Check out what this band did to promote their latest gig:
I noticed this video while checking out my comments on my MySpace page. The band is called Super Lite Bike, they come from Austin Texas, they write amazing tunes, and they make kick-ass video flyers for their gigs. Found this second promo vid produced for one of their previous shows (it’s not on youtube so I can’t embed it in wordpress). Check it out here.
Yeah, I think it’s an awesome idea too. I sent a mail to Super Lite Bike asking them how they got the idea and how long it took to edit the whole thing, and here’s what Jackson (bass and backings) responded shortly after:
The video game one took us about 4 hours. It was loads of fun. We ended up putting it out 2 days before the show, but we got a great response from it. The effects were all done by Jim Jones, a friend of ours who does the videos. The green screen was a fun shot: I had to run in place for about 2 minutes making weird faces. The guy that gets shot had to stay dead on the couch for about 30 mins.
The idea was really just to find a different way to get our shows out to as many people as possible. We all decided that the usual paper flyers are cool at the venue you’re gonna play at, but putting them up all over town is a waste of time and money.
We can get a video-flyer done for cheap and then just put that up on the net. We get way more people to see it than a normal flyer (about 1200 views for each video). If someone could guarantee us that a 1000 people would see our flyers on the street, we still probably wouldn’t do them. We’re in a more visual world nowadays: people just like to sit at their computers and take note of random crazy stuff. It’s also like giving someone a little gift from us. Our fans get to see something different – they get to see who we are, what we look like and get an idea of our personalities. It creates a much stronger bond with people than them just seeing a poster or a flyer on myspace.
Our good friend, Jose Jones got the idea for the videos. He films and edits (the editing process is usually a day or so). The guy is an up-and-coming director/genius here in Austin. He’s great and we’re just lucky to be good friends with him.
Yup, although traditional gig promotion is still a must in some respects, we are indeed in a visual world now, and interactive content is key to attract the increasing number of geeks on this planet.
Check out Super Lite Bike on MySpace: www.myspace.com/superlitebike
and Jose Jones on MySpace at: www.myspace.com/josejonesfilms
And while I’m on cool promo vids, here’s one from the very talented hip-hop/music 2.0Â activist Wax (from www.myspace.com/waxandherbalt). Also check out his youtube channel – the dude has made around 20 handy-cam home-made vids and generated around 800 000 views (rough estimate), probably more.
Mruff.
