Or does it? Maybe it does some good. Maybe impatience is adaptive. In this Darwinian world the rule is, famously, adapt or die … or at least watch someone steal your lunch. Why am I thinking these terribly profound thoughts? Why, Netflix, of course. Netflix streaming, to be more precise. Though I am patient enough, or cheap enough, to choose free shipping and wait several days for my Amazon packages to arrive, when I subscribed to Netflix, I couldn’t bear the idea of waiting for DVDs when there was an alternative. Streaming. I point the clicker at my trusty Roku box and, seconds later, I’m watching millions of pixels doing their high definition dance on my 46-inch Samsung screen.

(More about the  ragpicker’s choice of videos you get with Netflix streaming, as opposed to Netflix DVDs, below. For now, the subject is still impatience.)

Because we Americans will do almost anything to make our lives more convenient, impatience may be transforming into a virtue, at least for entrepreneurs. It takes an eternal seven seconds to reach into your pocket, haul out your car key, insert it into the door lock, twist, pull the door open, slide the key into the ignition and start the car. How tedious! So somebody invents a remote control to unlock the car. Then somebody raises the ante by inventing a “smart key” you can keep in your pocket. Every time you use it, it effectively lengthens your life by seven seconds. Wow!

That’s what I love about Netflix streaming. It’s effortless. Not only are you spared a trip to the video store (remember them?), you don’t have to chart your viewing course a couple of days in advance. Spares wear and tear on executive functions of your brain. Though the instant watch list is dismal when it comes to semi-recent narrative films, there’s a bunch of good docs, like Page One, The Art of the Steal and Theater of War. When my sister-in-law mentions the Brit-com series Doc Martin,  after a few clicks on the remote, my wife and I become mildly addicted.

The adaptive sin of impatience has always pointed the way to online video’s future, and it will continue to do so. Impatience has led to shorter and shorter videos. The YouTube classic, “Charlie bit my finger – again!” viewed by over 423, 000,000 short-attention-span folks (like me), is just 56 seconds long. To sample the conventional wisdom on this subject, google How long should online videos be? and you’ll soon see that nobody advises clients to make long videos. The graph shows a curve as steep as a ski jump of  viewers dropping off after just a minute or so.

Netflix streaming illuminates the future of viewing, but Netflix itself may not be the future of viewing unless they get their act together … and soon. When I search their website for a narrative film I want to see, almost without exception the Netflix gremlins tell me that my film “is not available to watch instantly.” Oh yeah, I can watch it on DVD by clicking on a single button … and upping my monthly bill by $7.99. It’s incredibly annoying, and has caused countless Netflixters to abandon ship. DVDs were developed more than 15 years ago. Those disks still work pretty well, but they’ll soon be a legacy technology.

Impatience rules. I’ve heard that Being Elmo is a charming doc. Let’s see, do I want to check it out right away, or do I want to wait for the mail carrier to arrive a couple of days from now? Seems like a no-brainer. Let’s see how long it takes for the pleasure to arrive in my family room once I put Being Elmo on my Instant Queue. Here, click along with me:

As always, I welcome your comments.

I know because I had to learn the hard way.

It wasn’t until I’d been in the television end of the biz for many years that I first jumped into the corporate end. And I hadn’t yet learned to listen—really listen.

You see, when you’re producing a TV show, it’s crucial to make sure as much of your vision survives into the final program as possible. If necessary, you rassle with the executive producer—maybe even hide a few things from him or her—because it’s you who know the territory best. (Of course, sometimes the EP does have a valid point or two that will enhance your vision!)

At the end of a long run mostly working at TV stations, I took the freelance plunge and soon landed a corporate gig. I understood the assignment (or thought I did) and as usual, promoted my concepts in everything I was writing.

Somehow, the client wasn’t getting it. My glorious vision wasn’t selling. Not long after, I found myself holding my terminal paycheck and looking for another gig. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I had been the one who wasn’t getting it. I hadn’t heard what the client wanted … because I hadn’t been listening.

But hey, I’m nothing if not educable, and once I learned the craft of listening, the world of corporate video was much more welcoming. The learning curve wasn’t steep—it was mostly a shift in attitude.

Now I take notes. Like crazy. At client meetings I type away without looking at the keyboard. Typos be damned—the important thing is to stay engaged in the conversation. I try to catch the nuances of what the client wants. If clients don’t yet know what they want, I take down every relevant thing they say and later help them figure it out. Naturally, I don’t just listen passively. I ask for clarifications. I make suggestions (and pay close attention to how they’re received).

