The powerful tools of video and the Internet allow users to share with the world anything from comedic home videos to career-launching bits to political statements.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
The file-sharing Internet site, YouTube.com, is no longer just for “America’s Funniest Videos” outtakes or MTV wanna-be producers. Nonprofit organizations and political activists, hoping to spread their message to the 20 million-odd viewers who log onto the site each month, have now embraced the YouTube phenomenon.
Launched in late 2005 with an initial investment of $3.5 million, and recently purchased by the Internet giant, Google, for $1.65 billion, YouTube has afforded under-funded video artists and citizen journalists the opportunity to post their “home videos” to a potential market of hundreds of millions of users.
And now, two local nonprofits have launched web campaigns on YouTube: the California Wildlife Center and the anti-LNG activists with Coastal Advocates.
Victoria Harris, spokeswoman for the California Wildlife Center, said the decision to tap YouTube was a function of economics: “We are funded purely on private donations and YouTube is free.”
The CWC video, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pelon-Kbut8, was produced by Marcia Orland at Afterglow Media.
“One of our board members, Dr. Lisa Newell, won a three-minute video session from Marcia in an auction,” Harris said. “Dr. Newell was able to talk her into donating the rest of the video time and editing for us to create something to post on YouTube.”
The resulting 10-minute video gives a brief, but comprehensive, overview of the center’s rescue and release activities of wildlife in the Malibu area, accompanied by a new-age musical score and footage of local wildlife being rehabilitated after suffering wounds, usually at human hands, and then being released again, healthy, into their native habitat.
“We rescued over twenty-two hundred animals this year already,” Harris said. “And the need continues to grow.”
Housed on state parkland, the center operates through private funding and grants, with a volunteer staff.
“Since we cover 27 miles of Malibu coastline,” Harris said, “we obviously rescue a lot of marine animals, but also deer, hawks, coyotes and snakes.”
Although the CWC hosts a couple of fundraisers a year, the hope is that their YouTube video will raise the profile of the center.
“We need to reach a wider audience to keep our center operating,” Harris said. “We’ve got an annual budget of over $300,000 and our funds go quickly.”
Also tapping YouTube is the California Coastal Protection Network with its anti-LNG campaign. Capitalizing on a recent event spearheaded by local residents Pierce and Keely Brosnan, the Coastal Advocates helped organize a huge “Paddle Out” at the Malibu Pier in October, protesting the proposed construction of a liquefied natural gas platform off the coast of Malibu.
Jolene Dodson, who helps direct the Brosnans’ environmental foundation, enlisted veteran producer Veronica Brady of Planet Grande Pictures in Malibu to help create the two and a half minute video recently posted on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoNVNs6-QI4).
“Veronica just tapped her whole staff for the helicopter shots, all the shots from the pier and from the water,” Dodson said. “We just got people to come out for a great party!”
The celebrity index helped, of course, with the video featuring environmentally concerned comments by the Brosnans, Halle Berry, Tea Leoni, Ted Danson and other stars, as well as champion surfer Laird Hamilton.
“Veronica had the video edited and packaged within a day,” Dodson added, “and when I saw it, I urged the Brosnans to send the link to everyone in their Rolodex.”
She said viewers have already contacted Coastal Advocates to see about helping with the campaign.
“It’s a powerful means of getting your message out,” Dodson said.
With the anti-LNG video having already received well more than 5,000 hits in less than a month, it suggests YouTube is one of the most cost effective mass marketing channels around.
The CWC video has been up on the YouTube site for mere weeks and already has received more than 750 “hits,” or views, from around the country.
“Of course, at least 100 of those hits are mine,” Harris said laughing. “But, hopefully, the rest of those viewers were inspired.”