The magic carpet ride blasted off today on my adventures in YouTube, and I thought that it would be cool to share the experience with the cult following, of at least three people who aren’t related to me, that I seem to have developed over the past few weeks… plus my big sister. 
Full Disclosure: I work for Humana and this post is about a Humana sponsored contest. In light of this fact, the verbiage below is a compilation of my thoughts and experiences – giving you behind the scenes access into the life of a burgeoning internet celebutant (ME) – and not the opinions of my employer.
Insert Coin
So it all started when I was asked to be part of the team to create some social media around a Humana Games for Health contest back in April. Humana is giving away $10,000 in prizes to people who are able to come up with an awesome concept for a health inspired game. You can check out the details here, and I encourage you to participate.
We had a few brainstorming sessions and settled on making some videos because we really wanted to try our hand at the format. So far, I’ve been big into Twitter, and Facebook to a lesser extent, and not so much into the the world’s 4th most heavily visited web-site and second most heavily visited search engine…
I guess I thought YouTube was a fad, and was wrong about that. Just like I was wrong about Emilio Estevez’s career taking off again after Mighty Ducks 3…
Video Killed the Radio Star
I’ve been into video since college, where I participated in an English class (Blue Tube for all you Zoomies out there) that had me producing videos to make my friends laugh. Those were the days… Now, I’m getting into the potential for video to make fun healthy, or even cool mind you. There is another concept I’m throwing around the halls of the Innovation Center that I think is going to be pretty valuable to people, but I can’t get into details at the moment.
Anyway, after weeks of undulation @naimul came up with the Gangsta Rap concept, music, lyrics, and video storyboards because he requires creative control on all projects that he works on…
Just kidding.
Basically what went down was, the project team told Naimul to do what he does, we then let him do it and he did not disappoint. The result is an original music video that pays homage to a video game system that kicked off my life-long obsession with video games. I was fortunate enough to be cast as a back-up dancer and was told to break it down in front of a green screen, which I had never done before. So I decided to close my eyes and just let the beat take over.
Rhythm is a Dancer
The result was nothing short of awe inspiring in my opinion. And although I didn’t mean to, I really think that I inadvertently upstaged my colleagues throughout the video.
My wife, Carrie, however, wasn’t that impressed with my moves, surprisingly. She said that she has seen them all before as I’m usually experimenting around the house with prototype routines when she is trying to have serious adult conversations about important things.
Undaunted by the early negative feedback from my wife, and various other haters at work, I’m looking at this as a huge opportunity to get noticed by some big-shot Hollywood talent scout.
You can check out the video on YouTube here. And be sure to tell all of your Facebook friends and Twitter followers about it, if you like it. You can also watch it below to save a click, because @hallicious is all about the people:
All kidding aside, the purpose of the video, and this post, is to attract attention to the contest. Humana Games is serious about crowdsourcing a killer game idea that is fun and good for people, so if you have one be sure to submit it. If you know someone who is sitting on one be sure to let them know about the contest and the cash prizes.
