Transcript
Unknown Speaker 00:00
Welcome, everybody, to video content strategy session with Ryan Waggoner, Peter Wuth, Gregory Castillo and myself and I just mispronounced your name, Gregory, I'm sorry. We are going to request it. If you guys have questions for us, we're going to each give a short presentation, we're going to have a few polls for you. And if you if you have questions, please put them in the q&a section. As you can see, the chat is moving very quickly. We will miss your question if you put it in the chat. And we will get to questions at the end. So I'm going to ask Ryan's going to share his screen with our slide deck. I'm going to ask you to go ahead and do that. All right. Can we go to that? We're going to put up the first poll. And we are what is our first poll? I can't remember. Someone on the MSDN side, there it is. So we're really curious. Yeah. What is your role with video production? We're kind of curious why everyone is here. So if you could answer that poll, that would be great. I don't think you guys can see the answers, right? We can? Or can you? Can you guys see them? audiences? Can we have a lot of hands on video makers? results are still coming in. More than 100 of you have answered. Cool. So we have like a quarter of you make videos. About 20% of you supervise about 20% of you request videos. And I can't seem to scroll mice part of my answer. Oh, there it is. Some of you are just curious about video. And I'm going to share the results here. Do I click stop share? Oh, no, it's sharing right now. You guys can see it, I think right. Okay. All right. This is super interesting. So we have a really good mix of people who make videos. oversea videos are just curious about video and request videos. that's a that's a great, that's really interesting. Awesome. So we're gonna get started, I believe our first speaker is Peder Wuth. And I'm we're gonna introduce ourselves, so I'm gonna mute and let Peter take it off. Take it
Unknown Speaker 02:19
either.
Unknown Speaker 02:19
You hear me? I'm Peter wood. And I'm working as head of digital media at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. And I'm going to talk you through some talk about Louisiana channel, which is our video channel. Okay, next slide, please. Thank you. But before I introduce the Louisiana channel, a short introduction to the museum to Louisiana museum is not as you might anticipate, not located in the state of Louisiana. It's actually located in Denmark in Northern Europe, just 20 miles north of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Okay, so the Louisiana museum was opened in 1958. It has a fine collection of modern art with a focus on Danish art, German art and American postwar works. It has quite a large Sculpture Park. Last year, we had around 750,000 visitors. And besides being a museum, it's also a beautiful place. The building itself is recognized as a major work in modern European architecture placed beautifully by the sea. Okay, let's go to the channel. And the next slide, please. So Louisiana channel is a video channel that was launched eight years ago, in November 20 2012. We have published two new videos with artist interviews every week in the past eight years, which means that we are currently have about 800 videos online. The videos are watched just about 30,000 times every day, which is just about 120,000 minutes of watching going on every day. We serve a global audience. As you can see on the map to the right, the blue colors mark the countries where our readers have been seen. And as you can see, we have the most viewers in Northern Europe and in the US, actually, we're staffed with six people plus freelancers, so it's quite a big project for a video project. Next slide, please. Okay, now I'm going to walk you through some key strategic decisions that we have defined the way Louisiana channel works. And it has defined our ability to distribute our videos and also how we handle the corona pandemic. I will get back to that. First of all, we are our Web TV featuring the artists we have excluded all curators and other experts from our videos. We have a journalistic approach. So this is a curator free zone, which means we let the artists do the talking. We just ask the question. We work independently of the museum. This means that we choose our subjects and the artists that we interview independently of the museum or at the museum program or The museum exhibitions. This means that most of the artists that we interview have never had exhibitions at the museum and probably never will. So we're an art channel as more and much less a museum channel. We work in a public service tradition that is strong in Denmark. And we see ourselves as an extension of Louisiana's values and listen to extension of the physical museum. Next slide piece. So also important here is what we're not doing. So, first of all, we're not trying to document events or exhibitions at the museum, I already mentioned that. Also, we're not a marketing engine. Videos are often used for marketing, but we're not trying to get people to go to the museum, we have no goal for getting up getting people to go to the museum. We're not trying to sell tickets. We're not news, we're not about the latest events. In the art world. Our goal is to produce videos that document the artistic experience, in a way that the videos will stay relevant for a long time, and might be seen and rediscovered over and over again. So we try to keep out of the news stream. Last but not least, we're not a website, we of course, we do have a website, where all of our videos are published. But our primary goal is not to get traffic to the website, our goal is to get people to watch our videos. And this means that we're trying to get our videos distributed to the right content partners. Next slide, please. So a key point in our strategy is the fact that we provide content for others. We try to partner with all kinds of publishers who might be interested in our content. This is non commercial, we do not make money doing that. And in a sense, we operate business to business but without a profit. Of course, that could be a business or partner. It could be a small blog about art, it could be a newspaper that has an art section, it could be our YouTube channel where people use our videos for their playlists, could be on Facebook for people to share. Our main goal is to place every video in the right context and partner with the right sites to give it maximum distribution. So every video gets out there. Next slide, please. Okay, so, as mentioned, much of our work goes into finding the right audience and finding the right partners.
