Twitter’s video app has millions of users, vibrant pockets of artistry and heavyweight advertisers who want in on the action. But what make’s this simple, attention-shortening app so special?

Quick! – Whats the quickest way to get a video online and in front of all your friends? If you said upload to YouTube, heres your stack of magazines and a black-belt Sudoku book; let us know when that spinning-wheel-of-death decides to stop ruining your life. If you said shoot a clip with my handy-dandy smartphone and Facebook that baby, youre getting warmer, but still several precious microseconds short of peak performance.

If you absolutely have to make a video and want it online at the exact instant youre finished recording it, then theres only one correct answer: Vine. Vine, an app recently purchased and promoted by Twitter, lets you record videos on its in-app camera and uploads them straight to your profiles feed the second you finish them. The catch? Vine imposes a strict six-second limit for all of its content.

Despite the limitations, its hard not to love Vine. The six-second cut-off point, although it encourages an attention span of microscopic proportions, ensures that even the lamest clip wont waste your precious moments and forces you to get your point across in record time or risk going out with an unflattering, mid-sentence freeze frame. Unlike smartphone cameras, Vine lets you become your own editor by giving you Pause and Record options, effectively allowing you to turn six seconds of screen time into a well-executed and expansive short film (provided you have a natural flair for performance and dont hit record too early, of course). A niche for stop motion clips already exists and shows great promise as an outlet for artists and filmmakers.

Given Vines meteoric success (its attracted over 40 million users, as of last month) and the new avenues for creativity which it provides, major companies have understandably wasted no time trying to get on board with it. In March, a tweaser trailer for The Wolverine premiered on Vine as the first official sneak peak for the summer blockbuster. Earlier this month, Dunkin Donuts became the first major chain to run a commercial made entirely on Vine when it premiered a clip of a coffee cup flipping a quarter on ESPNs pregame show for Monday Night Football. Virgin Mobile soon followed suit by running a 30-second spot made up of consumer-produced Vines on Comedy Central and MTV and other companies appear to be prepping Vine-centered campaigns for the near future as well.

With no end in sight for the Vine zeitgeist, creating content for your consumers through the app could prove valuable in the coming years. If you already have followers on Twitter, Vine represents a convenient extension of your dialogue with them and an opportunity to add sight and sound to your advertising vocabulary. Check out the clips below if youre curious about whats possible with Vine.

Ever wish you could tell people everything they need to know about your company the instant they visit your YouTube page? With YouTube channel trailers, you can automatically give unsubscribed viewers a taste of what your company and channel have to offer and give them an opportunity to subscribe to your channel without them even having to press ‘play.’

Its finally happened! A curious internet-surfer has followed a link to your YouTube channel. Theyre scrolling down the page, browsing the uploads and favorites sections, and youve got them right where you want them, primed and ready to go from casual observer to subscriber and potential client. Or do you? Given how fast-paced internet surfing gets and how short attention spans have become, chances are good that they wont be sticking around for long and checking out even one of your uploads may prove too time-consuming. Even if they do click on a video, is it going to be the most informative and eye-catching one? Thankfully, YouTube has provided a way for you to automatically grab their attention and give them a thorough run-down of what your company has to offer. Behold the channel trailer!

A YouTube channel trailer starts playing as soon as an unsubscribed viewer visits your YouTube channel and gives you a chance to offer the viewer a taste of what you have to offer both at your business and on your channel itself. The best channel trailers – like the best movie trailers – utilize rapid cutting, brief titles and an engaging voice-over or music track (or both!). Unlike a movie trailer however, your channel trailer needs to end with a clickable subscribe button to take advantage of the viewers heightened state of interest. This can be easily added by clicking on annotations above the video and YouTube offers a number of customization options such as size, text and color.

At aideM Media, we recently created a channel trailer for Yale Lighting Concepts & Design. Follow the link below to see it in action and, if you think your channel could benefit from a similar video, get in touch with us today!

Anyone can make a YouTube video, but how can you tell if it’s reaching the right people? In this entry in our video tutorial series, we show you how to track and analyze feedback on your videos so that you can gain a broader audience for your company.

Thanks to our smartphone-enabled, ultra-plugged-in world, making a video to show off your company’s assets has become as important as choosing the most eye-catching logo or choosing the right stretch of highway for your billboard campaign. But how can you be sure that your video is reaching the right people? After all, anyone with a camera and a catchphrase can upload a company video to YouTube, so how are you supposed to beat the competition?

In this entry in our continuing series of video tutorials, we walk you through the various data tools which YouTube has implemented to let you track feedback on your videos. From whos watching your video to how much of it theyre watching to when your audience peaked, well show you how to extract as much information as possible from YouTubes analytical features. Is your target audience women? Do you want to appeal to an under-30 demographic? YouTube allows you to track this sort of information, as well as many more useful statistics. All you need to do is utilize them.

Tracking demographics and getting useful feedback used to be a costly, time-consuming task, but thanks to user-friendly sites like YouTube, the information you need to take your company’s image to the next level is just a few clicks away. Make your first click on our video link and let us show you how to get started.

Every Mom gets to be a hero to her kids, but movie Moms need to bring a little extra something to the table. Here are some of our favorites.

