Online Outreach Then and Now: From Problem to Priority
May 4, 2012

When Mac and I looked back at where we were five years ago when we formed Click Communications, we were struck by how much has changed in the world of online publicity since then.

When we first formed Click, we would tell stories about how, back in 2003, no one cared about reaching online audiences, and online journalists didn’t care about home entertainment. We compared that with 2007, a time when many studios realized they needed to be in front of online audiences, but the pool of interested online media had gotten so large that matching the right product and story with the right sites was a fairly daunting proposition.  As such, we were often hired to “solve the online problem.” In fact, once word got out about how handily we could navigate the web, we got really busy really fast, and our company grew from two people to seven in a few short months.

Today, of course, there are a myriad of different ways to “solve the online problem” because the problems are as vast and unique as the people and agencies prepared to take them on. The major difference between online publicity Then and Now, however, is that online has shifted from Problem to Priority.

When online outreach is viewed as a problem to be solved, it automatically makes it a problem to be solved. Everything becomes last-minute and fast breaking, not just because of the dynamic pace of the online medium, but because most long-lead attention is still placed with traditional media. And if traditional media publicity doesn’t meet expectations, online coverage becomes the consolation prize.

When online outreach is viewed as a priority, on the other hand, wonderful things can start to happen. For example, if you wait until the last couple weeks of a campaign to roll out your online strategy, then what happens earlier in the campaign when you’re pitching broadcast and long-lead print publications about your new brand that no one’s ever heard of? Those producers and writers will Google your product and come up with…. Nothing. By contrast, if you prioritize your online outreach early on to take place throughout the life of your campaign, then you build up Google results, conversations and the all-important Buzz.

Our approach at Click has elevated online outreach beyond a priority to become a driving force in campaign strategy. This frees us from some of the old rules and restrictions that can apply to available assets, allowing our team to parcel out exclusive content, premium items, compelling interviews and exciting event opportunities across multiple mediums to reach true market saturation with our ideal audience.

The Click team is also particularly deft at finding new ways of maximizing assets in fresh, creative ways. After all, when it comes to rolling out publicity and marketing materials over a period of time to your target audience, you have to be careful. Think of your assets like ingredients, and your press as a mix of carnivores, vegetarians, foodies and picky children.  You can either parcel out your interviews, video clips and widgets (or meat, vegetables and cheese, if you will), to the people who want each individual item the most. Or you can put them together to form, say, a delicious pizza—something unique and mouth-watering for everyone.

The trick, especially with a long campaign, is to make sure that you’re not pitching the same story to the same person over and over again. I don’t care how much a person likes a pizza—if they hear about it three times a week, they’re going to get sick of it and stop returning your emails.

Luckily for our clients, the Click team avoids this kind of creative fatigue with the right blend of targeting, timing, and our signature Click creativity and genuine enthusiasm. Our online experts are well-rounded, strategic publicity and marketing professionals, ready to lead the way on our clients campaigns, and deliver outstanding (and occasionally delicious) results.

By: Dinah McLean

Web Working: When To Ask For Help
Aug 10, 2011

Help!

With the DreamWorks Pictures film The Help hitting theaters nationwide today, we thought it might be the perfect time to talk a little bit about help, when it’s time to ask for help, and the difficulties many web workers (and even typical office workers) feel when asking for the help they often need. You enjoyed our tips for being your own boss so much and now that we’ve boosted your ego, here are some ways to not bite off more than you can chew.

When you’re a web worker it’s easy to feel like you’re working in a vacuum. Even if you are part of a strong, stable team of workers in large (or small) business, the isolation of working from home can make it difficult to make connections with the people in your group. The feeling that you’re an island adrift in a sea of continually-piling-up work is not uncommon for a web worker. All this, however, should not deter you from seeking the help of your co-workers and superiors. Asking for help may not be an easy task for some people (for some, I’m sure, it’s a nearly insurmountable leap of faith), but it can be one of the most beneficial things you can do. Not only for you and your career, but also for the best interest of the company.

HELP So how do you know when it’s time to ask for help? Simple common sense can answer that question most of the time, but there are certainly tricky scenarios where you might feel that asking for help could put you in an awkward position. The general rule of thumb is: if you’re wondering if you should ask for help, you should probably ask for help. It may feel like a quick blow to the ego muscle, but it’s worth it in the end and most bosses will look highly upon you for asking for assistance before it’s too late. To get you started, here are five times when you should definitely press the help button.

