Felton Interactive Group is pleased and humbled to announce that we've been hired to produce & direct a country music video that pays tribute to Army Specialist Erica Alecksen.  

The song, "Proud", by Tim Cadiere & The Creole Ride is more than just your typical country music song.  As Tim says -

All of us at {FIG} are excited and honored to work on this touching project.

ABOUT ERICA ALECKSEN:
Army Spc. Erica P. Alecksen
KIA: July 8, 2012 
Operation Enduring Freedom
Assigned to 978th Military Police Company, 93rd Military Police Battalion, Fort Bliss, Texas

Erica Alecksen grew up in Eatonton, Georgia, and graduated from Putnam County High School in 2009. Soon after graduation she joined the US Army.  She was a model teenager, she was a model child, she was a model soldier, and she had a moral compass that was dead center.  In August 2010, Alecksen was assigned to the 978th Military Police Company, 93rd Military Police Battalion and stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas and was with unit ever since. She married Tim Bailey, who is from El Paso.  Specialist Alecksen was deployed to Afghanistan. On July 8th, she was riding in an armored vehicle in Wardak province. It was destroyed by the blast of a roadside bomb. Army Specialist Erica P. Alecksen was 21 years old when she was killed.

What’s the largest search engine on the internet? Obviously, it’s Google – hopefully you guessed that one right. But what’s the second largest search engine?

If you guessed Bing or Yahoo, you may be surprised to learn that it’s actually YouTube. (If you guessed Excite or AskJeeves, you might be really surprised.) That’s right, even though YouTube is owned by Google, YouTube’s search bar is still the second-most popular in its own right. So while you should be optimizing your video for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others, you should also be optimizing it for what seems like the most obvious search engine- YouTube.

Is optimizing for YouTube really that different than other search engines? 

Well, much of the same techniques work for both. You want a relevant title that includes your main keywords, and a description that restates these keywords and goes a little more in-depth. It’s also important to make the thumbnail of your video appealing, and it should obviously relate to the title. If your video is titled “Epic Stunt Car Crash,” don’t make the mistake of trying to keep the best shot secret until a user views the video. Instead, give us a sneak preview of the car crash! Trust me, we’re going to want to see more than just one frame, so if it looks good, we’ll click. Also make sure to upload a large, HD thumbnail, so it looks crisp and sharp no matter what size or location it’s displayed in.

Video advertising has a long history and a bright future as an effective mode to reach potential customers. Embarking on your video marketing project journey starts at the distribution choice. While big businesses usually have very large advertising budgets allowing them the ability to advertise throughout all marketing platforms, like the new Dodge Durango commercials featuring Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy (Television, Web, Social, Print) for instance, most small to medium sized businesses aren’t that fortunate.  Before declaring the route you wish to take, it is imperative to explore the nature of the two major competing methods of video advertising, television orweb; let’s take a look at the statistics.

Ever wondered what all the fuss is about when it comes to videos?  Why are companies suddenly jumping on the video bandwagon?  Well, take a look at these amazing facts and see for yourself.  Enjoy!

The use of video production to market a company’s product or service has increased dramatically in the past couple of years. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most significant reasons is that people remember what they watch in videos more than what they read in text. There are several different videos that you can make to help you market your company’s product or service, and here are eight different types a video production company can help you create .

Corporate Video Production – Are you interested in producing a video for your company, product, or brand but don’t know where to begin or the steps involved? There are a lot of moving parts to consider when planning the production of your video.  The three main areas of focus to the process are pre-production, production and post-production. This article is in no way a complete and comprehensive guide to video production, but it will give you a good overview so you know exactly what to expect when planning and executing your production. The fundamental goal of any video is to aim at creating a specific response among viewers.  What that response is can range from simply learning a recipe, to buying a product, or causing a person to attend an certain event. Make sure you keep your goal front and center, especially in pre-production, because you don’t want to overshadow the action you want the viewer to take with too many messages. Now it’s time to produce a rough outline of your project. In some cases you have a great idea of what you want the video to be about, in others you’re creatively stumped and want to leave the entire process up to the video production company. This brain storming part is more along the lines of what an ad agency does and is definitely an option, albeit a more expensive one than doing it yourself. Make sure the production team you are choosing offers this service and will help coordinate with your goals, image and style to make them a priority early on.

Digital video viewing is mainstream, and eMarketer estimates that 182.5 million people in the US, or 75% of all internet users, will view digital videos this year, and video advertising spending will increase by more than 40% in 2014 as well.

Video viewership and social sharing are closely intertwined; for example, an April 2013 blinkx survey conducted by Harris Interactive found that more than 40% of social network users watch TV or online video and simultaneously discuss content with their friends&mdashthe percentage was even higher among respondents ages 18 to 34, 14% of whom said they “always/often” do so.

Despite the connection between social network users and video content, social video advertising is still nascent. According to “Demystified: Video Advertising on Social Networks,” an August 2013 study from Mixpo, 8.5% of agency executives said they were underperforming on social video advertising, and none of the respondents said they were experts in the medium, according to the report.

Whether deciding to plunge into the world of video advertising or creating the next viral video hit, video length plays an important part in how long a viewer will actually watch a web video. With today’s short attention spans, it is no wonder that audiences are becomingly increasingly harder to hold on to. Here are some reasons why a shorter, more to the point video will succeed better than a video of a much longer length.

Studies have shown that the average attention span of a person can range anywhere from 8 seconds to a full 15-20 minutes given the context. For the sake of online video production, however, it is much more likely that a person’s attention span will hover near the 8 second mark. The reason behind this is that online video is by and large primarily for entertainment purposes. This means that the consumer is usually not going to be forced the watch the video in question. Even ads on YouTube can now be skipped after 6 seconds. If adults have such a hard time concentrating on important tasks, this makes the job of the web video maker that much more difficult.