After many a non-broadcast project, I can say definitively that listening works. Clients—no surprise—like it. And the path to an approved script or a finished project is much, much smoother.

This long preamble brings me to a recent project, a short video for JN Phillips Auto Glass. It’s a company with more than 40 locations, and a very good reputation. I was invited to write and produce the video by Dick Weisberg of B/R Creative, JN Phillips’ agency. Dick and I have collaborated happily before, notably on a circus video. The purpose of this video was to let people know about GreenShield, the company’s windshield recycling program. (I always enjoy projects that have an environmental or socially redeeming purpose, and this was to prove no exception.)

From the first phone conversation with Dick I took notes. Ditto at meetings and on conference calls. Notes are a solid foundation on which to organize a project, because you can look at them and know what facts, messages and people are important to include.

You know how frustrating it is when you feel someone isn’t listening to you. Clients are just like you. But if you incorporate as many of the client’s wishes as possible into every draft of an outline,  treatment or script, the client will feel listened to. As you’re writing a draft, you’ll see when a client’s desires (like wanting seven minutes of content squeezed into a three minute web video) won’t enhance the video. Since you’re the one with production experience, and the client knows you’re not fighting their ideas, chances are they’ll go along with most of your suggestions.

On the GreenShield project, a writer who knows the JN Phillips brand inside and out did some rewrites on my prose, to make sure it was 100% aligned with their messages. Then I took her version and cut it down, because web videos lose a huge percentage of viewers if they’re too long. In any case, everyone on the project—client, agency and production people—got along really well, and JN Phillips is very happy with the result.

See for yourself. As you watch, pay attention to the video’s host, Josh Rosenfield. He’s not professional talent—he’s the guy who’s actually in charge of the GreenShield program. Awesome job by a first-timer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPT1afINYI

Then there’s iMovie ’11. For years, evolving and devolving versions of iMovie came with every Mac I bought. After using it a few times I grew to hate it, because it was so mean-spirited. For one thing—and it’s a real deal-breaker—anybody who’s edited professionally can’t live without frame-accurate editing, especially audio editing. But trying to edit a simple conversation in old versions of iMovie would have made even Job say this is too much to bear.

Then I heard that the latest version, iMovie ’11, is way different. I read that a newbie can learn enough quickly to make a pretty slick vacation movie, while the journeyman can unlock some pretty cool advanced features. I went to Apple’s iMovie webpage and started exploring, and was bowled over … especially when I found out I could download it for a mere 15 bucks!

I’d been meaning to learn iMovie for a couple of months, mostly because a guy like me who purports to know something about making online videos ought to be familiar with this common app. The opportunity came when my daughter, Lily, who is an actress and writer, wanted to make a new demo reel. Before she arrived with her footage, I played with the app, checking out basic and advanced features.

The features are impressive–too many to go into here–but one of the very best seems utterly boring yet is worth mentioning here: Help. That’s right, Help. Just choose Help from the menu and you get two buttons:

If you click on “Get Started,”  you access a bunch of lessons that have lots of advice, videos, etc. If you click on “Browse Help,” you access a treasure trove of tutorials. They start out with basic clues, but you can tap a flock of disclose triangles to reveal deeper levels of information. As I tried figuring out how to do things I was used to from Final Cut Pro, the Help feature was invaluable. (If you want to steep yourself in a myriad of iMovie details, including a ton of stuff that’s not available through Help, you can always shell out a few dollars for iMovie ’11 and iDVD: The Missing Manual, which is terrific. Ironically, the book costs more than the app itself!)

Full disclosure: Lily–that’s my daughter’s name–and I resorted to Final Cut Pro to edit  one of the elements of her demo, “Instructions Not Included.” That was really complex, requiring lip-syncing audio from one take to video from another take, etc., etc., etc.

But we put all the clips together in iMovie ’11. Not only did we edit clips down, we also added music and tweaked the audio and video. For example, the only version of a clip called “The Scene” we had was very, very low resolution. Not only that, the exposures were all over the place, and the audio levels (because the mike was attached to the camera, which you should avoid whenever you can) varied from thunderous to almost inaudible.

Now, of course iMovie’s video and audio correcting tools aren’t as sophisticated as Avid’s or Final Cut Pro’s, but they’re pretty impressive. And I was pretty impressed, having paid (as I keep saying in different ways) less than the $19. cost of a “black label” burger at The Crow Bar. (Then again, that burger may have the same reward-to-cost ratio as iMovie ’11.)

