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Given
the speed at which we consume popular email culture, it’s
impossible to predict what will get sent around the world
a million times a week. But it is safe to predict that
if you don’t start off with a great idea –
visual or cerebral – you’ll get nowhere.
Once you’ve got that idea, there are a number of
technical factors to bear in mind when making a film in
the right format to ‘go viral’. Planning is
the key, unless you live in ‘You’ve Been Framed’
land, and below are a number of guidelines you should
follow when creating a file capable of being emailed to
a large number of people.
The main technical hurdle is the size of the file. It’s
a pain, but unless your total attachment is less than
1mb your movie will not be seen by users of internet mail
accounts such as Hotmail, Yahoo! etc as they block files
over 1mb.
Even worse (in terms of sending a positive message about
your film and web skills) is that a file bigger than this
can cause all of the archived mailbox content of one of
these users to be deleted. Not a good way to make friends
around the globe.
You’ll also have to consider the type of Internet
connection and bandwidth of your target users. 1mb will
take around two minutes to download on a 56k dial-up modem
– and you should account for the web’s lowest
common denominator which means users with this kind of
connection. Your film had better be worth the wait.
With this as the starting point you have to do everything
you can to get the most out of your megabyte – and
it is the constraints of the format that provoke the most
creativity.
In short, you have to choose everything about your viral
very carefully.
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VIRO
is your chance to reveal your talents to some of the biggest names
in film – so why not make
your own and submit it here?
Have your say: What's your favourite viral film? If you've seen a
film that you love or want to share your experiences of making viral
shorts with others, then why not go
viral and talk about it in our Forums!
Find out more about making
short films
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