Reason being, there are so many Social Media channels out there and the documentation that goes with each can be very lengthy and cumbersome (yes I spelt it right). So instead, I thought I’d address some of the very easy-to-do but easily missed functions of some of the more popular Social Media networks. Starting with Facebook.

Facebook can be one of the easiest Social Media channels to get into for your business, and yet the potential to get things wrong can be quite significant! Thousands of New Zealanders do – there are some horrific examples of Facebook Pages out there and there seems to be an absolutely sinful approach by some more traditional business owners in that they take extra care over getting their newspaper advert absolutely perfect … and then think it’s fine to throw any old/incorrect/mis-spelt/marketing-law-disgracing content at a Facebook Page!

If you’re one of those people that do actually care about your Facebook Page, here are 3 very simple tips to help you to get the most from it (update: plus 2 more advanced ones thrown in for fun).

1. Check Your Hidden Facebook Posts

Facebook kindly attempts to remove spam or irrelevant comments from the Wall of your Facebook Page. While this is often spot on, sometimes it’s a little over eager and can get it wrong. Despite this, I’d still rather Facebook erred on the side of caution rather than have spam comments displaying on my Page.

When Facebook marks a comment as spam, it moves it to a ‘Hidden Posts’ section which you can access by clicking on the link under your profile photo. If you see a comment that is not actually spam, you can choose to un-hide it so that it displays on your Wall again.

Typically you should be checking the hidden posts section at least once a week. If you have an active community on Facebook and your fans like to comment a lot, you’ll obviously need to check it a lot more – at least 3 times a week. Facebook users can get quite frustrated if they believe you are the one deleting their comments – as they are unlikely to realise they have been automatically hidden by Facebook.

What makes a hidden post?

Facebook doesn’t make it entirely clear as to what factors go into the decision to hide a comment. But some suggestions are:

• The comment contains links to suspect websites or to Facebook Pages that Facebook deems to be irrelevant or poor value
• The comment has been marked as abuse by another Facebook user
• The Facebook user has a history of abuse complaints against them and their comments already marked as spam by other Facebook users
• A combination of a badly written comment coupled with a low quality Facebook user profile (e.g. no details, no profile photo)

A chap called James Noble (of JamesTNoble.com) walks you through the process to deal with these hidden posts and discusses some of the reasons in his video:

2. Run Facebook Promotions (But Follow The Guidelines!)

As long as you have linked to your Facebook Page from your website (and perhaps in your printed marketing material and other marketing channels) the number of fans your Facebook Page has will naturally increase.

This can be quite a gradual process and is one that will hugely benefit from some well-run promotions that are targeted towards liking  your Page in some way.

Choosing a prize can be tricky. It really comes down to the value that you place on a Facebook fan and also the type of fans you’d like to get. One tried and tested way to get ‘mainstream’ fans is through dangling an iPad in front of them. I hate jumping on the bandwagon with this one but it really does seem to get results when done well.

However, to get more valuable fans – fans which will stay around longer, contribute to the value of your Page and even (heaven forbid) actually become your customer – you could try offering a Page which is significantly related to your business. Do you sell gardening products? Offer a garden make-over or a garden power-tool as a prize. Do you sell beauty products? How about offering a spa package or a voucher? It’s easy to see how these would reflect the sort of fans that you would accumulate through the promotion.

But here’s the key thing. Read the Facebook Promotional Guidelines and follow them by the letter! In fact, New Zealand-based Social Media Strategist, Cate Owen, has written a blog post that translates these guidelines into something that’s a lot easier to grasp in her post Facebook Competitions: Don’t Run One Till You’ve Read This. So read that too!

You may look at other promotions on Facebook and think that there are plenty of people running a simple ‘Like us and you’re in the draw’ promotion (that in its most basic format is against the rules), but the reality could be that there is some other functionality behind that process for their Facebook Page that means they are doing what they need to in order to comply with the guidelines.

It could also be the fact that they really are running a promotion that’s against the guidelines, in which case … more fool them! Facebook keeps a surprisingly long history of information related to your Facebook Profile and Facebook Page and you wouldn’t want to be the guy that set up that promotion when your Facebook Page is taken down, losing its 50,000 fans in a heartbeat!

If in doubt, run the promotion on your own website or Twitter account.