  • 1: When you feel like you’re starting to drown. In fact, if you’re feeling like you’re starting to drown, you’ve probably waited too long. Ask for help immediately. In theory, you should be asking for help when you feel your legs start to cramp under you and your arms are getting tired. At this point, you can still tread water, but not for much longer. This is when the words “I need help” should start to form on your lips. Your colleagues are there for a reason and they’re almost always willing to help, especially if it means saving a sinking ship. Put your ego aside and ask for help early. It will save you (and your team) from missed deadlines, botched jobs, and a lot more work in the long run.
  • 2: When you’re confused and struggling to understand how something works. So your boss just gave you a big new project to work on and he spent about thirty minutes explaining every aspect of it in detail. The only problem is, you didn’t understand a lick of it. Uh oh! Time to ask for help. Call your boss back, explain to him or her that you need the details broken down in a less confusing manner, and make sure that you’ve got it right before you hang up that phone. They’ll probably praise you for being so honest and diligent. The truth is, you can’t do your work if you don’t understand what you’re instructed to do.
  • 3: When you’ve made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s human nature. Nobody’s perfect. The big mistake comes when you’ve screwed up but you’re still too stubborn to admit it. Suck it up, tell your boss, and ask for help. Trust in the fact that every single member of your team has made a mistake at one time or another. This time is yours.
  • 4: When you feel like you’ve hit a roadblock. We all get stuck sometimes. Even Stephen King gets writer’s block once in a while, right? Well, maybe not Stephen King, but 99.9% of writers do. When you feel like you’re blocked, stuck, or getting stagnant on a task, a little help with a fresh perspective can give you just the boost you need to tackle the project head on. Clear eyes often bring fresh ideas with them. That’s one of the major benefits of working with a talented group of people.
  • 5: When you begin to wonder if you need help. I said this before, and I’ll say it again, if you’re wondering if you need help, you probably need help. This is the earliest you can possibly ask for assistance and it’s the very best time to do so. It allows your co-workers (or boss) to evaluate the situation at its infantile stage, diagnose the problem, and put you on the right path to fixing it. Ask early and ask often. That’s the very best motto you can have when it comes to asking for help. You’ve probably heard the phrase “there are no stupid questions” about a million times in your life and there’s a reason for that: it’s true.

Help!

Those five tips should get you started on your way to becoming a help-seeking machine! OK, maybe you don’t want to be asking for help from your boss and co-workers for every little situation that pops up, but it’s always good to err on the side of caution. If you trust your team and your own abilities to excel at the tasks given to you, it shouldn’t be any problem at all. It may, in fact, help you boost your presence in the business, increase your productivity, and ensure that you’re doing your very best work at all times. Give it shot. It’s easy. Just open up and say H E L P!

Oh, and if you find yourself in need of help pretty often, maybe it’s time to hire The Click Team to handle your integrated outreach! Wink, wink.

By: Scott Neumyer

Web Working: Being Your Own Not-So-Horrible Boss
Jul 8, 2011

Working From Home

With the Warner Bros. film Horrible Bosses hitting theaters nationwide today, we thought it might be the perfect time to talk a little bit about bosses and their role for you as a web worker (or someone who just happens to work from home). No, no… We’re certainly not going to rail against our bosses here at Click! We have two amazing bosses in Mac and Dinah McLean. They are the epitome of everything you’d want your boss to be; communicative, helpful, straightforward, and the perfect mixture of hands-off and hands-on. But, as a crew that works primarily from home (aside from weekly conference calls, meetings, and the occasional check-in at the “home office”) we also have an additional boss: Ourselves.

To be an effective web worker, it’s absolutely essential that you also be your own boss. You need to stick to your own schedule, produce work that would be up to any boss’s standard, and essentially manage yourself on a minute-to-minute basis. It’s a lot of pressure, to be sure, but something that’s becoming more and more common for workers who now find themselves working directly from their homes. If you want to turn out stellar work, you need to be your own stellar boss.

Working from Home.Managing yourself (especially if you’re new to web working) can take some getting used to. It’s an adjustment that doesn’t exactly come naturally. Most people who have worked since they were teenagers are used to having a boss that tells them what to do, where to do it, how to do it, and when it needs to be done. Now that you’ve joined the work-from-home team, you need to do all that yourself and if you don’t know where to start the task can be daunting. That’s where we come in. Here are a few tips on adjusting to working from home that, as your own boss, should help make the transition a little bit easier. That is, if you follow them just as strictly as if any boss assigned them.

