"Handshake" was directed by Jarred Foresman of Blacksburg Media and produced by Handshake Media, Incorporated.  It premiered on Handshake 2.0 on December 1, 2009.

The original music, Handshake, was written by Joseph Masciello and is available on iTunes.

The cast included Rob Martinez, Sean Moore, Kevin Allen and those from all over the world who shake hands when their paths happen to cross in Blacksburg, Virginia.

"Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts..."
- William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act 4, Scene 6

Anticipating the premiere of Handshake Media's corporate video on December 1, 2009, I've been reflecting on my history with short films and music videos.

When MTV launched in 1981, I saw my second music video.  I saw my first 10 years earlier before a now-forgotten feature film as an unforgettable short:  Skater Dater.

According to Wikipedia, "Skater Dater" won the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.  It was re-released in 1971 which is probably when I saw it.

Why do I think of Skater Dater when I think of Handshake Media's video which I previewed a few days ago?

Art with film and music.

You're invited to the 3-minute premiere of Handshake Media's corporate video at Bull & Bones Brewhaus and Grill, on Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 6:00 - 6:03 PM, EST. 

And you're invited to read more about the story of Handshake Media's video.

Blacksburg Media is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, the parent company of Handshake 2.0, and Handshake Media, Incorporated is a client of Blacksburg Media.

You're invited to the 3-minute premiere of Handshake Media's corporate video.

A 3-minute premiere?!  Yes!  Can you guess what kind of video it is?!

Thanks to Matt Vaughn of Bull & Bones Brewhaus and Grill, the YouTube version of the video will debut on the big screen in the billiard room and bar.

When? 6:00 PM to 6:03 PM, EST, on Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

We're buying the first drink for the first 50 people who join us to celebrate!

Jarred Foresman, director of the video and head of Blacksburg Media will be there, as will familiar faces you will recognize from the video.

We so hope you will come!

Here are the directions to Bull & Bones, located at First & Main on South Main Street in Blacksburg, Virginia.  We've written about the development of the video and we wrote about Bull & Bones when it opened to the public on New Year's Eve.

The only hint we'll give you about the content of the video is that it ends with this:

As I've written about in a series of posts, Blacksburg Media is making a corporate video for Handshake 2.0 to be released next week. I expressed my very rational (not!) reasons for initiating this project on my corporate blog.  I was drawn to waiting to view the video for the first time at its premiere. Z. Kelly Queijo, founder of SmartCollegeVisit, made a survey for us to help us seek guidance from others and to explore the issues of corporate use of social media - of which a YouTube video would be one medium - more fully.

• Should Anne preview her new Handshake 2.0 corporate video before the public sees it, or should she wait and view it for the first time with the public?
• What do you think? Anne wants to know. How risky is it to share branded media before the CEO has seen it or approved it?

Although I am one of the 2 who voted, "Yes, go for it!", the simple, elegant graph that results from a survey created with Google Docs made the way clear.

I previewed the video.

Were our corporate message and our corporate brand conveyed accurately enough that I could have seen the video for the first time at its premiere? Absolutely. I tweeted what I felt after viewing the video.

Before previewing, I wrote on my personal Facebook page:

I feel like previewing the video and asking for a change is like asking a poet to revise a sonnet to rhyme this word, not that one. I want to share the first reading, to share the unveiling with everyone else, like everyone else. Ah, well."

Did I see any moment in the video - any rhyme - that I would change? No, I did not.

Did I see wording in the opening text that I would like edited a tad to more specifically do the branding work I intended that I may not have conveyed fully during initial conversations?  Yes.

As a CEO responsible for the direction of my company, should I have previewed the video? Probably, yes.

I also wrote this on my Facebook page:

You know why I don't want to preview the video created by Jarred Foresman of Blacksburg Media... ? Because at the beginning of the project, I asked him to create art and let go.

He did. It's art.

From Anne Clelland, Handshake 2.0:

We are having a corporate video made by Blacksburg Media that will be released next week.  We've written about the process and are now considering the next step.  We want to host a premiere and invite all to come view the video in person before the next day's release.  I am torn.  I have not seen the video yet and to celebrate it, I want to view it for the first time with everyone at the premiere.  Yet, corporate responsibility calls and I wonder if I should view the video before it's released to make sure it matches my corporate message and vision.

