer in the sense that it informs people of the existence of my film and they'll know the title of it, they don't really even need to click the video. It's enough they're on a forum and someone starts a thread saying "hey guys check this out, it's a video for a movie called Marianne" or something.
If they enter the thread and read that, they will have heard of the film thanks to the video without even watching anything.
Click to expand...

Well now you are talking about trailers...

But even then, if someone watched the first 10-30seconds of a trailer, what info will they glean from it? Maybe the prod co? Maybe enough to see the cinematography? A bit of the acting? If your viewer drops at 30seconds, the odds of them seeing the completed film are essentially zero. You haven't grasped their attention for 90seconds, you certainly won't for 90minutes.

Impressions doesn't equate to click-through. How many banner ads have you clicked through? How many times have you clicked an ad on facebook? They are ordering millions of impressions, so technically you are made aware of the service, but then the question enters - do most people care? Ordering more impressions will invariably bring in more people to the site, but even then, click through rate might be low even though impressions are high. Wether that's due to poor targeting, poor content, or what-have-you, high impressions don't always mean high click-through rates.

Of course, if you make a thread on a site like this, you have a chance people will start discussing the film to learn about the making of it. But again, if those people are intimately knowledgable of your film go to watch your trailer and drop out at 25% completion, you have a problem. Then impressions don't matter at all. And if people just navigate to your thread, if they don't spend time and interact, the name of the film will escape them in a day or two. Again, impressions don't matter, engagement does.

Or you could go the other way with Netflix pop-unders. I'd imagine click-through rates on those are pretty low, but you see them everywhere, and thus you are very well aware of the company.
 
Mattykins said:
But even then, if someone watched the first 10-30seconds of a trailer, what info will they glean from it? Maybe the prod co? Maybe enough to see the cinematography? A bit of the acting? If your viewer drops at 30seconds, the odds of them seeing the completed film are essentially zero. You haven't grasped their attention for 90seconds, you certainly won't for 90minutes.
Click to expand...
Well name recognition has to factor into it.

If I make a video, even if it's not a "trailer" in the classical sense, there's still a message I need to deliver.

So if I can get people to watch the video and post it on forums, twitter and facebook, even the people who don't click on the video will know:

* There's a movie coming called MARIANNE.
* It's a Horror/Drama

The people who click on it, even the ones who don't watch more than 10 seconds, will also know:

* Peter Stormare is in it.
* It's Swedish (or at least European).
* The look and feel of it.

The ones who watch the whole thing (let's say it's 2-3 minutes) will also know a few details from the plot and where to find out more.

But the important thing is name recognition.
When I go to festivals and look through the programme, the first films I mark are the titles I've heard of. The rest I need to sit and actually read the description, and festival descriptions usually suck. They're really not dependable.
So I figure if people are talking about the film it'll help me get into festivals and it'll help getting people to see the film at the festivals.
 
Gary Huff said:
That's the big IF right there. How are you going to get people to do that?
Click to expand...
That's what we're discussing in this thread, man.

Look. It's already happening.
When I google for Marianne, people are discussing it in various forums. Swedish and international horror forums mostly. It's still very little, but people have been hearing about it and they have been starting threads.

Most of them started when I uploaded the pilot to Youtube and Vimeo and various other video sites in february 2010. The pilot was shot for virtually no money at all and it looked like **** but it got TV to call me and I got a lot of local and domestic attention in the press which helped me through the shoot.
Sending out screenshots and plot description to bloggers and film sites hasn't helped much at all, but that one video, even though it looked like ****, worked pretty well. I think it only got around 3000 or so hits on youtube, but that's a start.

Now that we're pretty much done with post I need to get the ball rolling for real.
 
Last edited:
And what you can't seem to accept is the idea that maybe there really isn't a formula for getting the public to do what you want...at least without spending some decent cash.
 
Gary Huff said:
And what you can't seem to accept is the idea that maybe there really isn't a formula for getting the public to do what you want...at least without spending some decent cash.
Click to expand...
Dude... Most of your posts in this thread have been negative. Try adding something constructive istead.
We're all filmmakers here, and low budget marketing and distribution is important to all of us.
 
With a trailer, you're telling people about your feature. It's important, I think, to not misrepresent the content. You'll end up alienating audience members. I don't know how you would Effectively create a trailer that could or would go viral or become popular if the content isn't already built for the purpose.

Someone posted a link for the last exorcism and that looked like a creative way to spread the word. How effective it was, we don't know.

If it were me I'd not hesitate to emulate or concoct something close to what they did for my horror feature.

Superseeds isn't horror so I've got other ideas on how to bring some attention to the feature. By no means is it free but the costs aren't anywhere near what companies spend on larger projects.

You definitely should consider what outlets you have access to or favors at.
 
The Last Exorcism stunt was just one segment of a larger viral marketing campaign. That was, ultimately, more successful than a few posts on a forum.

I guess what I was trying to get at, was still, impressions don't equate to awareness. Take a look at the user films section on this very site. There are so many films listed, how many do you remember? Even ones that you've watched trailers for? If there is no direct engagement, you are probably not going to remember the content.

If anything, this thread has made me decide to start blogging about film marketing again. Since there is a lot of stuff I'd like to get into, but this particular thread isn't the place to do it.
 
milksac said:
Advertising agencies attempt to create viral videos for their clients, however the percentage of videos that actually go viral is relatively small.
Off the top of my head I can remember one fabricated corporate video that went viral - the Red Bull plane that lands with one wing.
Click to expand...

Those fake gatorade ads are the only thing I can think of.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top