This video by Gabriella Kessler is one of the 20 submissions to Your Uncommon Economic Indicators Video Contest in June 2009:
Towards the end of April, with the Uncommon Economic Indicators now a full 3-months old, we decided it was time to invigorate the project–and its nearly 400 contributors–with a new assignment. We focused on drawing out video from our listeners because it was the type of media content submitted with the least frequency, as in, almost never. Brian put a call out for YUEI videos on May 29th. To set the tone and demonstrate what we wanted in an Uncommon Economic Indicator Video, we posted one of Brian interviewing Inwood restaurant owners about business. To be clear, we included the contest details (also listed on the wiki), and set a deadline of June 21st.
The videos were collected through a sharing feature on the WNYC Youtube channel, where we created the group “Your Uncommon Economic Indicators Video Contest”. Video submissions covered topics from coping with layoff , to how places of worship manage in a down economy and the number of vacant shops on one man’s walk to work. A total of 20 videos posted to the group were ranked by the deadline. From that, we chose the six semi-finalists. Youtube Insight does not measure page views from when we collected entries, but several videos posted online for the first time (some video makers shared older projects with us) now have viewing numbers in the 300′s, and some of our semi-finalists reached over 1000 views.
The very first video posted to the contest came from Isaac Littlejohn Eddy, a contributor to the New York Times hyper-local blog in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. His video was cross-posted with the Times site and WNYC’s and brought a whole new viewer audience to our pages. Here is his video, the only entry that was animated:
The semi-finalists were listed in a poll on July 10th in the Brian Lehrer Show’s Scrapbook blog and 1,258 people voted over 14 days for the top three videos to be screened live with guest judges on July 30th in WNYC’s Jerome L. Green Performance Space.
The three finalists came to the show and explained their videos to a live and webcast audience. (To allow us not to worry about how to explain the content on-air, the BL Show was off air and ran a third hour.)
Judges view one of the video finalists
Judging the finalist were Mark Elijah Rosenberg from Rooftop Films, Thomas Keefe from The Blackout Film Festival and Marja Samson,owner of The Kitchen Club restaurant in Soho. Each judge also offered a prize screening or lunch for four people. They picked Christopher Tignor to screen his video, “Life on Location”, on September 12th with Rooftop Films in their last event of the season. In addition, several contestants were invited to submit their videos to the Blackout Film Festival, where they were screened on September 19th as part of WNYC’s Your Uncommon Economic Indicators project. The BFF theme this year was “The Great Recession”.
Outreach: this contest was blasted through every possible channel, including on-air promos, twitter updates, tweetube posts, direct Youtube contacts and Facebook post. Rooftop Films, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, the Lower East Side blog and the Blackout Film Fest all re-tweeted each video contest update. In addition, the people we collaborated with in the film maker networks and some contestants such as Mr. Littlejohn, brought new audiences to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show and the project as a whole.
In July, nearly 400 people streamed the live webcast of the Green Space show. The Digital Dept. was unable to distinguish when the number of viewers logged on or off during the 3-hours of broadcast, but the goal of connecting WNYC staff and YUEI contributors was met and exceeded our expectations for building strong bonds.
Finally, here is our video contest winning entry by Christopher Tignor. His video about the film industry thriving despite the economy was screened at WNYC, Rooftop Films and the Blackout Film Festival in 2009.