I could go into more detail about all the goodies iMovie ’11 offers, but you’ll have more fun if you slide over to Apple’s website and watch their iMovie ’11 pitch video. After all, what is more beguiling than an Apple pitch video?

Finally, if you’d like to see Lily’s demo, just click on the player below. As always, your comments on this post are welcome.

A triple-threat disaster–earthquake, tsunami, and nuke threat–hits Japan. The Middle East and North Africa start exploding. Still, the paramount issue (IMHO) remains climate change. Virtually all the science says disaster is looming that could make a 9.0 earthquake seem almost trivial in terms of consequences.

Of course, that’s not an opinion you’re likely to hear from folks like Senator James M. Inhofe, who famously called the threat of catastrophic global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Inhofe and millions of others insist that the science is biased, shoddy or inconclusive.

This blog post is not the place to debate the plausibility of disastrous climate change. For today at least, let’s assume that climate change is arriving on our doorstep. Now, as makers of online videos, what can we do to help scientists, government officials and other influencers carry out their mission to slam on the brakes?

Some weeks ago, I asked myself that question. I realized that, as a video guy, the issue wasn’t so much climate change as climate change communication. The facts are clear–or clear enough–but our leaders are fiddling while the planet is smoldering because … well, because of a massive failure to communicate. (Yes, I know that our species’ brains have a hard time dealing with threats that seem distant in time. But we can’t wait for our beleaguered  gray matter to evolve further. So all we can do is communicate better.)

I googled “climate change communication” … and found–surprise!–that I wasn’t the only one thinking about this issue. In fact, George Mason University has a Center for Climate Change Communication and there’s a Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media.

Originally, I wanted this post to be about my analysis of online climate change videos. When I started looking for those videos, I found someone had beaten me to the punch. Her name is Sara Peach, and she describes herself on her Twitter page as an “environmental journalist and multimedia producer.” She has a bunch of posts on the Yale forum website that sample and analyze videos. She told me her favorite is the one called Climate Change Web Videos: Advocacy Edition.

Since she’s mulled over the failures and successes of these videos for far longer than I have, I wanted to hear what she has to say on the subject. So yesterday, Sara and I talked via a Skype videochat (which she recorded with Call Recorder and sent to me). Here are a few bites I’ve excerpted.

First, I wanted to learn how she’s dealt with the preaching-to-the-choir quandary. Most people who flock to see films like An Inconvenient Truth don’t need to see them, because they’re already convinced. And the people who most need to be convinced will avoid those docs like the plague. Sara replies that there’s plenty of opportunity to reach out to people who fall between these two camps. (In her description, she draws on the Global Warming’s Six Americas analysis developed by Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHRGEcO0VHk

Because our beady little brains can’t fathom distant disasters, Sara advises videomakers to bring things closer to home. No shots of polar bears, unless your viewers live north of the Arctic Circle. Audiences need to be able to relate to your content. Fortunately (really, unfortunately) there’s already plenty of evidence of climate change for you to draw upon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoNfgq0lHEc

You might think of climate change as abstract and therefore boring. Sara Peach sure doesn’t: “Climate change is a great issue to report on, because it draws on law, it draws on economics, as well as science. And so there are always very interesting things to report on. It’s very rewarding to bring together all these intertwining issues.” However, she acknowledges that making these videos can be very challenging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MppNvTjyDjI

Thanks, Sara, for doing my research for me. It was terrific talking with you and benefiting from your experience. May climate change communication succeed in helping our leaders, and the rest of us, do what we all need to do … now!

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

I said yes, and the whirlwind revved up. Welcome, Ron, to “Masters of Innovation,” a series about cutting-edge technology and how it’s going to affect our lives.

Even if you’re a veteran of the biz, you can learn a lot on any new assignment, especially if the calendar pages are flipping by so fast there’s no time for mistakes. Here are six things I learned — or re-learned — from about two months on the series. I’m telling you about them because they’ll be relevant if you want to make better online videos.

1) Every member of the team is key. Of course the host is key, because he or she is so visible — every instant of performance is subject to scrutiny. Fortunately, Jim Brasher loved the subject of the shows and really came through for us. But my point here is that  Steve Barker, the assistant editor, was also totally crucial; if he hadn’t performed way beyond his job description, we all would have been in trouble.

