The Power of Online Video - Sadler's Wells

On Tuesday 24th May we held a seminar on the Power of Online Video at Sadler's Wells. The event was a big success and we have received some excellent feedback. I'd like to thank all the panellists for taking part. Copies of the presentations will be put up on the Sadler's Wells website shortly along with links to video clips.


Here are the main points of my introduction to the afternoon.

For Sadler’s Wells the use of video has been hugely important. Since 2006 we have almost doubled our audience and video has played a key role in making this growth happen. We began with simple show clips but over the years we have expanded our content to include interviews and behind the scenes documentaries. With the invaluable support of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation we have been able to create short films featuring leading artists talking about their own work. At Sadler’s Wells we deal in an artform that is notoriously difficult to describe. The ability to show the work, to allow choreographers to say in their own words what inspired or influenced them has been hugely important.

We have an e-list of 180,000 and being able to deliver video to them at no real cost provides an unbelievable opportunity to introduce them to something new. In our emails we see that people are more likely to click to watch the video before they look at the longer written information. And that video generates sales, 75% of our sales now happen online.

Those of you who work in marketing will be familiar with the phrase “if it is a success, it’s the show; if it fails, it’s the marketing”.  In many ways video bridges the gap between marketing and programming – good video allows us to show good work.


I actually want to move beyond the term marketing as I think we need to focus on communication. For Sadler’s Wells in the short term video is about forthcoming shows which may need to find an audience, but in the long term it is about our identity, creating a legacy and talking to a global audience. 


For much of the work we present the major factor is risk. In many cases what we need to communicate is aimed at informing, not the hard sell. If you know our programme at all, you can guess the public won’t always be asking, will I have fun time? We often present challenging work. Instead they will be asking will I have a worthwhile evening? Will I be engaged? Will I see excellence?


So I am not one of those people who says we should be creating cinema style trailers for every show. If you are a film fan like me, you will enjoy the trailers but take them with a pinch of salt. The quick edits, the focus on action over depth, the restyling of hard hitting drama as light comedy, it is a short road to nowhere if applied without sense. Film marketing is often guilty of brazen opportunism.


As a venue, building audience trust is essential. We need to build long term relationships. It is always worth remembering that any risk attached to attending may be a double risk, as the person who comes often has to persuade someone else to come with them. Increasingly as videos are forwarded they will become an important tool in word of mouth communication. Video sharing is increasing rapidly. From 70million shares a month in 2010 to 220 million a month just a year later.


As you may gather, the future of online usage is video. The figures are staggering. Last week in Metro it was reported  “Britons watch 11,000 years of video every month" In April 26.9 million of us viewed 6.27 billion minutes of streamed footage at home or work. We see on average 7 minutes of footage online a day.

At its most popular the speed that video circulates is incredible. The Volkswagen Darth Vader ad has had 38 million views in three months. Has anyone watched The Greatest Marriage proposal ever video? It has had 12 million views in 6 days. Interestingly some of the most successful clips on YouTube feature dance – The Evolution of Dance with 173 million views,  the Filipino Prisoners dancing to Thriller with 47 million views.


Of course I’m not saying that the videos any of us produce will get these huge figures. A viral hit typically needs to fit one of the magic categories – to be uplifting like Where the Hell is Matt? or funny like the Evolution of Dance, or cute like Charlie Bit My Finger (330 million views) and even then it is more than likely not to get views by the million. 

One company we worked with, Bounce did create a viral video and got 15 million views for their Michael Jackson flashmob tribute, but that is unusual. Most video we produce is not created to be a viral hit.


But whatever views you get for your video it is worth thinking about this. A whole new generation is growing up that are used to watching video on their computers and increasingly their phones. People who might walk past your theatre everyday and never look; who don’t read a broadsheet newspaper; who don’t pick up leaflets from a rack will look at video. Especially if it is passed to them by someone else. 


The question is in the future where will people go to see that video. In two years referrals from Facebook to our site have increased  by 450%. At the same time video sharing through Facebook has increased enormously. And Facebook offers a one stop location where you can target users, create groups, and increasingly sell your product.


So where does that leave us? Online video has opened up new opportunities. For example the Sadler’s Wells Global Dance Contest which is now in its third year. We have had entries from over 40 countries over the three years. The judges pick a shortlist of 10 and the public vote with the winner coming to London to perform here. Using video in this way introduces us to new work and engages the public.


We can create an online learning resource through outlets like the iTunes University. It is worth remembering that the video we create can have value in five or fifty years time for students and historians. We could stream our rehearsals or performances for free using a site like UStream allowing people around the world to share the experience live. We have added QR codes to our marketing materials so people can access video from a poster, leaflet or advert.


