November 5th, 2008
Today we interview Dennis Brouwer. Dennis company, Spotzer, offers an online library of creative, ready-to-air commercials produced by industry-leading professionals from around the world. They also help you plan and buy spots across multiple advertising media, including television and the web.
Videos everywhere with Spotzer
Manuel Marino: Ciao Dennis! First of all, what is your role in Spotzer?
Dennis Brouwer: Hi Manuel, my role is VP Video Productions.
MM: What do you think about internet videographers community? seems there is a big community out there!
DB: As you can imagine I believe strongly in the internet videographers community, at the end of the day that’s the future or the biggest part of the production of video for internet and in later instances the television.
Both you and I have been growing up in a world were the television was always superior above the internet for were it came to the quality and the importance.
When I now look at my children what they (5 and 7) do with the internet and how school is moving them into that direction. And look at how the world of the production has changed I think with the constant renewing internet technologies and the production possibilities its inevitable to conclude that the world changed and is changing still.
MM: So what all of this will lead to?
DB: Where we move to eventually is not crystal clear but what even a blind man can see is that the classical production is a dead end street. At least were it comes to mass productions. There will always be an urge for Oscar winning productions but the mass will do with the ones that are not winning the prices. And therefore be happy with the current quality. This off course is arbitrary because what is quality in general, but that’s a total different discussion.
Some 15year old do not even recognize the 4k film images and are not aware if they look at SD, HD or BluRay. And I dare to say that thats because they got used to the “crappy” youtube image quality.
Having this said it opens up the discussion that I raised before; what is quality? Again its arbitrary. But what we as creative professional people can see is that the method of the production is changing rapidly.
MM: What about the short videos industry? Spotzer is really doing well in this area.
DB: We here at Spotzer believe that the market for the short promotional video is only just beginning. There are a lot differentiators that make the short video successful or not. We do acknowledge that there need to be a sales proposition in every video for every customer. We also believe that every video needs to be more or less tailor made for as far as we can achieve that for the incredible low budgets that we work with.
A very good personalisation tool off-course is the music that goes with every video, that is one of the items we make a video personal with. Obviously there is also video and voiceover to show the personal touch in the video. But a consumer could interpret-ate the video also as being stock material, the voiceover in contrary is very much personal because we let the customers name come back a few times always.
MM: When we first met you told me that Spotzer was going to expand to all Europe.
DB: We have started up our productions in Austria, Finland, Sweden and will shortly start in Poland and Czech / Slovakia. And we have found out that the customers are very happy with the end-result. Specially the quality that we deliver is very highly appreciated.
MM: What did you produce, beside the promotional videos?
DB: Beside the promotional videos we have also produced a big library of what we call “Ready to Air” videos. We have been delivering those RTA’s to Hearst and Merchant Circle in the USA and they offer these video ads to their customer base.
This is a very different product because every second of video is already produced and edit in the video, the changeable items in the video are: slogan, call for action and end-card.
And again we sell them at remarkable low prices!
MM: After this very interesting interview I just suggest to check Spotzer website at once! Thank you Dennis!
Posted in Business, People, Technology | 1 Comment »
January 2nd, 2008
This is a nice article from Isaac Marion. Isaac has been running the online textual variety show, BurningBuilding.com, since 2003. He lives in Seattle, Washington, where he works various mundane jobs while trying to make his writing/music/art career take off.
Reading: it’s not for fun anymore
Recent studies have shown that across the board, in all mediums, Americans are reading for pleasure less than ever before. This isn’t just literature, novels, etc, this is all forms of the written word, including magazines, even the mighty Internet. Yes, that includes blogs. Less than one third of adults reported having read any literature in the past year not required for school or some other assignment.
Sounds shocking at first, but really, who didn’t see this coming?
In fact, those stats seem rather high to me. I think out of everyone I know, only 3 or 4 people would consider themselves regular readers. Sitting down with a book has become a quaint, old-fashioned novelty notion, almost an affectation, like smoking a pipe, collecting cigars, home brewing, bonsai trees, single malt scotch, and Civil War enthusiasm.
This is distressing to me, obviously, since 70%-80% of what I do with my life is based around writing, and therefore, by extension, reading. Am I training in an obsolete trade? Is my dream of becoming a successful writer kind of like my dream of becoming a successful blacksmith?
And, what exactly is causing this decline in literacy? The obvious answer is, not enough “Reading is FUN” posters in our libraries. How are people supposed to know, if they’re not told? I think if the statistics were examined you would find a very clear link between the decline of Elijah Wood “Reading is Hobbit-Forming!” posters and the decline of American reading. But although this is certainly a major contributing factor, there must be others, because I’ve viewed my fair share of pro-reading advertisements, and even I find myself reading far less than I used to. What is going on? Let’s take a look at a few of the elements of modern society that are edging out the written word…
Television
Low cost and ease of production for reality shows featuring attractive, vapid automatons in crude parodies of life situations allows for vast explosion in quantity of TV shows, with each channel boasting dozens of similar shows, each with its own spinoffs, knockoffs, and webisodes, until total psychological saturation is achieved. All available brain space is filled with the televised thoughts of attractive, vapid automatons.
