How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity

by Patricia Carlin

  No such luck? Well, as with cameras, it’s more important to find an editing tool that’s easy for you to use than it is to equip yourself with cutting-edge technology. If you can, get a hold of a free trial copy, or try out a friend’s version, before you buy. That’s what Guillermo del Toro does (I expect).

  Whatever program you end up using, the process is similar: You excerpt individual snippets from the mass of video that you created, then drag them around to create a sequence to your liking. You can drag, can’t you? Of course you can. Now, all you need to remember as you sculpt your masterpiece is what Hollywood moviemakers call “The Three K’s.”

  THE FIRST K: KEEP IT SHORT AND SWEET.

  Because of frequent browsing and tweeting, the viewers of your movie have the attention span of a gray squirrel. Their brains are unable to process more than a modicum of your cat’s antics, no matter how clever those antics may be. So your video absolutely must engage viewers quickly, give them a positive feeling, stimulate them to share the video via social media, and then fade to black before their attention span resets itself and they move on to a slideshow about celebrity adoptions. You must accomplish this mission in roughly sixty seconds.

  Impossible, you say? Au contraire, Pierre. Possible! Just follow this infallible structure:

  Arc of a Cat Video

  ACT I: SETUP

  Establish protagonist, his goal, and the main obstacle to success.

  Elapsed time: 1–10 seconds

  Example: Yarrcat, a scrawny tomcat in pirate getup, eyes treasure chest full of catnip on high shelf.

  * * *

  ACT II: CONFRONTATION

  Protagonist confronts obstacles, testing his resolve.

  Elapsed time: 10–45 seconds

  Example: Yarrcat attempts to scale rigging to top shelf. Shark hand puppet pushes him off.

  * * *

  ACT III: RESOLUTION

  Climax. Protagonist achieves goal, is permanently defeated, or otherwise resolves conflict.

  Elapsed time: 45 seconds–1 minute

  Example: Yarrcat leaps over shark, lands on treasure chest; cat and chest tumble to floor and contents spill everywhere. Approximately 10–20 cats dressed as sailors rush into scene and begin eating catnip. Trademark “YARRRRRR!” catchphrase displayed on screen in bright yellow letters.

  THE SECOND K: STYLE MATTERS, SO KEEP PILING IT ON

  As the cat video market becomes saturated, it is incumbent upon directors to push visual boundaries in order to create a distinct, memorable style. For example, the enterprising director of Henri, Le Chat Noir decided on a somber black and white video effect. His cat was nothing to sneeze at, and the cinematography was jejune at best. But that director took Golden Kitty prize at the first-ever Internet Cat Video Festival in 2012. Henri’s got an upcoming book, an endorsement deal with Friskies, twenty thousand Twitter followers, and a budding bromance with Christopher Walken. All because creator Will Braden went the extra mile and poured some style sauce onto the visual taco he’d created.

  It’s easy to add a signature look to your video by experimenting with the effects during the editing process. Consider these options:

  EFFECT RESULT

  black & white Hard-boiled detective cat

  sepia Western or Civil War cat

  soft focus Romantic lady cat

  water ripple Sea captain cat

  x-ray Doctor cat

  fish eye Stoned

  “You’re as sweet as curdled cream, sister.”

  “This litter box ain’t big enough for both of us.”

  “Kiss me! Kiss me meow!”

  “The sea is a cruel mistress, yar.”

  “I have bad news: it looks like someone removed your balls.”

  “Where does my tail end, and where does I begin?”

  And don’t forget about transitions between scenes. The simplest is a basic cut, letting one scene start the instant the previous scene ends. That’s jolting, though people will respect that you kept it real. But you might smooth the flow by inserting a fade or dissolve between scenes. There are many other possibilities, and each makes a statement: maybe a page curl (life is like a book!), clock wipe (tempus fugit!), a heart shape (awwwww), or a spinning cube (watch out! cube!). Choose carefully.

  THE THIRD K: ADD SOUND TO CREATE A VIDEO EVERYONE WILL REALLY LIKE.

  People sure love to hear. And music can add drama to your clip, so it’s tempting to grab toonage from your music library and create a rich, emotive soundtrack. But be careful: using copyrighted music can divert your cat’s riches toward paying off hefty legal fees. So what’s a poor cat videographer do? Well, you could try using the sound files that came with your editing software. Those are royalty free. I think. Actually, it’s hard to tell, so you should probably read the fine print that came with the software … you know, the little booklet that you threw out.

  Another option is to poke around online for music that’s available under a Creative Commons license, which generally means “free music.” (Technically it’s “some rights reserved,” so you should maybe see exactly what rights the artist is reserving before you go ahead and score that video.) If you have a budget to spend on sound—oooh, get a load of Mister Rockefeller over here—you can also buy royalty-free music and audio clips. You’ll pay a one-time fee for unlimited rights to the material. That’s not as good as free, but you’re likely to find higher quality music, since somebody’s actually being paid to compose it.

  Maybe what you need is a basic laugh track, or some missile ground bursts. You know what global system of interconnected computers you can search to find a wide variety of free sound effect clips? That’s right.

