POPTUB, the online show that highlights the hottest stars in web video, recently visited the dynamic directing duo Milkhouse (Joe Pickett & Nick Prueher) to get some behind-the-scenes footage on the shoot for their latest Howcast video, “How To Get Psyched.”
Check out the behind-the-scenes footage starting at 1:00, and visit Milkhouse on Howcast to see the rest of their fantastic contributions.
Did you know that television stations are briefly turning off their analog signals tonight and will only broadcast digitally? It’s a test for the upcoming February 17th shift to digital when all television stations will stop broadcasting on analog signals. Check out how you can prepare for this upcoming switch to digital TV.
The inventive members of the Instructables community and the talented emerging filmmakers in Howcast’s Emerging Filmmakers Program are teaming up! The inventors provide the fabulous idea and the filmmakers provide the fantastic production skills, and voila: videos are born that capture the Instructables step-by-step guides we all know and love. The first batch are live and the results are in – inventors and filmmakers make a great team! Check out How To Make LED Floaties, How To Recycle Refrigerator Magnets, and How To Make a Tennis Ball Tripod. They’re live on Howcast and on Instructables.
Now we’re ready to tackle more.
Are you an Instructables inventor who wants to see their idea given the Howcast video treatment? Are you an emerging filmmaker with the craftiness to take on an Instructables project? Or are you the best of both worlds: an Instructables inventor and filmmaker who can pull off any DIY spot?
Here’s what we’re looking for and how it works:
1) Instructables Inventor? Submit the URL of your Instructable for consideration to Howcast. Our editorial team will review it, with various criteria in mind, including ease of production and originality, and if selected, we’ll get to work on the script. You’ll receive $50 for your idea, and a complimentary video (you helped create!) that you can embed right in your Instructable guide and on your personal website. Your Instructable guide will also be linked to on Howcast.com and anywhere the video is distributed on Howcast’s distribution network. Want to throw your hat (er, idea) into the ring? Email diyproject@howcast.com with the links to your project.
2) Crafty Emerging Filmmaker? We’ll pair you up with the perfect DIY topic to shoot and edit. Once your video goes live, you’ll be accepted into Howcast’s Emerging Filmmakers Program (which you can learn all about here). You’ll also earn $50, the opportunity for revenue sharing, and your video will be seen by audiences on Howcast.com, Instructables.com, and across Howcast’s distribution network. Email diyproject@howcast.com and tell us about your DIY prowess. (Bonus points if you know how to use a soldering gun!)
3) Instructables Inventor with Filmmaking Skills? Well, aren’t you perfect? Seriously, kudos! We’d love to work with you. You can score the benefits of both 1 and 2. You can make a video of your own idea, which means you’ll earn $100, the opportunity for revenue sharing, wide distribution, a video to snazz up your Instructables guide, and linkbacks! You can also earn more money by shooting videos of other inventors’ Instructables ideas. Sound good? Want to learn more? Email diyproject@howcast.com.
Last week at the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, Howcast hosted 17 inspirational leaders who have used online tools like Facebook and YouTube to effect social change. With an amazing range of speeches from participants such as Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, a conversation with the Obama campaign’s new-media team, and panels like Addressing Violence at Home moderated by Whoopi Goldberg, the summit was an unforgettable experience for everyone involved.
In case you missed any of the action in our live stream, tune into the Alliance of Youth Movements Hub and watch the panels from the comfort of your computer screen.
Highlights include:
Oscar Morales sharing how he got 12 million people in 200 cities to take to the streets in protest against the FARC.
How to Utilize Digital Media to Create Social Change
If you are starting your own grassroots movement, download the field manual compiled from the participants’ tips and techniques on using online media to effect real-world change.
Stay tuned to the hub to read news from these movements and to share your own stories with them.
Tonight, it’s the glorious moment we’ve all been waiting for: Biden vs. Palin, Celebrity Deathmatch-style. The potential veeps will battle head-to-head (how much would you pay for some toe-to-toe?) in front of an expected 50 million people, all of them no doubt totally transfixed. Just 90 minutes will determine who experiences the thrill of victory, and who suffers the agony of defeat. Democracy rules!
What better way to celebrate the Rumble in Missouri than to create a game around it? And not just any game—a drinking game. Well, we’ve gone ahead and done it for you, and admit it—you wanted us to. So check out How to Turn a Presidential Debate into a Drinking Game. We’ll certainly be playing along here at Howcast….Will you?
P.S. To prep yourself for the impending doom of tomorrow morning, you also might want to check out our tips on How to Cure a Hangover. Just saying.
