Movie Talk Platforms – Choosing The One That’s Right for You

Author and Streaming Media Allstar Steve Garfield, talks about how to choose the best movie talk solution for your online marketing efforts. Steve explains his belief that the plain movie talk solutions tend to work best, provides an overview of interactive features, talks about how to get good production quality in movie talk, and tells us what he sees as the “next big thing” in web movie talk technology and online marketing.

The following is a transcript from my interview with Steve Garfield (with some liberties taken on piecing text parts together to make it a more cohesive read.) Or, click the play button above to listen to the podcast in its total, unedited form.

Grant (me): You dedicated one of the chapters in your book to movie talk as a solution for online marketing. In your opinion, what should professional online marketers look for in a movie talk solution for them?

Steve: There’s a entire list of things to indeed think about. But if you stop to think about what my book is about, it’s indeed all about how to put movie online lightly. What the book says, and what I go around promoting, is this: Don’t worry about all of these technical things! So when we commence talking about doing a movie talk, where I have my movie up on the screen, and I have one (or more) viewer’s movie up on the screen – people all with movie on the screen at the same time – well, now it sounds kind of confusing.

The Ordinary Movie Talk Solution: Wetoku

There’s this one site that I truly like, called Wetoku is truly effortless to use for a very brief movie talk. They have a free version of it. How it works is you bring up the webpage, and you give the person you want to interview the same URL, you click “record,” and then you record your interview; and it’s side-by-side movie. When you’re done recording your interview on Wetoku, you hit “save” and it gives you embed code, and you can stick it in your blog. That is what I’ve found to be one of the easiest ways to do a quick movie interview online.

Movie Talk With A Text Talk Audience: Lil’ Talk

There are other sites that let people leap in and observe it, and talk… some of them are moderated… They have a little button where the viewers click, and they can join in the talk. Other ones look like free-for-alls where everybody is talking at the same-time.

If you want to have people watching (and commenting) as you’re movie recording (and permit for other moderators for your room), Little Talk is a good program to look into.

Little Talk's live web movie talk with many webcams at once. (Can you see ME in there?)

Live Movie Broadcasting vs. Interactive Movie Talk

Grant: It’s clear that no one movie talk service isn’t going to be the best solution for every online marketing need. You brought up a good point, and that is, what’s the business reason for doing this? What DO you want to do? Do you want to have a broadcast? Or do you want (audience) interaction?

Steve: If you want to do a live broadcast, at a very basic level, you can record a movie and put it online, and have people see it.

If you want interaction, you have to stop and think: What kind of interaction do I want? If you’re doing the broadcast yourself and you don’t want to get all kinds of technical things to have to think about, then you might just want to do the broadcast and have a text talk. So you can do your broadcast, and as you’re talking you can do the text talk, and people can contribute with text.

For example, Ustream – they have their own talk rooms on their website, and they’ve now introduced a fresh thing called “social talk.” As people talk, they can have their posts go out to popular social media networks like: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or AIM.

Participating in a Ustream social stream with live movie webchat

Numerous Webcams and Group Movie Talk

Now the next thing to think about is a group movie talk. Say you’re going to have a panel (and you want to feature a webcam on every panelist). I know when I was interviewed by Mashable, they used tinychat. Pete Cashmore interviewed me one time, and then there was another panelist. So there was three of us on there, all talking at the same time on movie, and people who were viewing were in a text talk, so we could observe what they were telling in text. However, this was managed situation that the talk room was locked, so no one else could join the talk.

The next version of this is where you let people join in, and you can have that be moderated. For example, when a person raises their forearm and you can bring in their movie, and you are now talking via movie with say, Four, 12, or more people.

Getting Good Production Quality in Movie Talk

Grant: What I think is especially significant to think about is the production quality. Is it overkill to be using high-end equipment, if the movie talk software or service is going to need to compress the quality down so much?

Steve: That’s a superb question, and there are many different answers to that. When I did my webinar with Brightcove – How to Be a Movie Blogging Powerhouse – we used a Logitech webcam,; and we used my dearest USB Mic, the Audio Technica AT2020, and sat that on the table in front of us. We we had this Logitech webcam hooked up on the back of a chair, pointing at us, and we had a USB mic on a table in front of us, and I brought in some lighting. The quality of this broadcast looked truly superb. Brightcoe did it with their own streaming product, combined with a site called KnowledgeVision, which permitted us to have Powerpoint glides go along with the movie.. The other thing I would have loved to do (with the KnowledgeVision service) is be able to showcase other movies at the same time – like, my own movies.

I’ve also worked with the guys from Wirecast, which is a front-end movie streaming solution; and what they suggest is if you’re going to use a higher-end DV camera with a Firewire connection (which will get you better pic quality your movie that what a USB webcam can provide), then you’re most likely going to want to use an outer microphone hooked into the camera, versus using the DV camera and a stand-alone USB mic. That’s because sometimes a USB mic can suffer from some latency (delayed audio), and so your movie and audio won’t match up. So the folks at Wirecast say that if you’re going to use a higher-end camera, then you should also use a higher-end mic hooked up to the camera.

Steve Garfield’s “Next Big Thing” For Movie Talk

The next thing I indeed want to do, that I’m working on and researching right now, is – I would like to have viewers watching (my movie talk showcase), and then have a user submit a movie (like, they give me the URL) that they could have me look at in real time. We all observe that movie together, and I comment on it, so we can critique movies and make them better. Now that’s like a killer feature that some of the sites have and some don’t. So that’s another fine thing to look for.

Have Something to Say? We’re listening!

Want to chime in on this article? Share your thoughts with us on Facebook or Twitter .

