A few years ago, homemade political commercials were relatively rare, still requiring a fairly significant investment in equipment, a high-bandwidth video host, etc. Nowadays, not only are such commercials nearly ubiquitous on sites such as YouTube, they're often even encouraged by the candidates themselves. Even my Michigan-based "Stop Devos" YouTube commercials got me thousands of views and hundreds of emails last year, and I didn't even promote them -- just dropped them on YouTube and waited for people to find them.
The exciting thing is that anyone with a voice can share their thoughts, and with the internet video being "free", there's less a concern with who's paying for what, who approves what, etc. (Whether this will end up being more problematic than its worth is debatable, but at least right now it seems a promising development for free speech.)
Admittedly that's not going to win any awards or anything, but I created it in an hour or so the other day, uploaded it to YouTube, and now millions upon millions have free access to it. How many will actually see it? Well, that depends on whether early viewers like it or not. Videos sent to friends, favorited, discussed on blogs, etc., will have a dramatically higher view count than those which aren't shared.
But that's what's awesome. The incentive is high to create the best, most engaging, and therefore most shared videos imaginable. Production values are secondary to message. When your output is a highly-compressed little YouTube window, it's sometimes difficult to tell the content that cost zero dollars from the content that cost tens of thousands. And once YouTube, like Revver, comes up with a revenue-sharing model, that will only increase the quality (and quantity) of submissions. (Well, hopefully.)
How many of us here have made and uploaded our thoughts, supporting our favored candidate or issue, in video form? Virtually all computers today come with free software in order to do this, whether Windows Movie Maker or iMovie or something downloadable. Royalty-free images and music are readily available. All it takes is an idea, and a little time.
I say, if you are sick of having the "old media" tell us which candidates are "inevitable", lets use our "new media" power to make something compelling. Upset that no one's talking about Issue X? Make a video! Upset that Candidate X is getting away with lies about Candidate Y? Make a video! What's the worst that can happen? No one watches? So what. Get better at it, and they'll watch the next one.
Writing a diary here is awesome, but only reaches a limited number of individuals who likely already agree with your point of view. Not everyone will read your well-researched essay on DailyKos. But send a 2-3 minute video link to your friends, family, blogs, etc? At least that can open the conversation. And maybe then they'll read that essay after all.
If you've already made a campaign commercial already, let's see it! Embed it in the comments of this diary. Haven't made one yet? Make one! Then share with the rest of us. The best campaign commercials of the season might come from you.