Unknown Speaker 07:21
Some examples of when this works, and also one example of when it doesn't work, we used to have a partnership with first thing that didn't work, we used to have a partnership with the Huffington Post, they have a huge amount of traffic, of course. But what we've found is that this media is very broad, and it's too broad for our niche content. Our videos had massive exposure, but very few clicks on the videos on Huffington Post. And they didn't the few that actually clicked in watch for very long. With our daily, which is the world's largest architecture site, we had the opposite experience, we have a very fine partnership with them, where they publish all of our architecture videos, not all of our videos, just the ones about architecture. And we find the engagement rate, the time that the average user watches the video is extremely high on our daily. So here, we seem to find the right partner for our content. The third kind of partner that I should mention is YouTube are the YouTube algorithm. That's the algorithm used to produce the related videos or watch more block on the right of YouTube. What we find is that we have twice the engagement rate. When people watch the videos recommended by YouTube instead of the ones they find in search, search and find themselves. So stimulating the YouTube algorithm is key to coming out there and getting the right audience for us. That's also a way of finding the right niche. Okay, next slide, please. So what happened during Corona? So being a channel that works independently from the physical space, we did not lose much. When the museum closed down during Corona, we were actually able to maintain our work and our strategy and actually increased traffic by around 25%. We also experienced an interest and increased interest for media. We were in the art newspaper in New York Times and Danish television and other media and they were very interested because we're no museums to visit. And being independent of the physical space and being highly distributed, highly distributed media that made us less vulnerable to lockdown. Currently, though, we are running out of material, we're running out of interviews, but we're working on formats where we can actually do artist interviews through a zoom session, and we hope we'll be able to continue to work that way. Okay, next slide. And it's just thank you from here. Thanks for listening.
Unknown Speaker 09:57
Thanks, Peter. So I will Step up next. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ryan Waggoner. I'm the director of Creative Services at the Spencer Museum of Art. And I'm going to be walking you through the three phases of our response to the COVID pandemic, as it relates to our video strategy. When we the four of us initially met to plan this session, I thought, okay, I'll talk about the one way that we've adapted. Now a few months later, I realized that was a pipe dream. And really, that my thinking and our strategy around video has changed significantly over the past few months due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic and our continued lack of access to our gallery spaces and two artists. So in my portion, today, I hope to show you how a museum and staff of our size was forced to respond based on our existing video content strategy. I'll share some results from these shifts, and also what I've identified as the lasting impacts for our video program, which I hope everyone can learn from. To start off a quick intro to the Spencer Museum of Art, we are the university Art Museum at the University of Kansas. And I first want to acknowledge that the University of Kansas occupies the historical homelands of the Kansa, CA, Shawnee and Osage people, we affirm indigenous sovereignty, support the needs of American Indian peoples and commit to indigenizing the Spencer Museum of Art. The Spencer's Museum in the Spencer's mission, excuse me is really academic based. So we serve hundreds of students, hundreds of classes per year and 1000s of students from across all disciplines as well as the general public. We have an encyclopedic collection of more than 45,000 objects. And we have about 25 full time staff as well as about the same number of students staff. The bulk of our video program really supports and offers interpretation for our exhibition program and our teaching mission. We are aiming to connect people with art and artists and we produce about 10 to 15 videos here. The three kind of tenants of our video program, our documentary style artists videos, this is the bread and butter of our program. These are interview based videos that explore the work of artists and commissions at the museum. We also produce companion videos for major exhibitions that explore the conceptual themes of the show. And we do some live event capture and live event streaming as well. So we will now step into the first phase of our response to the COVID pandemic. The image on the screen here is a GIF of a man attempting to vacuum the floor which is on fire. And I'd say he is not doing a great job of succeeding in that effort. So the first phase because the bulk of our video program is based on interviews with artists and curators. Much of our existing workflow was no longer possible once we lost access to the museum. And we couldn't be around other people. At the same time, as we all know, in the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic, in the United States, the demand for digital content skyrocketed. So we could no longer engage people in person. So we had to do it online. And quickly, we had to change our mindset to just producing whatever we could however we could. And so as I started to think about how we might accomplish this, I was looking around at how other people were handling this challenge. You know, I think we all remember people like Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert filming their shows from home Saturday Night Live producing episodes with their their cast filming their from their home. So we're all starting to see people filming remotely, kind of for the first time. And because so many of us were in the same situation I was seeing that this this lower production value and the low tech feeling it was really working right out of the gate. It truly leveled the playing field, at least for a while. So an example from this first phase of our shift is a series called amplify. So the images you're seeing on the screen here are some screenshots from this series. On the left is an example of the source footage that I received. And on the right are two screenshots from the finished production. So these were self filmed by members of our staff who had really never been involved in the content creation process. Before I wrote a very basic list of instructions. Most people filmed these segments with their cell phones, and then submitted them to me for editing. I knew in this in this phase that there was little that I could do to really up the production value of the video being captured. And so I tried instead to offset that by using graphic elements to make it feel more polished. So as you're seeing on the right hand side of the screen here, some animated text in motion graphic elements to spruce up the production value a little bit. And knowing that at least for a few weeks, audience's expectations had changed at least a little bit.
