What is Thumbnail Technology? Nobody really knows, yet — I’m just making it up as we speak. Okay, let’s define it as that technology which comes into play when you use a thumbnail for marketing purposes.
Here’s an example — I’ve made several thousand “buttons” or thumbnails for Brane-Power.com. They all sport the text overlay, “BRANE-POWER”, which is readable when it’s presented as a thumbnail, small as it may be. Your job is to make SURE that the button is readable by the client at first momentary glimpse, ‘coz that’s all you’ll get.
So each of those “bags” of “buttons” could be stitched together in Open Shot video editor and made into many dozens of videos or “movies”, and of course you’d use an effective button on the video when you post it on youtube.
Aside from thumbnails, you’ll undoubtedly want to take advantage of the fact that you can now quite easily project ANY backdrop behind you as you speak or give a live on-camera performance.
In short, you’ll use a “Green-Screen”, which can be any color. You instruct the Open Shot program which color you want knocked out and the backdrop substituted.
One major complaint from the chroma-key “green-screeners” is that they need several different shades of green to satisfy the graphic requirements, but they don’t know the MAJOR SECRET held by old-time professional photographers like I used to be.
Never have your model stand so close to the backdrop that it casts a shadow, however slight, unless you want to deliberately set up a sort of “Man Ray” highlights and shadow shot, which should not be your goal when using green-screen effects.
The thing is, that takes an uncommonly large piece of UNSEAMED paper or cloth behind the live action, and that means no scratches, no blemishes, no wrinkles, no shadows on the paper backdrop itself, none whatsoever. Every shadow you leave will magnify on screen.
Of course, the green-screen backdrops are going to be the exact same ding-dang backdrops you used for all your other thumbnails — screenshots or photographs, but shot without a character in the screen, just background.
So all you need to do is figure out the EXACT ANGLE from which to take the backdrop shot, so your live action will fit in and look right. It’s all about the angle, so get it right. If you mess this up, it WILL show, and you WILL achieve a fail grade from me.
Yeah, this is officially a class, if you like. These instructions are the new form of The School, where you put yourself through a variety of unusual conditions, the mastery of which produces the exact same result you would have achieved in a more traditional school, of which there are plenty to be had, if that’s your preference.
I’m taking the High Road, and I hope you’ll see the wisdom in that. Here are a few of the Green Screen Backdrops I’m offering in my Prosperity Path Virtual Ashram Backdrop Packet #1, price to be determined, maybe $5.99, but in any case, it includes all rights and permissions to use them in commercial applications, and involves a hell of a lot of work for me to prepare each set, thusly:
- BABYLON — The streets of Babylon and some interiors of a palace, a temple and several fascinating ancient private dwellings.
- ROME — Not only the government buildings with which you’re already familiar, but also some of the interiors of the Bath of Diocletian and a wonderful Roman street scene with merchants and their street market booths.
- EGYPT — The first Egyptian backdrops I’ll be offering are those of a small palace of a royal princess, both exterior and interior. The scene is well-decorated and very full of detail in columns, swooping fabric ceilings and intricate floor inlays.
- GREECE — My first Grecian backdrops are of Athenian citizen shops, homes, palaces and amphitheaters, plus interiors of ancient Greek homes to provide detailed backdrops to match any actual scene! You will not believe the ancient Greek urns that I’ve managed to find in Second Life!
- PRE-COLUMBIAN — Again, my first offering is a street scene from a Mayan town sometime around 900 A.D., plus the stellar observatory and a wonderful Mayan pyramid, and of course interiors as well.
- FRANCE — My first backdrop and exterior for the French Revolutionary Period is a fabulous miniature palace built for Marie Antoinette — it is furnished elaborately and expensively. The setup I’m offering cost somewhere around $240 to build in Second Life with the detailed artworks and furniture.
- WHITE HOUSE — The Oval Office is my first offering in the White House backdrops, and it’s here that you can film your wildest Presidential rants! What fun you’ll have dancing in the Oval Office, or doing a talking head video with the photo of Putin visible perched daintily on the famous White House “Intrepid” desk.
- AIRPORT — I have an enormous airport setting, and I’m about to buy a few dozen aircraft models for my InterDimensional Airport layout. I’ll be taking backdrops from the reception desk, the baggage pickup and of course the waiting room.