  Finishing Touches

  By now you’ve spent more hours with the video version of your cat than with the real thing. You even sent out for a pizza, then tried to make it arrive sooner by editing out the time in between. So why not push this thing out the door and reacquaint yourself with things you once took for granted, like sunlight and speaking in complete sentences?

  To quote Mexican Stereotype Cat, “Ay yi yi! Slow down, amigo!”

  To quote Mexican Stereotype Cat, “Ay yi yi! Slow down, amigo!” Maybe walk away from the screen and come back after a good night’s sleep. Invite a trusted friend or two to come by and preview the clip (they’ll have to sign a nondisclosure agreement first, of course). Be open to feedback.

  And finally, one last detail: You’ve got a tiny piece of intellectual property—and it needs protection. So brand your video like a cattleman marking his prize steer. Use Photoshop or Illustrator to create a simple logo—maybe a tiny kitten with dollar signs for whiskers?—and tuck it into the corner of the video frame. You should also superimpose the address for your cat’s website. You should also create your cat’s website.

  Ready to Upload!

  Well, the moment has finally arrived. You’re about to unleash a force that the world desperately wants but doesn’t even realize it needs. Why, it’s much like Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. But how, you ask, will the fruit of your labor reach the awareness of millions?

  I’ll answer that question with a question: YouTube, ever heard of it?

  Seriously, if you’ve never looked at YouTube, I’m not sure why you have a copy of this book. But, no judgment: maybe you were raised in one of those cults that forbids electricity in favor of beard growing and soap making. Maybe you just got out of prison. Whatever, Captain 2003.

  So, YouTube is this premier online video-sharing website. It enables everyone to share their video clips with everyone else. The right video—yours, if you didn’t screw it up somehow—can quickly gain millions of viewers and become a worldwide favorite. Perhaps I should have mentioned this sooner, but this is the premise that your entire attempt at becoming incredibly wealthy kinda depends on.

  You’ll need a YouTube account to upload videos, but signing up is easy. Just “log on” to your browser or whatever, go to YouTube.com, find the “New to YouTube” link,
and follow all the prompts. Once you have your account, you can finally UPLOAD and SHARE the fruit of your labors! Uploading is as easy as hitting the upload button and choosing the clip. Which is totally what you should do, right now.

  Stick a Fork in It, You’re Done! (Not Really.)

  Okay, video uploaded! Are you famous yet? Of course not. Because, surprise! There’s more work to do. It’s time to begin the crucial process of SHARING. This isn’t like what you did in kindergarten, when you had five apple slices and little Jimmy didn’t have any and Miss Grube made you give up two of yours and you got nothing in return. No, this version of sharing is more like grabbing people off the street and yelling in their ear until they cry. It’s the kind of aggressive, intrusive, uncompromising marketing campaign that people love, and it has five equally important prongs.

  Prong 1: Social media. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, uh … Insta-something. Don’t just invite groups of people to look at your videos—demand that they form a deep, emotional connection to this cat that can fill the void in their black and hollow hearts. Flood every social media platform you have access to and then join them all under a pseudonym and do it all over again.

  Don’t just invite groups of people to look at your videos—demand that they form a deep, emotional connection.

  Prong 2: Special-interest groups. Internet communities are nothing if not narrow and obsessive, so naturally there are online venues where people connect solely to swap opinions on all matters feline. Join and infiltrate these groups early, so that by the time you have a video to promote, you’ll have built up enough “cred” to be taken seriously. A few to check out are Catster (recent post: “I missed my cat on vacation and my friends ridiculed me for it.”), Catmoji (mission: “To make the Internet a better and happier place with cats.”), and Purrsonals (“Where cat lovers meet and greet.”).

  Prong 3: Web presence. If your videos are the crack, and YouTube is the crack house, then www.yourcatsnamegoeshere.com is the street corner where you, the crack dealer, dole out vials to those pitiful addicts. We’ll cover creating your own website or blog in the next chapter, but not in great detail, so don’t get your hopes up.

  Prong 4: E-mail. We all have friends and family who “go online” but lack the Web savvy to manage a Facebook profile or downvote a threadcrap. But those simple people shouldn’t be ignored. Send them e-mails with direct links to your videos, explaining in clear text that they must click on the links if they want some meaning in their lives. Encourage them to pass the links on. Follow up with more e-mails.

  Prong 5: Beyond YouTube. We’ve established YouTube as a video promised land for you and your cat. But don’t overlook other video-sharing sites that cater to the 0.1% of Internet users who don’t use YouTube. Examples include, oh, let’s say Break.com, Vimeo.com, Metacafe.com, Dailymotion.com, and Stupidvideos.com.

  How to Hijack a Search Engine

  If a cat plays a keyboard in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Who cares? The important point is this: That cat will not earn one single dime. So let’s get your cat out of the forest of obscurity and into the forest of famousness, where she belongs.

  Consider the typical cat-video enthusiast, trying to find the will to live until quitting time. Circumstances at the air traffic control room, 911 call center, or wherever this person works have allowed a few unsupervised moments. There’s no time to lose! He attempts to zoom in on his favorite diversion with a few quick searches:

  awesome cat video funny cats funniest cat video ever cat make feel good about self

  The search results come back in a flash. The man, in the mood for awesomeness or funniness, clicks according to his wont. Hilarity and/or awe ensues. Perhaps lives are saved. It’s that simple! But with so many cat videos on the Net, how can you ensure that your video will be the one that gets all up in the grill of that MF’s results page?

