KickLight: Thinking Outside the (Video) Box

Here's a nifty way to enhance online video. KickLight enables you to add synchronized visual elements (“Kicks”) in a separate field adjacent to the video itself. Wherever that video is ultimately sent or embedded, the Kicks go with it.

Kicks can be any form of digital information - as simple as text or still image or another video, or as complex as a miniature application. For example, a video of the “10 Greatest Yankees Baseball Homeruns” might include a dynamic Kick that presents the up-to-the-minute score of the most recent game played and tickets to an upcoming game -- irrespective of when the video is actually viewed.

A kicklight is the actual combination of a video with one or more Kicks. For the technically minded, a kicklight is a Flash-based video player that synchronizes images along the video timeline. Despite the tremendous amount of information that is potentially relevant to each video, online videos are currently stuck “inside the box” and fail to make connections outside of themselves.

So, as online video becomes increasingly prevalent, the video-based Internet is inherently becoming less “connected” and is falling far short of its potential. Kicks enable the creators of online video to link their work to the Internet’s entire breadth and depth of relevant information. Just like hyperlinks, this capability can be used for creativity, community, or commerce - it’s up to you.

Here's a 30-second demo -- the Kick is underneath the main video:

You can find actual Kicklight examples here.

Kicklight.com offers producers the ability to make a simple do-it-yourself Kick, utilize our tools to make more complex “Quick Kicks,” or make your own using any tools you want (like PhotoShop) and upload them as .jpgs. Ultimately, you’ll be able to obtain Kicks from other members of the community and from KickLight’s own libraries. For example, if you’re making a kicklight from a snowboarding video, you might make your own title Kick, borrow a Kick from our snowboarding library, purchase for pennies a Kick from an snowboarding Kick specialist, make an Amazon Quick Kick, and borrow a Kick provided by a snowboarding manufacturer.

Applications like these will not only add more functionality to videojournalism, but also help distinguish the medium from what's available on TV or in movie theaters. All that's required is the creativity and imagination of videojournalism producers to find great uses for this technology by literally thinking outside of the box.