1. Sarah Connor in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day"

Having a child changes everyone’s world on a personal level, but mothers in the movie universe frequently endure the added stressor of knowing that their offspring will, for better or worse, one day change the entire world. If knowing that her son will one day lead humanity in a war against robot death machines ever gave Sarah Connor pause though, you’d never know it from watching her blast her way through the second "Terminator" movie. Neither a corrupt mental hospital nor a shape-shifting mechanical assassin prove any match for her steely determination to save humanity from nuclear oblivion.

2. Mrs. Incredible in "The Incredibles"

Ask any mom if she’d like "super-flexibility" as her superpower and you’ll probably get an ecstatic ‘yes.’ Yet as useful as Mrs. Incredible/Elastigirl’s powers prove to be, they’re often no match for the everyday dilemmas and setbacks of suburban life in "The Incredibles." Ultimately, her love for her family saves the day and helps both her children and her husband unleash their full potential, proving that maternal love makes all the difference even in a world with giant robots and supervillains.

3. Kee in "Children of Men"

In a world where fertility has dropped to zero, what’s the world’s sole unwed, teenage mother to do? In the case of Kee in "Children of Men," the answer is "trust no one and stay one step ahead of everybody." As the fascist government and extremist radicals both try to use her pregnancy for their own ends, Kee fights to give birth on her own terms and ends up literally holding the future of humanity in her hands.

4. Joan Berkman in "The Squid and the Whale"

Being a parent to growing boys can be a thankless job, especially if you’re going through a divorce and one of them idolizes your narcissistic ex. As the matriarch in the fracturing Berkman clan, Joan’s struggle to care for her increasingly troubled sons perfectly illustrates the dilemma between love and discipline that all mothers face. In one particularly gut-wrenching scene where she slaps her oldest son for giving her the finger, it’s hard not to feel her disappointment and anger or cower a little as she silently accuses her son with a cold stare.

5. Wendy Torrance in "The Shining"

It’s next to impossible to raise a family in a horror movie. If masked psychopaths aren’t trying to tear your family apart, there’s some unseen menace waiting to posses your children or an alien ship about to abduct your significant other. Yet the monster that Wendy must face doesn’t come from outer space or beyond the grave, but from within her own husband when Jack Torrance loses his sanity and goes on a murderous rampage. When faced with this unthinkable horror however, Wendy manages to protect her son and even draws first blood in the still-terrifying bathroom scene, an accomplishment that surely puts her in some kind of pantheon for ‘scared women in horror films.’

As a part of my internship here with aideM Media, I was able to create a 60 second film for Fine Living Lancaster’s 60 second film festival. Telling a story in sixty seconds may seem like an easy task, given that you only need to fill a minute of screen time. I found the limited amount of time, however, to be too short for many of the story ideas I came up with. Even after I came up with a story line and filmed it, I struggled with editing the footage down to that 60 second marker. At one point I was deleting single frames from each shot to reach the set time. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed making the project immensely and learned so many filmmaking lessons along the way. Sometimes creating something short and sweet helps you to realize the true meaning of your film.

Here is a behind the scenes shot of us working on the film.

In this month’s clients spotlight we have Lebo Skin Care Center. We were fortunate again this month to be able to work with a great gang of people. We worked hand-in-hand with Heather Witmer over at Lebo to develop and produce three great spots. For the sake of this article, we are going to talk about two of the three spots that we made. The on-camera talent for two spots was absolutely wonderful. Our two lovely ladies are Linden Stern, a talented and dear friend of ours, and Christine Martuscello whom we found through Jack’s Modeling Agency.

Let’s start with the first spot… In this commercial, we open with two women sitting at a table enjoying a glass of wine (at the beautiful Heritage Hills Golf Course) discussing an upcoming class reunion. One woman (Linden Stern) voices her concern about her skin not feeling as young as it once was and asks "what’s your secret?". The other actress (Christine Martuscello) urges the woman to call Lebo Skin Care Center, and why not?? they have free consultations! The other spot is very similar to this one except in this one, the actress’ "daughter" is getting married. Both spots follow the same concept, but are just different enough to stay fresh for our viewers.

These spots have a very "clean" feel to them. They are very informative and have a great cinematic look to them as well. You be the judge! Check out these great commercials this month on Comcast. And remember to give Lebo Skin Care Center a call, they have free consultations!

This month we were certainly not having a shortage of TV spots to be produced. Cleanworks incorporated contacted us in March with hopes of making several spots in the coming months. After turning in a few concepts and storyboards to them, "Honey-Do List" was chosen to be the first spot we would be collaborating on together, which can now been seen on Comcast, the Cleanworks homepage, and the CleanWorks Youtube page.

From paper, we traveled to location, brought a few actors, and within a day the commercial was shot. Back at the editing desk, the commercial came together pretty smoothly as well, aided by the fact that the story was mapped out so well and the footage was shot accordingly. Once put together, we added a few color effects and interesting transitions to help follow the tone of the story. One piece of this spot was a little more interesting; the use of the Cleanworks logo to make multiple animation pieces. This piece was particularly fun to create because of the genuine nature of the logo we were given and the possibilities that came with it for unique and fun animation.
So, check out the CleanWorks "Honey-Do-List" spot airing now, and keep and eye out for Scrubbles!!