There’s something uniquely intimate and direct about video shot on a mobile phone. One of the examples we often point to is the work we did with the cast and production team of the hit West End musical Wicked.

The show’s leading man Oliver Tompsett took a mobile phone behind the scenes at the Apollo Victoria Theatre for a month to show what it’s really like working on a big London show.

His videos of cast workouts, dressing-room banter and backstage action in the wings were a big hit with the show’s vast army of passionate fans. The video blog approach made you feel you were getting much closer to the cast and crew than even the best fly-on-the-wall documentary crew can achieve. As a viewer you know you’re sharing something personal between the people on the camera – you’re not seeing it through someone else’s lens.

Oliver’s video blog was part of Wannabe Wicked, an initiative designed to give fans of the show the opportunity to get closer to their heroes, to actively feel a part of Wicked – and, for one lucky person, win a walk-on role in the show.

Fans sent in videos of themselves performing a song from the show and these went into a knockout contest decided by the votes of customers of Orange, the show’s official communications partner.

Orange wanted to raise awareness of its mobile portal Orange World among the valuable Wicked fan base, typically female, aged between 16 and 24.

Orange and Wicked used fan sites and groups on My Space and Facebook to reach out to fans – as well as the show’s large fan club – and the fans themselves set up their own social networking groups and uploaded their clips to YouTube to discuss the contest and appeal for votes.

The effect was to create a real buzz around the fan base and drive a completely new audience to Orange’s multimedia services.

You can still see some of the entries – including winner Louise Henderson’s – at www.wannabewicked.co.uk.

Michael McCabe, UK Executive Producer for the Wicked, said: “IMP have created a completely new way for us to interact with our audience and give them a unique chance to get closer to the show and feel intimately involved.

“We’ve been hugely impressed by the way IMP combine genuine creativity and innovation with the technical capability to deliver services that fully exploit the combination of web and mobile.”

Posted by Mark on 16 October 2009, 16:54

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The explosive growth of video on the internet – and the ability to create and access video inexpensively on mobile devices – brings huge opportunities for businesses, at the same time as letting individuals do things we couldn’t have dreamed of a decade ago.

Video is core to our products and services. Some examples:

VIDEO BLOGGING:

We help companies cover live events, tell stories and communicate with their customers in a much more honest, genuine, conversational way by using blog-style video.

We help businesses create and manage complete video-based blogs, we help you to ditch old-style corporate websites and replace them with a more human way of communicating, and we use realtime video blogging to capture the raw excitement of live events. We’ll even send out our team in their mobile blogging support van to help you do it.

Take a look at the some of the work we’ve been doing with Asda chief executive Andy Bond and the communal blog we managed for Orange at this year’s Glastonbury Festival: 100 Hours In A Field.

UGC VIDEO

Whether you’re aiming to “democratise the process of creating movies” or you just want to get your customers sending in funny video of themselves, we’ve got the tools you need to let people do it, and we’ve got production teams who can help package UGC (user-generated content) into really compelling products.

Our Profusion system is designed to make it easy to manage videos, photos and supporting text uploaded by mobile or web – and we provide managed editorial and moderation services for brands running UGC-based competitions or ongoing products. One of our favourites was Wannabe Wicked, which combined fans’ own video competition entries with behind-the-scenes videos recorded on mobile phones by stars of the West End show Wicked.

VIDEO ON MOBILE

More and more people are using their mobiles to download and view videos as phones become more sophisticated and the operators introduce simpler charges for using data.

We build and manage mobile internet sites featuring high-quality video content optimised for different devices. We also provide video advertising solutions allowing you to automatically stitch short ads in realtime before, during or after the video content a user has requested depending on their profile, the context, or the nature of the content. See an example in our Zap! service.

VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT

Every day we’re taking in live feeds of video from the UK’s top broadcasters, TV production companies, film distributors and games companies to turn into a range of different interactive services on web and mobile.

One example: We manage the Orange Film service uses trailers, clips and behind-the-scenes features to help people decide what to go and see with their Orange Wednesdays 2 for 1 tickets. We make sure clips are optimised for the device you’re viewing it on – your specific mobile phone, a PC, a TV screen – and we create supporting images and editorial material for the service. Find out more here.

Posted by admin on 15 October 2009, 09:39

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