"Self-Started" Succeeds Through Social Media

Self-Started Production Companies

Promotion through Social Media

          

Production. Distribution. Screenings.

These are the main facets of the film industry. It used to be that if you want get involved in this industry you had to play with the “big boys” like 20^th Century Fox, Universal, MGM, or another big production/distribution companies. If you wanted to have your piece seen, you’d have to go through movie theaters to get your piece on the “silver screen.” Either that or you’d have to go to a film or record manufacturer/distribution company, which would allow your piece to be seen on a home television screen through a video player or television station.

But now with the internet and social media outlets, these facets of film and sound recording have become more accessible to the people. Now anyone with access to a computer and recording equipment can create a video or music content and distribute to online viewers. (which make up over 75% of the population in the U.S.) 

           

Now let’s talk self-produced. These are three production/distribution groups I’m going to be talking about in this post: 

• Scott Bradlee & Postmodern Jukebox
• SoulPancake (The Science of Love)
• Hit RECord

Postmodern Jukebox

            Postmodern Jukebox is a music experiment founded by Scott Bradlee. The band, known to fans as a collective whole as Postmodern Jukebox, is comprised of members Robyn Adele Anderson on vocals, Adam Kubota on bass, Allan Mednard on drums, and Scott himself on piano. This group has been around for about a year and a half now, though Bradlee was making YouTube videos since about 4 years back.

            The first video of the group published on YouTube was in February 2013. The song covered is Mackelmore’s “Thrift Shop.”

This is no ordinary YouTube cover. Bradlee and the rest of the group is dedicated exposing the musical flexibility and hidden potentials of recent pop hits. He does mash-ups of music & vocal genres, and presents most of his work in his very own apartment. Though for this project the studio apartment has become an apartment studio.

Other early recordings include a country version of Kesha’s “Die Young.”

Scott has found as a musician and a student of music as an art form, that roping music strictly to their original genre is not the way to go about experiencing music. Through social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and the group’s own site he has been able to produced (record and film) these re-imagined pop hits and distribute them online.

            Over the past year the group has reached an over 600,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel, and their videos have a collective total of over 25 million hits. The group has collaborated with dozens of guest artists, some already viral such as Puddles Pity Party the “Sad Clown with the Golden Voice.” 

They’ve coved such recent songs as “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor to superstar status artists like Miley Cryus.

Through the group’s impressive use of social media on the production and distribution level, they have gained a national following and are currently on tour!

\

         

SoulPancake

SoulPancake small, viral “production company” based in LA and founded by actor Rainn Wilson (The Office), and his friends Joshua Homnick and Devon Gundry. 
This production group is sub-divided into about 6 different video series. These sub-groups in SoulPancake cover a wide range of topics. 

I particularly like the series “The Science of Love.” This series, like much the others from SoulPancake, contains reaching out to regular people in the creators communities and bringing them into a conversation.  

On “The Science of Love” these conversations rang from topics such as intimacy to Tinder.

The creators spend a lot of time & effort crafting this productions, just like any other profession production company. And because of this hard work and collaboration they then get to share it through SoulPancake's managed social media outlets such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.

Today the group has over 1 million subscribers on their YouTube channel, and their videos have a collective total of over 35 million hits. Like Postmodern Jukebox, it is highly collaborative and eclectic in taste, and uses social media to help produce and distribute its work for the online community to see.

Hit RECord

Hit RECord is another film and art production outlet. This self-produced project is interesting because it focuses so heavily on collaboration. The project was started by actor Joseph-Gordon Levitt, and is now based all over the U.S. with hundreds of thousands participating in collaborations through the Hit RECord project.

Short film, "Yes We're Sinking"

It's all about the collaboration. The Hit RECord YouTube channel has sever examples of this collaboration, but the website gives followers all the bits and pieces and individual artists who contribute to this ongoing initiative. 

Watch video here

Hit RECord engages the smaller population of online content creators from photographers, to studio artists, to writers, to filmmakers. So while the “following” on YouTube and other social media may not be as high as the other two examples, it is constantly growing. It also shows an impressive amount of engagement in the online creating community. Considering there are less than 25% of America’s online population contributing to the creation of content the following Hit RECord has gained is truly impressive.  

As of today, Hit RECord has over 100,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel, and their videos have a collective total of over 3 million hits. But they certainly are cornering the social media market through the group’s own YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. Gordon-Levitt also promotes the project through a “HitRECordJoe” account on nearly all of this media.

The project has been going on for several years now, but has only recently gotten very formal on the collaborative level. Perhaps this has been enhanced because of their clearly strong participation in social media. (I’m going to guess, yes.) Just a little over a year ago, the project got picked up as a television show, and the first season just aired on the television station Pivot.

The Take-Away

Self-produced, self-promoted film and recording groups online have changed the way we’re exposed to film and music. We’re also experiencing it differently. This genre works though because social media is providing a platform to produced, distribute, and promote new works. Self-produced production groups use on social media to promote and distribute their work, and therefore viewers are getting a whole other category of film and recording to experience.

New information. New talent. New ideas. 

