Good, Fast, Cheap - Pick All Three

The saying used to be, "good, fast, cheap - pick any two."

In creating content for the web, it has to be all three.

"Good" means good stories, well told. Or good, well produced coverage of events. Or an interesting, well researched documentary. Does it have to have the same level of production value, as, say a Hollywood feature or a prime time television show? Of course not. But the people who are producing the web content should know what they're doing - be experienced and professional and able to wring the last ounce of production value from a relatively tiny budget.

A friend of mine was recently producing a web video and the client wanted the "edgy look where the camera waves around" and insisted that as much of the footage as possible be shot from his cell phone. My friend patiently explained that getting that "spontaneous" look takes a lot of time and planning. Those shots aren't made by amateurs waving cameras around. And he suggested that the client was welcome to cover the shoot simultaneously with his cell phone while my friend shot the more "traditional" way. Needless to say, they used the traditional footage.

That's not to say that there's not a place for the "shaky cam" approach. It just needs careful planning to get the appearance of spontaneity while still creating something watchable.

"Fast" just means getting it done quickly so you can move on to the next one. In the immortal words of William Goldman, "no one knows anything." None of us know what's going to be a web hit and what isn't. If you spend too much time obsessing over something that falls flat on it's face, it's going to take a while to get back on your feet and on to the next project. Remember, your audience is not going to be as critical as a cinema or television audience will be. So work quickly. Make it good - just not obsessively good.

"Cheap" is just the reality of web content. Most web shows are just not going to have the kind of giant bucks behind them that film or television have - at least not for now. This is another reason why volume is important. And while we now have all kinds of great, relatively inexpensive professional tools at our disposal, the realities of production are still the same. So it is vitally important that we use our ingenuity to produce quality content without spending a ton of money.

Ways of doing this include keeping costs in mind at the concept stage, minimizing the number of locations, keeping the number of actors limited, etc. Also, if you are creating for a specific sponsor, don't be afraid to ask them for whatever they can offer in the way of locations, employees as background actors, props or anything else that comes to mind. It's amazing how much you can save in production dollars this way.

I think that production dollars will start to increase as time goes on and people figure out ways of effectively monetizing web content. Until then, producers need to walk the fine line between losing money by over-producing and creating worthless junk in an effort to make money. Neither approach serves anyone for long.

User Generated Content

A lot of web content models have been based on seemingly infinite supplies of user generated content (UGC). While I'm sure that seems like a good idea in the abstract conference room environment, one only has to spend a few minutes surfing through YouTube to realize that the gems in this morass of mind-numbingly bad material are few and far between.

Which is why I created Vibert's First Law of Cheap Technology:

"Just because the technology for creating something suddenly got cheaper doesn't mean everyone will be good at using it."

It reminds me of the time in the late '80s when page layout apps suddenly became common. Every CEO thought about firing their ad agency and having their secretaries create the ads (remember secretaries?). After a few weeks they found that most of their secretaries weren't very good at creating ads, even though they had the software.

It turns out that there is more to creating compelling video content than having a DV camera and an editing application. Some will be lucky enough to be holding a video camera when, for example, their best friend decides to launch a bottle rocket from his ass, creating an instant YouTube hit. But, scorched colon aside, how often is that going to happen? Multiply it by a few hundred million users and you'll get more, of course, but after awhile it all begins to look like "America's Funniest Home Videos... Uncensored!" You can only take so many 20 second clips like this before boredom and ennui set in.

So what differentiates UGC from other, more sophisticated kinds of web content? The same thing that differentiates Uncle Fred's home movies from what you see at the cineplex:

Professionalism.

What does that mean? Working to a consistently high standard, both in terms of concepts and execution. Being able to do these things on an established timeline, within an established budget.

As the web audience continues to grow more enlightened and seeks superior content, the need for material designed for the unique requirements of the web audience will steadily increase. The challenge for anyone hoping to make money at this will be to create this quality content without spending the kind of money that Hollywood and Madison Avenue do.

The good news is that advertisers and sponsors are starting to realize that associating themselves with superior content means they will attract more viewers - and that makes good business sense.

More about that in upcoming posts.