  • 1: Create a work schedule and stick to it. If you don’t have a work schedule, you have nothing. Working from home takes an insane amount of self-discipline. You need to be able to know what you need to do, when you need to do it, and you need to stick to that schedule like glue. It’s incredibly easy to get distracted and derailed when your office is also your home. A schedule will help you keep those distractions to a minimum.
  • 2: Get showered and dressed as if you’re going into a normal office setting. Yeah, we all know that one of the perks of working from home is the ability to work in your pajamas and we’re cool with that. Every once in a while, that is. You see, when you never get changed out of your jammies you tend to let other things (like that schedule we mentioned) slack as well and that’s a slippery slope for a web worker. Being dressed also helps in the event that you need to run out for some reason.
  • 3: Have a dedicated area of your home that is for work only. It’s fine if you want to work on the living room couch, in front of the TV, every now and then (if you have something to do that doesn’t take deep concentration), but having a dedicated “work area” in your home will allow you to close the door and enter “work mode” every day. It’s a great form of muscle memory that can help you kick it into gear the minute you step in the door. It’s also a great tool to help you balance work and life as you can breath easy and be with your family once you shut the door to the work area behind you.
  • 4: Don’t procrastinate. Duh, right? Yes, this can really work for just about any type of work, but it’s especially important for the web worker. When you are your own boss, procrastination simply leads to more procrastination, which leads to missed deadlines, poor work, and maybe even loss of job. Don’t do it.
  • 5: Stay connected. Everyone needs some kind of human interaction. Some kind of connection to someone outside of ourselves. In a typical office setting, you get this every single day (whether you like it or not). When you first start working from home, the break from this interaction can be exhilarating. “Wait, you mean I don’t have to hear Tommy belch after lunch every day anymore? Yes! Sign me up!” But after a while, the lack of connection can be a detriment not only to your emotional well-being but also to your work. Stay connected via IM, telephone, email, Skype, and whatever else you think will help you be as close as possible to your co-workers and management. Interaction goes a long way toward being a great team.

There you have it: five tips to get you started on the path to becoming your own not-so-horrible boss. Of course, there are plenty of other little tidbits of information that can help you successfully transition to working from home, but we’ll save those for a future blog post. These five are a good primer and should have you well on your way to doing some of your best work yet…from home.

54 gratitude: working from home day

Web working (and working from home in general) is easily one of the most rewarding and gratifying things you can do as a professional. It not only instills a sense of complete responsibility over your own destiny, but it also teaches you brand new ways to creatively connect, intelligently produce fantastic work, and flourish as both an individual and part of a larger team. If you have any tips on successful ways to work from home, please feel free to leave them in the comments. We’d love to hear what you have to say!

By: Scott Neumyer

No Valentine’s Day Plans? No Problem.
Feb 14, 2011

It’s Valentine’s Day! I know, I know, it’s a “fake holiday” trumped up by greeting card companies and you shouldn’t feel forced to show someone affection just so some corporation can make money on manufactured crap, we should all show our loved ones that we care EVERY day, not just Valentine’s Day, blah blah blah.

Get over it. I mean it. Some or all of that sentiment might be true, but taking one day or evening out of 365 to tell your partner, family and/or dearest friends that you love them is nice, and you can do it with or without corporate tie-ins. In fact, I’ve got the perfect hook-up for all of our readers that might have been protesting the holiday, but were really slackers who forgot to make any reservations or plans for their Valentine this evening:

Dinner and a movie.

It’s a classic for a reason, and you can do the whole thing right at home. First, the dinner. If you’re a real hopeless case in the kitchen, then go for take-out or delivery, and just focus on setting a nice table–candles & flowers work just as well on coffee tables as they do in a dining room. If you can at least boil water, then you can make spaghetti. It’s cheap, easy, fast, and you & your partner can do that cute kissing thing from Lady & the Tramp with the noodles. Just go easy on the garlic and the portions–nothing’s less romantic than heartburn and breath that could slay a vampire.

Dessert is also key, and unless either you or your partner is allergic then you gotta go with chocolate. (If you are allergic: salted caramels. YUM.) If you don’t have time to make anything, I recommend a small box of high-quality, rich chocolate truffles (Trader Joe’s makes great ones). If you’re on a budget, forget the cheapo drugstore chocolates in the heart-shaped box and buy a box of brownie mix instead. They’re so easy to make, so yummy and gooey, and baking seriously impresses everyone.