2) Organize, then organize some more. In video production, things will go wrong — a missed flight, an equipment breakdown. Since some things are beyond your control, it’s important to have everything you can control be nailed down properly. Do you have all of tomorrow’s interviewees’ cellphone numbers as well as their office numbers? Does your sound recordist know the best place to park? Luckily, associate producer Jessie Ward was even more compulsive about these details than I was.

3) Never lose sight of the story. Before each day’s shoot I made sure to list all the story elements I wanted to capture on tape. While filming, I kept consulting this crib sheet and scribbling more notes about things I wanted to shoot.

4) They’re called movies because they move. This may seem obvious, but it’s not. On “Masters of Innovation,” Jim interviewed a whole bunch of people, many of whom did demos — showing him everything from snake-like robots to iPad apps. When we started editing, we saw that there was often too much static talking before they dove into the action of the demo. That was boring. So, we moved the demos as close to the top of the story as we could. A lot of the palaver just disappeared. Much more fun to watch!

5) Remember the close-ups. I say this, because we didn’t, at least not on Day One. Sure, we shot some close-ups, but we were constantly rushing and we didn’t get enough, and the editors found their hands tied by this shortfall. Mercifully, we were able to go back and film the missing shots … and we made sure to get plenty from then on.

6) Stock footage and stills can save your story. Maybe you can be too rich or too thin, but you can never have too much B-roll. The lifeblood of video storytelling is B-roll, but sometimes there’s just not much to shoot, or you don’t have time or budget to shoot enough. That’s where stock footage and stills can make the difference between dull and delightful. On “Masters of Innovation,” we had a minuscule budget for stock, but some of the labs where we shot had produced their own videos and photos. We begged them for every bit of relevant footage, and bought a few shots where there was no other option. I could hardly believe how much of a difference adding this material made. On your next shoot, maybe the folks you’re filming have snapshots, videos or graphics they’ll let you use. (Make sure they have the rights to whatever they give you. You don’t want to use pirated stuff!)

I hope I’ve piqued your curiosity about the shows themselves. You can watch any of the four episodes of “Masters of Innovation” online if you click on the title screen below.

I’m drawn addictively to the word “story,” and the attractive book seemed like a present begging to be opened. The cover promised: “Present visual stories that transform audiences.” Wary as I have become of promises to transform, I started reading greedily.

At first I was disappointed. My initial impression was that the opening chapters seemed too influenced by the corporate world. Do I really believe that “A business is usually founded because someone came up with a clear vision of the world in the future as an improved place.” Really? Sometimes businesses make the world better, of course, but has news of the greed-induced Great Recession not reached Mountain View, CA, home of Duarte Design? It seemed overblown to talk about addressing an audience at a company meeting in these terms: “You are not the hero who will save the audience; the audience is your hero.” Really? Odysseus was a hero, Aung San Suu Kyi is a hero.

But I got over it, and riffling through the book now I see that Duarte’s examples and intent focus at least as much on people who are improving the world versus improving the bottom line. (Not that there’s anything essentially wrong with improving the bottom line.) And with or without heroes, I found a lot of value in these pages because of the advice she gives about storytelling.

For those of you determined to make better online videos, what’s most valuable in Resonate is the linking of Duarte’s astute analysis of what makes a great presentation to killer examples of actual presentations. Those examples are not all videos, but that doesn’t matter at all.

Best of all, she’s posted some of these examples online, as Extended Web Content. Some of these presentations are truly inspired and inspiring, and I encourage you to click on all of them. Ideally, you’ll have her book in hand, and you’ll look at the extended web content when you come to the page it connects to. But you’ll absorb something valuable from many of them even without owning Resonate.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream …” speech is among them. And there’s a bonus: on her blog, Duarte recently posted an analysis of this speech that’s pretty darn brilliant. I’ll embed her video here, so you can watch it at your leisure:

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

On the other hand, if you have a few questions about making better online videos, just ask them in the Comments section below. I’ll do my best to answer them when I have a moment. That may be helpful to you, and it’ll be easier for me than dreaming up new posts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

That’s why I wanted you to know about it. You can judge for yourself if it’ll be worthwhile for your needs as a maker of online videos.

The Reinvention Summit is the offspring of a team led by Michael Margolis, founder and president of Get Storied, an enterprise devoted to the storytelling needs of innovators, entrepreneurs and other folks. The Summit describes itself in these terms:

Reinvention is the new storyline. We believe narrative is a key to re-storying possibilities. That’s why we’re gathering a new tribe of storytellers: change-makers, marketers, creatives, innovators, and entrepreneurs — anyone who sees storytelling as fundamental to their work and mission. Help us re-frame the conversation.

