Is there a video project you’ve been thinking of launching but have been reluctant to do so because you don’t have the talent on your team who can help execute your vision? Don’t let lack of talent stop your project from being launched! Our collaborative community is always looking for projects with loads of potential to be part of, and join as a partner.

Want to tap into the time, talent, and expertise of our Spidvid community? Then get a free Spidvid profile, and post your project on our site for our members to explore. Or if you need some additional information about how Spidvid works, or have questions before you start, then shoot us an email. We would love to hear from you!

Cheers to the success of your video projects in 2012!

The holidays are all about relaxing, eating deliciously fattening food, and spending time with family and friends. For some of us it’s also about finding some spare time to write new scripts for video projects, shooting video, cutting video, and hopefully uploading new content for the world’s viewing audience to watch and ideally share. If you were planning on doing a holiday parody of LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” video you are either too late, or against some big time competition below.

I have lots of planned projects for 2012 and I trust that you likely do too! Keep in mind that by posting your video or film projects on Spidvid; you can connect with talent who wants to collaborate and partner with you, build your teams, share credit and compensation, and distribute your content to UnleashVideo and earn thousands of views! This is all easily done from your Spidvid video creator account! Or if  you don’t have a project to post, then you may want to check out the active Spidvid projects.

Happy holidays to you and your family, friends, followers, fans, subscribers, and pets too. The holidays are meant to be relaxing, but keep production projects on your mind because right now has never been a more perfect time to cost effectively create and distribute online video entertainment!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Chrismukkah or whatever holiday you celebrate, from myself and the Spidvid team

Show us some love by subscribing to our blog via email.

All too often video creators and producers want to use the same production teams over and over again. Is talent recycling a good long-term strategy? I explore this often overlooked topic below.

4 reasons why switching up your video production teams is a good idea:

1. Safe is risky – Quite honestly it’s a big pain and challenging problem building teams around video and film projects. So what many video creators and producers do is save time by just using their same local talent, without exploring opportunities outside their city. Call it a “team building comfort zone” or whatever term you want to use, but bottom line is that having a core team is perhaps a good idea for stability reasons, but learning to be flexible for attracting outside talent can be very beneficial for your projects.  Sometimes good things take time!

2. Fresh perspectives – Teams can get stagnant, so bringing in even one or two new members for every project can help liven things up a little, and ignite more conversations that ultimately beat a better path towards the end goal. Individuals who challenge the status quo should be at the very top of your list.

3. More resources to draw from – Raw human talent is a wonderful thing, and so too are the assets which each member brings to the table. Some examples are videographers who have their own cameras and lighting, producers who have money to invest, composers who have sound equipment, etc. When bids are made on Spidvid projects we always urge the talent who are bidding to specify what they can contribute in terms of skill set, and any equipment, tools, props, or software they have at their disposal.

4. New connections – When you attract new members to your teams the chances are good that a few of them will be valuable connections beyond video projects. As a small non video production example, I’ve been offered places to stay should I decide to visit San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, London, New Zealand, and even Australia. Harness these relationships, and never burn bridges if things don’t go according to plan.

Build the teams you need for your video entertainment projects, join our Spidvid community to gain access to a vast pool of talent from across the world that wants to collaborate with you on developing your content!

Do you have a 5th reason to add? The comments are yours below!

Don’t miss any future articles posted here, have them delivered to your email inbox.

You could watch videos and films for hundreds of hours and study each of their elements into exhaustion. You could read dozens of books on filmmaking. You could listen to podcasts on how filmmakers made their first feature film, and what they learned along the way. Or you could write a script, grab a camera, team up with some actors and other talent you need, and get out there and start creating content.

Far too often we want to learn everything we can before jumping into something new. The best thing you can (likely) do is learn the fundamentals of the craft you seek to master, and simply get out there to make something and then as Seth Godin says, ship it.

It`s scary starting something new, but to get good at anything I believe you must fail, learn, fail, learn, and then ultimately break through towards finding a path to success. Malcolm Gladwell believes it takes 10,000 hours before mastering anything.

Stay foolish, stay hungry, and get out there and create some entertaining videos, starting with one that`s 1 minute or even just 5 seconds long.

If you need some partners or collaborators then get a creators profile on Spidvid, post a project, connect with our community, and build the team who can help you execute your story`s vision.

