Music Video Done with iPhones

First, the back story. A New York City band called Atomic Tom recently had all of their instruments stolen. A major setback for any band, right? Not in this case.

Flash forward to October 8. Instead of using the thievery as an excuse and giving up, they came up with a fantastic solution. They gathered up their iPhones (7 in all), boarded the New York City B Train (which travels over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn), and recorded a live performance of their latest song, “Take Me Out”. And not an acoustic version either; they each used different iPhone apps to act as their instruments. The remaining three iPhones were used as cameras to capture the performance, which was edited into this music video.

I’ve used this space before to promote the use of high quality cameras and images in video, no matter what the final destination will be, whether it is DVD, a video blog, YouTube, whatever. I’ve also stressed the importance of using a tripod, framing your shots nicely, and the like. This video breaks all of those rules, and then some. And yet, I love it. It captures the raw feel of a live performance (and the fact that it’s taking place on the New York City subway!). The sound quality is fantastic, which is obviously important in a music video. I am also fascinated by the way they are able to use their iPhones as instruments. I knew Apple had a lot of apps, but I had no idea there was anything like this.

What a great blend of creativity, ingenuity, technology, and talent. I hope their never-give-up attitude pays off for them (at almost 2 million views on YouTube, I would say it has!)

Tags: apple, atomic tom, fundraising videos, iphone, music video, take me out, Video of the week, Video Production

Honesty is a Key Tenet of Social Media

Social media isn’t really all that hard to understand, yet corporate America has a way of taking something simple, honest and relatively pure and smudging it up with it’s big fat fingers. Here’s my beef: One of the tenets with blogging is hyperlinking to content that is complimentary to your content. The idea is to share good information - pretty simple stuff.

So, growing up in suburban Detroit, I often read the Detroit papers - the News and the Free Press. The other day, while reading an article on my iPhone about my beloved Michigan State Spartans basketball team I noticed some obscure words hyperlinked - words like “comfort.” Thinking this is related content (like, ‘in beating Northern Iowa the Spartans can take comfort…), I clicked on the link only to find a pop-up advertisement for a deodorant. Dumbfounded, I began to click on other hyperlinks in this mobile article only to find more and more pop up ads. This is the type of stuff that will drive people away from social media.

In this age of transparency I find it amusing that so many businesses have a hard time helping people, instead of selling to people. It’s an old mindset that traditional marketers can’t seem to escape. They are trapped in old school thinking, that just does not work in the world of social media.

Quit trying to control the message, stop shouting at your customers and find ways to help people. If you want proof that the old way is the wrong way - next time you go to a party, introduce yourself to a stranger and begin selling your product to them. See what kind of reaction you get and then shoot me a note to let me know how that worked for you.

Ed Heil is the owner and president of StoryTeller Media & Communications an inbound marketing and public relations agency and video production company based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Ed blogs on topics related to inbound marketing, social media, media relations, news media, video production and crisis communications.

Tags: Communications, Detroit, Free Press, iphone, media, Michigan State, News, Northern Iowa, Spartans, storyteller

The Anti-Social Side of Social Media

Undoubtedly, social media has changed the way many of us communicate.  This blog is a case in point. However, it seems more and more social media has made us all master multi-taskers absent of focused communication and in many cases downright unsocial.

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Tags: be here now, Blackberry, Blog, Facebook, flickr, iphone, myspace, PDA, Twitter, YouTube