As for picking a movie, well, it depends on your date. Here are my recommendations for a fun and romantic evening with your Valentine tonight.

Romantic Comedies That Aren’t Ridiculously Formulaic And Also Actually Funny: Raising Arizona, High Fidelity, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Definitely, Maybe, Going the Distance

"Marvin Gaye is responsible for our entire relationship." "Is that so? I'd like a word with him then."

Romances With Lots Of Guns: Bonnie & Clyde, True Lies, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet, A Life Less Ordinary, Natural Born Killers, True Romance, Mr. & Mrs. Smith

"That's the way romance is... Usually, that's the way it goes, but every once in awhile, it goes the other way too."

Co-dependent, Unhealthy, Enabling Romances: Sid & Nancy, Leaving Las Vegas, Trainspotting, The People vs. Larry Flynt

"If I asked you to kill me, would you?" "I don't know. How would I do it? I couldn't live without ya."

Movies That Aren’t Technically Romances, But Feature Great Couples: The Mask of Zorro, Lord of the Rings, Rocky, Pirates of the Caribbean, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Matrix, WALL-E, Fargo, The Empire Strikes Back

"I love you." "I know."

Classic Romances For Every Generation: Roman Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, Casablanca, Lover Come Back, Annie Hall, Some Kind of Wonderful, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, Singles

"I've never been alone with a man before, even with my dress on. With my dress off, it's MOST unusual."

Any movies you think are missing? Tell me all about it! Oh, and before I forget:

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

By: Dinah McLean

The Star Wars Guide to Comic-Con
Jul 22, 2010

“Ready are you? What know you of ready? A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind”… to survive Comic-Con.

Navigating Comic-Con International in San Diego takes the training and discipline of a Jedi knight. In 2009, there were approximately 126,000 attendees, 400 events over four days and over 900 exhibitors present. You will need patience, discipline, the Force as your ally, and should heed these wise words from a galaxy far, far away:

“Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for my arrival” and ensure that all your travel details, hotel accommodations and even restaurant reservations if you have a large group are booked and confirmed before you arrive in San Diego. Last minute accommodation is nearly impossible to find and rooms can go for hundreds of dollars a night. “Republic credits are no good out here.”

“A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge” by planning your itinerary in advance. Check out the official program* and decide what panels you’d like to see and when you plan to meet up with friends and colleagues. Allow extra time for getting to and from each destination. Ideally, explore and buy exclusive items in the Exhibit Hall on Preview Night or before the weekend crowds arrive and you are thrown “into the garbage chute, fly boy” with the walls closing in.

* A complete schedule of Star Wars- related events at Comic-Con is now available at StarWars.com.

“The Jundland Wastes are not to be traveled lightly” so don’t forget to pack essentials including your mobile device, charger, sunscreen, sunglasses and other protective gear for the long outdoor lines, as well as mints, hand sanitizer, band-aids for blisters, a notebook for autographs and business cards for networking.

“Only what you take with you” may help stave off hunger and dehydration.  Bring snacks to keep your energy up while walking around the booths and waiting for panels as drinks and food can be very expensive inside the convention center. Once the hunger pains set in, even “Bantha fodder” will start to look good.

“Tell Jabba I’ve got his money” and have the cash you need before you arrive on the convention floor.  Many smaller vendors deal in cash only and the ATMs are known to have long lines that can stretch to the second moon of Endor.

“Not unless you can alter time, speed up the harvest or teleport me off this rock” will you be able to avoid the long lines for popular panels and that infamous entrance to Hall H.  Bring an iPod, PSP, books or any other form of portable entertainment that can help pass time.

“The possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.” If you need to move quickly within the Exhibit Hall, avoid cutting through the center of any aisle for “once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny” with bottle-necked crowds.  Instead, move along the perimeters of the aisles and then head into your destination aisle for speed and ease.

“Boy, it’s lucky you have these compartments” to carry home your Comic-Con exclusive swag.  Bring poster tubes and bags to carefully carry this year’s Imperial-class goodies. For Star Wars fans, that could include the 30th anniversary Empire Strikes Back Insider commemorative issue with Han Solo in carbonite cover, Hallmark exclusive keepsake ornaments of protocol droids K-3PO and R-3PO and limited edition Darth Vader mini-bust.