  The answer: keywords. Search engines (those things you google with) glom onto these words like a pickpocket elephant sneaking peanuts from the zookeeper’s trousers. YouTube and other video sites allow you to “tag” your video with whatever keywords you like. It’s totally legit to copy the keywords from other successful cat videos, so start there. Eventually you’ll want to come up with some on your own.

  TYPE OF KEYWORD EXAMPLE

  Verbs and action words jumps, destroys, cuddles

  Movie and TV titles Die Hard, Glee, Barton Fink

  Descriptors hilarious, awesome, hypercute

  Celebrities and famous names Lady Gaga, Aristotle, Homer Simpson

  Funny or surprising props or objects in the video sextant, teeter-totter, zune

  Not really words awwwwww, LOL, squeeeee

  Superlatives (the more superlative the better) fattest, funniest ever, funniest cutest ever

  Cats more famous than yours Grumpy Cat, Bub, Yoruichi Shihoin

  Current events presidential election, salmonella poisoning, Golden Globes

  Along with keywords, you’ll also have to give your video a headline, a description, and tags (which are like keywords, but different, but who cares). For God’s sake, the work goes on. Luckily, you can use your keywords in all of these slots. In fact, you should. Like the opposite of a three-year-old, the more you repeat something, the more attention a search engine will pay to it.

  Title: You’ll probably have only 100 characters to work with, so pack the title with as many keywords as will fit:

  L’il Wayne the cat flies like Hurricane Sandy into bathtub. Hysterical!

  Incredible kitten dances with glee after destroying origami shark. Awwwww!

  Fattest cat named Madonna devours Gingrich-shaped potato. Awesome!!!!!

  Courageous Egyptian cats protest invasion by Afghan puppy. Surprising!

  Kitty cuter than Maru cuddles Kate Middleton lookalike. Unbelievable!

  Description: Simply write a short entry that describes your video. Be as detailed and keyword dense as possible, with 800 words or so allotted. Include links to other videos, playlists, or your website.

  Tags: Use your keywords here. Check out what’s trending on Google, and see if you can apply any of those words as well. For example, if there’s a stock market crash … well, in your video a cat “crashes” on the couch after taking “stock” of the salmon that you brought home from the “market.” So it’s legit!

  White iPhone, broken screen

  Super Bowl

  Christina Hendricks, red- carpet meltdown

  CHAPTER 4

  The World Is Your Litter Box

  Congratulations! People everywhere are talking about your cat. Things are really happening and you’re shopping for a better cell phone to use in case someone actually returns your call. But as you ride that rocket to the top, don’t ever forget that there’s a younger, fresher kitty in a younger, fresher rocket right behind you. A cat who will happily throw you out of your rocket and watch your head explode in the vacuum of space just to take your place in the sun. Do you want to let that happen?

  Thought not. To maintain a tight grip on fame and prosperity, you’ll need a massive feline PR machine with more arms than an octopus. And each of those arms will need to sit in the driver’s seat of a different fame-propelled rocket ship. So I present to you:

  The Ten-Armed Octopus of Media Dominance

  1. The Internet. Just as you used social media and the World Wide Web to bring your incredible feline to the world’s attention, it’s imperative that you keep using it to wedge the underpants of your cat’s celebrity so deep into the world’s ass-crack that it can never be shaken loose. Your biggest weapon here is your cat’s website, ground zero for the wild-eyed cultists who are your cat’s biggest fans.

  How do you get a website, you ask? And how do you get that coveted www.mycatsname.com Web address? For crying out loud…Well, maybe I haven’t made it clear enough that this is a book for people who want to turn their cats into celebrities and then live off their fame forever, not a book for computer nerds who
se idea of a good time is to sit in the basement writing “programs” for “Web pages.” Surely you know someone who has her own Web page, so just ask that person what she did and then do that. The good news is that there are many services out there to help you build a website for free, albeit with limited options. Also, be aware that creating a website is a separate task from gaining use of the .com (or .net or .whatevs) domain name you want to use. If the name hasn’t been taken, you can pay a small annual fee to a domain name registrar, which makes that name yours and yours alone. Most website makers will do that for you, too. And, good lord, could this topic become any duller? Let’s move on.

  You’ll need to marshal your social media resources as well. Be sure your cat has a Facebook page, with no fewer than 200 friends. He should be liking and commenting frequently. Get him on LinkedIn, where he can network with other performing animals. Give the cat a blog so he (you understand I really mean you, right?) can post religiously about everything he does, every day. The blog and the Web page can be the same thing, and why wouldn’t they be?

  And your cat must have an active Twitter feed if he wants to stay relevant (unless Twitter’s been replaced by something else by the time you read this book, like 3-D printing). Keep an eye on what’s trending and get your cat’s point of view out there:

  #GayMarriage: Gay owners, straight owners, doesn’t matter, just feed me.