There’s no need for me to go into detail about who the scheduled speakers are and the resources that will be available to you if you register. You can get all that, and lots more, from their website.

One urgent note, though: the $11. Early Bird registration ends November 10 at 8pm EDT.

I’ll leave you, for now, with a video in which Michael describes the Summit. You’re welcome to crit this vid on your own as an example of the art of online storytelling.

That lead to a meditation about what I’ll call our Creative Covenant, our “contract” with the people who watch our online videos. Would you like to peek under the hood of my meditation? OK, here goes …

Soon after starting my chore, I thought: why don’t I grab my new blue iPod Shuffle and listen to “This American Life” or “Radiolab” while I work? I set down the rake and headed toward the house … and then stopped. I didn’t want any media intrusions. I didn’t want that autumn afternoon to be invaded by recorded words or music.

With my ears deliberately unwired, I heard my neighborhood’s audio track afresh. Not that there was anything glorious to hear: a distant leaf blower, a contractor’s Bobcat beeping in reverse, the sound of desiccated oak leaves scraping against each other. But buoyed on the rhythm of raking, I began daydreaming. Gradually, the reverie focused itself and I imagined writing a Seeing Your Story post about not wearing the iPod.

At first, I hadn’t the slightest idea about the point my post would make. But because my limited brainpower wasn’t focused on a podcast, I was able to sense that something was on my mind.

Enveloping myself in media would have stanched the musing, and I wouldn’t be writing this post now.

It’s taken a full day for the inchoate thought to become conscious. Only at lunch with my brother-in-law (thanks, Lawrence!) did it pop in a way I could articulate: Any media, from a magazine article to an mp3 song to an online video, narrows the angle of our awareness. I hadn’t realized it when I picked up the rake, but I didn’t want Ira Glass or Jad Abumrad, talented as they are, to colonize my mind.

But that’s exactly what we do when people click the Play button on our videos. They’re inviting us to take over billions (?) of circuits in their brains. In exchange for what? I think we owe them something. I believe we have an obligation to give them an experience with some value to it, be it garden-fresh information or wacky entertainment. I’ll call that tacit agreement our Creative Covenant.

Now that I’m aware of it, I suppose I have to sign on to it. You, too! So, don’t just upload videos. Upload good videos. However you define “good.”

That’s all I have to say on the subject, at least for the moment. Anyhow, I’ve had enough of writing for now. In fact, I’m ready to relax and have my mind colonized. I’m choosing to enter into a Creative Covenant with OK Go, a contract with a duration of only three minutes and thirty-six seconds. I invite you to join me by clicking on the Play button below.

Your comments, as always, are welcome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHlJODYBLKs

His message: Don’t begin your online video with stuff that’s gonna drive away the very people you’re trying to reach in the first few seconds!

Got it? Now, here’s the “tease” of the video I watched yesterday, the opening 15 seconds of a two-minute piece by the very worthy organization Save the Children. Be forewarned–some images are hard to take …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC_Fbg3Lc4U

The heavy artillery of the first shot doesn’t get to me, but the flies on the baby’s face are heartbreaking. Human psychology (mine at least) being what it is, a feeling of disgust at the flies trumps empathy for the child. If you came across this video on your own, would you continue watching?

It’s a shame, because the later parts of the video are far from a turnoff. They introduce a very cool–very imaginative and very worthwhile–Save the Children project called The Lottery of Life.

You can “play” the Lottery of Life on its own website. You spin a wheel of fortune to get a chance to start your life over in a location chosen by chance. For me, the wheel stopped in India, and I learned I would have a 39% chance of growing up illiterate … that there’s a lot of child labor … and a huge number of child marriages. (Glad I was born in Manhattan!)

The Lottery of Life is social networked up to its eyeballs, because Save the Children wants to spread the world about improving the lot of kids around the world.

My point today is not about the planet’s children, who are, of course, way more important than your videos and mine. It’s simply that we should all pay attention to Aristotle and jump start our videos with scenes that’ll attract folks, not repel them. ‘Nuff said about that. Now you can watch the whole two-minute video below, or simply pop over to The Lottery of Life and spin the wheel!

Your comments, as always, are welcome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQwKd5eaXjA