Screengrabs As Content + Movie Sites?

Okay i have a question, im working on some new movie sites and wanted to get your input on whether i should also take screen grabs of each of the niche specific movies im going to have inside the members areas and use those as image content instead of 'regular' image content?

My gut feeling is that this would probably help a lot better than regular image content because it still carries on from the whole 'movie' theme of the site overall, was just wondering what you folks thought about this?

Regards,

Lee

Lee:

I'm not sure you need to do that. Contact the studios whose movies you wish to promote, and ask them for publicity images. Some studios are pretty free with these, others seek to maintain a very strong level of control as to what images are out there. Some studios have a wide selection of publicity images, but they insist that their image be watermarked on the picture.

Only is very last resort situations have I used photos that are screen captures. In my opinion, I don't think they sell the movie very well, compared to professional photographs. But that's just me, and there's always gotta be a specific look on things.....

In any case, most studios have PR guys who will be happy to help you.

I'd be happy to send email contacts if you need any.

Hope that helps.

Steve,

I already have a license to do pretty much what i please with the DVDs, capping them to use as image content is fine to do, just as is ripping and encoding the movies for use in a members area :)

Im not going to be promoting the 'movie' rather the 'content' which the movies form part of inside the members area.

Regards,

Lee

good idea, however if you licensed through a broker, you probably don't even have a way to contact the studios.

vidcaps can be an asset to a movie site, particularly if instead of having a pic section and a video section, your member area is in reality format. be sure and do the vidcaps at high quality and full size. if you want to really work it, you can do what is needed to optimize their appearance, probably sharpening a hair, adding a touch of contrast and shrinking just a little.

I'm promoting a sponsor right now that uses only screengrabs in their FHGs. The quality is terrible, and yet it is converting like a crack addict. My current ratio is 1/27. So I'd say go for it on the screengrabs. They seem to work!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gmartin

I'm promoting a sponsor right now that uses only screengrabs in their FHGs. The quality is terrible, and yet it is converting like a crack addict. My current ratio is 1/27. So I'd say go for it on the screengrabs. They seem to work!

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Any chance you could post or PM me the name of the sponsor please so i can see the quality? :)

Regards,

Lee

I sent you a pm to one of their galleries. The sponsor is in my sig. My blog has only been live about a week or so and I've already had three sign-ups. None of the much prettier sites I'm promoting on my blog have done anything yet. It cracks me up.

Thanks for the links i appreciate it :thumbsup:

Regards,

Lee

i used to create galleries out of vidcaps from naughty america, our own site that we had at the time and even our current site and they sell great. the quality isn't always all it could be, but surfers were happy with what they see - probably because so many pic sets have so little to do with the actual content in the sites promoted by galleries where vidcaps generally are really taken from the movies in the site.

We shoot high-resolution photography of all of our models, and all hardcore scenes in our videos. But we use screencaps for the Citiboyz website because it seems to work better with customers. Last year, we experimented with replacing all the screencaps with scaled-down hi-res images and sales fell flat. When we restored the screencaps, sales went back to good levels. My feeling is that, when it comes to buying a video or watching movie clips, a screencap works best because it's really an image from the actual video, and the buyer doesn't feel he's being tricked. My $0.02 worth. Interestingly, when I entered the business back in the wild-west days, my first foray into the internet was a screencap site I had with Mancheck. I made good money off that site!

So I guess we should start looking for more sponsors with screencap content on their tours, fhg's, etc :D

Screencaps are great because they let you preview the video without sitting through minutes of "fast forward" content that may not interest the viewer. If they don't see what they want in the screencaps, they move on to another video rather than waste time watching.

I did that for Bedfellow before watching the video.

Now... screencaps AS content without the video to accompany it is questionable. In that case, it would be better to use full quality professional photos for clarity.

Screen captures (SC) work fabulously and they help attract subscribers to the videos. Of course, one must provide good-quality screen caps, which mean one must edit them manually, or better yet, do them manually.

Not adding them to your line-up of content is a bad choice, as one is not getting the most out of their content.

Heck - even galleries with SC sell!