What you typically see today in the video creation process are video creators and producers paying out money in hopes of seeing a good ROI on their content investment, within a few weeks or months down the road. One of the largest expenses if not the largest expense are individuals who make the real magic happen. This is expected because having the best cameras, lighting, and sound equipment is important but without the right combination of talent using those assets it’s all worthless.

The model that most creators and producers use is to pay out money for everything, retain 100% ownership in the video content, and work hard to at least break even, and ideally turn a profit. But what happens when creators and producers view the individuals on their production team as partners (giving each member or key members a small content ownership stake) instead of employees? The result is that these individuals now have a vested interest in seeing the video content succeed, and are even more motivated to do a remarkable job.

Traditional actors, directors, writers, and story tellers may see this approach as more risky because they aren’t being consistently paid like they are used to, but the concept of building up content equity that could return a far higher amount (over time) than they would get from a paid contract has to be intriguing. And it also helps to build up their content portfolios which can act as valuable leverage for other future opportunities.

It vastly reduces the financial risks on the part of creators and producers because each individual member invests their time with the optimistic belief that financial compensations will come their way as the content goes through the distribution and monetization process. This leaves the creator to only have to spend money on the things that aren’t human beings. Now planning those production budgets have to sound much more fun than crunching all the numbers for each employee and contractor on the team.

Active people in the video production space may not like the approach mentioned here because they like their safe paychecks, but Spidvid has been developed and targeted towards the new crop of up and coming star actors, directors, writers, and story tellers, who want low barriers to entry with lots of potential upside.

Spidvid levels the playing ground for anyone who believes that he or she can add value to the video production process, and the end result which is the quality content. After speaking recently with a friend of mine who’s a real estate agent, he made it clear to me that he wanted a Spidvid beta invite because he believes that his writing ability is pretty good and so writing a script for a short film peaked his interest. His script without individuals to carry out his story has a low amount of value and can get little traction, but because he can connect with the talent he needs on Spidvid his video can actually get produced, and that’s something very exciting for him. I’m sure there are stories like this all over the place and it will be interesting to see how other types of people with day jobs feel about the new opportunities within the video entertainment space.

If you are a creator or producer who would like to partner up with individuals then Spidvid would be valuable to you, and if you are an individual looking for a production team to join then you may also fit well within our community. Visit our site, click the ‘join our video production community’ on the left hand side and provide us with your email address. We send out the first batch of invites next week so be sure to have your name included on our request list.

Jeremy Campbell Visionary actors, collaboration, collaborative team, community, connecting, empowering, leverage, next-gen media, online video, partnerships, private beta, production teams, relationships, social media, social movement, spidvid, video creation, video creators, video production, web 2.0, web video

Things are looking good as we are getting a few new invite requests from remarkable people each day who want to join our private beta community. Our goal is to hit at least 200 individuals by the week of December 14th so that we can send out a first batch of invites to everyone on the list. From then after for every 200-300 invite requests we get we will issue a new block of invites. We considered sending out new invites every day, but to us it makes more sense to build and add to the community a couple hundred individuals at a time. If it gets to the point where we are seeing 200 new invite requests/day then we will need to work extra hard to successfully scale up the community.

During the next couple weeks leading up to this momentous invite distribution event we are developing a few new features that we feel fit well into the core of Spidvid’s platform. Going forward after our video production community will heavily determine what new developments we do, how to make the usability experience as easy as possible, and how to grow this social movement across the world.

Our exclusive distribution partner for the private beta is UnleashVideo, and with that comes the need of customization. So as the sneak peak prototype image (below) shows, a major redesign/layout is well underway to accommodate video content from Spidvid’s production community. The most unique aspects are showing each team member who was part of the video production project, showing where the members are located geographically across the planet (via Google Maps), and the open ability to interact with videos through Facebook Connect and Disqus.

If you have already provided your email address to us for private beta access thanks for doing so, if not why not head over to Spidvid right now to click on the side ‘join our video production community’ button and reserve your spot as an early Spidvid adopter.

Jeremy Campbell News community, disqus, facebook connect, google maps, internet video, invites, join, new interface, new media, online video, private beta, redesign, social media, social movement, spidvid, unleashvideo, video sharing, web 2.0, web video

Companies are entities which connect individuals together so that they can work on projects together, create products, market products, generate revenue and profits, and then repeat that process over and over again until it no longer works then they either change it or vanish from existence. The most important aspect of the corporate model are the employees, everything else involved are just commodities.

The point here is that by providing a framework so that individuals can connect to each other, collaborate together, and align themselves to accomplish similar goals will produce remarkable results that we’re not yet aware of. This can now be done without corporate involvement which is very exciting for some, and very scary for others because it’s a relatively new concept.

Spidvid provides a social framework so that video creators and professionals (like actors, writers, directors, story tellers, music artists, and others) can connect together and produce whatever video content they are passionate about creating regardless of team member location restrictions. The right combination of talent, ideas, passion, execution, and connection will yield video content that would have never existed without having brought individuals together in an open environment to achieve these results. That’s what motivates us to push Spidvid forward because we know what’s possible as members of the world get more connected, collaborative, intelligent, and come to understand what’s possible in this new media space in the years ahead.

We invite you to join our video production community so that you can create your own tribes, and join others which will help you produce quality content that you can’t do alone, or without a large budget.

Spidvid’s platform has been immensely influenced by the Tribes book, with the firm belief that connecting people together so that they can form their own creation entities is the wave of the future.

The video below is a presentation by Seth Godin at the TED conference in February of this year (2009) where he argues that leading and connecting is the key going forward so that we as a human race can further evolve, and challenge the status quo across all industries and marketplaces.

More info on the video

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big changes. He urges us to do so.

I hope this video inspires those who watch it to want to be part of something bigger than themselves. If it does then please join our community, and work with us to make the video production process more open, transparent, authentic, collaborative, connected, and fun.

Jeremy Campbell Visionary actors, amazon, collaboration, collaborative teams, connecting, new media, online video, open ecosystem, open model, production teams, seth godin, social movement, spidvid, TED, Tribes, video projects, writers

Spidvid will not be built with TV, radio, or print ads. What we strive to do is build a social movement around collaborative video production teams who produce content that’s enjoyed by millions of people.

We are now looking for a remarkable person who can help us build a community of passionate individuals who believe that quality video content can now be created outside of corporate studio entities.

If you (or someone you know) are plugged into social media, enjoy connecting with people daily, creating blog content, educating people through webinars, organizing events, and want to contribute to changing the media world forever, then this is your calling.

Contact us via Twitter, or through our site if you are up to the challenge.

Jeremy Campbell News collaborative teams, more than a job, new challenge, new media, new opportunity, open ecosystem, open model, production teams, social movement

Online social networking sites are excellent for communicating with friends (like on Facebook), having conversations and sharing media with people who are interested in the same things you are (like on Twitter), and connecting with professionals in your industry (like on LinkedIn).

Traditional social networks have many great benefits to offer, but for the most part don’t focus on offering exciting opportunities such as team building to achieve common collaborative goals. I believe that the next evolution in social networking is to empower individuals to accomplish tasks and projects, and to reward the deserving individuals for the content that gets created as a result.

So another way to think of Spidvid is as a social network with the purpose of allowing individuals to form teams, collaborate to create and produce quality video content, and credit those who invest their time and talent into the content.

Jeremy Campbell Illustrations collaborative team, connecting, ecosystem, empowering, new media model, next-gen media, online video, production teams, social movement, video creation, web 2.0, web video