7 steps to make a viral to promote your play

Making The Seagull Viral Video 😉
If you have a project you are promoting, a 2 minute viral video gives your friends, supporters, collaborators and family something to share, so get them all involved as much as possible, even if it is just providing coffee, transport or locations. Creativity is a joy and even more fun when you create together. Does your sister sew? Can she make a great costume? Get your brother to bake themed muffins, your mum to make artwork and your cousin lend you his ‘bachelor pad’ for a location. If you have fun consider making a series of virals or even a web series.

Step one: Find a suitable location that gives the viral the right feel/environment that sits well with your project. (ideally one that does not smell of the local sewerage)

Step two: Get a few unsuspecting actors/musicians/artists to agree to shoot said video and get them to agree a date. (Note if you are planning a very early Sunday morning call don’t tell them til after they have agreed they are available). Ideally pick people who have a social media following or super large ego (note these are normally mutually inclusive ;-))) as they will share/tweet/ about their unusual Sunday morning (Note The Vamps did that too!). They may even blog about the experience….

Step Three: Get a great cameraman who is also brilliant at editing to agree to stride with his equipment through smelly fields and manure, whilst not being terrified of large geese and packs of swans.

Step Four: Do ADR (Additional Dialogue Replacement) to ensure that you can’t hear the actors and actress (yep that’d be me) complain about the smell still wafting over the lake.

Step Five: Having an icon or totemic image to further brand your promotion is great, although pick with care. Be warned as director/instigator you will be in charge of the search of the seagull/butterfly etc, with exhausted cameraman in tow.. I suggest you don’t pick a mythical creature unless you are really good at animation.

Step Six: Set up a Youtube account (you just need a gmail address which is free), think of a name you will be happy with for years to come – so maybe your production company, band name or Brand name rather than the individual project name.

Step Seven: Post it on all the social media sites you have ever heard of and get anyone involved in the project to share it everywhere (including all the cast’s grandmothers to open twitter & facebook accounts so they can link to it, if they haven’t got one already). OK well Green Girl Productions did not go that far but maybe they should have ;-))

I actually loved the experience of making this, including meeting a few of the actors before we started rehearsals and think that this viral is super classy. This is the first play I have been in that has done a viral and it absolutely is right for the play, the plot and the time period. So well done guys!