Lots happening in the filmmaking world these days, and it’s hard to believe that summer is almost officially over! Below are some of our best filmmaking related tweets over the last few weeks. Click on a couple links below to learn more about the collaborative art of filmmaking, and (below) watch a couple awesome videos recently uploaded by our community members via Spidvid below.

• Some great tips for creating videos, and managing the online video business
• Sony Offers Special Effects Suite for Aspiring Filmmakers
• What #Screenwriters Can Learn From The Inbetweeners
• Interesting product! Move Big Video Files Easily with Video Compressor Latakoo
• How to Clone Yourself in a Handheld Shot
• The Hard Truth: Filmmaking Is Not A Job
• Tips For Attracting Big Actors To Your Web Series
• Magisto aims to make your video editing smarter
• How to Start Your Own Web Show
• This Week in Web Series – Episode 5 – Rich Mbariket of@WebSeriesToday
• Great article alert! 35 Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most From Twitter
• Essential book for filmmakers – Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul
• 5 Tips For Dazed and Confused Filmmakers
• How to Submit Your Film To Festivals
• Half Of All Mobile Device Owners Shoot Video Once A Week
• Lots of solid tips for online video creators to learn from in this video
• How To Break Into the Film Industry
• Very cool video effect to use! Look like your breaking the speed limit without breaking any laws
• Interested? Avid Offers Switcher Price for Unhappy Final Cut Editors
• Fun Ideas For Making An Online Video
• WeVideo brings collaborative video editing to the cloud
• This Week In Web Series Episode 4
• Pierce Brosnan’s advice to young actors
• How To Start Making Online Videos – for Beginners
• Interesting read! THE HISTORY OF THE WEBISODE – Lessons of the Past
• Charlie Terrell On Working With Artists
• Use Household Objects to Make Special Effects
• Ken Burns Discusses His Filmmaking Process
• A New Breed Of Online Video Viewer – How Audiences Are Becoming More Engaged
• How To Motivate Your Actors
• Top 5 Things You Need To Know About Filmmaking
• How To Create A Web Series Using Popular Content Without Infringing On Copyrights
• The Pros And Cons Of Building An Audience Outside YouTube
• How to Create Storyboards: Video 101
• Top 10 Film Books
• Web Series vs Short Film
• Make Your Videos Easy To Share
• The Importance Of Deadlines In Filmmaking
• The Intersection of Social Media and Video: 8 Tips
• Make Your Videos Extreme: Tips for High Action Shooting
• 10 Things A Filmmaker Needs Every Day
• 5 More Reasons To Create a Web Series
• Cool video effect! How To Pull Off Bullets Flying Through Water
• The Importance Of Storytelling In Film
• The POV Technique
• The Art of Being Funny in Online Video
• How To Collaborate With Online Friends
• 5 THINGS NOT TO DO ON A WEB VIDEO PROJECT SHOOT…AND WHAT TO DO INSTEAD
• How To Market A Web Series To Generate Interest and Gain Viewers
• What To Say In Your Video
• Life As a Film
• Use Video Mashups to Engage Your Viewers
• Video Production Tutorials: Film Lingo & Cloning Effects
• Web Series Creators: Stand Up And Be Counted

Recommended videos to watch below, created by our Spidvid community

Women In Web Series – Some of the world’s most popular female web series stars get interviewed about their shows, and interest in short furry guys.

Women In Web Series from Travis Gordon on UnleashVideo

Two Night Stand – Jennie and Steve have never met. She lives in San Diego and he lives in New York. When they wake up in bed together after a night of heavy drinking, they try to figure out where they are, how they got there, and what it is that drew them together.

Two Night Stand from Kyle Gilman on UnleashVideo

Subscribe via email for all new entertaining videos created by Spidvid’s community.

Announcing the 2nd annual Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival which we are proud to sponsor again this year!

What is this film festival all about? The Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival is a young film festival that will highlight independent films from around the corn fields of the Midwest. The film festival is to honor the independent drive Film Makers of the Midwest have to create films without the support of the Hollywood machine. All the films shown will have no funding from Hollywood and will have a completely independent voice. The Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival will also be a chance for film makers of the Midwest to come together and network together, thus improving their ability to make impressionable films.