Once you have invested time and energy into creating your video it can be used in so many ways, new distribution routes are opening up all the time. The boundary between online video and television broadcasting is breaking down as more people get internet enabled televisions or get used to using web based catch up services.


Certainly New technology is moving in our favour. Cameras get cheaper, editing software is freely available. Also sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Foursquare are constantly developing, adding new features and functionality that you could never hope to develop on your own and allowing you access to a huge growing audience at no significant cost.


And most importantly we have content – thrilling, exciting stuff happens in our rehearsal rooms and on our stages.


But the move towards video and the move towards digital raises questions.


An effective video strategy often depends on flexibility and speed – who approves the video? How quickly can you react to opportunities? And what about artist rights? Are you dealing with this at contract stage? What about music rights? In the future we will be expected to become content producers. How do we manage that on limited resources? Do we continue to turn out leaflets and posters? How do we embrace new opportunities without jeopardising what works well for us already? As digital gets bigger who decides and controls what is produced? Where does video content sit within your organisational structure? And finally once we have made this content how do we make it visible to people outside our own existing audience?


Hopefully today's event will answer some of those questions.

UStream - live video streaming for free

UStream offer you the ability to stream live for free. There are literally hundreds of thousands of things being streamed as they happen, to anyone who cares. It means anyone with a camera and a weblink can be a live broadcaster.

You can watch owls feeding in their nests, bears s**ting in the woods, sport events, interviews from the red carpet and lots more on what is effectively a live version of YouTube.

The Siobhan Davies Company did a relay of one of their rehearsals a while ago and used UStream. Certainly the potential for the arts is interesting. So much of what we do is live and unrepeated. Performances of course, but also rehearsals, talks, first night parties, behind the scenes activity, any of which might make great live content.

It is quick to set up; in minutes we had set up an iphone to film live the computer screen that was showing our own live stream (silly I know, but no one in the office wanted to be filmed!).

Anyway, have a go and let me know how you get on.


Link to watch bears sh**ting in the woods

Gil Scott-Heron RIP

Sad to hear of the death of Gil Scott-Heron. Last summer in NY I had the most New York experience a London music fan could ever have. The night I arrived I found out Gil was playing a free gig in Marcus Garvey Park on 120th street in Harlem. I quickly changed and headed straight up there. I found a place opposite that served Curried Goat Roti and sat on the grass and watched him perform. A memorable night and my first visit to Harlem made even more special by the amazing Bobbi Humphrey coming out to play the encore (for those of you who don't know check out the tune Harlem River Drive).


Ps - I actually wanted to name my son Gil but that was vetoed in round two.

The Guardian Music Power 100

The Guardian published it's Music Power 100 yesterday. An interesting list that was more business than artist focused than past ones I have seen; perhaps reflecting the fact that the selection panel included two publicists. Lots of usual suspects were there but some interesting selections in the area of digital. At 10 Jeff Bezoz of Amazon was not a surprise and I expected to see Daniel Ek of Spotify (27) and Steve Purdham of We7 (68) as music is core to all their businesses.

More interesting was the high placings for Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, founders of YouTube (6), Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, founders of Google (8), Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (13) and Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, founders of Twitter (37).

None of these choices are really controversial, it just reflects the huge impact these sites have on our everyday lives and the influence they have on the way that information about things we care about is distributed (whether films, fashion, politics or music).  None of these people set out to change the music business but they have. In reality the placings are for the sites which I suppose explains why the credit is given to the individuals who had the original idea. Just four short years ago the names Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe (founders of MySpace) would probably have been at the top of the digital pecking order rather than at 100.

Interestingly iTunes is at number 5 due to its status as (perhaps) the leading retailer. No name is attached in this case as they don't know who to credit. iTunes does fits neatly alongside music based businesses like Spotify and retailers like Amazon but that does seem to underestimate its significance. Taking a broader view its parent company Apple would sit comfortably alongside the world changing Google and Facebook and perhaps it is Apple rather than just iTunes that should be at number 5. Long before I ever bought anything on iTunes I used it to put my music collection on my computer. The playlists created based on favourite songs got me listening to things I had ignored in my collection. I listened to podcasts and internet radio. Perhaps most importantly thanks to the iPod and iPhone I carry that music everywhere I go and it listen to it connected to headphones, the car stereo and my hi-fi. Perhaps the name Steve Jobs should have been at 5.

Pina 3D

An interesting look on the Pina film website at the process of filming Pina in 3D which gives quite a lot of technical detail.

For those who have not seen Wim Wenders film here is the trailer.

