Hugh Garry

The 'How to make a viral video' myth

Since the birth of Youtube and the unmasking of Lonelygirl I can't count the number of times I've been involved in one of those 'lets make a viral video' conversations. And... I'd have to be a total and utter ***t if I tried to make out that I've never replied "Sounds amazing!!!" Over the years (and I'm amazed it took me more than a few seconds to catch on) I realised that there's no such thing as a viral video. Sure, there are videos that are spread virally, but there is nothing in the video's DNA that would make it distinguishable as a viral video.

There's no shortage of lists out there offering advice on 'How to make a viral video', you know the sort "Follow points 1 thought to 1001 and you'll have a Youtube hit on your hands". I've made my own list and if you follow points 1 through to 1 you are sure to have a Youtube hit on your hands.

Hugh Garry's "How to make a viral video" list

1. Just make a good video

The end. That's it. That's all you need to know. Sure, there are 1001 things you can do to help spread the video but the hard fact is that the only element of the video that makes it spreadable is the fact that it is good. It might be clever, it might be funny, it might be dumb, it might be deceptive, it could be anything. Think about all the viral videos you've shared in the last 3 years, did any of them have anything in common other than being good? What did the Sneezing Panda have in common with the Dove Evolution commercial? What did the Evolution of Dance have in common with Lonelygirl? Nothing other than they were all good in their own way. Some people will go to ridiculous lengths to attempt to make a viral video (as parodied in the video above) and usually fail through being more concerned with the viral nature than the content.

I can draw on my experience in my other job for a parallel. As a club DJ with a huge amount of experience I'm frequently approached by new DJs asking for advice. More often than not they want to concentrate on mixing techniques, formats and hardware only to be faced with my one piece of very simple advice... "Have good tunes". As obvious as it sounds it's the last thing they expect.

The reason I mention this is because earlier this year I went to speak to a company in Paris about their Augmented Reality software for a project I was working on. I filmed myself at their HQ trying out their cool toys so that I could demo it to a few people when I got back. I uploaded the videos and sent the link to 5 people in the office. I then forgot about the demos and got on with the rest of the project as you do. Today in a moment of nostalgia I went back through my archive and came across the Paris videos. One video in particular caught my attention. My Lego video had been watched over 10,000 times and linked to from blogs all over the globe. Amazing when you consider that I didn't follow rules 1 thought to 1001 from all the other lists, I just filmed something that I thought was good.

Nokia N95 Trick

There's a really nice Sequence Mode on my Nokia N95 that I've been looking for a reason to use all summer. You can set your camera to take a picture at intervals ranging from every 10 seconds through to every 15 minutes.

I fixed my phone to a lighting rig at Glasgow Green for Proms in the Park just before the gates opened and set it to snap every 5 minutes. Annoyingly it somehow managed to miss the fireworks which must have gone on for 4 minutes 59 seconds.

I dropped all the photos into iPhoto and decided upon Craig Armstrong's 'Glasgow Love Theme' as an appropriate piece of classical music to accompany them.