You say you want to go “viral.” I’m gonna tell you that you actually might NOT want to go legitimately “viral” and here’s why: About 90% of videos that go viral are a trap for their creators. Tay Zonday made Chocolate Rain, and regardless of the fact that he’s a talented singer and songwriter, he will forever be known as the Chocolate Rain guy. Chris Crocker isn’t known as a smart social commentator and sketch comedian, he’s known as “Leave Britney Alone.” The list goes on. The trap of going viral is that you will forever be compared to your original viral work, and viewers will be largely uninterested in anything else you have to offer. It’s like how Matthew Perry will play Chandler the rest of his life, you don’t necessarily want to blow up super-quickly… better to build an audience with a few really solid, moderately popular videos, and then continue releasing consistently good content within a specific concept or brand.
I have to say that this is the most nicely critical piece of writing I’ve seen in a while. It’s easy to “go mean” when someone comes to you for advice like this; I appreciate that Black went into teacher mode instead.
You can learn more about Brent Black by visiting his website or checking out some of his YouTube videos. (Also, the video on his subscriber page that auto-plays where he explains what his channel is about for new viewers? Why don’t more YouTube artists do that?)
Once again, Google informed me that the latest and final part of the Black Star Warrior documentary is online, and this one has an appeal for help at the end:
As the YouTube comments have so far stated, this is really tripping my “This is fake” buttons, but I also agree that it’s so well-done that I don’t care. The glimpses at the end of the documentary of what looks like “actual” footage is pretty interesting, and if indeed they will be releasing a trailer to go along with this, you know I’ll be all over it. Also, isn’t Comic Con coming up soon?
Anyway, if you think you can help, go visit LandoIstheMan.com for more information.
…especially if you choose to view this at work, because courtesy of British film editor Harry Hanrahan, I present The 100 Greatest (and Profane) Movie Insults of All Time:
(Special thanks to the gang at Pajiba.com, who hunted down the names of all the movies in the clip.)
At first, I was dubious at the thought or idea that floating out in the ether somewhere is a blaxploitation version of Star Wars, but I quickly forgot about the whole concept—until my YouTube subscription alert mentioned that the second part of the documentary was online:
Going back to the LandoIstheMan.com blog, I found this blog entry which explained that Alan, the blog’s author, has a friend who created a movie poster featuring Lando Calrissian as the star of a spinoff Star Wars movie called Lando, and it was this action that started the whole thing:
[Alan’s artist friend] Matt decided it would be fun to dig around and explore the rumblings about this supposed 1980’s Blaxploitation film that takes place in the Star Wars universe. After uncovering some tantalizing evidence he thought Marcus might be telling the truth.
I’m totally calling shenanigans on this, because it all smacks of “friend of a friend” business; and yet, subsequent posts on the blog suggest that this Alan guy totally believes it’s real. Also? He’s got consistent pictures of his family on the blog, including candid vacation shots, and I don’t think anyone would do that to their kids on a hoax website… would they?
I’m going to try and get to the bottom of this, because I have to admit, if is fake, it’s really well done.
Well, at least according to this YouTube vid-maker, they are:
Normally I wouldn’t take such a piece of video from an account that was created just days before a video is uploaded as truth, but just as I had to click on the April Fools’ Day “black Star Wars” video, I had to check out this story about the World of Warcraft actors because I’ve been a voice actor fan ever since I was a young geek in Southern California.
Living that close to the Hollywood movie and TV machine, I got to attend a lot of voice acting panels when I went to anime conventions and actually got to know some of them better as people rather than “celebrities.” When I moved to New York City, I found that though the scene was a little different, the people were the same: hard workers who had a talent for sounding like something other than what they appeared to be.
And to be perfectly honest, I ended up working with many voice actors from both coasts and Texas in my roles as a journalist and as a guest coordinator for two anime conventions, so my perspective when I see a video like this may be a little different from any other person’s.
The thing that struck me was vid-creator Mr Oilsoap‘s claim that all of the Hollywood voice actors are professional actors who work within a union while actors in New York and Toronto, Canada are not. I can definitely tell you that over a decade of attending anime voice over panels has taught me that even Hollywood has had its variances regarding the employment of union actors versus non-union actors in a production; try getting California voice actors Steve Blum (Spike Spiegel from “Cowboy Bebop”) and David Lucas (Onizuka from “Great Teacher Onizuka”) in the same room at one time.
The other claim was that the Hollywood actors were “recognizable to anyone who watches films or TV,” and I have to add that it’s probably only a voice actor fan or geek like me who would know or care that the voice of Prince Kael’thas Sunstrider in Warcraft III and The Burning Crusade expansion is none other than Quinton Flynn, the voice of Iruka in “Naruto” and “Naruto Shippuden” or that Debi Mae West is not only Maiev Shadowsong in Warcraft III and The Burning Crusade but more importantly, is Meryl Silverburgh from the Metal Gear Solid games.
Still, it was an interesting vid, so I showed it to an old contact of mine… and the response I got surprised me.
My source within the industry wasn’t surprised that I’d seen the vid because it was something that had come to his/her attention as well along with a Playbill.com notice from a reputable casting firm in New York looking for:
Actors ages 25-55 years old to voice various roles for World of Warcraft video game. Actors must be skilled in accents — especially British and New York — among others.
“We’re not entirely sure of the details ourselves, but it just looks like a general WoW casting call. WoW adds content all the time. Everyone has been attempting to reach their various counterparts for confirmation,” my source said, adding, “To be fair, It’s not unusual for the actors to be the last to know.”
Why such a claim would surface when prominent WoW blogs like WoW.com and MMO-Champion.com haven’t picked up this story smacks of something fishy, and you can be assured that I’m going to try and get to the bottom of this.
Special thanks go out to Mattias, a human paladin, and Korixa, a gnome warlock, from the Guardians of Fire on the Elune U.S. server for additional research and support for this article.