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Advertise on CHS-V
Starting today you can buy ads on CHS-V through CHS's ad service.  New CHS-V videos are consistently some of the most viewed stories on CHS, both because of the CHS traffic, but also because they're often linked to and embeded by other sites like Seattle PIThe Stranger, and many others.  This means if you advertise on CHS-V, your ad will reach far beyond just CHS.  So what are you waiting for Seattle businesses?! Advertise on CHS! Advertise on CHS! Side note -  I don't love the idea of having advertising on screen at the same time as my video.  But this is the best way we could think of to a) give the advertiser good placement, and b) not make the viewer have to sit through an ad to get to the video.  Obviously I would prefer to have post-roll ads, but who honestly sits through those... if the video is over, you can just go on to something else.  Pre-roll ads are just annoying and I would never use them*,  so I thought this was a good compromise.  Plus as long as it's local businesses ads it's not so obnoxious as a Clorox ad or something.  Since I shoot widescreen, I just have to move the image down in the frame to make room for the ad, rather than actually placing the ad over part of the image. *This is not legally binding, so don't hold me to it.
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1000 views!
Woke up this morning to find that after 2 full days online, "Hope Art" has 1000 views!  More than all three other episodes of CHS-V combined.  So thanks to Slog, Seattlest, O'Reilly Radar, Obama Art Report, and all the other blogs that linked to the video! Here's the blip.tv graph of total viewers, the first two little bumps are the release days of the first two episodes "The Blog," and "Snowstorm '08,"  And the huge spike on the right is "Hope Art."
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"Hope Art" & Web Video vs. Doc Short
About an hour after I sat down to edit this video, I decided that I had a good enough story here for it to be more just a web video, and that if I spent some serious time editing I could probably submit this to some film festivals as a documentary short. What is the different between a web video and documentary short? I’m not sure exactly. (I’ve also been thinking lately about whether there is a difference between a “citizen journalism video” and documentary but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.) The main difference for me was that when I decided it was a doc short instead of a web video, I stopped assuming the viewer had ADD. It’s pretty well established that online video viewers have short attention spans... I know I do. When I watch web videos I often fast forwarding to find more interesting sections, or just get distracted by something else on the page and click away from the video. (I hate that I do this, and I’ve been making a conscious effort lately to extend my web attention span.)  When I edit web videos, I don’t add typically use very much nat sound unless it’s needed to tell the story, or long establishing shots, which slow down the pacing and give people a chance to get distracted, but I did use those things here. As a result I think “Hope Art,” is a better doc short, but probably doesn’t play as well as it could as a web video. Editing this video has reminded me a little about the limitations of web video. It’s hard to tell a good story when you’re constantly worried about holding the viewers attention. I’ve been focusing pretty exclusively on web video for a while now, but having a story that takes a little more time to tell is making me appreciate the idea of sitting someone down and making them focus on my film. So what you do you think? Is this video too slow paced for the internet? Did you sit through the whole thing? Also make sure to visit this video at it's CHS page, and add a couple of pennies to my earnings (I get $$$ per page view)
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