Our Product is Explanation
All posts for “show”
We have just been notified that The Common Craft Show is an Official Webby Award Honoree in the category of Technology Film and Video. Yaaaay!
What does it mean to be an honoree? From the Webby Awards web site:
Of the more than 8000 entries submitted to the 12th Annual Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an Official Honoree.
Basically, we made the short list but didn't quite make it to being a nominee, which is eligible for the award. It's still wonderful to be recognized... Continue Reading
I while back I wrote about solving problems when they need to be solved - and it's still very applicable. With every video we continue to learn and solve new problems.
In almost any video project, lighting is a huge factor we've learned so much. There are few more stark examples of our learning curve than the listing of our videos on our YouTube page. Notice the gradation of the white backgrounds:
You can see, right in the listing, our learning curve. Here are a few things we... Continue Reading
When we got started with the Common Craft show, it would have been easy to feel overwhelmed. We were stepping into the world of video production and in that world there is a lot to know. Looking back - we had something very valuable on our side: ignorance. We didn't know what we didn't know. Had we done all the research and tried really hard to make videos the "right" way from the start, I don't think we would have been as successful.
Our experience in the last 5 months has taught us... Continue Reading
Why Paperworks: All About Constraints
Posted by: leelefever on June 23, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: best practices, lesson, ourwork, paperworks, show
Since our first couple of videos came out, I've been talking to a lot of people about what makes the Paperworks format work. Aside from the content/message, I often say that a set of constraints is what makes the format a great fit for our goals.
In this case, a "constraint" is a rule that we have decided not to break in making our videos.
Examples: We only use certain materials (paper, whiteboard, markers, string), we won't make a video over 4 minutes long, we only use our hands to tell... Continue Reading
Common Craft Video Productions
Posted by: leelefever on June 12, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: business, paperworks, productions, show, thissite, video
Common Craft (the company, not the blog) is in the midst of a change. It appears that we're becoming, quite fortuitously, a video production company.
This is our story:
As many of you know, Sachi and I traveled around the world in 2006. Along the way, we started making short videos and fell in love with putting our work on the web. Towards the end of the trip, we started to think about how we could use short videos for Common Craft. In October of 2006, an idea was born: we would make... Continue Reading
Just after posting our first video on RSS , I learned a few valuable lessons:
1. Video is inaccessible for the hearing impaired
2. Video is not easy to translate into other languages
3. There is a new site that addresses both of these issues called DotSub .
DotSub makes it easy for me to transcribe the spoken words into text subtitles. Then, once the subtitles exist, it enables DotSub members to voluntarily translate the text into other languages and post the video to their blogs. This makes... Continue Reading
The Verdict: Exceeded Expectations
You're going to have to forgive me, I'm about to spew all sorts of facts and figures while at the same time stroking my ego. I fear that it will sound like bragging , but we were completely blown away by the success of the RSS in Plain English Video and I want to share.
The video was posted on April 23rd, 2007. Today is May 28th and in just over a month the video has been...
Viewed over 80,000 times across three hosts (Blip.tv, YouTube and DotSub)... Continue Reading