What to do?

Z. Kelly Queijo made a cool survey for her own site, SmartCollegeVisit, and very kindly made one for Handshake 2.0, too!  I would love to run this question by you.

If you cared to leave a comment, we'd love to learn more about your answer. Thank you so much for participating. We'll share the results!

When I read about the expected explosion in the use of video content and extrapolated from that the need for companies to communicate via video, I opted to get this YouTube party started ASAP.

While I'm a fan of a good elevator pitch, and certainly a YouTube video can be used to convey a corporate message or to describe products and services, I was hoping to try something new.  We've experimented with videos (here is our Handshake 2.0 YouTube channel) and I like our results, but I'm no expert on video production and find the process tedious. Like other members of the Fem Den, I'm into intuitive and am not "less tolerant of complicated interfaces" - I'm not at all tolerant.  These days, if I take a video using my camera, I no longer even download it into Movie Maker to add an introductory slide or some other gizmo.  I suck it straight from my camera into YouTube and click "Save."

While I appreciate Lindsey Eversole taking this video for me, I think I look tense.  About my company and its products and services, I feel a complex coexistence of confidence and peace. I asked myself in what setting I most often felt both confident and peaceful...

Jarred Foresman of Blacksburg Media - who is creating a forthcoming corporate video for Handshake 2.0 because he is known for innovation - heard me when we met at The Weight Club:  "Help me say what I most want to say with my truest, best self."

He did.  Even with my sweaty self.  And that's still a very cool splash screen.

Handshake Media, Incorporated, the parent company of Handshake 2.0, is a sponsor of the New River Valley Triathlon.

While the brand identification clip in a film can be called a "logo" or an "introductory trademark" - the boy fishing on the moon for DreamWorks, for example, or the bouncing desk lamp for Pixar - branding YouTube's software-based delivery of short films with a several-second splash screen - a term Blacksburg Media uses - seems just right.

We're excited about Handshake 2.0's upcoming splash - a video created by Blackburg Media, scheduled to debut in early December.  We've written a series of posts about the developing project.

Blacksburg Media has created a draft of the splash screen it will use for our video.

We asked Jarred Foresman of Blacksburg Media about the value of a splash screen. "It’s all branding," he answered.  "To keep up in a digital age, companies will need more digital assets. Having a re-appearing clip at the beginning or end of all of a company's video assets helps remind people who they are watching."

I respect the power of branding through video assets, I do. And we've written about the expected explosion in the use of video content.  But Handshake 2.0's splash screen?  It's just plain cool.

According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, "By 2013, the sum of all forms of video (TV, VoD, Internet video, and P2P) will exceed 90 percent of global consumer IP traffic."

Cisco predicts an "explosion of video content."

What does this mean for businesses who want to communicate and engage with customers and clients now and in the future?  Might be a good time to get on YouTube.

We selected Blacksburg Media to make a video for Handshake 2.0, scheduled to debut on Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

See why?

Blacksburg Media is featured on Handshake 2.0 in our Company Index.

Remember Jarred Foresman of Blacksburg Media, whom I dubbed Digital Media Production Rock Star?  In association with Blue Ocean Marketing and Consulting, he did the video production work on New River Valley of Virginia and VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit.

I am absolutely delighted to announce that we have contracted with Blacksburg Media to create a video for Handshake 2.0.  I met with Jarred, explained what I wanted, and got a secret link to a YouTube video with rough footage - called "concept" footage - with a demo of effects and ideas.  I was enchanted. Handshake.  Check mailed.

My original idea was to ask Jarred if I could share the concept videos as the project progressed, but now I'm enjoyiing the building drama and want to reveal the final version for you at the launch, planned for the first of December.

I do have Jarred's permission to share a few excerpts from screenshots of the first concept video.  He's pictured above from a cool black and white sequence.  And this just made me laugh and I had to share it.

Can you tell what the video will be about?!

Jarred Foresman displays the next generation of digital media production equipment for Blacksburg Media, the digital media company he founded which specializes in corporate, business, professional, and event videos.