Wednesday 25 March 2009

Some thoughts on the RTE Storyland voting system.

I have voted for a show on Storyland, and, for the record, I voted for Running Low - I liked it the most... but I thought some of the others were pretty good too....

I think it might be an Idea in the future to allow tiered voting, you know, your top 6 choices in order of preference.

There are some really good arguments for this.
-- It encourages people who are simply visiting the Storyland site to vote for a particular show because of a good online campaign, to take a moment to watch a few more.
-- Because you can only vote for one if your choice gets knocked out in the first round why would you go back? The system as it is is getting people to invest in shows but not in Storyland overall.

Voting in order of preference means that if you are voting No 1 for a video that has a good campaign you are also voting for things based on your taste and how good you really think they are,and you're actually investing in Storyland itself. I think this method might throw up some interesting results and also build the Storyland brand a little better.
Let's face it, Storyland provides good oppurtunities for emerging and existing film makers so it would be nice to see the project survive until next year.

Monday 23 March 2009

The colourful Pat Kenny

One of the joys of sitting in on a Friday Night is experiencing the joy that is Pat Kenny on The Late Late Show. This week, he has a bit of a Black and White minstrels moment with the young All Ireland Talent Show breakdancer, Jack Lynch. Personally I paled.

Work it.

Hours of fun to be had here, well...maybe minutes....

Nothing to be sheepish about!

We may have just beat Wales in the Six Nations in Rugby but their sheep farmers have a hell of a lot to teach us.

Storyland is live

The Storyland competition is live now the RTE Website and seeing as we were shortlisted for it we sat through the videos and off course, we voted. Interestingly there are only nine videos, there were supposed to be ten, Moo Cow Productions Morbid and Sons pulled out early and were replaced by Pub World ages ago, but it now seems that for some reason Sulleybags has been axed/dropped out also. RTE have made no reference to it but it is disappointing that none of the others on the shortlist were considered as a replacement in the way that Pubworld was. Perhaps something happened at the last minute?

When we were viewing the videos their scores were visible on RTE which seemed a bit daft for two reasons, you don't know how well the voting is going on The X Factor or Irelands Got Talent because it can influence voting patterns unfairly and also, with nine videos to troll through most of them over 6 minutes long the natural inclination is to just watch the most viewed or the favourite. Thankfully for those taking part in Storyland, the scores have now been removed so the playing field is more level. For the record Hardy Bucks was waaayyy out in front with 45% while the rest shared fairly equal footing of 8 - 12%

This is the first time RTE have done something like this so teething problems for all concerned are to be expected. One thing that I think is a major challenge for all concerned is the simple fact that 9 videos at an average of 5 minutes each comes up to a fairly jarring 45 minutes, add the fact that the streaming is a little slow, and the time it takes to read the blurb on each one and before you know it you are an hour down, in fact it took us an hour and a half to go through them all. That's one hell of a time commitment, and not one I think a lot of people will make. Instead, I guess, they'll just pop along to view whichever one they've been mailed about or told about in one way or another. This means that if your marketing skills aren't up to scratch then, even if your video is worthy, you could be sunk, which is a shame. I don't know what plans RTE themselves have for pimping the project but as of today it's not linked from their home page.

Another possible improvement might be to include a simple logline with each video on the home page, to entice the viewer a little more to click through and watch it, as it is you have to select the video to find out what it's about, and you don't so much get log lines as paragraph. Interestingly the Pat Mc Cabe penned Chez Spuds has the clumsiest bit of copy.

We're going to publish our opinions on each later but in the meantime pop along to RTE Storyland and have a look. Don't forget to vote!

Monday 16 March 2009

Look behind you!

I drive a Smart, I've had it for about 2 and a half years and I LOVE it, it's my most favourite car ever. While it has much to offer in terms of city driving, milage and parking, this ad shows, there are other benefits!!

Thursday 5 March 2009

Oxegen 2009, the big names.

Just added to the line up at the official launch are Nine Inch Nails, Janes Addiction, Pet Shop Boys!!

The last L Word ever!

It's 3 days to the airing of the last ever episode of The L Word. Every season of the L Word has been different, and this final season plays out like a murder mystery. Looking at this video I realised how many changes have happened the characters, especially Jenny throught the last six years. What a show, I'm going to miss all these characters sooo much.