Taubman Museum's First Annual "Battle of the Bands"

Man, this was an event!! The new Taubman Museum of Art really means ALL Art, even the performance kind. They have been presenting a variety of shows and exhibits indoors at the Museum and outdoors Downtown. One would normally expect a musem to be an inside adventure with paintings, photography, sculptures, and other exhibits of artwork. But definitey not this past Saturday.

I wish I could be everywhere around Roanoke filming things. And I do miss out on a lot of cool stuff. It's hard to keep up with the different events going on, especially in the summer. Some things slip by me... Luckily, I got tipped off by Facebook friend and band leader, Santiago Prada of Twelve O'Clock Knob. So I contacted the good people at the Taubman to ask if I could shoot their Battle of the Bands contest for the Star City FAME YouTube Channel.

The question arose whether SCF would be streaming the BOTB live. Unfortunately, my company was still in shopping-mode for a suitable live stream site. But at the last minute, my webmaster and I decided to choose a rather tech-integrated vendor and begin testing late Friday, just one day before the BOTB event. We did succeed in setting it up and running a live test demo. So off I went Saturday morning with the usual video gear plus additional equipment to attempt a broadcast of the show on a designated Star City FAME webpage. Alas, Roanoke WiFi would not reach behind the Taubman building. It took me a half hour to set up for the shoot, all the while connecting to any and every wireless signal that came up with a pulse and re-logging into the livestream site. I finally gave up and focused my full attention to the stage and filming. (Perhaps next time I should bring along 500 feet of Cat5 cable and ask to tap off the Museum's LAN/WAN... )

I knew I was in for a long day, so I brought 10 HDV tapes to cover the show. I used up six of them and documented every song by every band that played the BOTB. Though I started out setting up next to the PA mixing board some 70 feet away from the stage, I eventually drifted all the way to the front and off to the side only 5 feet away. Stage Sound granted me a line-out off the submixer. Thanks Stage Sound!! (They are my pro-audio supplier for SCF's music recording projects.) I tend to be a MacGiver of sorts, so I had signal converters and cables of every shape and size, including 65 feet of XLR mic cables which allowed for all the close-up camera work (eventually).

The BOTB was a big hit with the local bands and the audience. I had NO IDEA there were so many young and talented original acts here in Roanoke. In all, nineteen bands answered the call to enter the "battle" to try for a grand prize of $1000.

The show started at Noon, with Nancy and 2 Meteors opening things up, and ran until about 8pm. There was a nice variety of genres represented - rock, metal, reggae, hip-hop/DJ, country-rock, avant-guarde, power-pop, and what-not (because I really don't know what some of the newer forms are called these days). The winner for this First Annual event was a Christian Rock Band called Smoke and Mirrors. They didn't sound anything like the inside of any church I've been to... thank the Lord, haha!! I wanna know where they go on Sundays and I'll get my map out. (Yeah, I still use maps.)

After the winners and honorable mentions were announced, the audience shouted out for an encore by Smoke and Mirrors, which they humbly accepted. This took the event closer to 9pm - but it was soooo worth it! Even though my feet, back and neck were killing me from operating the camera, I loved every minute. The Taubman officials, Lisa Martin and Maria, and the staff of Norah's Cafe were wonderful to me, and I thank them deeply for saving my life with bottles of water and goodies. It was hellaciously hot and humid out there all day.

You'd think I would hit the shower and pass out after getting home, but I couldn't wait to roll back the tapes and begin transferring them to the editing computer. The audio quality suffered somewhat due to signal mis-matching, but overall the concert is nicely documented in HD widescreen format. Many of the bands have already contacted me through MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Therefore, I have since re-scheduled my regular business work to include editing BOTB tapes in the evening so these awesome guys and gals (the artists as well as their great fans) can re-live the moments in what looks to become a legendary annual event at the Taubman Museum of Art.

Here's a list of the bands that performed. Best wishes to them all in their musical journey!
•NANCY & 2 METEORS
•THE WAIT
•BLACK RAIN
•LEVI'S GENE POOL
•SMOKE N' MIRRORS
•HEAD OVER KILLS
•AMONG THE BRAVE
•THE AURORA OBSERVATORY
•GRASS MONKEY
•AFFLICTION KID
•COMMONPLACE
•THE ROYAL GREENS
•LAZY MAN DUB BAND
•ZULU WATU BAND
•THE PULLOUTS
•THE BASTARDS OF FATE
•CRAWLING THOUGH MUD WITH MACHINE GUNS
•TWELVE O'CLOCK KNOB
•THE SAD COBRAS

You can surf over to http://www.youtube.com/user/starcityfame to check out uploads of the BOTB.