Unknown Speaker 14:45
So then we interface to the image being used here to illustrate this phase is a clip I believe from last which is show I have not seen. But I do know this reference a very stressed looking man saying we have to go back So as quickly as we all adapted to low production value and improvise filming locations, I think equally as quickly, we all got really tired of it. Zoom fatigue became a really a very real thing. I'm sure many of us are feeling that even today, as we were experiencing this virtual conference. And with the shine of that first period wearing off, I knew that we had to find a way to start producing the types of content that we were known for, and that we've produced in the past. And so with so much of our content dependent on interviews, I knew we'd have to sacrifice the visual. And so we started interviewing artists over zoom. So here's some examples from that face, that you're seeing a screenshot on the left of an artist being interviewed on zoom, and then on the right, a out output piece from that interview. So for an upcoming exhibition, we had planned to do videos on three artists in the show. So our goal here was to produce the same type of documentary style video, under these new less than ideal interview circumstances. So again, we're using zoom to conduct these interviews and really prioritizing high quality audio capture, since we knew visuals would be a challenge. So in these instances, we started shipping artists, USB microphones to up their their audio quality. And using a free online service called clean feed, which is the kind of center screenshot you're seeing there to isolate the audio capture from zoom and be able to capture a higher quality. In one instance, we didn't even ask an artist to film themselves. That's the screenshot you're seeing in the top right. And I'd say for the most part, this has worked. But it has proved challenging to work without that interview footage that we've been so dependent on, in some instances. So we really had to condense the narratives of these, these pieces shorten their duration, really refined the story that we're trying to tell, and rely only on still images and animation. As you're seeing, I'll replay this clip here. Again, really relying on motion graphics to animate some pieces to fill that visual void that was left by the lack of interview footage. So where are we today, trying to find a balance. The Gift being used to illustrate this phase is a bulldog asleep on its back, balancing some Pringles potato chips on its paws, and chin. Also a good representation of how I feel most days while working, trying to balance many things at once. But in this sense, you know, we're really, somewhere in between those first two phases. Now, like I described, we are still trying to produce video in a similar style while we remain remote. But we're also open to new methods for production and really opening up the entire process to a wider range of our staff. So for us, our galleries have reopened on a very limited basis. But we I still don't have consistent access to the galleries. And I certainly don't have access to artists to conduct interviews, as we've done in the past. And so we're really just trying to continue, as Peter said, to start to refine those remote interview options over zoom, how do we make that process better. And for us, we're settling into this being our reality still, for some time to come. I think even as many of us hope to see restrictions begin to lift, hopefully next year, a lot of these logistical challenges are going to remain and so for us, it makes sense to not fight it or try to wait it out. But really instead take this as an opportunity to grow and diversify our video program. And so the lasting impact for us, summed up in a word this, this process has been one heck of a opportunity. And I have to give credit to my colleagues, Kate and Sarah for coining that phrase, at least in our museum chop opportunity. If you're not familiar, that's combination of the words challenge and opportunity. That's, I think the best way I can describe how I feel about that what this process has been. The image you're seeing here is a photograph of me producing a live stream outdoors, wearing a mask a few months ago. And so the pandemic for us, it's really pushed me to build in some much needed structure into our video production workflow, especially around project origination. So because we have so many more people involved in our video production process now, I've created a new request form so people can submit ideas for content.
Unknown Speaker 19:20
And this is also approved as an opportunity for me to educate our staff on really what is involved in a video production. It gives people aiming to give people have better sense of understanding around timelines and the resources required to produce some of this content. But more than anything, I think the pandemic has really opened our eyes and my eyes at the museum to new styles and new types of content to be produced. So it's helped us break out of the mold of the types of content that we've been producing for many years, and in a lot of ways kind of lighten the tone of our content. This is something that I had long desire to do at the museum, but I don't think we would have achieved it necessarily. Without the circumstances and limitations that have been introduced by the pandemic. And to wrap up here, I just want to say that I think we could really use a lot more of this industry wide in the museum sector. You know, as institutions, we have a tremendous amount of knowledge that we're able to share with our audiences. But at the same time, we need to continue finding ways to really amplify new voices in our storytelling in our interpretation of the artwork that we that we steward. There are plenty of good examples of this in place. But I think the more we can continue to push in that direction, the better off we'll be as a as a sector. And for us, it really took this global pandemic to realize that to produce that type of content, we needed to look beyond our well established production methods, and also outside of our typical content, collaborators. And so with that, I'm going to hand it off to Gregory. And I think we're going to run our next poll.
Unknown Speaker 20:54
Right out, right, that was fantastic and very difficult to follow. So my name is Gregory Castillo, I'm multimedia producer at the Dallas Museum of Art. And before I start, we are going to take another quick poll. So I think that poll will be coming up now. Somehow, magically, and I don't know how it comes up, but it just does. And there it is. So we want to ask you, where is your institution on its video journey? Are you just getting started? Do you create some video without a dedicated staff? Do you have a person on staff that makes video or none of the above? And while you answer that question, I'm going to introduce myself. So next slide. Right, or do we have to have this slide up with the poll? I don't remember.
Unknown Speaker 21:36
You're good. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 21:38
Yeah. So I will go to the polls up. Alright, so I have a so I've been at the Dallas Museum of Art for over five years. And today I'm gonna talk about the people behind the content that we've created. As you can tell, I've got Chef gastos cookbook from Ratatouille on my intro slide. And in the movie Ratatouille, Chef Cousteau was this acclaimed lovable French chef who believed that anyone could cook. Similarly, I believe that anyone can make content. So I think we're about to wrap that poll up. We're gonna share the results, Susan.
Unknown Speaker 22:11
Yeah, I just did. I hope everyone can see this. So we have 6% just getting started. Welcome, new people. Most of the people here about a little less than half, create some video but don't have dedicated staff. Wow, that's cheers to you. That's, that's hard. And about another 45% have dedicated staff.
