TV Academy Foundation’s Rising Professionals is a Go!

It’s official.  After months of hard work, Gabriel del Rio, Jacob Rhodes and myself have seen the fruits of our labor pay off. Through the development of the TV Academy Foundation’s Rising Professional Committee, we hope to enhance access to the Academy for the wide spectrum of television professionals by opening new in-roads to members through mentorship opportunities and mixers as well as a series of hosted panels.

On the evening of March 17, we will be hosting the inaugural launch event. In addition to revealing the calendar of events and formally introducing committee staff, the night will identify a crowd-sourced pilot that will serve as a central theme to each of the four panels planned for 2010. Each panel will represent a pilot’s life cycle and will provide insight to the entire television programming experience.

Event Details:

Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Time: 6:30pm - 8:00pm

Location: Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Headquarters

Street: 5220 Lankershim Blvd.

City/Town: North Hollywood, CA

Please RSVP’s via Facebook: http://bit.ly/drXqwI

TV Writers: SEO Your Scripts!

By: Matt Meeks

published: February 24, 2010 5:17 pm

One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that anybody can now market themselves and their content in exciting new ways; and, many are doing a great job of it.  One look at Felicia Day’s work over the past three years will tell you that there is something to this whole Internet business. She has built a solid brand for herself, leveraged that into film, television and video game voice-over work and made some money in the process.

We all know that digital marketing is nothing new, but one of the earliest online marketing tools, search engine optimization, can now be used to put Web video content in front of new audiences.  While SEO has been around for a long time, Web television is still in its infancy. Today, script optimization presents a huge opportunity for content creators to promote video content; and as far as I have seen, few people are openly taking advantage of it.

Recently, Hulu announced that they have enabled closed caption search, which means that you can now insert popular search terms into your scripts to help shows index. In addition to Hulu, YouTube and Google have been doing this for even longer. If you don’t believe me, check out the following video to see closed captioning SEO in action: http://bit.ly/11G2ic

Optimizing YouTube is easy, because a little something called AdWords exists to tell you what people are searching for in Google. Due to the fact that Google owns YouTube, this is probably a good place to start.

Unfortunately, there is no Hulu “AdWords,” so when optimizing a video for Hulu I would stick to what Hulu’s audience is looking for. First, I would look at the Hulu homepage. Outside of that, Hulu users are searching for timely news items and top network television shows.

So, my advice to content creators is this: become a news source.  Host a weekly video series discussing the top news or a roundup of network television shows and what you, as independent writers, think about them.  Doing this may just land you a coveted spot on Hulu, somewhere between a clip of Peter Griffin fighting a chicken and that Shy Ronnie SNL skit.

My advice to studios - hire some internal Internet savvy people and put them on your creative teams— put a marketer on your writing staff, not to influence the writing but to recognize material that can be used for online distribution and get writers creatively thinking about how to expand the story.  Hire junior writers to take background character work and use this to strategically infiltrate the Internet with Twitter accounts, blogs, etc. Let your characters live and breathe online (Hint: all of this activity can be optimized as well).

My advice to content destination sites - provide creators with your search data. Sure, you will probably be flooded with a bunch of spam videos but tweaking your search algorithms can filter those out; and, on the up side your site traffic will go through the roof.

Anyway, just my thoughts on it all.  Let the games begin.

Currently Reading

For those who wish to obtain power or protect themselves from those who seek it.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green

1. Never Outshine the Master
2. Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
3. Conceal your Intentions
4. Always Say Less than Necessary
5. So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard it with your Life
6. Court Attention at all Cost
7. Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
8. Make other People come to you – use Bait if Necessary
9. Win through your Actions, Never through Argument
10. Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky
11. Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
12. Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm your Victim
13. When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude
14. Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy
15. Crush your Enemy Totally
16. Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor
17. Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
18. Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself – Isolation is Dangerous
19. Know Who You’re Dealing with – Do Not Offend the Wrong Person
20. Do Not Commit to Anyone
21. Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker – Seem Dumber than your Mark
22. Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power
23. Concentrate Your Forces
24. Play the Perfect Courtier
25. Re-Create Yourself
26. Keep Your Hands Clean
27. Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following
28. Enter Action with Boldness
29. Plan All the Way to the End
30. Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
31. Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards you Deal
32. Play to People’s Fantasies
33. Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
34. Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated like one
35. Master the Art of Timing
36. Disdain Things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best Revenge
37. Create Compelling Spectacles
38. Think as you like but Behave like others
39. Stir up Waters to Catch Fish
40. Despise the Free Lunch
41. Avoid Stepping into a Great Man’s Shoes
42. Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will Scatter
43. Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
44. Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect
45. Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once
46. Never appear too Perfect
47. Do not go Past the Mark you Aimed for; In Victory, Learn when to Stop
48. Assume Formlessness

Letter from a friend in Haiti

I’ve heard rumors that the wireless carriers can take a cut of your txt message donations, so please donate here: http://mercycorps.org/

We are safe.  The country is in ruin and chaos.  We lost so many friends.  Our work place was flattened with all my students inside.  I had just given them a class and told them “see you next week.”  I pulled some of their body’s out of the rubble yesterday. Yesterday morning there were still voices inside, but we all were having a hard time reaching them.  The one person we pulled out alive yesterday bled to death on the way to the hospital which is more like a place were people go to die because they can’t even begin to treat the people lining up for help.

All my medicines, medical supplies, lab was buried under CONASPEH as the 6 floor building now is one huge rock pile.  I’ve never felt like such a worthless tool in all my life.  I had a car full of injured on Tuesday evening trying to get them to the hospital that wasn’t even opening their doors because a wing had collapsed killing several of their doctors and they didn’t have staff or resources ready to see the mobs coming to be treated.  So instead Patrick and I carried bleeding people back to their families so they wouldn’t be alone.

Its a small miracle we are safe and alive… that the group that was visiting is safe and alive.  I’m not taking it lightly and despite being refugees trying to figure out where to sleep each night, where to get food for Solomon, and what to do next, we are counting each moment as an incredible blessing.

I’ll write/blog more as I get caught up on e-mails and letting people know information as we get it.  A friend in the city has taken us under his wing (he as a family with small children as well) and showed us a hotel high in the mountains to stay for the next two nights.  Yesterday patrick and I retrieved a few things from our apartment building, jumping at every groan as we did the stupid thing and REENTERED a building that had partially collapsed… but thanks to that, we hopefully will have e-mail for a few days and can stay in contact since the phone systems are either jammed or down completely.  The next day or so we’ll try to get ourselves together and make a plan, find our bosses (who survived) and figure out where to go from here.  There is more need then ever, but the safety situation may get very tenuous the long the masses go without food and shelter.  Everyone—no matter whether their house fell or not, is terrified to go inside.  The streets are packed with people just sitting… stunned.  Tent cities are going up in all areas that had some space.  Parks are filled, our work out center constructed a big tent in the soccer field for people to come stay.  The supermarkets all collapsed, so far the street markets haven’t gotten going yet… so food will be the next big crisis.   I am hoping the water treatment centers didn’t completely collapse and can start services soon.  Yesterday there was none.

Please pray for Haiti if you are so inclined.  We are ok, are safe and are taking things one day at a time.

More soon.

I love you friends.

Kim

Images from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com