iTunes University - the National Theatre adds content

The National Theatre have begun to upload their content to the iTunes university. There is good video around War Horse, Mother Courage and Hamlet, mostly short form, but also longer interviews with Danny Boyle, Rory Kinnear and Peter Hall. I also liked the vocal exercises for aspiring actors. It is another good example of how existing content can be distributed through multiple outlets. Importantly it also provides a valuable outlet for the type of longer, more specialised content that might otherwise be hidden away on a venue's education pages or never used at all; post-show talks, seminars, courses and classes.

Video and podcasts are the obvious content for the iTunes university but students may find background material like poster artwork, technical plans, costume and set designs valuable and these can be uploaded in pdf format.  It would be great to see entire productions documented all the way from conception to performance and made available to students.

The Flip Cam is dead

So Cisco have ditched the Flip

After spending serious money on the company they have given up on it. Perhaps because it was no longer fit for purpose (though surely they could have improved it to keep it up to date), perhaps because your iphone does the job, perhaps because they did not know what to do with it.

I must admit I still like mine. It takes me too long to get the camera up and running on the iphone and I like the fact I don't have to care about the Flip. Mine even has tooth marks from the dog.

But what it does show is that things move fast. A company bought for $590 million in 2009 is just not worth bothering with in 2011.

And my Super 8 camera sees off another challenger!

3D - the future of theatre at the cinema?

It will be exciting to see what 3D offers arts audiences. No matter how high the quality of the output, take up at home is tied to the public spending money on the necessary technology, and for the moment at least, subscribing to Sky, who are investing heavily in the format.

But in cinemas 3D technology is already widely available. 3D is regularly used, with varying levels of success for animation, big blockbusters and horror. At the same time a market has been shown to exist for conventional screenings of theatre, opera and ballet at the cinema. Most of these screenings try to recreate the feeling of being in the theatre and having the best seat in the house. Taking that experience into 3D is a logical step forward. Having seen some performance footage myself the feeling of being there is hugely enhanced in 3D.

In the arts sector, high filming costs, the limited availability of film equipment and the complications the 3D format adds to the filming of public shows may initially make arts broadcasts rare. But it does, if done well, offer something quite special to audiences. Certainly something more than I got from watching Piranha or My Bloody Valentine in 3D.

Microsites - do you really need one?

The conversation usually goes exactly the same way. "We are doing a show/festival/project and as a key element part of the campaign we will be building a microsite." I am supposed to be thrilled by this news. Yet another arts microsite. A microsite it will probably take months to build and sign off and that probably won't be ready until just before the show happens.  A microsite that won't have any significant traffic and will have a low page ranking on Google. A microsite that will use up budget and resources that could be  better used elsewhere. A microsite you will expect me to promote and drive traffic to from my site, just so they can come back to me to actually book tickets. And all this for an event that may last just a few days. And when it is all over and the show/festival/project is long forgotten? It will sit there, a graveyard site in internet limboland.

There are of course times when building a microsite may be a good idea. Just not many. Unfortunately the desire to build one often does not come from anyone who knows anything about the web or marketing. So next time someone says "we think a microsite will play a key role in the campaign" ask them, "how exactly?" And then get them to dig out the web stats for the last one they built.

Take your corporate guidelines and $tuff em!

A lot is said about the importance of logos and corporate identities (usually by people who design logos and corporate identities) but in the modern era what does it mean? In a world where brands are often spoken about by the public more than they speak directly themselves, the unchanging, corporate controlled logo may be an endangered species.

Increasingly as arts organisations cut costs and spend less in traditional media (press ads, print, outdoor) the appearance of the logo (with all its rigid guidelines) in outlets we control will become insignificant in volume compared to the huge amount of mentions we receive in editorial (in both newsprint and online) and increasingly through facebook, foursquare and twitter.

The music industry is already adapting to this new world. Ke$ha for example has a logo that works in virtually any font that is likely to be used in modern communication. Whether it is in an email subject line, in a newspaper editorial, on a tweet, a facebook status message, SMS or BBM. It is a logo that is flexible enough to adapt to different circumstances yet strong enough to be instantly recognisable.

In the modern world increasingly there will be no control over colour, no exclusion areas, no rules for minimum size for your logo, not when the primary communication about your brand is being done by other people.

ps We are changing our logo to $ADLER'S W£LL$.

4 April 2012 - a date for the YouView diary, Lord Sugar

The date of the digital switch off in London has been announced. 4 April 2012. It is the largest switchover yet, affecting 12 million viewers. This date presumably will have a big circle around it in the YouView offices as due to the switch off a lot of people will need to buy freeview boxes for the first time.
There will need to be a huge awareness campaign around the switchoff so people don't wonder where Homes under the Hammer has gone when they switch on the telly on the 4th. It will, I am sure, focus heavily on what digital offers the public compared to old school analogue. YouView will have to be part of that message.