This is a cool idea that incorporates what some online fans do anyway and tries to harness that energy for promotional purposes: the Intelligence people have started a video mashup contest. People can take provided video and audio from the show, mix it up with their own materials if they want, and create a 30 to 60 second promo.
This isn't a new concept. If I could remember the details, this would be a better story, but about a year ago, a car company - I think - did something similar, and ended up with some audience-created commercials that talked about how crappy the product was. To their credit, they only deleted ones that had non-PG rated content. Anyway, other products have done the same to capitalize on the video mashup craze. Is it a craze? It's a thing, anyway.
The contest has just launched and so far there are only a few Intelligence videos up on Eyespot, the online video editing service they've partnered with (though you can use any video editing software and then just upload there). So far they're ... not spectacular. The grand prize is an Apple MacBook Pro and a copy of Apple's Final Cut Studio, so I'm guessing some people who are actually good at this will be entering.
From my earlier chats with the Intelligence people, I knew this contest was coming, but had no idea how it would work. Now that I've browsed Eyespot, it seems pretty simple. I'm even tempted to try, though I've never touched video editing before, would bet my House-watching privileges that I'm not destined to be very good at it, and have no real need to do it. It just seems like a fun and potentially useful thing for a pseudo-web geek to learn how to do.
I'd been thinking of playing with Audacity, the open source (aka free) audio editing software just for the hell of it, and adding video editing to my repertoire of things I'm terrible at but can say I've tried appeals to me. I'd never heard of Eyespot before, but not having to install software seems like a plus, though there are also open source (aka free) video editing suites available.
If I do try playing with it, I'll link to my efforts. Unless they really, really suck. Well, even then, they might be good for a laugh.