“You don’t look so bad to me. You look strong enough to pull the ears off a gundark.” Whether you want to dress up as a Stormtrooper, TIE fighter, a big walking carpet, Princess Leia in the slave bikini (counting the Slave Leias is a popular game at Comic-Con) or even a “stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herder,” anything goes when it comes to what you wear. Embrace it and have fun!  For inspiration, you can check out last year’s costumes at the official Star Wars blog. If you’re not dressing up, think layers for those outdoor and indoor lines and remember to wear comfortable shoes. How about a pair of Han Solo sneakers?

In the 80s, Click Communications publicist Jackie Cavanagh dressed up as Princess Leia-meets-Ballerina Fairy with her little brother Stewart as Yoda in tow.

“You came in here, didn’t you have a plan for getting out?” If you aren’t watching a panel at the end of the day and merely roaming the Exhibit Hall, don’t wait until closing time to leave the convention or you will need to “stabilize your rear deflectors” and “watch for enemy fighters” as thousands of people will try to cross Harbor Drive into the Gaslight district at the same time! Not even Obi-Wan Kenobi will be able to save you.

Man your ships for Comic-Con 2010 and may the Force be with you!

By: Jackie Cavanagh

Click’s 2010 San Diego Comic-Con Survival Guide
Jul 19, 2010

Raise your hand if you’re going to this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego later this week! (Now put it down or people in your office will think you’re weird.) We’ll be there doing some nerdworking* of our own, and we’ve assembled our third annual Comic-Con Survival Guide to help you make the most of this year’s event. Just click here to download the pdf, and it’s all yours!

Click's 2010 Comic-Con Survival Guide

In addition to offering a few tips, tricks and insights into the event, Click’s Survival Guide highlights some of the geekiest upcoming movies, TV shows, comics and toys that we hope to catch a glimpse of at this year’s Con. From Green Lantern and TRON: Legacy to “The Walking Dead” and “Terra Nova,” our guide walks you through nearly 100 of the most buzzed-about entertainment properties that you might come across during the pop-culture circus extravaganza that is the Con.

Why write all this up? The simple answer is this: because we really wanted to. That whole bit on our web site where we call ourselves “geek professionals and professional geeks” is no joke. We love our movies, collectible action figures, games and web TV shows as much as our jobs—and that passion and expertise makes us better at them.

We also built this Survival Guide for our clients, colleagues and friends who go for work and might not be as stoked about all this madness as we are. If we can help even one overworked studio publicist, journalist or blogger have a better time at Comic-Con? Mission accomplished!

While we’re there, we’ll giving away free Survival Kit goodies (Purell, vitamins, superhero bandages, etc.), so be sure to follow us @ClickComm to find out where we are. We’ll be the ones in the awesome t-shirts.

Now download your Guide already, and Enjoy! We look forward to seeing you at this year’s event!

*Nerdworking: Networking with our fellow nerds; coined by our very own Amanda Barnes.

By: Dinah McLean

Ten Ways To Grow Your Following on Twitter & Facebook
Jul 13, 2010

As a digital agency, we often have clients, friends and even family members come to us looking for ways to establish and grow their social network. With that in mind, we wanted to share with you what we have shared with all of them: Click’s Top Ten Tips for growing your following on Twitter & Facebook.  For social networking veterans, these might seem pretty basic. For anyone new to Twitter or Facebook who might still be feeling a little overwhelmed, however, these tips are the best place to get started.

Tip #1 – Follow more people. Start with people you know, then follow those who are relevant to what you do and in your industry. Following the people and things that you’re actually a fan of, like a show or a sports team, also communicates authenticity. (Added bonus: following the right people is a great way to enjoy your Twitter account more!)

Tip # 2 – Keep posts authentic, individualized, and frequent. The more personal a Twitter account is the more likely people are to follow that person. Posting frequently is also essential. No one follows a blog, Twitter, or Facebook page that only updates once a month, or is obviously just promoting a single project. To gain momentum and a solid following, we recommend that you blog, tweet or update your Facebook status at least 3-5 times per week.

Tip #3 – Interact with others on Twitter. Reply and Re-tweet messages to fans, friends, other celebrities, and especially film-interest websites. Support others and they will support you.

Tip #4 – Participate in #FollowFriday. Do you have any friends with large followings on Twitter? If so, ask them to be kind enough to post a tweet alerting their followers that you have now joined Twitter. It’s an easy way to garner a large following pretty quickly.

