Webware

I'd always considered Broadway musicals to be a pleasantly low-tech form of entertainment. When something's live on stage, there's only so much you can do to make people look and sound better (not to mention the special effects).

But what happens when you're trying to market a musical to the tech-addicted MySpace generation--and to those willing to admit they once fell into that age group? Clearly, you start a video remix competition. It is, after all, the trendy marketing tool du jour, now that faster broadband connections and improved Web technologies have made it possible for anyone to chop up video and put it on the Internet. Consequently, it doesn't seem that surprising that the recent Broadway show Spring Awakening, about the antics of angsty promiscuous teenagers, would hook up with a remixing site for a "theater 2.0" promotional campaign. The folks behind the campaign chose Eyespot, which has also done promotions for The Colbert Report and Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror.

Consequently, through Eyespot's promotion, fans can use song and video footage from the production along with their own home video clips to make the angstiest, most emo-ridden video mashups possible. Sweet! You've got until June 15 to enter.

It should be noted that video mashups are not always very reliable as forms of publicity--after all, one of the first campaigns of this sort was the General Motors ad competition that environmentalists turned into an anti-SUV rallying cry. Likewise, I'm not unconvinced that the Spring Awakening competition likely has a handful of entries that are facetious at best. Nevertheless, it's a sign that even lower-tech entertainment is willing to capitalize on new marketing strategies like video remixes. It'd be interesting to see what the age metrics are for the competition versus the people actually seeing the show. What's next--live streaming of Broadway shows over the Web?

(And why did we single this one out specifically? Well, because it's such a novelty when something "emo" surfaces and it doesn't have anything to do with MySpace.)

Note: This post has been updated from it's original publishing. It now contains a hands-on video overview of Remix.

Adobe's Remix is a new Web-based video editing tool that will be provided free to all Photobucket members in the coming weeks. Remix allows you to string together and edit short video clips. We covered the announcement of the online video editor last week, but got our hands on it this morning.

Remix is essentially a stripped-down version of Adobe Premiere Elements. You get a timeline with clips and transitions, along with a source bin containing all the media from your Photobucket account. Adding clips to your movie is as simple as dragging and dropping. There's also a handy clipping tool if you feel like cutting out the boring bits. There are only three transitions to choose from, and they're all fades. This might seem like a letdown, but honestly if you've ever edited video before, you know some of the flashier transitions aren't necessarily better than the fundamentals.

To put the finishing touches on your movie you can add titles and all sorts of cheesy digital overlays, like a police hat or gingerbread people (both genders are provided). You also can add thought or chat bubbles with customizable text. What really feels off about adding all these effects is that you can only add one to each clip. There is a way to get around this--by cutting your clips into pieces to make them separate--but it would be nice to have a separate timeline for overlays, as the majority of video editing apps provide.

You also can add music to your film, though not your own. The library of music clips is fairly large, although you've probably never heard the tracks. There's no way to add voice narration.

When you're done with your masterpiece, there are the standard URL and embed links, but no way to locally save or export your video to other formats. No doubt Adobe wants you to buy one of its video editing programs for this. This also means there's no way to archive your videos--you've got to rely on Photobucket to keep running.

I like Adobe Remix for the casual stringing together of clips. It's really easy to use and quite fast. The Photobucket integration is spot-on, but don't be surprised if you see Remix popping up in other sites, since the partnership isn't exclusive. It will be interesting to see where it shows up next.

See also Jumpcut and EyeSpot.