Web Movie Talk Platforms – Choosing The Best Movie Talk Service

Movie Talk Platforms – Choosing The One That’s Right for You

Author and Streaming Media Allstar Steve Garfield, talks about how to choose the best movie talk solution for your online marketing efforts. Steve explains his belief that the ordinary movie talk solutions tend to work best, provides an overview of interactive features, talks about how to get good production quality in movie talk, and tells us what he sees as the “next big thing” in web movie talk technology and online marketing.

The following is a transcript from my interview with Steve Garfield (with some liberties taken on piecing text parts together to make it a more cohesive read.) Or, click the play button above to listen to the podcast in its total, unedited form.

Grant (me): You dedicated one of the chapters in your book to movie talk as a solution for online marketing. In your opinion, what should professional online marketers look for in a movie talk solution for them?

Steve: There’s a entire list of things to indeed think about. But if you stop to think about what my book is about, it’s indeed all about how to put movie online lightly. What the book says, and what I go around promoting, is this: Don’t worry about all of these technical things! So when we begin talking about doing a movie talk, where I have my movie up on the screen, and I have one (or more) viewer’s movie up on the screen – people all with movie on the screen at the same time – well, now it sounds kind of confusing.

The Elementary Movie Talk Solution: Wetoku

There’s this one site that I indeed like, called Wetoku is truly effortless to use for a very brief movie talk. They have a free version of it. How it works is you bring up the webpage, and you give the person you want to interview the same URL, you click “record,” and then you record your interview; and it’s side-by-side movie. When you’re done recording your interview on Wetoku, you hit “save” and it gives you embed code, and you can stick it in your blog. That is what I’ve found to be one of the easiest ways to do a quick movie interview online.

Movie Talk With A Text Talk Audience: Little Talk

There are other sites that let people hop in and witness it, and talk… some of them are moderated… They have a little button where the viewers click, and they can join in the talk. Other ones look like free-for-alls where everybody is talking at the same-time.

If you want to have people watching (and commenting) as you’re movie recording (and permit for other moderators for your room), Little Talk is a good program to look into.

Lil’ Talk's live web movie talk with many webcams at once. (Can you see ME in there?)

Live Movie Broadcasting vs. Interactive Movie Talk

Grant: It’s clear that no one movie talk service isn’t going to be the best solution for every online marketing need. You brought up a good point, and that is, what’s the business reason for doing this? What DO you want to do? Do you want to have a broadcast? Or do you want (audience) interaction?

Steve: If you want to do a live broadcast, at a very basic level, you can record a movie and put it online, and have people witness it.

If you want interaction, you have to stop and think: What kind of interaction do I want? If you’re doing the broadcast yourself and you don’t want to get all kinds of technical things to have to think about, then you might just want to do the broadcast and have a text talk. So you can do your broadcast, and as you’re talking you can do the text talk, and people can contribute with text.

For example, Ustream – they have their own talk rooms on their website, and they’ve now introduced a fresh thing called “social talk.” As people talk, they can have their posts go out to popular social media networks like: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or AIM.

Participating in a Ustream social stream with live movie webchat

Numerous Webcams and Group Movie Talk

Now the next thing to think about is a group movie talk. Say you’re going to have a panel (and you want to feature a webcam on every panelist). I know when I was interviewed by Mashable, they used tinychat. Pete Cashmore interviewed me one time, and then there was another panelist. So there was three of us on there, all talking at the same time on movie, and people who were viewing were in a text talk, so we could witness what they were telling in text. However, this was managed situation that the talk room was locked, so no one else could join the talk.

The next version of this is where you let people join in, and you can have that be moderated. For example, when a person raises their palm and you can bring in their movie, and you are now talking via movie with say, Four, 12, or more people.

Getting Good Production Quality in Movie Talk

Grant: What I think is especially significant to think about is the production quality. Is it overkill to be using high-end equipment, if the movie talk software or service is going to need to compress the quality down so much?

Steve: That’s a good question, and there are many different answers to that. When I did my webinar with Brightcove – How to Be a Movie Blogging Powerhouse – we used a Logitech webcam,; and we used my beloved USB Mic, the Audio Technica AT2020, and sat that on the table in front of us. We we had this Logitech webcam hooked up on the back of a chair, pointing at us, and we had a USB mic on a table in front of us, and I brought in some lighting. The quality of this broadcast looked indeed good. Brightcoe did it with their own streaming product, combined with a site called KnowledgeVision, which permitted us to have Powerpoint slips go along with the movie.. The other thing I would have loved to do (with the KnowledgeVision service) is be able to display other movies at the same time – like, my own movies.

I’ve also worked with the guys from Wirecast, which is a front-end movie streaming solution; and what they suggest is if you’re going to use a higher-end DV camera with a Firewire connection (which will get you better picture quality your movie that what a USB webcam can provide), then you’re very likely going to want to use an outer microphone hooked into the camera, versus using the DV camera and a stand-alone USB mic. That’s because sometimes a USB mic can suffer from some latency (delayed audio), and so your movie and audio won’t match up. So the folks at Wirecast say that if you’re going to use a higher-end camera, then you should also use a higher-end mic hooked up to the camera.

Steve Garfield’s “Next Big Thing” For Movie Talk

The next thing I indeed want to do, that I’m working on and researching right now, is – I would like to have viewers watching (my movie talk demonstrate), and then have a user submit a movie (like, they give me the URL) that they could have me look at in real time. We all see that movie together, and I comment on it, so we can critique movies and make them better. Now that’s like a killer feature that some of the sites have and some don’t. So that’s another superb thing to look for.

Have Something to Say? We’re listening!

Want to chime in on this article? Share your thoughts with us on Facebook or Twitter .

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