Comments on: Green Gets Glossy Sheen With Zaproot

By: Five Questions With…7Robot CEO Sarah Szalavitz: Video «

Five Questions With…7Robot CEO Sarah Szalavitz: Video « — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:34:38 +0000

[...] content acquisition for the now-defunct Veoh and produced the environmentally-themed video podcast Zaproot, among other web video shows; today, she consults for a variety of entities including Next New [...]

By: Marshall Kirkpatrick

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:23:27 +0000

I’ll be sure to pass it on to the “millions of families” I know who can relate to the sentiment “I’d never f* a hippy!” This kind of pitch is liable to soften my cynicism re the usually unspoken and tired “sex sells” videoblogging approach. I’d never advocate a return to the days of the TV news patriarch, but I think there is plenty of proof throughout history that intelligent, grounded people can be successful in visual media. Just in case anyone’s forgotten that.

Re liberal women in video – perhaps that “I’d never f* a hippy” line is the best way to communicate environmentalism’s new respectability. Now who will tell Amy Goodman?

By: eric : Real World Green

eric : Real World Green — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:15:41 +0000

If you’d like to see the opposite of ZapRoot – meaning a 44 yr old who is losing his hair talk about practical things you can do to reduce your impact on the earth

check out Real World Green on iTunes or http://www.realworldgreen.com

By: Bill Cammack

Bill Cammack — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 08:19:15 +0000

I didn’t mind the production values, though I do see your point that some people will see ZapRoot as being too highly produced not to be the ‘front’ for some sort of entrepreneurial interest.

I’ll be interested to see how the viewers react to jump-cutting a small character over a moving greenscreen background.

I’ve done my own jump-cut videos against a static background or even a static background with changing depths. I’ve seen Damien Somerset’s work on “Ask A Ninja”, which is jump-cutting over one solid color and in a confined space. Of course, Ze Frank utilized jump-cuts… again, in a confined space with a certain size/space/distance relationship between the character and the camera.

What I haven’t seen… and maybe this is the next big thing… is jump-cutting over a moving background where the character’s so far away from the camera that they completely physically disappear from one location and arrive somewhere else on the screen several times within the same sentence.

Having said that, I think the writing’s fascinating and they have the niche subject matter to create a very popular show. They definitely have the elements of that formula that’s worked so well for other video blog shows. ZapRoot seems ambitious and edgy… Definitely one to keep an eye on in the coming months.