Unknown Speaker 22:36
That's incredibly close, having staff and not having stuff, but a percentage point away one person. Well, that's amazing. Oh, that's that's great to know. So I'm already so we are going to I'm going to I'm going to get back to it because I have ADHD I got distracted. Ryan, go ahead and skip the next slide, please. So a little bit about the Dallas Museum of Art. The DMA was established in 1903. And we're among the 10 largest art museums in the country. We have an encyclopedic collection with over 24,000 works spanning over 5000 years of history. We're in the heart of the Dallas Arts District. And since 2013, we've offered free general admission. Now, a little background specifically about our video program, prior to March of this year. So prior to March video was mostly used for marketing collateral that includes 15 to 32nd, pre roll ad buys on various websites, the types of things that you see, when you're watching a video on YouTube that would kind of come up, they were geographically tagged, we also created a lot of exhibition oriented videos. And we averaged about two to four videos per month. And I'm the only dedicated video producer at on staff. And in a nutshell, video was really thought of as something supplemental and promotion. If you have a program that needs a boost, we'll make a video for it. And then March happened. Next slide. So the first week that we've closed our doors, and we got sent to work from home, I felt kind of useless. My boss is the director of marketing, she was working on this large plan with the rest of the directors team that we would soon find out about. And I decided that the only thing that I could do to help my team was to make a video. So these are some screenshots from the video that I created. And I'm actually going to go ahead and share this link in the chat with everybody, for you to watch later if you'd be interested. So this is actually an internal training video that I created for our staff on how to use your phones to make content. I shot all the photos on my phone, I recorded all the audio on my phone, and I made all the videos on my phone that went into this short video on YouTube. I wanted it to be accessible and helpful for everyone. And I wanted to take feedback of you know, who might be making stuff and how could I help other people with it. And this video was the first thing that I was able to do. It's about three minutes long and it kind of covers basic recording on your iPhone or Android phone. Next slide. So I can't take credit for identifying who and what content would get made at the museum. That was an institutional effort. And it is an institutional effort. From our education team to curatorial, everyone started brainstorming what their programs and offerings would look like as video content. The the phrase, what can become a video became a rallying cry for my team and across the museum. But who can make these media videos? Well, the first thing that everybody thought was curators, but the actual answer has been anyone willing to make them have been who's in the next slide, please. So these are some examples of videos that we've created just quick, some screenshots of them. We've made a lot of videos, I can't even tell you it's definitely over 100. And our Arts and Letters live videos, which were once held in our theater space are now these live YouTube events. People can buy a book have it delivered to their house, they can watch this YouTube video with an author or a personality that they like, our educational programs have become virtual story readings. And we've leaned on our community partners, not only our staff to create content that we could feature, I'm going to take a quick sip of water because I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous my first time presenting. We had artists film themselves at home just like our colleagues did. We had local organizations put together videos, I'm really proud of this video on the top right, which is a steal from our video that we partnered with the Dallas black Dance Theater, where they filmed an outdoor dance number inspired by our collection, on artwork in our collection, or various artworks in our collection. Next slide, please. One video that I'm actually particularly proud of doesn't feature any footage at all. One of our curatorial systems Alyssa wood is a trained yoga instructor, we found out that she was a yoga instructor. And we decided that she would create a guided meditation inspired by painting in our collection. Now this video hasn't gotten a million views. It wasn't our most popular video ever. But it's exactly the type of thing that I really want to stress today. You can have, you can create amazing things you can make creative content that is that that can make a connection with your audiences. By really understanding what your staff and what the people around you are able to offer. It's not just the curators, it's everyone everybody has talents that you might not know about. So, you know, if you can harness that and you can learn about people, you really can produce some great stuff. Next slide. So you're probably wondering why there's a bunch of screenshots of Conan O'Brien on screen right now. And that's because Conan O'Brien was actually the person who kept inspiring me personally, while I kept thinking that we needed to feature our staff in different ways.
Unknown Speaker 27:36
You might know Conan from late night or the tonight show or his podcast, Conan O'Brien needs a friend. But from the start, Conan has always gone behind the scenes and featured his staff, his writers, his producers, his assistant, his most successful sketches on the internet that have millions and millions of views usually are him giving his producer a hard time or him messing with his assistant or talking about their stories. I think it's worth bringing up for two reasons. It's my first presentation, and I really want to reference Conan, because I love Conan. And second, I think the type of energy that he's able to exude on his show with his staff is the type of content that can create those genuine connections that people really like engaging with. Next slide. So our new normal, we've been open at a limited capacity for a few months now. In that time, we've adjusted our strategy, just how Ryan talked about this kind of hybrid idea behind making videos. The institution needs more videos, though. So we've got into film in the galleries with a skeleton crew, we try to film when it's necessary only. But I've been really proud of the content, our one of our curators Mark Castro, and one of our other curators Sue Canterbury actually came in and we were able to film some interviews with them and make sure that they're you know, everybody's always wearing a mask, we want to show people in our videos, that you should be wearing a mask. And I think that's just kind of my, my little way of doing it is always ensuring it, even though I could film it without being there. Um, something else that we've done very recently that we converted one of our unused classroom spaces into a video studio, we added lights, and we added microphones and stuff that we could supplement people's video setup, they can still shoot from their phones, they can use one of the devices that we have, we've created a request form that people can actually like request time on a calendar to use the space. And we're really learning that we can have people make their own videos, we can train them to make their own videos, and they can get, you know, create really great content by themselves. We've kind of made people we've given them the tools, I helped them out as much as possible. But the amount of video that we're producing, we're gonna need a lot of people working and the best thing we can do is training people how to do it. In conclusion, I just want to say that my staff and staff at the museum has been so inspirational to me, they've produced these amazing videos, they've all learned how to become videographers and how to edit their own content and I couldn't thank them enough. So, you know, we're still learning. I have a lot of questions. But I was really glad today to be asked with my colleagues to share what we're doing. And with that, I want to hand it off to the wonderful Susan Edwards to finish the day.