The 2012 event is on April 15th in Urbana, IL, submissions are free and will be accepted until February 20th, 2012. If you have a web series, a short film, or a feature length film, you can submit your content here. There are some great prizes to be won including a feature across our entire network for all winners! Here are the winners from last year, and below is our personal favorite entitled “Bedtime For Timmy” which is a very cute short animated film by Thomas Nicol.

Bedtime For Timmy from Thomas Nicol on UnleashVideo

We are proud to be a sponsor of this fun, new, and exciting film festival, not just because of the event itself but because of the wonderful people behind it too. Cheers to the filmmakers, viewers, organizers, and everyone else involved with Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival, 2012.

There have been a few interesting projects launched on Spidvid recently, and a few completed as well to showcase some impressive video entertainment from our community. Our community’s videos now have received over 400,000 views, and now the journey is on to reach a large milestone of 1,000,000 views!

If you have a video project that you have active in development, or one you want to launch, then get a Spidvid profile and post your project for our 1,200+ community members to check out and bid on.

There are 3 brand new Spidvid projects that you may want to take a look at right now:

Escape is a web series which is about to head into its 3rd full season! Cheers to its success to date! Creator Mike Feurstein is looking for a VFX artist to do some electrifying animation effects, Music Artists are needed for songs for the episodes, a Graphics Designer is requested, and a person who can Promote the show to find a larger audience is integral too. Check out the eScape Season 3 trailer below, and if you want to collaborate with Mike to make Season 3 a big hit then bid on his project or message him on Spidvid to start a conversation.

We are producing the web series “Gen Y” in collaboration with Illinois-based filmmaker Sasan of Gladius Arts. He needs to build out his core team with 2 Actors, and 2 Promoters to help spread the word about the web show. If you are based in Illinois and can act, or live on this planet and can promote this video to lots of potential viewers/bloggers then please bid on Sasan’s project.

Philly-based James Jackson has a new film project called “Frogg Prince” and needs some talent from our community to move his project forward in a positive direction. James needs individuals from Philly to collaborate with, and he’s seeking out a Videographer with a DSLR camera who can add another camera angle to work with, he’s needs a Set Designer to create settings inside his studio, and he could use a talented Video Editor who can cut the story together with some added effects. If you are in Philly looking for a new project to collaborate on then visit the Frogg Prince page and post your bid for James to review.

Stay updated on all new Spidvid projects, by subscribing to them now. And again, if you have a video project in development, or want to launch a brand new one then get a Spidvid profile and post your project’s story for our community to take a look at.

You’ve likely never heard of Illinois-based Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival before until just now.

What is this film festival all about? The Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival is a young film festival that will highlight independent films from around the corn fields of the Midwest. The film festival is to honor the independent drive Film Makers of the Midwest have to create films without the support of the Hollywood machine. All the films shown will have no funding from Hollywood and will have a completely independent voice. The Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival will also be a chance for film makers of the Midwest to come together and network together, thus improving their ability to make impressionable films.

The 2011 event is on April 3rd in Urbana, IL, and below outlines how the day will unfold.

Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival

2011 Festival Listing

2:00pm International Showcase

Wolke Jacob Seifert Bastlerz

Lokschupen Jacob Seifert Bastlerz

Implants Pardis Parker Flying Dish Productions

Afghan Pardis Parker Flying Dish Productions

Two Men, Two Cows, Two Guns Pardis Parker Flying Dish Productions

Run Granny Run Nikolaus von Uthmann Envy You Productions

3:00pm Feature Film Showcase

Connor’s Woods Joe Taylor Sleep Creek Films

Dark Matter (Best Feature Film) Tye Wilson Broken Shadow Entertainment

6:00 Short Film Showcase I

Cannibal Caverns Ian Havermale

The Jersey Devil Jon Klemke & Nick Nylen OOO, Candy Productions

The Magician’s Box Ash Ahrens Ash Fire Films

Two Rows In Bob Zimmerman R.A.Z. Films

7:00 Short Film Showcase II

With Me Now Sasan Shabrou Gladius Arts

His First Day Brian Rose

Mogul Tye Wilson Broken Shadow Entertainment

Heart Candy Tye Wilson Broken Shadow Entertainment

Cemetery Blues Matt Packman Legacy Pictures

8:00pm Short Film Showcase III

Back Home Tye Wilson Broken Shadow Entertainment

The Last Ride Sasan Shabrou Gladius Arts

8:30pm Best of the Festival Showcase

Bedtime for Timmy (Juror Pick) Thomas Nicol Unfocused Films

Broken Dolls (Best Short Film Non International) Kevin Sedall B.S.E.

