ASSIGNMENT #4 - VIDEO COMPETITION

THE ASSIGNMENT:
The objective of this assignment: a hands-on experience in producing and advertising a video online, in a competitive arena. This is the best way to understand the participatory and competitive nature of Internet media.  This assignment is not about exploring illicit ways to increase "hits" on a YouTube video, but how generate content that would be of public interest and how to use social media channels to direct users' attention to a given material online.

THE RULES:
• Each team will create a video and post it on YouTube (NOT Vimeo or any other video site), on WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 27th (NOT before, NOT after). Each team will post their video (in embedded format) on their team website.  

• Admins: you must make your video statistics accessible and available on your YouTube posting.

• Your team will have until Thursday, December 5th to receive 1,500 hits on your video.  Anything less than 1,500 hits will not receive full credit.

• The team that receives the highest number of hits among the class videos will receive an awesome prize. And will be worshipped.

• The video must be made of original content: NO materials filmed before November 14th, 2013.  NO TV clips, NO movie clips, NO video games (or anything else that you did not generate yourself). The subject/content of your video must be original: NO parodies, NO satires, NO spoofs of anything else, NO recycled materials. Your video has to be entirely new content: NO current events, NO news, NO trends, etc.

• You may use copyrighted music, but you risk being edited (muted) by YouTube or the copyright holder = less views/hits.

• Play fair: NO animals or children/babies. Way too easy.

• NO pranks or offensive or explicit materials. Anyone appearing in the video must give consent/permission.

• Nothing illegal.

• All aspects of these videos must be created by team members only - no use of outside parties in the production or distribution of your videos. You cannot enlist others to distribute your video for you, nor can you use any form of pay advertisement. You can, however, post/advertise your video on websites or any other medium you see fit.

• Teams cannot take any measures to affect the rating of another team's video. Teams cannot utilize illicit measures to increase the number of hits on their video (e.g. - "click fraud" or anything similar).

• Utilizing any online services which specialize in providing "hits" to videos (i.e. - "click fraud" or similar services) will result in an automatic failure of the assignment.

• Good luck and have fun.