It's viral advertising but still pretty damn cool for the F1 fans

I got sent this via email today from Vincenzo who works for "viral videos production company from London" asking if I'd embed it, it being a Vodafone viral.

My initial reaction was no thanks, but after watching what they've done with a Blackberry Storm and a McLaren Formula One car, I have to admit to being impressed - looks pretty cool...



I'm not sure if I'm more impressed by them getting Lewis Hamilton to do it or that office racing track. That looks pretty funky, eh?

Extreme Sheep LED art by the BaaaStuds

Just look at this. Seriously. It's absolutely amazing. I want to know if it's real.

We took to the hills of Wales armed to the teeth with sheep, LEDs and a camera, to create a huge amazing LED display.

Yep, another ad, but wasn't it worth it?

Tim Burton's Vincent, his first stop motion film, made in 1982

I love Vincent Price's voice in this.

Vincent Malloy is seven years old
He’s always polite and he does what he’s told
For a boy his age, he’s considerate and nice
But he wants to be just like Vincent Price.

He doesn’t mind living with his sister, dog and cats
Though he’d rather share a home with spiders and bats.

There he could reflect on the horrors he’s invented
And wander dark hallways, alone and tormented.

Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him
But imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum

He likes to experiment on his dog Abercrombie
In the hopes of creating a horrible zombie,
So he and his horrible zombie dog
Could go searching for victims in the London fog,

His thoughts, though, aren’t only of ghoulish crimes
He likes to paint and read to pass some of the times.
While other kids read books like Go, Jane, Go!
Vincent’s favourite author is Edgar Allen Poe

One night, while reading a gruesome tale
He read a passage that made him turn pale
Such horrible news he could not survive
For his beautiful wife had been buried alive!

He dug out her grave to make sure she was dead
Unaware that her grave was his mother’s flower bed
His mother sent Vincent off to his room
He knew he’d been banished to the tower of doom
Where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life
Alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife

While alone and insane encased in his tomb
Vincent’s mother burst suddenly into the room
She said: “If you want to, you can go out and play
It’s sunny outside, and a beautiful day”

Vincent tried to talk, but he just couldn’t speak
The years of isolation had made him quite weak
So he took out some paper and scrawled with a pen:
"I am possessed by this house, and can never leave it again"

His mother said: "You’re not possessed, and you’re not almost dead
These games that you play are all in your head
You’re not Vincent Price, you’re Vincent Malloy
You’re not tormented or insane, you’re just a young boy.
You’re seven years old and you are my son
I want you to get outside and have some real fun."

Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall
And while Vincent backed slowly against the wall
The room started to swell, to shiver and creak
His horrid insanity had reached its peak

He saw Abercrombie, his zombie slave
And heard his wife call from beyond the grave
She spoke from her coffin and made ghoulish demands
While, through cracking walls, reached skeleton hands

Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams
Swept his mad laughter to terrified screams!
To escape the madness, he reached for the door
But fell limp and lifeless down on the floor

His voice was soft and very slow
As he quoted The Raven from Edgar Allen Poe:

“and my soul from out that shadow
that lies floating on the floor
shall be lifted?
Nevermore…”

185 blogs walk into a bar...

There's some improv challenge! The Craic Pack, resident improv group at the Bankers in Dublin have to come up with the responses to a barman refusing to serve 185 blogs (or bloggers) who walk into a bar...

This Monday's tune

Last week's song was a bit bouncy, apparently.

Primal Scream's Movin' On Up is even better.



The video looks like it was great fun to make, too.

When Jerry met John Lennon

"In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced an animated film about it."

I loved it. I love the use of drawing to illustrate the words and the mixture of pen works and digital animation just emphasises how timeless John Lennon's message actually is.

Lovely stuff altogether.

How to embed YouTube videos on your blogspot blog

Dedicated to Andrew because he asked so nicely!

1. Sign into your blogspot account as per usual and choose to create a new post.



2. Depending on where you choose to place your video in the post, either write your text before putting the video in or wait until after.



3. In a new tab/window, go to YouTube.com and decide what video you'd like to select.

I chose Rick O' Shea's interview with Mundy at OXEGEN yesterday, not least because I needed at least one OXEGEN post it's funny to see Rick taking photos on his N95 in it...



4. To the right side of the video you'll see the EMBED code.



Just left-click on the code to highlight it all and right-click and choose to copy it to your clipboard (or CTRL-A, CTRL-C and CTRL-V or whatever you find best) :)


6. Return to your blog post screen and switch to the Edit Html view.



7. Paste in your YouTube embed code - it will look something like:
And that's where your YouTube video will appear in your post. You can write as much text as you like before and after it, or indeed just paste it in and publish, it's up to you.

There are probably easier ways of doing it, but that's what I find works for me :) And if it doesn't work the first time, just try again!

Nothing left but to enjoy the video and comments from the people you share it with.



Does that help?

Getting to know me...

Blame Rick ;-)

Interview with Sophie Merry, BandyToaster

Sophie Merry isn't dancing today. Following what sounds like a painful landing poor Sophie is on crutches.

However, sitting in Dublin's Lighthouse Cinema, participating in the Viral Marketing symposium during the Darklight Film Festival, she seems at times bemused by her video, which I imagine she's watched a few hundred times now, and genuinely appreciative of the warm applause she receives at the end of the showing.



Sophie, 26, is of course one of Ireland's best YouTube stars. With almost 3 million views on her Groovy Dancing Girl video and with over 3,854000 views on her YouTube channel, Sophie's experience is a viral marketer's dream, a fun idea that went truly viral.

Hers is a story I have been enthralled with since it's come to notice. From the talk she comes across as being very down-to-earth, not at all positioning herself as a "morketing expert" (despite her presence with such luminaries as Bebo's Philip McCartney and Strategem guru Fionn Kidney) and her accent is pure Dublin, not in any way affected or "put on". She speaks well - plainly and forthrightly with the authority of her experience.