Filming theatre in 3D - Swan Lake

Filming in 3D at Sadler's Wells turned out to be quite a different proposition than a usual 2D shoot. In the theatre for a 2D shoot usual camera positions would be from the rear of the stalls and/or the front of the first circle. These would be supplemented by shots from the side galleries either at stalls level or from the first circle.

In 3D the cameras need to be much closer to the front of the stage which does cause sightline issues if you have an audience in. For Swan Lake there were five 3D cameras including two dollies and one on a crane, plus two 2D cameras all set up across the front of the stage. This entailed taking out quite a few rows of seats. I'd always assumed all 3D filming used two lenses next to each other to get a 3D effect but the set up for Swan Lake was a mirror rig which has cameras set at 90 degrees and uses a mirror.

What was even more impressive about this was the OB truck parked outside. Apparently it spends most of its time parked outside football grounds doing live 3D broadcasts of Premiere league matches. It expands outwards like something from Transformers.

Inside was more like Close Encounters with us all watching the action wearing 3D glasses.

This is where the director (Ross McGibbon) and the producers sat. To the left was sound and to the right an individual operator for each camera.

Filming theatre in 3D will probably prove to be best done by replicating the "best seat in the house" effect rather than going on stage amongst the action or shooting from unusual angles. Too much movement is likely to make you feel nauseous and unusual angles will break the illusion of a real stage experience.

As 3D is so new lessons are being learnt all the time. Apparently 3D can look gloomy compared to shooting in 2D and fast movement is hard to pick up. Also the effect can be distorting with a big drop off between foreground and background (critics of the Mariinsky's 3D film mention this).

The Metro announces 'we have all gone video crazy'

Last week in Metro there were some interesting stats on video views in the UK. Apparently Britons watch 11,000 years of video every month. In April 26.9 million of us viewed 6.27 billion minutes of streamed footage at home or work. We each see on average 7 minutes of online footage a day. These are amazing figures fuelled by the growth of mobile smart phones and social media. It seems that video is what we increasingly use the internet for. In fact apparently YouTube now acts as the 2nd biggest search engine after Google.

One other thing that is amazing is the speed that video views can grow. The Darth Vader Volkswagen ad has notched up 38 million views in three months. The Greatest Marriage Proposal Ever reached 12 million views in 6 (six!!) days which proves people are hopeless romantics or insane. My personal fave the Ultimate Dog Tease notched up 31 million in 24 days. My dog Linus received this last one about three times through facebook which really makes it clear how a popular clip posted on facebook can quickly get huge visibility as it is exposed to hundreds of facebook friends at a time. A stat from Unruly Media says that Video Sharing has gone from 70million in the second quarter of 2010 to 220million a year later. They estimate it will be at 400 million by the end of 2012. That is a serious amount of proposals, cute kids and talking dogs.

Video trailers and theatre - Don't show the art, it might put people off.

I am of course joking. Whenever the topic of using video to promote live theatre comes up it seems someone always cites the film industry and says "why don't we make trailers for theatre like they do for films?" All I can say is, I guess these people don't go to the pictures very often or if they do, they talk through the trailers (I really hate people who do that).

The quick edits, dialogue taken out of context and endless action, the restyling of thought provoking and tragic stories as light hearted comedies or fast paced shoot 'em ups has made the film trailer an object of study in its own right, but one that often bears no resemblance to the finished article. Good fun and something to be enjoyed at the cinema, but a dangerous path for theatre to follow if you want to find new audiences, and retain the trust of existing ones.

It is important we understand the product we are dealing with, and the potential audience for it. You can't make every show appear to be the most fun you will ever have at the theatre because it probably won't be. I certainly don't see the point of cutting endlessly to hide what the work looks like in the hope of attracting an audience who otherwise would not attend. It is of course a slippery slope once you start. But it becomes even more slippery when the film industry is used as the model.

If video is going to play a role in attracting audiences to theatre it has to do so by informing them, not lying to them. By all means sell the sizzle, not the steak (as the saying goes) but let's not confuse or mislead people into thinking our lovely prize steak is a dirty Big Mac (I love eating Big Mac's, I just don't class them as food).

While we are here let's look at how the film marketing industry has treated some of the film versions of theatre.

Sweeney Todd  Not sure who would have been more surprised, Sondheim or the audience who didn't realise it was a musical.

The History Boys Did Alan Bennett really write in his screenplay - the young man breakdances?

East is East An improvement on the tube poster which only featured the dog! Check out that copyline; A comedy of families, a chip shop, and a very randy dog. God forbid anyone finding out it was about Asians.