3. Claim Your Username

This is a very basic one but still one that many businesses miss. Your username is the text that appears after the final slash in ‘www.facebook.com/’. Without claiming this, the website address for your Facebook Page will be something horrendous, like www.facebook.com/pages/my-company-name-ltd-bollocks/012343543321321/.

If you claim your username, you can change this to something that is far more appealing to the eye, memorable and, last but not least, easy to write on your business card! For example: facebook.com/nzraw (don’t judge me by that – I don’t really have time to use it!), facebook.com/PAKnSAVE, facebook.com/brb, facebook.com/ASBBank, etc.

You can use fullstops in your username if you like. It’s also worth noting that the capital letters that you use will display in the final URL (as in the example for ASB) so feel free to match them to your branding. Some companies even make their username their website address – as is the case for facebook.com/Stuff.co.nz and (partly) facebook.com/NZScom.

To claim your username now, you’ll need a minimum of 25 fans (a great feature from Facebook – stops people squatting on all sorts of usernames) and then all you do is make sure you’re logged in as an admin of your Page and visit facebook.com/username. Just make sure you’re in the box that creates a username for your Page and not your personal profile! Once you set it, you can’t go back!

4. Post Engaging Updates 2 or 3 Times a Week

Ok I said I was only going to do 3 tips but this one really is fundamental if you’re going to be running a Facebook Page.

First off it’s important to realise that your Facebook Page is very different from your personal profile. You can’t simply post every time you find something interesting on the web, such as this video or those (bloody) photos.

Not only should you refrain from posting content that has no relation to your business, but you should also refrain from over-posting. Facebook’s own strategists recommend posting just 2 to 3 times a week. Any more than that and you risk ‘spamming’ your followers and causing them to unlike your Page. A marketing manager once balked at this and couldn’t understand how this was spamming. After all, we were posting the updates on our own wall. Remember – your Facebook Page posts will (hopefully!) be appearing in your fan’s news feeds. Take over their news feed with your frequent posts, therefore blocking out content from other Pages and friends that they are connected to, and they won’t thank you for it!

Secondly, it’s amazing how much your results will improve if you simply encourage participation from your audience. Not in the form of ‘If you like the sun today, hit like!’ While comments that ask people to like the comment will actually work in some scenarios if you’re onto it, in examples like this it’s totally transparent and reeks of desperation!

Instead, aim to more-often-than-not end your update with a question, or even an amusing challenge of some kind. For example, this update:

“We have a great special on tents this week. Get down to your local store for more details.”

… may receive some likes (people like the fact that you have a special on tents so ‘liking’ your status feels natural) but it’s unlikely to receive any comments or shares – it’s a combination of likes, comments and shares that will get your comment into more news feeds and in front of more people.

Instead, try:

“Now that summer’s here, we’ve dropped our prices on tents! Where’s your favourite place to go camping?”

or

“We have some big specials on tents for you this week! What 3 things can you not live without on your camping holiday?”

These comments have a much better chance of receiving some replies plus you’ll even be encouraging your fans to share some great tips with each other, thereby improving your Facebook community and boosting the value of your Facebook Page.

Note: It’s worth being careful when you’re posing these questions. Have a good think about what would happen if someone posted a dodgy answer. It may only take one person to post ‘that’ comment before everyone else joins in and your comment has to be removed for the sake of decency! For example, it might not be best to ask “Who would you most like to share a tent with?”

5. Avoid Deleting Comments

Ok screw it. I’ve already broken my 3 tip rule so I may as well do it properly. This one is quite important too. Don’t delete comments unless they meet one or more of these criteria:

• They contain offensive language (base the level on the audience of your Facebook Page)
• They insight violence or hatred towards any group or race
• They contain offensive images or links to objectionable content
• They contain obvious spam or irrelevant advertising

In the event of the above, it’s a good idea to have a separate tab with your ‘Facebook Policy’ clearly displayed, such as this one for PAK’nSAVE. You can always refer to that if a user posts again to ask why their comment was removed. This is also a good place to put your promotion guidelines statement juuuust in case you forget it for any promotion you run.

If you ever delete a comment that is simply a complaint about your store, products or services … shame on you! In some ways, these type of comments are fantastic for your business. They give you a unique opportunity to address an issue that may be affecting hundreds of others. Not only that, but they give you the ability to flex your customer-service-muscles and demonstrate to the world how well you handle complaints!

