James Kotecki (SFS ‘07) bought his first webcam in late January, so that he and his longtime girlfriend, Emily Freifeld (American ’08) could make their online chats a little more visual.
Once he had a camera, though, Kotecki turned his attention to a different kind of Internet filmmaking: widely-viewed humorous YouTube videos critiquing presidential primary candidates’ campaign videos.
With a little video-making experience, a $30 microphone, a $60 camera, and the “pencil puppets” he fashions from yellow pencils and paper cut-outs of his subjects’ faces, Kotecki sits in his desk chair in his high-ceilinged LXR single and offers the candidates advice.
Besides the “pencil puppets,” other gimmicks Kotecki employs are occasional “ding!” noises and his own personal awards for the candidates—he recently awarded former Senator from Alaska Mike Gravel the “Oldest” award. Gravel hasn’t held political office “since the year the first Dolorian rolled off the assembly line,” Kotecki says in a video he made on Monday evening, paying homage to the Back to the Future III poster he has on his wall.
“I hit on the fact that no one was talking about what candidates are doing on YouTube,” Kotecki said, who has so far made 46 videos since he first posted on Jan. 27.
After being featured on YouTube’s “News and Politics” homepage on March 4, Kotecki’s video “‘08 Candidates on YouTube: Talking to Us or Talking with Us?” was viewed 53, 345 times.
The exposure catapulted Kotecki into the national spotlight: the Washington Post featured Kotecki in an article about candidates’ use of web videos.
“The candidates are trying to reach young people via the Internet. Well, here’s a young person talking back,” Jeff Jarvis, Entertainment Weekly founder and blogger, wrote in an e-mail. “What’s wonderful about what James does is that he gives consultation to the campaigns and it’s worth more to them—if they listen—than the advice they get from high-powered, expensive, experienced political consultants.”
So what is Kotecki advising? He tells candidates that the best online video is about a specific issue in which the candidate talks directly to viewers within a short time span (Kotecki tries to keep his videos under two minutes.) He criticizes candidates, such as Rudy Guiliani, and Newt Gingrich, who use news clips, and long speeches for their videos.
Dennis Kucinich is the first and only candidate to respond directly to Kotecki. Kucinich thanks him, makes Kotecki a “pencil puppet” and calls him his “adviser.” Though not exactly the back-and-forth policy debate Kotecki envisions for the future of YouTube video communications, he was thrilled enough with Kucinich’s response to post another video in which he uncharacteristically leaves his chair and dances in celebration.
Freifeld, who has dated Kotecki for almost five years, said that she is proud of his accomplishments.
“I’ve watched all of [the videos] at least once. My family has watched all of them. It could become very big because it’s a niche,” Freifeld said.
Kotecki declined a job offer from the First Manhattan Consulting Group three days ago so that he could stay in D.C. and continue his job with the Cypress Group, which, he said, will be flexible enough so that he could continue his video-making part-time. Kotecki said he would pursue it as a career, if possible.
“I actually want to buy a real camera,” Kotecki said.
