Promoting the video portfolio.
Whether it is an animation, a short film or a quality demo reel at some point you ultimately want to get the word out about your work, get noticed and get paid for what you like to do most. In the end, you need to easily facilitate your publishing, distribution and video monetization goals… aka, sell yourself and increase visibility so you can get hired, increase your client list and do more creative work.
If you choose to, you can go with the industry standard and dump to VHS/DVD and cold sell yourself via snail mail; although, you might end up spending more money then it is worth. You may decide to go it alone and convert it to some industry format of-the-many-choosing and post it online in the dire hopes that someone will remotely find your URL/website and see said animation, short film or demo reel. Finally… you can get a bit more daring and expose yourself in more ways then one by “peddling” yourself online, via the fast and trendy world of social networked (cough, cough) online video publishing services – aka the folksonomy that is youTube.
Now, let’s not discount the glory of youTube and video.Google as well as iFilm which were clearly the early adopters as well as the current ‘leaders of the pack’; you may want to consider the multitude of second-tier services (not necessarily “second-rate” services). These ‘copy-cat’ services are easy to post to, cheap, and quickly allow you to get your animation/video pushed out to the unfortunate masses.
Fortunately, in the pseudo-Web2.0 horizon, there are a few shiny examples of what might be the next best thing for individuals heading into the world of corporate creative staff, freelance virtual project teams or solo-gun/work-for-hire designers.
These new services offer the ability to maintain the ownership and creative rights to your hard work, facilitate online editing capabilities, increase the quality/resolution of your video content, introduce a new revenue stream (something akin to ca$h) as well as tap into a broader advertising/distribution platform. In a nutshell, these things might let you compete and show up side-by-side with large, professionally run media service. In the end, it might just be a very effective way to direct people to your website and get your portfolio, creative work and talent noticed.
So, the breakdown…
The Headliners
http://www.youtube.com/
http://video.google.com/
http://www.ifilm.com/
Alternatives
http://www.liberatedfilms.com/
http://www.itunes.com/
http://www.vimeo.com/
http://www.ourmedia.org/
http://www.grouper.com/
http://www.motionbox.com/
http://dabble.com/
http://www.livedigital.com/
http://videobloggers.org/
http://www.selfcasttv.com/
Rising Contenders!?
http://www.brightcove.com/
http://blip.tv/
http://www.jumpcut.com/
http://stage6.divx.com/
This post is tagged: Animation, business, employment, new media, software