Indeed it is this groundedness that makes her so endearing. She doesn't feign any special knowledge or expertise, rather using the truth of her story "I did it to have fun" to show just what a success it was. Her case-study is the hightlight of the talk.



In what Grannymar has now termed "doing a @Darragh" I sat down with her to find out more.

The background:

"I was doing animation in college and listening to Daft Punk on the iPod on a bus home when I thought of doing something. Basically it was filmed out in my friend Billy's garden. I watched the video and decided to speed it up.

Billy recommended I put it up on YouTube. That was February 2007. It took about a year to reach one million views and hit 2 million a month later. That's pretty much when I started to get contacted and it's gone from there."

Sophie, an animator with a Dublin based animation company (she describes them as "a bunch of legends") is now the face and body of French clothing line Etam. Featuring on a dedicated website, the site shows Sophie modelling the jeans and featured a well promoted competition for others to show off their own dancing skills, with the winner receiving a year's supply of jeans for herself and 10 friends.

On the viral aspect

"To be honest I didn't really know that much about You Tube - to me for years it was one of those places you went to watch a guy fall off a bike or a funny cat or something. Now though it's become such a depth of content and creativity it's almost preferable to TV.

I didn't set out to make a viral - I set out to do something I'd enjoy and I did it honestly. I do it because I love to do it. If people like it that's a plus. It was when the positive comments started appearing and sites like Dailymotion and BoreMe featured the video that I began to see it happening.

We've put up other videos and I've also seen the animations, the mash-ups and the tributes. I'm really glad people seem to like what I do."

On creating a viral video:

"Anything you depend on other people passing on to each other can fail. Trying to create something artificial specifically for people to pass on is a lot more difficult than doing something that there's a lot of fun in that people will respond well to. You have to give value to the viewer as well."

On friends, family and being recognised:

"Oh the folks are very proud. My friends think it's savage - they call me the Irish Crazy Frog. I'm not really recognised much though I was in Tripod recently and because it was a younger crowd I got noticed a lot.

I have a MySpace page for my fans where I post the videos online and people get in touch with me."

Finally, advice for fans or people with an idea:

"Do something with feeling, whatever that is, from the heart and without an aim. Enjoy it. You'll have fun."

Sophie's MySpace is here and YouTube channel is here. Thanks for the interview! It was a real pleasure :)

Racism and discrimination in Limerick?

Limerick Unplugged parts 1 and 2:

"Two University of Limerick students Matthew Organ and Daniel Murphy decide to do a video project on the causes of racism and discrimination in Limerick today,

In their quest to seek the truth they uncover some interesting characters who paint a very different picture on the subject rather than the one found in the mainstream press. "

I met Frances Murphy, one of the stars, while being a movie extra on Triage.

I don't know if it's accurate know it's not a true reflection, it being a college mockumentary, but is it funny? Maybe the lovely Maz, The Limerick Blogger, Bock, Alexia or Laura could tell me more?

;-)

Your favourite YouTube videos on the big screen

You'll see this out there today on other great blogs, including the screening of Tron for the first time in 25 years, but I'd like to draw your attention to Darklight's Budda Bag YouTube salon.



I did this last year and it was great fun. A very simple idea - choose your favourite You Tube videos, line them up on the laptops and show the audience what you like!



You get 30 minutes to show off your chosen videos. It's a great idea for the people who make their own films, who do interesting mash-ups or who just have funny ideas and talent.

I met some really interesting people doing it last year and saw some videos I wasn't even aware of.

I'm hoping Darren, Anthony, Ben and myself may be able to throw some sort of show together... stay tuned!

Find out more here. To book a place email the lovely Sinéad at sinead[at]darklight[dot]ie

How creative could you be and what would you choose if you got a go?

This one will always be one of my favourites:

Bad Habits - shocking stuff altogether ;)

Just been sent a link to this by my beautiful friend Emily.

It's a short film she wrote and directed, starring the lovely Emma Cavanagh and Dave Kaczmarczyk.

Beautifully shot, great sound and a simple - if slightly unrealistic* - story.

*I mean seriously, I've NEVER known a nun as pretty as that one!

Well done Emily, really loved it :) It's great to see such quality come from young, talented Irish film makers.

What did you think of it? Just click below to tell us!

Even though I'd probably break a leg...

... I'd still love to try this in the right pair of jeans.



I saw this over on Ina's blog today and I love it. LOVE IT!

Where can I buy a pair?

Where else would you get it?

I just wanna dance - more creativity from the monkeys with typewriters...

I've always loved the uniqueness of the web, in that people do/create/share things on here that have never been done or possible to do before and that realistically we may not have ever heard about.

It's only online I'd have seen this video from Avenue Q, read these unintentionally funny comic strips and watched the amazing Hunter Hayes perform "something called Jambalaya" - all well worth a look!

I suppose there are both positive and potentially negative aspects, but overall it's a real treat to see something "cool" or to share someone's love of what they've found. It used to be butterflies and rhyming cadences, now it's generally YouTube videos.

When Steve sent me this link I visited straight away. He only sends me good stuff. While I may not share his effusive enthusiasm about it, here again is something that can only have been shared online, on YouTube (I shudder to think about the copyright complexities on this one) and was also done by someone with obvious passion for what they do. I wish I had the creativity.

It was originally created for a background screen at Gay Pride, but sure if you weren't there you wouldn't have seen it...

Definitely not one for the kids (contains an expletive) and probably not for office loud speakers. The song was never commercially released (understandable but a pity) but this made me question all the recent controversy about You Tube copyright. If we could use more stuff like this legally - and appropriately - where would people's creativity take us?