When most people hear about "internet circulated videos", they usually think of the random little home videos put up on youtube or movie trailers put up for established "real" films coming to theaters soon. However, what if you promoted and got a production contract based on your following and hype before you started production or got your contracts?
While I'm sure there are more people out there doing this than I have here (and if you somehow come to read this post and know of others, please post that info in the comments), my first exposure to this is for the proposed sci-fi show Slingers.
This sizzle reel in the past might have been shown only to studio execs or network programmers in past eras of promotion. However, the folks at SleepyDog wanted to see how it tested with the real people that make shows live and die; the fandom. So they distributed the video through various social networks, blogs, news feeds, and webzines and sat back to see how far it would spread. Within a few weeks the company got an article in print magazines and were in talks with undisclosed parties for the show's future, and still are getting circulated by friends linking friends and chatting it up on "how cool it would all be". Seriously, it's numbers and feedback like that that most places spend tons on through focus groups (though it by no means is as reliable as the refined data you can get from a well run focus group).
Then there's the feature film project Iron Sky, an alternate history story about Nazis attacking from a hidden moon base.
Ironsky.net has taken their production process one step beyond just promoting their proposed film through the internet, but also using the internet to see what people might want in the movie. Now, this isn't some hobo soup method where the writers and producers will use everything, but instead they are looking into the insight of various armchair writers that might have extremely valid and creative ideas, thus allowing them to keep a steady flow of concepts that keeps their main staff from getting too married to concepts that might kill the film to viewers. Yes, there is a danger of getting piles of junk with those good ideas, but how often have we all gone to movies and said, "I could have improved so many parts of this if they had only asked"?
Finally you have the film short Pixels which came out onto the net not long ago.
While not an official project for promotion, this particular film gained such attention through networking and linksharing that Patrick Jean has been meeting with large media companies for possible future projects. Consider how this sort of short film would have to tour in expensive and/or obscure showings and contests in the past to get attention, while now we have a way to boost up those who we feel have talent just by talking about them in the right places.
The conclusion I came to, and what I hope others see, is this; web promotion does not have to be about stupid Facebook games or pages that require you to share with others for a "chance at a prize". These methods of internet promotion are in fact steeped in a mindset that you have to trick your audience into liking what you want to put out there. Instead, work to make something that people find compelling and interesting and trust them to do your work for you on a voluntary basis. In the sci-fi/fantasy genre this can be easy, because that target demographic is the one that is so highly intermeshed with the internet. But if other media start putting as much thought into gaining interest, then they might see a growth in quality projects coming from channels they never thought possible.
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