Check out the exclusive video we shot, which got picked up as an exclusive on the Times’ site. Blind Photographer John Dugdale shot the key art for The Miracle Worker and we were allowed to be a “fly-on-the-wall” for the video you are about to see. Enjoy.
Video
Burn the Floor Opening Night
The Stars shine bright on Broadway at the Opening Night for Burn the Floor. I was fortunate enough to get some pretty incredible interviews like Nigel from So You Think You Can Dance, Carolyn from The Real Housewives of New Jersey , Susan Lucci and the fabulous Kelly Divine, Choreographer of Rock of Ages. Just another day at Art Meets Commerce!
Look to the Front of House
The team at Spotco created a beautiful image for Finian’s Rainbow, looking radiant on the marquee of the St. James Theatre on 44th St. If you haven’t been able to walk by it, check out the video we made of the installation of the piece:
Burnin' up Broadway
We knew that Burn the Floor, a hot ballroom dance show opening at the Longacre this week, has a lot of opportunity to use the dancers for video content that can be distributed on YouTube and other platforms.
A video diary is a great way to show the personalities of the dancers and give users that golden ‘backstage pass’ to see the lives of dancers. We sent them 6 flip cams while they were working on the pre-Broadway engagement in Perth. The footage they came up with was amazing! Over 5 hours of footage of dancing, talking, laughing, playing their ritual hacky sack, making fun of each other. After much editing we launched with a pretty nice starter to the series.
Nielsen released some news that video usage is up by 53% since last year. Another impressive fact is that the number of people watching video via cell phones is up by 52 percent!
Be sure to subscribe to all the Burn the Floor videos:
Rock of Ages Broadway Cast Recording
It’s official! Rock of Ages has a Broadway Cast Recording! You can pre-order it on iTunes. We were able to get in there while they were recording and tape the event and do a Live Tweet. The entire cast was at Legends studio (Whitney Houston, Mary J Blige, Kanye, Foreigner, etc) and the band KILLED it.
I’m with Hillary on this, “I can’t wait to have this in my house! I CAN’T WAIT!”
Rock of Ages Opening Night
Zowie—the Rock of Ages opening night was amazing! The crazy energy that is blowing the roof off the Brooks Atkinson eight times a week followed the crowd down the block to the Edison Ballroom which quickly became bobbing, throbbing, dancing, drinking, singing, clapping sea of merrymakers. Early word about the fantastic reviews swept the room, which only added to the air of incandescent intoxication.
What? You haven’t read the reviews? Click here
(Hey, the critics aren’t the only ones who are loving on ROA right now. Check out the fan testimonials that we taped after a recent performance.)
Night Ranger (yes, THE Night Ranger!) played a smokin’ all-acoustic set, Survivor’s Jim Peterik gave a the whole crowd a Rocky (III) moment when he had us belting out Eye of the Tiger, and the girls swooned en masse when Constantine and his band took the stage.
It was, to date, the best opening night party anyone at AMC has ever attended. And the stupendous reaction from the critics was the chocolate on the cherry on the top!
Youtube gets a hulu makeover
I love hulu.
It’s the only place where you can legally get free videos of your favorite episodes of SNL and Family Guy. Seriously, I’ve watched more Kristen Wiig videos on Hulu than I have seen Kittens Inspired by Kittens on YouTube.
Google recognizes the awesomeness of Hulu.com (much like Facebook recognizes the awesomeness of Twitter) and will do many of the same things that Hulu already does, like feature premium content, but most especially, will feature in-stream, interruptive ads. (Funny or Die already does this.)
I am not sure if they can target the videos, but, you bet your sweet charity that I will be getting the in-stream ads for Jennifer Holliday AND Jennifer Hudson’s And I Am Telling You video.
We’ll see this new launch April 16, the delay due to on-going negotiations with Disney.
IPod Readings
Here’s a video we did for Mark Blankenship’s The Critical Condition featuring Mark Indelicato from TV’s Ugly Betty! Watch it, rate it, love it.
A Matter of Rant or Wrong
Have you been following the tale of Patti Lupone’s shouty episode with a picture-taking audience member? Here’s the audio clip (which is on Youtube, which seems sort of ironic, but whatever):
Obviously this begs the question about questionable behavior during live performances, doesn’t it? That “no photography of any kind” rule includes “no recording devices,” so unless the person who captured this is exceptionally quick to recognize a newsworthy moment, he or she was flouting the very same rules as the snapper. Both are wrong, true, and listening in like this does make us culpable in the act, but it’s still pretty fun to hear La Lupone going off on this lout, isn’t it?
Here’s the interesting thing: Take a look at some of the comments from this blog post about the incident on the Gay TV blog.
First of all, wow, these are some vituperative people, some of whom clearly have no understanding of what they were even listening to, but sure are ready to sling some serious smack about a famous person.
Second, boy, do theatre folk get sanctimonious, particularly about their sacred cows (no insult to the lady in question intended).
Third, I just don’t understand the urge to snap photos–or make recordings–of entertainment events. For what? Was that guy going to try to sell crappy cell phone pictures of Lupone on Ebay? Was the recorder planning to make a cd of the show? (Before he realized he could post the show-stopping episode on Youtube, naturally.) Is there really a market for this kind of thing, or are they planning to gaze/listen to their blurry/mostly inaudible contraband in the privacy of their lonely rooms? Whichever, it’s just kind of sad.
Fourth, full disclosure, I detest people who do stuff like this and have been known to personally, publicly and not-very-nicely request them to desist, so I’m pretty much on Patty’s page here (ha).