By Matt Silva, BFA Motion Pictures and Television
I want to say very quickly that COVID-19 is an extremely serious matter and should not be treated lightly. Unless you’re living under a rock, you should know this deadly virus is spreading all over the world and we all have our part to play in slowing the spread and stopping it. If you can, please stay home, stay safe, and take care of yourself and your family during this time. That being said, here are three video sharing sites you can use to upload your creative content.
If you want to know how to make edits, click here for more information!
Vimeo
Vimeo is a great site to share your high-resolution videos. It’s a place where people can share and archive films, commercials, or documentaries they’ve made. It’s popular among film students and video editors, and is a great site to use for your demo reels whether you are a director, editor, actor, or anyone who wants to be part of the film industry.
What makes this better than other sites like YouTube and Flickr is the fact that you can upload high-quality videos, anything from 4K to 8K, as well as content that’s movie-length. However, all good things come with a price.
Vimeo can get extremely expensive and its biggest downfall is the subscription to upload video. Vimeo is a professional video sharing site with added benefits of sharing your account with multiple people, having storage from 250GB to 7TB (for large, high-quality video files) and being able to access other Vimeo movies and videos that are locked. It’s the price to pay to be professional. Vimeo isn’t for everybody, but if you’re interested in uploading high-quality films, this is the best site to do so.
YouTube
Let’s be honest, we use YouTube religiously, right? When we open up our phones or go on our laptops, we always pull up YouTube, sometimes even just for background noise. I know on my phone, YouTube takes up 32% of my screen time. It’s the app I use the most.
The site has over 2 billion users. You can produce as much content as you want, you don’t have to pay for storage space and you don’t have to wait very long for your video to be uploaded. The only time you’ll pay is if you want to download or save videos, listen in the background while you’re on your phone, and watch YouTube Red, which is their version of Netflix exclusive shows.
The best part about YouTube is that you can upload 4K videos as big as 128GB, which means you can upload anything from five minutes to 12 hours. Unfortunately, because of YouTube’s continuously changing algorithm, your video might not be viewed as much but if you really want to get your content out there, I will be publishing a future blog post on gaining a following and how to follow certain trends, so be ready for that.
In the meantime, here’s my YouTube channel if you’re interested in seeing the kind of videos I edit!
TikTok
TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular social media channels. It surpasses YouTube on the social media section of the App Store and has been the number one social media app for two years. People of all ages are on the platform, from high school kids to lawyers to police officers to nurses to celebrities, actors, YouTubers, and even pornstars.
What can you find on TikTok? Almost anything and everything, except for NSFW content. From dancing videos to aesthetic, cityscape videos to comedy skits. One of the biggest TikTok creators is a 15-year-old girl named Charlie D’Amelio, who makes a lot of creative dancing videos and has well over 41 million followers. In the same way, PewDiePie is the king of YouTube, Charlie is the queen of TikTok.
But why is TikTok considered one of the best social media sharing sites? In short, it’s a phenomenon. TikTok has something called a For You Page or FYP. It’s the first page you see when you open up TikTok and get to scroll infinitely to watch TikToks from different creators. What makes this a phenomenon is that you can post almost anything, add #FYP and if it’s the right time, you can be an overnight hit. With the right video, following the necessary trends, making something extremely funny or heartwarming, it will be a guaranteed hit. If Charlie was able to gain 2 million followers in two months, you can too.