Unknown Speaker 30:07
Hello, everybody. We are going to have another poll. So can we put the poll questions up? There we go. And Ryan, go ahead and move forward in the next next session. So we're really interested to know what platforms you guys are on. And I think you should be able to choose more than one here. I hope this meant to be a choose more than one situation. Lots of YouTube, lots of nobody on Snapchat, tick tock
Unknown Speaker 30:45
can only choose one, Susan?
Unknown Speaker 30:47
Oh, it was supposed to be a choose all option. Okay, choose their failed wholesale. All right, I'm going to end it then because everyone's on YouTube. And that's where you should be. I'm gonna go ahead and end it and move on. Because I am guessing that most of you are on more than one platform, like, like we are. So that's a lot of what I'm going to say. So my name is Susan Edwards, I'm Associate Director for digital content at the hammer Museum in Los Angeles, which is part of UCLA. And the first thing go ahead, next slide. The first thing I want to say is what they said. So, as my co presenters brought up lots of issues and tactics for video production, all of the above applies to us at the hammer Museum, we leaned very heavily into COVID, right after sorry, into our videos right after COVID happened, because that's what we had. We had a big inventory of recordings of our past programs, and also lots of interviews with artists and exhibition related content. So what I'm going to focus on in this portion of the panel is things that aren't necessarily in the video itself, and touch a little bit of on about how you get your videos out there and make sure people see them. Okay, next slide. Really quickly. The Hammer museum is a Contemporary Art Center in Los Angeles. As I said, we're part of UCLA. And we have about 120 full time staff and one dedicated video producer, but we also have a large AV team that helps produce our theater events and though that that team has been shifted over to doing all of our zoom programs during the Coronavirus. So next slide. And we produce a lot of video. So we do over 300 public programs a year most of which, while not all of those, but around 150 280 of those are live streamed. Online. This was before the Coronavirus. We've been live streaming for over five years now. And we put the videos on our website, we put them on YouTube, we put them on Vimeo, we put them on social media on all the social medias. So we also next slide are in the process of creating our own video. platform. Whoops. Go back.
Unknown Speaker 33:03
I think back one more question.
Unknown Speaker 33:09
Sorry, Susan. Going forward, give me a second.
Unknown Speaker 33:15
So we are in the you're going to go to the first one right before that. I think.
Unknown Speaker 33:23
No, it's one after that.
Unknown Speaker 33:25
Really? laggy
Unknown Speaker 33:26
Oh, it's just lightning. There we go. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 33:28
that's it.
Unknown Speaker 33:29
Yeah, that's it. We're in the process of creating our own video platform where we can put all of our video, you guys are getting a sneak peek here. This is not live. And actually that name hammer video at the top of the screen is a placeholder, we don't have a name for this. We are going to put over 1200 videos we have documenting our public programs going back to I think around 2010 plus 300 plus videos that are about our exhibitions and programs, many of which include artists interviews. So the process of sort of corralling all the video from all the places and all the platforms, and trying to get them into this one place made us realize the importance of having a comprehensive inventory, being consistent about how we describe our videos, how we brand them, and documenting how we're reaching audiences on the different platforms. So I kind of want to say a cautionary tale Don't be us create an inventory. If you're going to start producing a lot of video, make sure you're tracking all of that stuff. Okay, next slide. Next slide this time, excuse my looking I'm looking at two screens here. So here's an example of how we do multi platform content distribution with just video. So on the left is a screenshot from our program that we did a couple of months ago after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and it was a program with Barbara Boxer as you can see in the upper right about the legacy of ginsburg we live stream that we captured it through zoom, live streamed through live stream platform, then the recording stays on live stream, we take that video and We post it on YouTube. And then we create about a one minute or a little more one to two minute clip of a choice moment a Barbara Boxer saying something super awesome. And we post that to HGTV, and often also on Twitter, on Facebook in this case. So this is how for us and I think a lot of you might be having this also one video becomes many videos. And consistency becomes a challenge. And also making sure that you're posting the right style and format of video to the right platform to reach the audiences that are there. So I'm echoing back to a lot of what Peter ELLs already talked about. So I'm not going to go into too much detail. But I want to talk about three big things. Number one is how you provide access and discoverability. For these videos, the things you need to think about in terms of SEO, metadata, and ADA accessibility, and how to manage your brand, and also evaluating the impact of these videos on the channels. So next slide. The first thing is, oh, I feel like I'm Oh, so the first thing really quickly, accessing discoverability, the platform you choose is important. So it was really great to see everybody is on YouTube. Somebody at MCs two years ago, I think said in a session that YouTube is the second greatest, the second biggest search engine in the world after Google. And I repeat this all the time, whoever said that, please let me know. So I can credit you because I can't remember. But I repeated all the time at work. And it has made an impact. And everybody understands how important YouTube is. And you want to treat YouTube like a search engine. And so the descriptive metadata that you include, and the way you do your titling, and everything is really important. captioning and providing Ada access is also really important for our audiences. But it also helps with SEO, if you have a cat, a transcript of your video search engines can look deep within your video and actually search it video is actually is is hard to search. And then when you're looking at live video, I really want everyone to remember that if you are going to keep a recording of your live video online, make that final recording part of your planning process I've seen at my institution several times live video that we didn't plan for the recording. And then after the fact we're like, oh crap, we should have put some screens in there that had our branding on it. And we should have thought about what the description is going to be. And we should have thought out thought about where we're going to place this video, the recording of the video. So next slide, is this is my sort of like, this is my brain and how I think about that sort of what you need to think about to decide what format to make your videos and where to place them. So this is really just looking at the hammer Museum, most of our content is either going to fall into the category of art, meaning it's an exhibition related, or it's an artist focused video, or the what we call ideas, which is something from our mission, which is those public programs, event recordings. And we're thinking about the different goals we have with our audiences and the different people we're trying to reach the different format options we have for our videos, which are also really tied to the platform. So obviously, we're not going to put a 50 cent 15 second teaser on Vimeo. And we're not going to put a two hour long recording of a online program on Instagram TV because those those don't really work. And it's not just the length of the videos, but it's also the literal format like is it vertical? Or is it horizontal? And how did the captions work on the different platforms and where where do we put the descriptions and things like that that you really need to think through? Okay, next slide.
