Whether you're looking to get a foot in the door of corporate advertising, or just want to get some practice making professional productions, Poptent is a valuable online community for generating original, exciting content.
Overview of Poptent:
Poptent is a website that connects filmmakers and companies to create innovative advertisements and branding strategies. Poptent is a crowdsourcing site in which different brands post video competitions that are tackled by Poptent community members. Companies offer cash rewards, and in some cases, Poptent competitions can lead to larger advertisement contracts.
Getting Started with Poptent:
Getting started with Poptent is easy, and it's free to sign up. Just make a username, provide a valid email address, and create a password, or log in with your Facebook account. Once you've logged in, you'll arrive at your home page, which will be your portal for networking and finding out about new competitions. If you choose to integrate your Google, LinkedIn, OpenID, or blogging accounts with Poptent, you can log in with those instead. Enhance your social media presence by linking your Twitter and YouTube accounts with Poptent - every time you tag a post with Poptent it will automatically update your status on these other websites.
Your Poptent Profile:
Poptent encourages you to use your profile as a professional portfolio. Your profile is where you can let users and branding executives know what your skills are, list the equipment that you use, and upload a personal photograph. Poptent also awards users with "medals" to show other members of the community what they've accomplished so far, which are displayed on your profile.
Uploading media to Poptent is a great way to express yourself to other members of the community. Browsing other members' work examples and providing your own jumpstarts networking opportunities, and provides a basis for collaboration with other users. Just navigate to the "upload" tab in the right-hand corner of the site, and start browsing your computer for images, scripts, videos and sound. The Poptent media player supports a lot of file formats, and also provides HD playback, giving your videos a professional feel.
Assignments:
To check out all the current Poptent competitions, navigate to the "assignment" tab. Here, you'll find all the current competitions and their deadlines. Click on a link to become involved with a competition. On the competition's main page, you'll find the assignment summary, which gives you a briefing about the creative goals and requirements for the project. To learn more about the competition, you'll need to click on the "accept this assignment" button. You'll then be prompted with a participation agreement that debriefs your role as an Independent Contractor. Once you accept, you'll be able to download a .pdf of the full creative brief, interact with other users on a message board specific to the assignment, view submissions, and upload your own.
Poptent for Business:
The Poptent website also includes information for businesses interested in using Poptent to generate high-quality advertisements. You can tailor your assignment to fit your company's needs, and even make your assignment invite-only to ensure professional submissions. In addition to generating crowdsourced assignments for your business, Poptent runs the largest video production house in the country, with professionals working in over 125 cities. Poptent productions has experience with creating videos for commercials, webisodes, promotional and teaching materials for businesses, and sales video.
Another exciting Poptent tool for business is the "audience network", which is a distribution and optimization service. Poptent professionals help you use social media and other distribution channels to get your brand out to the maximum number of people. If you're interested in any of these professional services, you can contact Poptent directly through their website.