- SUBWAY — If you’re a video busker, this might be the perfect backdrop for you — it’s an underground railway station somewhere under the streets of Manhattan, and you can almost smell the decay and feel the damp air circulating around your feet.
- CHACO CANYON — This backdrop will give you mostly outdoor exterior shots, but I’ve included some interior shots of the pueblo and an ancient kitchen.
- ROMAN CUCINA — How would you like to do a cooking show from an ancient Roman Cucina, or kitchen? This is the interior of the Roman Villa of a famous general and senator of Rome, and there is a private arena for gladiatorial training — most senators had their own gladiator or many gladiators, and got votes by risking their champions on the open field of battle, something like what you’ll see when Trump throws his staff and advisers under a fleet of buses.
- MEDIEVAL CASTLE — A fabulous Medieval castle right out of the Dark Ages, an early example of feudal architecture, providing a protective city within thick, high walls, girded by a moat and defended by professional soldiers called “knights” — in German, the “k” is not silent.
- FAIRYLAND — Actually Spenser’s Land of Faerie, with a fabulous set of Elvish builds and a quaint outdoor Faerie marketplace with a stunning glowing shrine and other elements of mystery and vaporous fantasy. In short, a paradise.
- WONDERLAND — Alice’s incredible layout, with the not-unexpected caterpillar on mushroom, the ever-popular Red Queen and dozens of other wild characters from the Lewis Carroll classics.
- MIDWAY — The entire midway with its crazy life-threatening rides, ghost train, Hell World E-Ticket Ride, parachute drop, Ferris wheel, fun houses, food vendors and so much more, everything from giant strolling cartoon characters to Ribs on a Stick.
- CHINA — My initial Chinese backdrop offering is from a Medieval monastic school, actually an entire village of scholars and scribes, and of course the interiors are absolutely amazing, full of rich, carved detail and fabulous colors and shapes.
- JAPAN — In the Japanese setting of my first choosing, I’m presenting a private home layout situated quite near Edo during the Nara Period. I have Edo, Fujiwara and Meiji Period pieces which I intend to use in my later offerings.
- NEW ORLEANS — Not your modern New Orleans, this is the city around the Civil War period, and you’ll see steamboats in the river and lots of fancy dancehalls and saloons and fabulously expensive restaurants like the Court of Two Sisters, and so much more, plus incredible period interiors and legendary furnishings.
- INDIA — I’ve put together a backdrop that absolutely screams “India” without explanation, which is the objective I’m after anytime I’m creating a backdrop.
- SPACE — Space my destination — yes, I’ve got dozens of totally incredible space layouts, and I’ll be using every single one of them for my backdrop offerings. The one I’m starting with is the easiest to photograph, and that’s why I’m using it first.
I have many more backdrops I’ll be preparing for these Green-Screen social media video kits, and I’ll make them available and known as soon as possible. In the meantime, there’s nothing stopping YOU from going into any area and producing your own backdrops!
One factor in showing those videos I mentioned at the top — those which are composed of dozens of thumbnails shown one right after the other in sequence — is that there’s an opportunity to view what more or less amounts to a catalog of thumbnails for that particular subject, whatever it may be.
There’s no limit to the categories of thumbnails we can put up for you to use, everything from fairyland figures to space oddities and Close Encounters of the Fourth Way, we’re ready for the worst the universe can throw at us, or at least a “Category 0 Hurricane”, the likes of which ravaged the waters 1000 miles off the coast, leaving damage only in the surface of the water.
No idea what that meant, but it takes up the slack and leaves me with less written material to come up with in order to reach the bottom of this blog, which is apparently the goal set by Great Nature, said text referring to the writer as “we”, a term reserved only for royalty, editors and people with tapeworm.
I can’t take credit for that Mark Twain line, even if it is obscure enough to get away with it. No point getting away with anything — it all catches up with you at the end, and the problem with that is that it’s endless.
There’s branding to be considered. I’m using “Brane-Power” as a very potent and memorable brand name, and it fits a number of categories that I had in mind.
- Brane-Power Virtual Healing
- Brane-Power Sacred Foods
- Brane-Power Movements
- Brane-Power Isolation Tank Inductions
- Brane-Power Granola
- Brane-Power Hot Popcorn
- Brane-Power Virtual Meditations (let your Avatar do the work for you)
- Brane-Power Social Media Agency
- Brane-Power Chocolate Factory
- Brane-Power Hot Sauces
There are more, plenty more, but that will serve to illustrate the point — branding is everything in marketing today, absolutely everything is about your brand, building your brand, getting your brand out there and getting it distributed where it counts.