Afghan (Juror Pick)

Two Men, Two Cows, Two Guns (Juror Pick)

Run Granny Run (Juror Pick and Best Film in the Festival)

We are proud to be a sponsor of this fun, new, and exciting film festival, not just because of the event itself but because of the wonderful people behind it too. Cheers to the filmmakers, viewers, organizers, and everyone else involved with Buttered Corn on the Cob Film Festival, 2011.

Are you a passionate man or woman on a mission when creating new videos? Perhaps you try to do everything by yourself, work on just one project at a time, and ultimately end up with sub-par results over a long period of time.

We all want to be multi-talented at what we do, but wearing many different hats on a project can be exhausting and you can spread your skills too thin. For every successful film project, there is a talented team behind it, period.

So you have a couple choices: a) work on one project at a time and try to do everything yourself, or b) reach out to outside talent, connect and collaborate with the individuals you need to add skill to your project, and free up more of your time to do multiple projects at a time.

For example: Jessie is an aspiring filmmaker who loves writing and shooting creative new videos, but hates editing them, dislikes using his voice for the voice over, and tries to score each of his videos but they always end up sounding rather boring to viewers. Jessie can keep pressing on with this process and settle for mediocre videos, or he can focus exclusively on writing and shooting videos and collaborate with other like-minded talent to fill in his skill gaps. This gives Jessie the time to do many projects simultaneously, allows him to complete more projects faster, and hedges his bet so he doesn’t invest a ton of time into projects that end up getting little or no success. He gives up some control and perhaps pieces of the content ownership, but gets many more opportunities at success with each new video him and his team release to the world.

Our Spidvid community is full of talented individuals eagerly waiting for new and exciting projects to be part of. If you have projects you want to launch but either don’t have the time or talent to accomplish that, then get a Spidvid account, and post a project. We will help you spread the word to the specific talent you need, and get your project heading in the right direction.

So you have created a Spidvid profile but you don’t know what to do next. We’ve created a list of tips that will help you get the most out of your experience using our new media platform, and leveraging our community for video projects.

5 tips for getting the most out of your Spidvid profile:

1. Fill Out All of Your Profile Info – Tell your story and showcase your portfolio with your Spidvid profile. Embed your top videos and/or demo reel so others can watch what you’re up to, not just read about it. Include important links such as your website, blog, Twitter and Facebook profiles, IMDB page, etc.

2. Upload a High Quality Head Shot – A good first impression makes all the difference in getting your project bids accepted, and looking the part is half the job for some roles. So if you’re an actor, VFX artist, or graphic designer, expect other members to be highly critical of how you present yourself in our community. Also, if you can’t take the time to upload your picture, how will a producer trust you’ll play your part on the project?!

3. Actively Bid on Projects – The only way you’re going to get noticed and invited to participate in projects is if you start reaching out to video creators, and earn feedback from collaborating on projects. We’ve recently had several great opportunities arise for members to get involved in all aspects of some amazing video projects. From writing, to acting, to production, to promotion and beyond, no matter what part of the process you’re involved with there is a team and project waiting for you to be part of. So head over to our projects section and see if something interests you right now. If there is nothing right now that catches your eye then perhaps there will be in the near future, so subscribe to the Spidvid projects feed to stay updated going forward.

4. Participate in the Forums - The Spidvid Forums is the spot where you can start conversations about video projects, production, ideas to improve the Spidvid platform, or anything else on your mind. Create a thread about your project, post a link to it in your project description to let interested people ask questions, provide advice, give recommendations, and offer feedback to help you move forward and get your project off the ground. Additionally, the forums feature daily filmmaking and production tips, alongside a conversation section where you can connect to others in the Spidvid community.

5. STAY CONNECTED - Subscribe to our blog and monthly newsletter and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Connecting with us via e-mail and through phone conversations is the best way to build a direct relationship with us. Our YouTube channel features several videos that demo our Spidvid platform and visually show first hand the project work flow process.

We hope you find these tips helpful for making the most out of your Spidvid experience. If a question just came to mind leave it below with a comment, or email us. Don’t be shy, we would LOVE to hear from you!