Straight to Video Knockoff Films
Having already watched every other film in Blockbuster, people turn to low-budget, nearly-homemade films released to coincide with similarly named, similarly themed theatrical films, ie, Transformers / Transmorphers, Beowulf / Beowolf
Video Blogs (See Youtube)
Weary of ingesting the inane thoughts of strangers by reading them in written text form, Americans turn to video blogs, or “Vlogs”, where they can listen to the inane thoughts of strangers while watching their faces from an uncomfortably close camera angle, and randomly assigning them celebrity status by public whim.
Sports/Video Games
Competitive entertainments allow bored Americans to work their reflexes and mental dexterity without actually doing anything, feel part of something without actually being part of something. People flock to Sports/Video Games as an outlet for their personal energies and as a general mental anesthesia. Helps relieve pressure of disposable income and time.
Beowulf: the IMAX 3D Experience
CGI animated film hurls arrows, spears, axes, blood, guts, and naked Angelina Jolie directly at the viewers, completely blowing our minds and making us never want to read, write, talk, or walk around ever again.
Youtube
Endless supply of videos where lightsabers have been digitally placed in the hands of people or animals who were not previously holding lightsabers.
There seems to be a trend here. As part of the general movement away from difficulty and towards ease and instant gratification, humanity seems to be trying to avoid even the difficult senses. The popularity of video blogs shows that people would much rather have information poured into their brain through their ears than have to focus their eyes on letters and attempt to comprehend writing. Is the day too far off when even listening to information is considered too much effort? Too dull, too slow?
Probably just in time for the invention of direct-to-brain connections. Entertainment won’t require us to use our senses at all. It will just be dumped directly into our minds in a big, sticky, informationy gob. An entirely new form of blog will appear, not the web log, or the video log–the “brain log”, or….”blog”.
Hmm.
Brlog…?
Brailg…?
Hmm.
Posted in Arts, Culture | 3 Comments »
October 13th, 2007
Today we interview Jaques Smit, an incredible man. Just read all his current positions: Managing Director at MindNova Advertising Pty (Ltd), Marketing Director at Inland Kitesurfing Pty (Ltd), CEO at Avonstorm Entertainment, Producer at Avonstorm Pictures Pty (Ltd), Technical Director at Blo-Tant Pty (Ltd).
Here is the interview and I initially ask about Cereal, his new project/show:
MM: “Cereal is the perfect example of how an Idea can be developed despite the obstacles, can you explain briefly what is Cereal?”
JS: “The title “Cereal” is a play on words as the show is a pseudo-parody of the serials of old. Serials were the old fashioned, Saturday afternoon cliffhanger matinees, complete with dashing heroes, damsels in distress and fiendish villains… Not to mention the ol’ ‘conquer the universe’ plot motif.
Instead of trying to remake the classics of old, “Cereal” uses footage from original television shows; kicking off the first half of the first season is “Radar Men from the Moon!”
“Cereal” does follow a coherent plot and does feature reappearing characters as a regular show would, but the visuals are all that remain from the originals. The sound effects, music and voices are rerecorded and rewritten by the actors and creators behind “Cereal” to create an offbeat blend of old and new and produces hysterical results in doing so.
Cereal is aimed at a broad audience and sets out to create a get away from every day stresses. The show is runs with the plot of commander Cody that must save the world form strange aliens that are destroying the railroad lines for some unforeseen evil intent (revealed in episode 5 ;-P). Commander Cody and his heroic band of miss fits light up the show with witty comments and questionable lines.
The first episode “A sale at Penny’s” introduces the hero’s to the audience and sets the mood for the under lying joke that will run throughout the first season.”
MM: “I know you encountered obstacles…”
JS: “Creating the series was easy as it came natural to the well trained staff we had at our disposal. But upon completion of the pilot episode the next step was the hardest. Finding a TV station willing to broadcast something as revolutionary as Cereal. We approached all the large stations we could get a hold of and after being kept waiting on answers for excessive periods of time we finally decided to use the Web as a broadcasting platform instead.”
MM: “So the show runs online like web series. Are you having success?”
JS: “We started posting the series on the web one week ago with no advertisement backing other than word of mouth. The results have been astonishing. We went from ten friends viewing the show to give us support to an average one hundred viewers a day within a seven day period. We have received raving reviews from fans that have started quoting the show in every day conversations.
Our next step was to start searching for sponsoring companies willing to advertize on the site in order for us to keep developing the show. Our first sponsor came from the faithful directors on one of my other companies called Inland Kitesurfing. We are still searching for more sponsors but thanks to our fantastic fans we will have no problem there at all.”
MM: “What are your next projects?”
JS: “Avonstorm Entertainment is a group of young entrepreneurs that have come together to make their dreams a reality. Our first two projects were Avonstorm Gaming and Avonstorm Motion Pictures. As Avonstorm Gaming we are launching our first MMO-Cell phone game in January 2008 called Wappet.
As for Avonstorm Motion Pictures, we have been working on another more conventional television series that we are trying to raise funds for. In the true spirit of our organization we will stick to great comedy as we send two forgetful Hungarian spy’s into a suburban community to complete a mission they have forgot about in a land they know nothing of. The preliminary scripts are hilarious and are living up to all the ideals we set out to meet.”
Thank you, sir, what else to say?
Posted in Arts, Ideas, People | No Comments »