Unknown Speaker 38:31
This is my sort of really quick anatomy of a video focused description using YouTube as the example. So in addition to the actual video file, you really want to think about your title and end cards, which is where you're putting your branding and telling people about who you are and giving them the context for the video. The title is really important in how you write the title for YouTube. If you have not read Jacob Nielsen's work on how to write for the web, I really recommend people find his usability articles and read about how to write for the web because you can use those principles for writing titles and descriptions on YouTube. YouTube, there's articles on the internet about how to write descriptions for YouTube, which include the very important include a link to subscribe to your channel at the top of the description, which there's evidence that the YouTube algorithm will actually deliver more of your videos. If you are encouraging your followers to subscribe. captioning and transcripts and translations we could do a whole session just about but you know, think about it depends depending on what platform you're posting a video on the captioning will look different. The transcript will look different to what might not even be there. And then because YouTube is a search engine keywords are really important on YouTube as well. Okay, next slide. I know I'm whizzing. So brand management if you are multi posting your videos on multiple platforms or permutations of your videos, being consistent is key because your brand is consistency. So you want to think about how you're placing your branding in all of your videos in a consistent way so that people know it's your institution. So you can see on our zoom calls, which then go to live stream, we always insert our hammer logo. And you want to think about also when this video might get if you post it on YouTube or Vimeo, it can, it can get embedded out of context from your website, if you're allowing people to share. And you want to make sure that that branding carries carries with you. And again, reminder that if you are doing a live video, think about whether you're going to make that recording available afterwards and plan for that recording. Okay, next slide. So the final real big challenge in distributing on multiple platforms is really like how do you evaluate this, and this is a shot from one of my most of my giant spreadsheets where I track video metrics. And because we're on so many platforms, I have to go to seven different places to get those analytics. And those seven different platforms are, are measuring data in different ways. So it's really challenging to try to determine how do we, what does success look like on these different platforms. So my advice, this is what I do is, is simply decide how you're going to measure it. And then just do that consistently from week to week and month to month. And so you're just looking at the deltas, you may not be able to know that a view on Facebook is the same thing as a view on YouTube. But at least if you see a spike on Facebook, and don't see it on YouTube, then you know something's going on there and you can investigate and figure out what happened. live, live attendance is another huge there was a whole conversation on one of the cigs and emceeing earlier in the summer about how do you count attendance for a live event? Do you count a three second view on Facebook? Does that include does that an attendance? Do you only like count people who stayed for a certain amount of time? Or people who stay for the whole program, which is what you would do in person? I don't think we've figured that this out. We are counting all views at the hammer that people see if people show up for a program, we're going to count them. And it might not be the way to do it. But I'm really curious what if other people's how other people are doing that. Last slide. So in summary, video is complicated and managing video is it's a shifting landscape also. So these platforms are all changing how they're representing video, and what all the different aspects that you need to think about. The screenshot I have here is actually from a program we did last week, it's called it was about the election recap of the election. We posted it to YouTube, just the other day. And they added one of these election flags to the program. So another way that the platform is responding to the current time. And we don't, we don't need to do anything about it in this case, but in many cases, the platforms will change. And you actually need to change your the way you're doing your work. So again, consistency across the platforms is really important. metadata is important. And if you are producing a lot of video, I really encourage you to start a survey, sorry, start an inventory. So that your future cells will will thank you.
Unknown Speaker 43:28
And that's my presentation. can go to the last slide. Last slide Ryan and we can look at questions. Now. Ryan told me in the chat privately that he couldn't see the q&a questions. Am I the only one who can see the QA?
Unknown Speaker 43:47
I can see them as well. Or you can
Unknown Speaker 43:49
meet me too. I see them too. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 43:52
Ryan, do you want to stop sharing so we can see ourselves big? Right.
Unknown Speaker 43:58
Yeah, and I've got it now, Susan. I think it was just because I was
Unknown Speaker 44:02
okay, great. Um, so does anybody Let me see? I'm gonna start with one of the first questions for Peter, which was curiosity from Sarah Wambold about how the Louisiana channel was founded? How does it sustain yourself? How do you sustain yourself? And what is your strategy over time? Okay,
Unknown Speaker 44:24
can you hear me?
