Shooting Between Rattling Subways Cars
A team of young writers and producers lost their network show, and decided to create their own broadband content for a young online demographic. Black20 offers viral content from a small office in Brooklyn, New York. Says the website: “Our office is small, our desks don’t have drawers, and the heat craps out at least once a week. A pack of junkyard dogs roams our block and tears apart our trash. Our building is directly under the subway, which rattles the walls and our heads, and interrupts shooting every nine minutes. But it’s home. Literally. Two of us live there.”
What’s the name mean? Let them explain: “With few options, and a determination to make our show the way we wanted to make it, our team walked out of the building, hopped in a car, and drove down to Atlantic City. 124 miles of scenic New Jersey highway and eight servings of chicken fries later, we stopped outside The Taj Mahal Casino. Our cameras rolled as we placed our production money on a single spin of the roulette wheel. Stupid? You betcha. But we knew we would win. We could not afford to lose.”
Two lessons from Black20? First, anyone with half decent equipment, passion and some creativity can now create great content and find an audience online. Second- there’s no motivator for a startup like being dissed by a larger player.
Courtesy of Kaya Purohit
I did my Animated Trailer: What if Spiderman…? after being inspired by Black20’s hilarious Black20 Trailer Park: Spiderman 3 – Product Placement, which I heard about from my partner’s teenage son.
That is so true, especially the passion part, if you look for opportunity and sieze it who knows, am sooo cited I sent a clip to Channel 4’s “Big Brother” today and they foned me back and its on air tonight on E4 11pm on “Big Brothers Big Mouth”, YAY!
Not so over here in Australia, best offer I’ve had was a cple of $$ per 1000 views..yee haa!!
Has anyone quit their day job doing online video over there in the U S of A?
I see a lot of video sites using adsense, is anyone organising their own advertising, arranging deals with businesses themselves?
I’m becoming a little jaded with the ‘viral video’ hype. I think the reality may well be that the only people making cash out of this fad are the likes of Chad and Steve!
It’s a shame you were bypassed on the youtube partner program Nalts, but is ANYONE making a buck out of this hobby??
I think Kevin should expand Cube Break, (a new and better youtube) get some up and coming wanna be geeks to put it together for a percentage of the ad revenue and become self-unemployed like renetto. Kevin you have the formula, someone is eventually going to swipe it and do it. It’s just community building and that something you already have 🙂
I make a living out of this video malarkey and just got into Google Adsense too around $98 in 3 weeks not ace but its early days.
maybe a mix between comedy and how to do video, but gee, the ideas for online vlogs are thick and fast, just check out blip.tv. Question still is…any moolah??
I have made $5223.86 on Revver so far. I have made (been paid) nothing anywhere else even though I tried them all.