Tip #5 – Give things away. People love wining free things. Even if it’s something simple like a book, DVD or lanyard from a winning game; if it’s free, they will want it.

Tip #6 – Interact with your followers. The more you interact with people, the approachable and interesting you will seem. People feel a connection with someone they get an @reply from, and personalized and complimentary responses are likely to be shared with a person’s own following.

Tip #7 – Friend your friends’ friends. If you’re on Facebook and you’re friends with popular people, take a few hours to scroll through their friends. If you see someone you know or are connected to, add them to gain more followers.

Tip #8 – Be relevant. No one will want to read your updates if they’re not current, interesting and relevant. Not every update must tie into current events and trends, but most updates should be compelling.

Tip #9 – Don’t spam. If every tweet or status update is about soliciting fans for your project, website or film, people will quickly be turned off and possibly even un-follow your account.

Tip #10 – Share in the zeitgeist. Are you currently watching the latest reality show or following a sports team? Tweet about it while you’re watching in real time when possible and be sure to include hash tags (i.e. #worldcup) so others that are tweeting about it can join in the conversation. Also, keep an eye on Twitter’s Trending Topics section—if you’re interested in something on that list, definitely hop in on the conversation with some tweets.

Got tips of your own? Share them in the comments!

By: Scott Neumyer

Blu-ray vs. DVD: For your mom
May 18, 2010

Stores are so prepared to blow your mind with all the amazing technical statistics of why Blu-ray is so much more awesome than DVD that they often overlook the one key element in their jargon-filled diatribe of technical word-vomit: their audience.

For most people, hearing about technical specs is about an interesting as reading the phone book.  I think it’s fantastic that the sales kids at Best Buy even know what pixel resolution and frames per second even mean.  However, that doesn’t mean that the average consumer necessarily does.  Here are three key technical differences between Blu-ray and DVD, broken down into layman’s terms (i.e. something I can explain to my mom).

Anamorphic 16×9, 59.94i frame rate, 1920×1080 pixel resolution

Blah, blah, blah–it’s a better picture.

All this tech speak means is a cleaner image and better color, whether you’re watching on a 15 or 50-inch screen.  It’s simple math: A higher number of pixels = denser image = clearer picture.  And those little black bars at the top and bottom of the screen?  Not just there to piss you off.  They actually preserve the way the film was shot and prevent the film from being distorted and stretched.

Want to experience the world altering colors of Pandora in Avatar?  Blu-ray is for you.  Want to see the intimate details of the Mad Hatter’s make-up in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland?  Blu-ray is for you!  Looking forward to experiencing the Lord of the Rings trilogy the way it was MEANT to be seen?  Me too. Ergo, Blu-ray.

Dolby Digital (AC-3), DTS-HD High Resolution Audio

There is essentially one important difference between audio on a Blu-ray and audio on a DVD.  DVD uses “Lossy” sound, which is a euphemistic, albeit weird, way of saying that you’ll get six channels of sound, but will lose some of it digitally.

Blu-ray, on the other hand, includes eight channels of sound in which no digital sound is lost; appropriately named “Lossless.”

So, to recap, partial sound versus full sound.  These are the difficult decisions of our lives.

Single Layer = 25GB,  Dual Layer=50GB

Let’s not lie to ourselves–size DOES matter.  Fewer available gigabytes (GB) per disc simply means there’s less space.  With Blu-ray’s additional space, you get things like better picture, better audio, and more bonus material.  And while there are quite a few people who buy a DVD or Blu-ray because they just like the movie, there is a large part of the film-loving population of über-nerds like me who also make a choice based on bonus materials.  And I’m not just talking about previews and bloopers.  We’re talking J.J. Abrams Star Trek style bonus here.  A dual layered disc is more likely to have every interactive Behind the Scenes featurette the filmmakers and studios can dream up.  From creating the make-up for mystical creatures to a nanny-cam worn around set by a child star to capture those Candid Camera moments.  I dare you not to watch.

We’ve covered the basics, but before I stop bending your ear, let’s answer the ultimate question:

What is “Blu-ray?”

Simply put, the color of the laser that reads and writes on the disc is blue (well, blue-violet).  You cannot trademark an everyday word (let alone a primary color), so in true English language fashion, we drop a letter.  Voila!  Blu-ray.

Now go forth, my friends, and spew your knowledge to the world.  Or even just your mom.

Today’s blog was brought to you today by the color Blue Blu and the letters B and D.

By: Emily Ronkar