Journalist Crowd Ambushes Bill O'Reilly Employee Trying to Ambush Bill Moyers

Oh, this was really amusing - a video clip of a producer for Bill O'Reilly trying to ambush and browbeat Bill Moyers for not going on O'Reilly's show on O'Reilly's terms. The producer kept using loaded questions to color the conversation and attack Moyers while claiming to be asking something straightforward. Moyers, being no fool, didn't back down and nicely said that he'd go on O'Reilly's show if O'Reilly would first go on his - for an hour, completely unedited. That's a tough format if you like to browbeat and make yourself look right. And then the journalists who were attending the conference where this happened started following the producer and used the same techniques on him. The guy kept walking - no wonder. Whethr you agree with Moyers's politics or not, I think it's clear that you don't play word games with someone who has been using them for as long as he has.

YouTube and the Writer-Editor Relationship

Here's a video on YouTube about how writers and editors work together - and it's even funnier if you realize how close to the truth it lies.

Is It Live or a Movie? National Theatre Uses Video Promotion

Looking for the National Theatre in London? Don’t bother with a plane, train, or cab. Instead, try YouTube. The company is using online e-trailers as a marketing tool.

As have many other theatres, the National has wanted to reach people outside people who already see live productions. Some months ago, marketing director Sarah Shunt was surfing the web and came across a video trailer for the musical Wicked on Broadway.com. She wondered why the National couldn’t do so as well. Apparently there was no good reason, so it started experimenting.

“One of the first two e-trailers we created was for a new play called Market Boy,” she says. The David Eldridge script reflects on political life in the 1980s and is set in an East London market with “unusual staging” by Rufus Norris that made heavy use of period music. It seemed a good match for 20- and 30-somethings, although the Theatre thought that it might not be appealing to its traditional crowd – hence the online promotion along with an e-mail campaign.

“It was incredible,” Shunt says. “Market Boy became known wider than the theater-going public. “The data showed us that a larger portion of the people were first timers to the National Theatre, and for the fist time more people booked their tickets online than any other method.”

There was no professional video crew. The National had some cameras and a staff graphic designer that had become a good photographer and was willing to try video. To do an e-trailer for something like the current production of Maxim Gorky's Philistines takes only an hour with some cast members – in this case using a rehearsal room.

“This trailer is the best [among the others] at capturing the essence of the stage,” wrote Henrietta Clancy in the Guardian’s theater blog. “Having seen Philistines, I can confirm that the trailer definitely shines a light on Gorky's play. It successfully embraces the real grit of live performance, yet I feel sure that it could be pushed further. The trailer could benefit from some footage of the rehearsal process or a few shots of the audience being shown to their seats and buying programmes.”

According to Shunt, the reviewer was a bit off-base from what the National was trying to achieve, which is an impression of the play, and not a representation. The 2 minute and 8 second video is a montage of images; characters addressing the viewer in close-ups, a sepia-toned black & white treatment; sensitive lighting that adds a dimension of depth to a medium that usually seems visually flat. In other words, this is a commercial of the best kind. Instead of focusing on an artificial brand image, the National is trying to communicate the essence of what it is and what it does. That's real marketing.

Take this an early sign of just how useful modern communications can be to the life of theater. It's difficult to bring new audiences into what can seem like an alien ground if you haven’t been brought up in and around it. But now a company can invite guests, give them a taste of what they will experience, all using media that makes them comfortable Video is intimate, seductive. Advertisers have known that for literal decades. Large commercial producers of musicals have been using television over the years, and now smaller venues can.

The National doesn’t stop with videos. There's a presence on MySpace.com. The company’s own web site has RSS feeds about books, exhibitions, productions, and news. Podcasts carry interviews with directors, writers, and actors. Reaching out to audiences isn't about doing the same things repeatedly, or even about pandering to what a theatre thinks its audience wants. It's about communicating honestly and in a way to convey the emotion of live theater. “We’re in the 21st century,” Shunt says. “This is how people are communicating. It’s a moving poster.”

The National does have significant resources, but this isn’t technology restricted to large organizations. Small groups that depend upon the kindness of volunteers could likely find web designers, practiced photographers and videographers, and the technically-adept who could learn to generate compressed video that could run on a free site like YouTube or MySpace and email an invitation for a taste of the latest production. By taking drama of contemporary times and using modern communications, a company can build a mirrored door to theater and make it relevant to generations that haven’t yet been acquainted.