Unknown Speaker 44:27
Yeah, good. Hi, sir. I'm a huge fan of your motivation surveys, by the way. So thanks for asking. So well, it started as a problem, I guess, because the Louisiana museum is a very beautiful place. And we didn't want to, like reproduce this the experience. So basically, what we were looking for is a way to do something that didn't take away from the experience or didn't try to reproduce the experience. So that was like a strategic goal. And then basically, what we did is we wrote some Foundation's, try to get some money. And we did, we got a quite a big chunk of money. And then we decided that we wanted to do video as our digital thing. So basically, we put away all other media and or ways to, to, to communicate and said, we're going to do video and that's basically it. And we're sustained by my funding. So we, every year we get from foundations, we're quite happy. We're a small country, Denmark, so people are quite happy to have also have Danish architecture, Danish artists meet an international audience. So that's one motivation of actually giving us money, then I'll be very, very happy to talk to you more thoroughly on the subject. And I would like to hear what you're doing too. So yeah.
Unknown Speaker 45:55
Um, can I Kai, there's several questions in here about basically the ROI of video, like how we got buy in to make so much video, does it? Or how do you make the case? Does anybody want to answer that or?
Unknown Speaker 46:10
So that are you talking about? The question for Mitch?
Unknown Speaker 46:15
That one is one of them? Yes. And there were several others asking similar? Yeah, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 46:19
I actually thought about that. And one thing that that really comes to mind and like why you would at least for us, something that has really justified, I guess, my employment and the AV team deployment is that these there are a lot of revenue generating programs, that without having somebody in house, for us would have been impossible, the money would have been lost, the events would have had been canceled. I specifically think about our Arts and Letters live series with authors and speakers from around the country. If we couldn't turn these events into, you know, you know, some sort of video program that people can do from the house, we would have had to refund everybody. And that's not really something that we could have done. So I think that there are real revenue implications with video now that I probably couldn't even have touched, you know, during this time, that is probably a question for another day, but there is very much there are implications to money. And I think that that in itself could be part of the argument, like, do you want to make money for the institution? Do you want to await it to save programs that otherwise would have been canceled? Do we have you have to think about what examples would be personally but I think that revenue is king. Right? So that's, that's kind of the one of the first thing comes to mind.
Unknown Speaker 47:34
What else?
Unknown Speaker 47:37
I'll speak from a broader perspective, just briefly to say that I, the way that I've always talked about video in my institution, and it's been successful is that it is a a powerful and transformative way to make art accessible to people. If that is a goal of your institution, which I hope it is it, it video offers a lot of unique opportunities to tell stories. If you look at any other type of popular media out there today, that's that's the format that people are using. So that's a very broad answer may be kind of a lofty goal. But I think that's really where it starts, at least in my mind, and that it's it's the most, it's one of the most powerful storytelling tools that we have. And if your institution is interested in using your collection, and telling stories about that collection, and making it more accessible to people, video, the very nature of it being nonlinear, the way you can edit the way you can insert additional images, additional clips, is a really powerful way to do that.
Unknown Speaker 48:38
I want to tag on to that and also say that, that it is a way to tell the personality of your institution. So you can get the reason we do it at the hammer is because the voice of the artist is very important. Similar to what Peter was saying about the Louisiana Museum, and getting the artists voice, like an artist speaking for themselves is very important and video is one of the most effective ways to do that. So one of the things that I've been really fascinated with with the rise of tik tok is this Rise of the personality. The people who are really successful on tik tok and on YouTube, frankly, there, there's a human being who has a very strong personality that's leading that that makes those really popular and I also think about the Field Museum shout out to Brad and my friend Andrea over there, the Emily grass Lee's science, what was the trend of I'm blanking on the name of her her program, but she started a blog and video program like a decade ago and now it's a TV show. And it's all around her personality and talking about science. So video is is really effective in presenting those personalities of your institution. But also analytically speaking, the all the platforms privilege video content, video content is it performs better for us on all of the platforms and if anyone went to The session earlier before this with Tim Hart and Marty Spellerberg and blanking on his name from the Whitney, one of the things that Tim talks a lot about was this gateway content that then brings people to your organization, and then they stick it, stick it stick around for the more evergreen content. So I think the video content for us at the hammer has been that sort of gateway content that brings people to us.
Unknown Speaker 50:24
So just just an argument from here is definitely the fact that I mean, I, what I see is that social media has become a new public space. So that's where people experience art. That's where people experience culture, that's where they discuss culture. So if anything is going on there, and and I find it hard to imagine that you wouldn't want as a museum want to be part of that. So there's a lot of things going on to be part of the public space when it was in the analog world. But in the digital world, video is definitely one way of like you said, Susan, it's the second biggest search engine. So you want to be part of that. And part of that is producing video, I think.
Unknown Speaker 51:06
Does anyone see any specific answers that you want to or questions you want to answer? also say that, sorry, really quickly, a low hanging fruit way to get into video is recording and producing live video for your program. So if you're already doing a program online on zoom, it is not that difficult to record it and just like, and then it's done, and it's online. And some of the live streaming platforms are not that expensive. They don't require video editors to do work.
Unknown Speaker 51:35
I'm seeing a lot of questions, or at least a couple questions about equipment and gear. And I think the best way to like what type of gear to have to start you off and what you might need, I think the best thing to the best way to answer that question is email us email one of us, we're probably all pretty, you know, nerdy in gear. And I know Ryan and I and Peter and Susan, you know, we everybody loves cameras and equipment. Those those questions can be answered for hours. So send us an email, we'll talk about equipment, because it's, there's I think we need another three hours to talk about.
