Books meet viral video in Raincoast/Pocket Cine partnership

One of the oldest forms of media is drawing on one of the newest in a bid to publicize a contest based on a popular series of tongue-in-cheek survival guides. Vancouver publisher and distributor Raincoast Books has tapped New Westminster BC-based Pocket Cine Inc., another publisher and distributor – in this case, of mobile video – to help with a competition to see who can create the best viral video in the spirit of the Worst-Case Scenario Handbooks, a series of how-to-survive-anything guides published by San Francisco’s Chronicle Books and distributed here by Raincoast. "There’s so much bad and dark news about impending disaster in the world," says Philip Shaddock, the man behind Pocket Cine and the self-described "Johnny Appleseed" of mobile viral video in Canada. "This is kind of comic relief that takes really ridiculous situations like jumping off a train and has some fun with them." Billed as "survival guides for the worst life has to offer," the series of books features light-hearted, not-too-serious tips for coping with situations ranging from the awkward (The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating and Sex’s "How To Fend Off Competition for Your Date") to the life-threatening ("How To Fend Off a Shark Attack," found in the original Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook). The contest kicked off on November 13 and will run through January 31, 2007. During each of those 12 weeks, Raincoast will promote a different title in the Worst-Case Scenario Handbook series, which runs the gamut from fairly mundane situations such as dating, work and parenting to the exotic, such as travel and survival. "It can basically be any video – it doesn’t have to be animated," adds Monique Trottier, Internet marketing manager at Raincoast, of the eligibility requirements. "The film will be any type of film that you could take with your cell phone camera, your digital camera, your handheld camcorder – it doesn’t really matter." Raincoast and PocketCine will convert all entries to the MPEG-4 format, which allows for portability and viewing across nearly all platforms including mobile phones, video iPods and similar media devices. All the videos will be available as downloads rather than streaming media, and will be seeded throughout the Web in venues that lend themselves to viral video marketing, such as YouTube and various blogs. Raincoast is also promoting the competition at 92 bricks-and-mortar book retailers across the country. While it’s ostensibly a mobile video competition, Trottier says Raincoast is mindful that video-capable cell phone penetration is still in the single-digits in Canada. "There the people who will have the video-capable phone and the data plan that will allow them to download it, and then there are the people who will basically watch it online and share it via email," she explains. "We’re trying to accommodate those two different sides; of course, the mobile side is what we’re interested in experimenting with, but that audience will likely be smaller." To get the ball rolling, Shaddock commissioned a viral video from an independent BC animator, who came back with a piece titled "How to Jump From a Window into a Dumpster" that immediately won Shaddock over. "I thought that was the funniest idea in the world," he says. "Hopefully someday I won’t need to do that, but if I do I’ll have some idea of how to do it." The video, along with several other samples, can be seen at the contest’s home page at http://www.raincoast.com/worstcase/. Originally a developer of interactive content such as games through his company Rage Pictures Inc., Shaddock turned to working with mobile video after University of British Columbia professor and MobileMuse.ca executive director David Vogt convinced him of its potential. "I discovered that there’s very little awareness amongst artists of this medium," he says. "They’re intrigued by it and they’re interested by it, but they really don’t know where they can put their foot into it, and once they get into it they really don’t know what technical issues there are in dealing with it, and what the creative possibilities are in terms of short-format." To help bridge the divide between mobile media technology and the artistic community, Shaddock set up Pocket Cine as a clearinghouse for information on porting content to cell phones and other similar devices. The site led him to work with Trottier and Raincoast, which has in turn brought other artists to his door to learn more about the mobile medium. "The whole connection to Raincoast allows me to reach a lot of artists that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise, and to generate awareness and invite them to experiment with this medium," he says. While it’s admittedly early days for mobile video as a medium, Shaddock is confident that the portability and ubiquity of mobile phones coupled with old-fashioned storytelling will mean the multitudes watching video on the "third screen" will soon grow exponentially. "It’s something that somebody throws into their pocket when they leave their house, and it’s something they share spontaneously with friends," he says. "It’s one or two buttons to press and it takes advantage of the habit that people have of watching TV, which is passive, and because the medium supports narrative, and because it has sound and music and all that stuff – it has emotion."

Books meet viral video in Raincoast/Pocket Cine partnership

Broadcast | November 30, 2006

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