Viral Videos

Today I had the pleasure to work with the great team at In-Focus Digital Video. They are the video production sponsors for our museum's fundraiser, the Buffalo Chip Classic. They do top-notch video production and did a great job producing the 2009 short (online) video and a nice longer DVD with footage of all of the teams.

We got into a disussion about editing to make videos more "viral" or faster, shorter, punchier etc. The event was really fun and they captured great footage so we think it has potential to be somewhat viral. I asked for the video to be limited to three minutes. That seems really short at first but if edited with a standard television commercial format it is actually six 30-second ads.

That made me think about the great 30-second ads aired during the Super Bowl each year. Many of them use narrative story-telling as the format and take you through an entire "plot" in 30 seconds. I watched about a dozen, and most of the 2010 Doritos ads, and counted an average of 15 cuts (segments of footage) per 30-second spot. They move fast but are able to carry a narrative, and make you laugh. This one is my favorite video of the bunch.