On the stupid political front, the jerks against the assholes are at it again, this time it’s about a phone call. Christ, if it’s the quarter they want for the call, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket just to get them to shut up for a couple of hours!
Impeach the buttface already, and get it over with, so we can get some rest around here, okay??? Just keep us out of it.
I joke about our stupid and greedy politicians, but it’s just as well they’re so ineffectual — at the end of the day, we get far less government than we pay for, but we get far, far more government than we bargained for!
So what are the categories of videos that work on youtube?
Actually, there’s no way to predict what videos will go viral. It’s all a matter of Fluke Factor, and that’s a fact, Jack. I’ve put up all sorts of videos, thousands of them, all different subjects and styles, and there’s no way to tell what’s gonna click with the zombies, the Great Unwashed Masses that are going to give you the 1 million subscribers you need to really make youtube worth your while.
Now, if you were only a major broadcaster, or perhaps a corporate giant or even a small corporate giant — or the President — you’d have no trouble finding an audience. But what about the small fry like us? No voice, no web presence, basically the same situation as some isolated countries — we have no seaport!
No seaport means no commerce, and no commerce means no money, and no money means poverty, pure and simple, although in these times, nothing is ever pure and simple, it’s always one or the other, like Chastity is Pure, and Trump is Simple.
Couldn’t resist that minor dig — I DO want to get my licks in before he attacks me from behind — the only way Donald could ever win was by cheating, in golf, wrestling and the draft, which is why they still call him “The Bone-Spur Kid”.
So there are PLENTY of great video subjects, such as “How to wrap wire around a crystal” and “How to make a cheap sculpture armature that works” and “what happens AFTER you die?” and many more great capture lines.
I’ll list a few ideas to start you off, but you’re gonna hafta come up with some of this shit yourself, dude.
Okay, that’s plenty for now — must dash, have a lot to do before the ICW, and I’m quickly running out of energy, after 6 1/2 hours of Adobe Photoshop, whew! I’m still up in the Ashram, and I’ll be taking a few more shots before I dash out the door.
I’m hoping that you can use the greenscreen technology to produce things that you would otherwise not be able to do, such as a lecture given in a strange Medieval castle, or a high secret space laboratory, speaking of which, what about a backdrop of a mad scientist’s lab?
You could, with permission from Claude, operate a photo session in the Builder’s Area of the Ashram, and do your very own wild and extravagant screenshot backdrops of virtually anything you can think of!
I’m planning to do at least one backdrop made in Second Life of the Mummy’s Tomb — actually, I have tombs already built in the Godd™ Engine, but I’ll probably also set up some layouts in Second Life.
While those setups are up, you are more than welcome to use them as photo ops. They typically cost around $200 each, but some of the Egyptian and Roman pieces cost as much as U.S. $450, and in spite of the cost, they were worth every penny.
Claude and I estimate that we’d still be working on the first building if we did them all ourselves.
Okay, now I’ve definitely run out of typing time — on da way to the Ashram and then I’m off to breakfast and the ICW — I’m due there at 6:30 A.M. — sharp. I prefer to not be late, and seldom have ever been late for an appointment.
Always keep appointments and be right on time for them. This inflexible law is part of the true business ethic, along with things like not extorting the heads of foreign governments while holding $400 million dollars that were designated to go there, holding the money back as a prize for faking a negative report about some politician’s kid.
Trump can’t win without cheating. Remember that, and don’t get upset. Ignore, Ignore, Ignore — you can afford to ignore it, and you can’t do anything else, if you want to get some daily work done.
I want to vote for someone that isn’t dominating the news cycle all day long, seven days a week. I also want to vote for anyone who can do their work and keep their fingers out of the pie and their feet off our necks. That clearly will NOT be a politician.
Even the good guys are bad. It’s the nature of politics that evil must be done every 26 minutes. Even I can’t think of a new corker every 26 minutes!
Recommended viewing for today: “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother”, with Gene Wilder and Madelein Kahn, it’s a dilly, and it’ll get your mind off the stupid political crap. Sunday is a no-news day, right?
See You At The Top!!!
gorby