Each day that passes people use viral marketing more and more to share info about projects and ideas. A simple post, message or tweet can spread like wildfire generating excitement and buzz. The beauty of this word of mouth advertising is that it is free.
Images of the interface and how it looks on the phone.
"You Gotta See This!" is an app for your iPhone or iPod Touch made to share environment or atmosphere with your friends or followers you have on various social networks. With only a few steps you can capture a collage of the event you want to share and easily upload the image to Twitter, Facebook or email it and all without leaving the app.
Dark Table collage.
Using the gyroscope in the iPhone 4 or 4th generation iPod touch, "See This" determines the camera orientation while you record and creates spacial collages from the images you take. Moving the camera slowly in 3D space, the app makes a collage of images similar to "panography".
Image of the instructions and page to send images.
Ease of Use
I don't want to over emphasize how easy to use this app is but, this is so straight forward I can't imagine anyone having trouble with this app. Basically you open the app, record the image and then send, share or save the image. There is a technique for capturing the most usable images by stretching out your arm and rotating while swiping through the scene. The image is constantly being recorded from the time you press record until you stop recording. (There is a limit based on the amount of available memory you have.) Moving the camera around slowly provides the sharpest images and the app has a nifty feature that shows when you are swiping too fast. Ultimately the app's goal is to make cool images so, it may take a few tries to get exactly what you want. But, sometimes something happens that you are not expecting, and that can be very visually interesting.
Screen capture of what image looks like on twitter.
Depth of Options
Apps like You Gotta See This! are made to do basically one thing. This app makes collages. There are numerous variations based on the six themes that are included and the way you capture the specific image. This gives you plenty of options to satisfy your tweeting collage needs. Admittedly some of the themes are better than others. In my opinion, the Magic Light theme is a little too psychedelic star burst but, the Light and Dark table themes look very decent. Other options to take advantage of are the ability to lock the focus and exposure and manually turn the flash on or off. This is where the way you capture comes into play in shaping the look of the images.
Light Table collage.
Performance
See This! perform fairly well. The upsides is that this app is very quick generating the collages and the final product is decent when saved, then emailed (although it is slightly lower quality when exported directly through the app). The downside is the app crashed at least 4 times during my preparation for this review, which is excessive for an iPhone app. It did not freeze my phone but, it did kick me off. I was able to get back on and start from where I left off but, this is a problem that should be addressed in the future. Reliability is key.
Polaroid Stone collage.
Value
What can I say? This app is $1.99. It is more then worth it. Technology has come so far in the last few years that we take for granted how cool this stuff can be. It's fast and easy. It is yet another way to share creatively. I could see in the future using this to show glimpses of the atmosphere of sets or characters in costume without giving too much away. This is a great way to update and tease for a project. $1.99 is a very reasonable cost to facilitate viral marketing.
Wall of Tiles collage.
Final Comments In closing, I want to bring up something that sometimes falls by the wayside. If you are at this website it means you are an aspiring filmmaker. We all like to create something and sometime we are so worried about our projects, so busy we forget to take it all in. The next time you are shooting stop, look around, and enjoy it. Take a photo and share with your friends and family. Feed off that energy. Take advantage of of how small and connected our world has become. Then get back to work.
Ease
of Use
9.0
Depth
of Options
6.0
Performance
9.0
Value
vs. Cost
10.0
Overall Score
8.0
After graduating film school, Nathan Eckelbarger soon finished his first feature film as a Director of Photography. Having lived and worked in both Chicago and Los Angeles, Nathan has worked for 20th Century Fox, CBS, MTV, VH1 and many others. He has credits in both the camera and art departments on feature films, TV, music videos and commercials. His production company Neggwerkz (that was co-founded with Director Craig McDaniel) is beginning production on its original material in the near future.