Video Killed The SEO Star

Dead, you say?? How dare... oh wait, I did just look around to see if the last website had any videos, didn't I?? (Yup, you probably did.)

Even the phonebook companies are gearing up for video. Let your eyeballs do the walking? Hell yes! So let your video ad do all the talking, baby!

There was a comprehensive report done recently by DoubleClick (See Report here) wherein they analyze the effectiveness of ad formats. Rich media involves complex flash, animation and/ or video ad formats. The study includes these as well as the older formats of images and simple flash.

We have been heading toward total visual for a long time, if you count the 60 plus years of television and about 100 years of motion pictures, not to mention early animation. (Remember those booklets with a hundred pages of drawings of a cat that seemed to move when you filed through the booklet? No, well then you ain't old enough and you probably think I'm kidding.)

Don't get me wrong - people still do read. The difference is that today, if it's in words, it needs to be interactive for the reader. A blog or forum would be useless if readers couldn't post comments. Cellphone texting is another example in which people read messages, but the idea is to participate in real time. This is much different than how we started off using pagers twenty or so years ago, and it advanced quite rapidly after that, from just static sending of alerts and cellphone photos to the texting we do today.

For websites, again we need to hold people's interest, and that improves by reducing their burden to read too much information - ah, that wordy explanation of your product or service typically needed for accomodating spiders, crawlers, and that whole google search engine phenomenon.

Not only is visitor interest important, that is getting them to stay on your site and navigate it. You want visitors to make a proactive decision: Buy your products or services!! Well, they have to FIND you first, right? And this is the best part about using videos.

For those looking to rank and be found, a well-titled video hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or other video-sharing sites, will markedly improve your search status without spending thousands of dollars on SEO. The video can be a traditional-looking 30 second ad, but your options are many. Don't limit yourself. You also do not have to limit your ad to just the video hosting site. Once posted, take the video file's link and drop it in any of the popular online social networking sites you belong to. Of course, you can include the video on your company's (or org's) site, too. If you have the marketing budget, and you carefully choose an effective online marketing consultant or company, they can provide some strategic SEO solutions. But for guerrilla marketing, which is what most small businesses are doing these days, videos are a more cost-effective and results-effective way to go. (Hell, even huge corporations are going this route.)

If your company or proprietorship is already popular and you have top ranking on search engines, you still should think about staying on top of your game. There are always competitors out there selling cheaper, faster, better, more. What you present in a video can make the difference. A kind and sincere welcome to your services, a product demonstration, an entertaining invitation to visit your location, or a sincere customer testimonial are some nice ideas. Personal, helpful and familiar are the way to go in our socially-driven online world.

I know you all know from my blog that I cover lots of events and music in the Roanoke area. I shoot videos of all types and genres. These include videos for commerce. They can be short or long, for online or for DVD presentations, and for-profit businesses or for non-profits. I am always interested in working with new and current subjects, clients and ideas to bring your best visual message up front and out into the world.

My latest video is a Real Estate listing. (I also shoot for a phone company's online business pages. Those are 30 second "ads" and a bit formulaic.) This residential home video includes a voice-over, which I also produce here at my studio. I run an audio recording and video production company. Professional audio tracking is essential in many different shoots - and not every video producer offers that. This is why I call Star City Fame a Media company. I built this company by expanding my existing pro-audio studio, adding professional video for on and off-location shoots.



(Source for the graph posted above is: Dynamic Logic MarketNorms®, 2008. Fixed frequency level of 1. Campaigns using online display advertising of any format N=547-765)

The Kite Festival was Great!

Were you there??? Leda and I went to this year's Annual Kite Festival at Greenhill Park in Salem, Virginia. We met a lot of wonderful people, saw incredibly beautiful kites, learned about kite-making, and even got some info - like...

Kite flying is an art AND a sport, and that there is actually a kite museum and Hall of Fame for kites (in the state of Washington)!!!

This event was hosted by The Salem-Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce, and presented by the Richmond Air Force Kite Club and the American Kite Flyers Association. Music during the event was provided by the American Kite Flyers Association as well. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and we were able to shoot just about everything that went on during the day... it was hard to edit out stuff because every minute of it was FUN!!

Well, we'll be back to bring you more events in the Roanoke Valley really soon. It's been a lovely Spring so far and - oh, yes - there are many, many things to do out there!! Come back and join us for more...