Unknown Speaker 52:05
I could add an interesting point, maybe the fact that we don't even own a camera at Louisiana channel actually was a point at from the beginning that this should not be a technological project, but a content project, right. So we still don't have a camera. So we rent equipment, and we just want to get rid of it. We don't want to maintain it. So that's one way of doing things because there's a risk for sure to get caught up in technology and lose focus from content.
Unknown Speaker 52:37
I was explained to me recently as a as something called gas, which is gear acquisition syndrome, where people get the type of equipment. But in the end, the thing is, you do need some form of equipment, whether it's an iPhone, or something. So it's just really it's got to be suited to your needs, though. That's that's really important to know.
Unknown Speaker 52:58
Um,
Unknown Speaker 53:02
I thought I blinked. I just blanked. I had a question that I saw, and I lost it.
Unknown Speaker 53:07
There was a good question for you, Susan, that was asked to you by reagents for the hammer. Susan, how much room do you leave for contemporary responsive videos like RBG?
Unknown Speaker 53:18
Um, this is something that is not that predates COVID, we've always been super responsive. We it's I don't know that. It's like a plan thing. There's our public programs, directors, the one who sort of orchestrates all of this, and she always is on the lookout for how can we respond to what's happening. So in the past, an example where she's done this with with the Supreme Court, she we always know, you know, when the Supreme Court is going to be hearing certain cases, and you have a sense of maybe when they're going to give their announcements. And so our public programs director, Claudia, she will try to seed events in those in those time periods. I would say, we do this once, twice, maybe three times a year that we're that responsive like we were with a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it's not. It's not a technical challenge, so much as it is like getting speakers in line and getting people to agree to to come speak on short notice. That was a huge win to get Barbara Boxer to come see.
Unknown Speaker 54:21
There's a question from Kira that I really like your peacock. Have you had trouble with staff having bandwidth to chip in on video content? We've had trouble crowdsourcing social media content, and I'm worried the same for videos, tips for encouraging contribution, everyone seems overwhelmed and I don't want to burden them burden them, but I can't do it alone. We've dealt with that very specifically. Ryan, Peter, Susan, if you want to chime in something that we've done recently is that we've actually had a lot of the department heads realize that we were asking too much of all the curators, like do this program the membership wants the program from them, we want to program from them. So we we decided to make the effort of specifically for curatorial because at the end of the day, there is always going to be a day desire for curatorial art museums and museums in general for content from them. So we've kind of decided that the directors of the different teams have to, you know, we have to coordinate and say, well, we can't ask them for 50 videos a month, what can we ask them on? What can we reuse footage from one interview and another where they're doing something? So I think just having some coordination from the top of departments really helps, especially with talent. But I think that it's just asking the question of like, who can do what, who wants to be in, in a video who can contribute in a certain way? And who has who really does have the bandwidth? Because I think everybody's just burned out right now. And I don't know a single person that is so. But I
Unknown Speaker 55:39
also want to say, if you're really going to do it, right, you need dedicated stuff like, it's, it's, it's a lot of work. Yeah, there's a question about how to start planning and institutions overall video strategy. And I think all of us can answer that. But one thing I want to say is that I wanted to say an answer to that is that think think more evergreen and less temporary. So even like, video is very labor intensive to produce, you want it to work for you for a long time. And there is a long tail with video on the internet, especially on YouTube. So programs we have going back to 2004 are still being viewed online. So think about the long tail.
Unknown Speaker 56:24
I really agree. And that's our our channel is built on that very principle. Definitely.
Unknown Speaker 56:31
I would add in terms of like how you start to shape your your content strategy. The first question I always ask is like, what, what can video uniquely accomplish for what you want to what you want to achieve as an institution? So whether that's about an exhibition or your institution in general, like, what aspects of video unique opportunities Can you can you leverage to accomplish what you want? Or another way to think about it? If it's like exhibition or project specific, like, what things are we not? What stories are we not telling yet? Or what what information? Are we not sharing yet? That video could be a solution for
Unknown Speaker 57:12
two minutes left? We probably have one last question we could answer. So wonder what would be a good one too.
Unknown Speaker 57:18
There's a monetization monetize.
Unknown Speaker 57:20
That's gonna say, I don't know if monetization is a great question. I don't have any answers for that. But either one else does.
Unknown Speaker 57:30
blocked from that just from our rights and permissions. Right, we got permission from all of our speakers to use it for non profit educational story over.
Unknown Speaker 57:42
Yeah, that's that's the answer. For if there's anybody from any, if anybody actually that's attending has been able to successfully monetize, give us a message. I would be really curious because I've been here for five years, and I haven't even thought about it. Yeah, I mean, I've thought about it not thought about executing.
Unknown Speaker 58:04
So Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 58:06
No, just say real quick, in case you didn't catch in the chat. I'm gonna start a thread and slack so we can keep this conversation going. Just FYI. So if you didn't see that, please join us there to continue talking.
Unknown Speaker 58:16
And there's a lot of questions about accessibility and about dams and stuff like that. And let's all let's move over to Slack or feel free to contact me directly. I'm sure. We're gonna get cut off here in a second because, yeah, just turn it off. So thanks, everyone, for coming.
Unknown Speaker 58:32
Thank you all so much.
Unknown Speaker 58:35
Thanks, everybody, be safe.
Unknown Speaker 58:36
Be safe. Hope to see you all.