Twitter, Tags, and DiGiorno

Groundswell Today

Ray Rice & NFL Internet Coverage and Its Viral Scope 

            Two weeks ago the internet exploded with reports of NFL player, Ray Rice, and footage of him beating his then fiancé, now wife, Janay Rice. This story was initially reported from TMZ, a celebrity gossip news program. Of course, the NFL’s response to the situation when the story was finally exposed through a facet of the media received a large amount of backlash.

All too soon was the elevator footage viral and used in many online news articles, broadcasts, and social media as a case against Rice and NFL.  

Yes, this content has thrived online. Blog sites, like Tumblr, to social media networking and content sharing sites, namely Facebook and Twitter, spread this content far and wide, and the outrage was voiced.

It became a fast “trending” topic within overnight. Ray Rice’s “punishment” was mocked by many media outlets, and football fans and human rights activists spoke up on blogs and other social media sites.

It is no secret (according to the internet and the general public) that the repercussions of Rice’s actions are not satisfactory. The NFL has had its name and brand tarnished, not just by Rice’s actions, but really by the way the NFL is handling the situation.

Turning the Disheartening Into the Empowering

Tags in the "Why I Stayed" Movement

            On twitter, users have used the hashtag “WhyIStayed” to tell their own stories involving abuse relationships and the reinforced their involvement in those relationships. This hashtag has also been coupled with another hashtag “WhyILeft” to share and connect over their reason(s) behind leaving these relationships. This social justice movement on Twitter has generated very real content and created a powerful narrative.

The hashtags separately serve their own poignant purposes. “WhyIStayed” is a heartbreaking account of real events which, frighteningly enough, resonate with a large number of Twitter users.

 “WhyILeft” is more empowering, but is still heartbreaking because of the gravity of the situation that is bringing a person to finally leave the relationship.

Together, the hashtags send a powerful message out to the rest of the Twitter community. Because of relevancy of the Rice case and the use of tags, this movement has reached the online community at large. 

This movement has surfaced on many online news publications, blog sites, and other sites and search engines. The movement is made to the public through online searches using one of the tag “Why I Stayed.”

 Groundswell: It Can’t Be Tamed

           Janay shares her comeback to the media’s and the people’s reaction to the video and story of her abused carried out by Rice on her Instagram.

This story, as well as many other narratives created online, cannot be contained. Though Janay’s position posted through her Instagram defended Rice that did not stop participants in social media from using her experience to speak out against Rice and stand for and with those who have experienced abusive relationships. 

How “Going With the Groundswell” Goes Wrong

The distribution of the Rice case, and the “WhyIStayed” movement that came from it is brought to the greater online community through the power and persistence of “groundswell.” In Li and Bernoff’s text, groundswell is the phenomenon where a story or trend inevitably gets picked up on an internet social media network or application and is there to stay (in so many words). Li and Bernoff emphasize right away in their text the permanence of the internet. Once content has been share it has sticking power regardless of the desires of the “powers that be.” This contributes to the inevitability groundswell and one of the traits of the internet that make groundswell so inevitable.

The more an individual, organization, or company want something taken off the internet, the more it’s bound to resurface. This resistance and secrecy on behalf of the person or people the content is representing only entices internet participants and generates more desire to access this content. Li and Bernoff would agree.

DiGiorno, a brand that makes frozen pizza, jumped on board with this trending topic by using the trending tag “WhyIStayed” in a controversial manner. First of all, DiGiorno do not follow the guidelines of “POST” given by Li andBernoff. They’re objectives and strategies are askew, to say the least. The biggest evidence of this is their misuse of tag, hashtags on Twitter specifically.

DiGiorno tweeted “#WhyIStayed You had pizza” in order to get involved with this trend that had obviously made an impact in the Twitter community. However their strategy (“S”), which I’m only assuming was “to gain audience interest in their product through humor” was very misled.

 Their objective to reach out to another community with this hashtag was botched because they failed to achieve some crucial objectives (“O”), such as listening. Those responsible for running the DiGiorno account did not even bother to clink the hashtag and see other’s stories. This would have illuminated the intended and appropriate use of the hashtag.

DiGiorno’s twitter account is somewhat of a “repeat offender” when it comes to misusing trends on Twitter. However its last escapade during the live televised production of Sound of Music on NBC was actually considered a success. But regardless, it is evident that DiGiorno is handling this social media technology and groundswell with some reckless ignorance.

DiGiorno taking down its tweet doesn’t mean the evidence has disappeared. With screenshots the text, time, and place exist on the online community forever. And while the company apologizes and makes not just a valiant, but surprisingly smart effort after their blunder, they cannot erase the original mistake. Though they may have made the best effort of any company, or general user, on Twitter to apologize and make amends for their mistake by apologizing to every outraged individual it can only go so far to “save face” for the DiGiorno brand. 

The Bottom Line on Walking the "Thin Line"

Corporations Partcipating in Groundswell  

Lesson being that if a company is  not thorough and respectful with background information and motivation behind social media trends and tags then there is bound to be backlash. It really comes down to the "thin line" between being engaging and being appropriate. If corporations aren't willing to apply the listening objective of social media marketing then they are going to have problems. 

Watch the video

 John Oliver sums up this case perfectly. His criticism is so on point. 
(And needless to say, his face also captures the ridiculousness of DiGiorno's twitter blunder)