Have you ever watched a lion cub being born, a guy jumping through the atmosphere, or what goes on inside your dishwasher when you hit the ‘start’ button?!
Think of the most bizarre situation you could possibly be in…chances are there’s someone who has somehow filmed that situation so that everyone else can experience it online!
Bottom line, when it comes to content marketing today there is a huge audience out there fascinated by original and interesting content! Digital storytelling is all about engagement and today that may take all sorts of unusual guises.
We’ve all seen the usual footage from extreme sports fanatics – the view from a surfboard, mountain bike, skydive etc. Increasingly amateur videographers are recording footage from all sorts of weird and wonderful places meaning that we have access to places we’d never imagine ourselves being.
What I love about this concept is that it’s not only the professionals who are being creative with film, amateur videographers from all over the world including Perth are producing some really imaginative videos with household brands like the GoPro or DSLR.
If you have a few minutes we’ve found some examples of what people are filming and watching - there are some really random and some unbelievably creative ideas out there, but for some reason they’re extremely watchable…
One that hit the headlines last year was Felix Baumgartner, who travelled through space at 1,357 kph -1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound. Through Red Bulls initiative, it allowed viewers to live through Felix’s experience (in the only way realistically possible).
In contrast, here’s a video of what happens inside your dishwasher!! Yes, that’s right…a video production filming inside your dishwasher! It’s actually strangely interesting and at the time of me viewing it, it had 3,228,049 hits!
We are familiar with visual effects and the capabilities of CGI in movies, but occasionally it will stand-out as a newly creative or unusual technique, for example in ‘The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug’. There was much debate surrounding the use of GoPro’s in the barrel scene. The point was to give the audience the point of view of the character. Many thought this ruined the sequence by distorting the audiences’ perception. Others viewed it as a dynamic way of utilising technology to it’s best potential by mixing up traditional and modern filming techniques.
Do we really know what the audience want to watch on screen? Did you ever imagine that someone would want to watch paint dry for example? Well surprisingly some do, and there’s a website dedicated to streaming footage of it, you can even watch grass grow!
http://www.watching-grass-grow.com/
As a marine life enthusiast I loved a video that was shared with me recently via social media. Take one West Australian, one GoPro, a crab net and a whole lot of marine life and you’ve got one fascinating video!
It’s astonishing what some people choose to film and watch. When we discuss creative ideas with clients nowadays, we’re aware of how there’s far more willingness to really push the “barriers”! As more and more content marketing takes hold, your audience will want something original and engaging. Being ordinary is no longer acceptable. There seems to be no boundary or reason. I’d like to think that those novice videographers will continue to explore the parameters of what can be achieved and reach those places that we once thought impossible! Thinking ahead – imagine if one day we can actually reduce in size to the point where we can walk around inside a human body like in ‘Honey I shrunk the Kids’ – that would have to go viral!
Lucy Helliwell
