Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) is the act of augmenting real life with images or sounds that are not present. We’re beginning to see some mobile phone apps take advantage of AR by showing information about objects and places you look at through the phones camera, this can be seen in apps such as Acrossair Augmented Reality Browser and SnapShop Showroom. Along with this we have begun to see new tech such as the (currently in beta trials) Google Glass, which whilst not designed specifically for AR features, could see third party developers create apps not dissimilar to those we see on smart phones now. The main difference will be that the display is head mounted, meaning you wouldn’t need to hold a phone up, making the user experience better, and possibly working to popularise the idea of AR as a mainstream technology. As well as this we’re seeing AR type innovations coming within more familiar media. The new additions to Iplayer announced in the autumn of 2013, included the option to turn on an annotation type service that would allow for relevant information to be shown on the programme you’re watching. Whilst not actually AR, it incorporate elements, the idea of conveying information beyond what we see in reality. You can watch the video announcement here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/dg-iplayer.html
More media focussed ways of using AR could be to embed the trailer of your film inside a poster, or flyer, advertising your film, or create a companion app that you can use whilst viewing a piece of media that will identify where you are in the film (from the audio) and give you behind the scenes stories and facts. Similar apps have been created for the television show Breaking Bad.
Quick Response codes
Quick Response (QR) codes are a form matrix barcode that have been around since 1994, when it was created in Japan by a subsidiary of Toyota, Denso Wave. However QR codes didn’t real start seeing wide spread use until the introduction of the smartphone in the early 21st century. Now QR codes are found in countless numbers of places, and can link to web address, online stores and can even be used to login to certain websites. The QR code is an invaluable tool in marketing because it allows are cleaner and more convient way to present a web address, and because the vast majority of the population have smart phones, you’re potential hits are relatively high. I would also argue that part of the appeal of a QR code for some people is the mystery of not knowing necessarily were a QR code will lead.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an important part of any websites design, and something that needs to be consider if you want your website to be found. SEO is the process of increasing the visibility for your site across search engines (aside from paid for search priority). This is fairly important because in general the higher up a search engines list your site appears, the more hits you’ll get. Sites that appear after the first page have a noticeably smaller ‘hit rate’ as can be seen here:
So we can see why ensuring you correctly tag your website, and the content on it (which can also help with SEO) can be an important way of driving traffic to your website, and also generate new traffic by people finding your site near the top when they search for related terms.
Social Networks
Social networks have been around for years, from Bebo, through MySpace to Facebook and Twitter, the current social networking giants. To understand why social networking can be such a powerful tool, you need to understand just how massive these sites are. As of 2012 Facebook as one billion active users (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443635404578036164027386112) a 1/7 of the worlds population, give or take. And twitter has over 500 million active users (http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/). These are massive audiences, and we have seen before how a well constructed video can get massive publicity with these audiences. Take the short lived internet sensation that was Kony back in 2012. Although the campaign ultimately came to nothing, that was a product of poor planning, and some unfortunate news stories creating negative attention for the people behind the Kony campaign. The reason videos can go so viral on these social media sites is because for every share, or re-post the video goes right to the top of your ‘feed’. So even if a person passes a video up the first time, if enough of their friends share it, they may give it a watch the second, third or fourth time it get’s re-posted to the top of their wall.
Crowd funding
In recent years crowd funding sites such as kickstarter and indiegogo have begun to really see an increase in people backing projects, and as a result projects being posted on these sites. Some well known success include the Ouya a piece of gaming hardware that raised over 8.5 million dollars (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console?ref=most-funded) which was the most funded project ever on kickstarter before it was surpassed by the Pebble: E-paper watch with over 10 million dollars (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android). However looking closer to home, the current top funded film and video projects are the Veronica Mars Movie (Over 5 million dollars), Wish I Was Here (Over 3 million dollars) and The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint (over 1 million dollars).
Crowd funding sites such as these are a great way of getting your projects funded, and keeping independent of big production houses. It can also aid in funding projects that otherwise wouldn’t be funded, an example would be the Detective Heart of America movie (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1556971210/detective-heart-of-america-the-feature-film?ref=live) based off a two part YouTube series with a small following, a project like this would never have been funded by a bigger production house, however because of the demand for more episodes from the fans, the film was able to easily get funded and beyond on Kickstarter.
LadderHouse Productions 