With the latest Wall Street wallop, we’ve moved from a simple credit crunch to a total economic meltdown. Personally, I’m no stranger to working a few odd jobs to pay the rent. Check out my Howcast profile and you’ll see that, yes, I once worked as Pee Wee, mascot of the minor-league baseball team the Brooklyn Cyclones. But you don’t have to don a smelly costume to save a buck—check out our mascot-free tips to ease the pain. From creating gourmet (OK, not quite) meals out of dollar-store kibbles to learning how to get cash fast, here are some timely tips to help Ride Out the Recession.
If you just gotta squeeze in that camping trip before the end of the summer, there’s no better way to impress your friends (or that special someone) than getting primal with good eats, sturdy shelter, and safe passage. We’ve got a series of new camping how-to videos to help make your venture into wilderness as smooth as possible.
Home Away From Home
You’ve got to get cozy out there in the wilderness. How To Set Up A Camp Site and How To Set Up A Dome Tent will help you first-time-campers find your home away from home in no time. And whether or not things went horribly wrong or you’re just an aspiring rock star, How To Get A Good Night Sleep In Your Car will get you comfortably tucked in so you can tucker out.
Snake Bites & Rashes
Before you venture into the wilderness, having a bit of first aid and survival tricks up your sleeve can save anything - from having a seriously bum rash - to saving your patootie all together. How To Treat A Snake a Bite will turn a possibly fatal misfortune into a brief hiccup in your travels.
Before an emergency squat in the woods (and thus possibly having to recall the wisdom of How To TreatPoison Ivy) you will want to be able to see that nasty stuff when it crosses your path. How to Recognize and Avoid Poison Ivy will keep your travel donut deflated and in the trunk.
We just flipped the switch on the 100th video made by a director in Howcast Studios’ Emerging Filmmakers Program. 100 videos made means thousands of people have enjoyed and learned something from these filmmakers’ work! The 100th video is funny, creative, and has some neat editing tricks up its sleeves. Well, videos don’t have sleeves, but filmmakers do, and Damon Zwicker, the proud director behind the 100th spot, How To Make A Cowboy Costume, has got some tricks up his. Damon is a television producer and director who has worked on shows for NBC, The Discovery Channel, VH-1, and TLC. He also obviously knows a thing or two about birds. Check out his second Howcast spot, How To Clip a Bird’s Nails.
While you’re at it, congratulate Damon! Subscribe! Vote!
One last thing: Just so you know, when I say thousands of viewers have enjoyed videos by our emerging filmmakers, I really mean hundreds of thousands. More than 1,5 million folks have already watched How To Kiss With Passion video shot by one of our most prolific members, Michael Sanchez.
Be our next emerging filmmaker star. Join Us Today. hhttp://www.howcast.com/network/directors/step1
Be prepared for a lover of any sign. Sit back, relax and watch the entire What’s Your Sign? playlist our new Custom Player. (If you dig it, and you will, just click “Grab the Playlist” to add it to your website or profile.)
The political campaign is a good example of the Howcast approach to tackling an “issue.” As a brand, we are committed to providing practical how-to information that genuinely informs and inspires people. That’s the baseline, but we don’t want to stop there. One of the things that makes Howcast different is that we do practical and straightforward, but we also find a way to present ideas with a twist as well. Sometimes that will mean an interesting twist within a more straightforward topic, and sometimes we might do an entire video just to present something with a fresh angle. For example, when we decided that we wanted to address the election, we talked a lot about what the “Howcast take” should be. There are endless pundits discussing the specific issues to death… we really wanted to focus on empowering people with useful information about how to interact with the election, and also provide a bit of fun and wry commentary and use the how-to format that we’re so adept with to poke a little fun and provide a little relief. So we have very practical videos like How to Register to Vote, which are presented in a fun way (in this case, its a giant slice of pizza who is doing the registering!), but we also have videos conceptualized from the script stage as a more unique and fun approach.
My favorite example of the latter is How To Become a Superdelegate. Rather than present the actual process, which is actually not that detailed or accessible or engaging, we instead came up with a comic-book based concept, playing on the “super” part of superdelegate, where the “how to” has touchpoints to all the classic super-hero origins. So that’s an example of an idea we did strictly because we thought it would be fun and imagination-capturing. And when the writers came up with the phrase “faster than a speeding ballot,” I knew we had found that Howcast magic that makes everything we do here so much more fun and accessible.
Tonight, it’s the glorious moment we’ve all been waiting for: Biden vs. Palin, Celebrity Deathmatch-style. The potential veeps will battle head-to-head (how much would you pay for some toe-to-toe?) in front of an expected 50 million people, all of them no doubt totally transfixed. Just 90 minutes will determine who experiences the thrill of victory, and who suffers the agony of defeat. Democracy rules!