Here’s a secret tip though for those of you lucky enough to have a solid and loyal fan base. If the complaint is quite petty or ill-conceived, try leaving it for a short while. You may find that other fans will jump on board in your defence! Either way, end by leaving a comment to say that you’re sorry they’ve had a bad experience with your product or service, and ask them to contact you by email or fill in the contact form on your website so that you can address the issue. Others viewing this conversation will then see that you have addressed the issue.

Simply delete the comment and you could put yourself at risk of a whole world of trouble! The user will not be happy that you have dismissed them and will more than likely follow up with far more negative comments. Ban them and they’ll simply rant about your business on their own Facebook Profile. Their friends and family may even then start commenting on your wall in defence of their friend, unleashing a whirlwind of problems for you!

So there we go.  I hope those have helped you in some way. And apologies for the whole ’3 tips’ thing. Think of it as buy 3 tips get 2 tips free ;)

Like much of the city, I was at work when it happened and it was definitely another one that required getting under the desks. It was a 5.8 that hit us, 8km deep and approximately 20km NE of Lyttelton.

Driving home, it was obvious that liquefaction was going to be a problem again as the roads were just starting to flood in a few patches. Traffic lights were also out along Travis Road and Anzac Drive, making the drive home that bit more interesting.

Orion say that power has been out for over 26,000 people but hopefully will be back within hours rather that weeks and days like last time, thanks to their new set up. So long as the aftershocks start dying down – we’ve had 3 decent ones since I started writing this so that’s about 1 per paragraph!

Back in Aranui, liquefaction was apparent on the roads but didn’t really look like it was going to give us too many problems. Until the second big aftershock hit – a 6.0 about 80 minutes after the first, 6km deep and 10km north of Lyttelton. This one was big enough to break whatever barriers were holding the liquefaction back and the streets started to fill with that far too familiar grey silt.

Christchurch Earthquake Dog knows the rules. Thanks mate. Where am I supposed to go then?

Back in Sept 2010 (was it that long ago??) and both February and June of 2011, I’d taken a few casual photos of the liquefaction but no video. The photos drew the attention of the National Geographic (they’re making a documentary right now which includes some of my pics) and a professor of geo-activity (or something) in the US. He was keen to use the photos in a paper he was writing and said (and I more-or-less quote) “I’ve been to substantial earthquakes all over the world for the past 30 years and I haven’t seen liquefaction anywhere near as bad as it is in Christchurch. You guys are pretty interesting right now!”

In conversation with him, he was pretty keen to see if I had any video footage and seemed very disappointed to hear that I didn’t. So, just for that guy and all of the other non-Christchurch residents that aren’t yet sick of the sight of it, here’s some exciting footage of the new mess that’s being created in my street right now!

Stay safe Christchurch … and Merry Christmas!

Update 23-12-11 plus an hour or two:

Earthquake call centre line is now live: 03 941 8999. Further update on the news at 10:30pm tonight.

Update 24-12-11:

It’s the morning of the 24th. Christmas Eve. I’m tired! We’ve had approximately a zillion aftershocks since god-knows-when-o-clock. Check out the Twitter feed below from @nz_quake to view the latest 20 aftershocks.

Paradise is not everyone’s idea of fun. If you’re strictly the shopping/sipping latte type, go somewhere else. Unless…and it’s a significant ‘unless’…you enjoyed Lord of the Rings and are keenly awaiting The Hobbit. The area has several Rings locations, including Lothlorien Forest and The Slopes of Amon Hen, and has just been used by Peter Jackson for scenes in The Hobbit.

Queenstown to Glenorchy

Meanwhile, back to your Queenstown hotel and the start of your journey. Ideally, you’ll have a rental car at your disposal. Make sure your camera is handy, and that you’re not craving caffeine (there’s nothing available for the next 47 kilometres). Then set off on the first stage of your journey to Paradise: the Glenorchy road.

This is one of the most scenic drives in New Zealand, no question. Theoretically, it takes 30-40 minutes. Realistically, with so many beautiful views to admire, it’ll take a bit longer. But who cares?

The road winds along steep hillsides by the lake’s edge and, with many twists and turns, provides constantly changing, mind-blowing views. Cecil Peak and Walter Peak, two historic sheep stations, come into view on the opposite shores just 5km along the way. A third, Mount Nicholas, is visible nearer Glenorchy.

Eleven kilometres from Queenstown is Twelve Mile Delta – Ithilien Camp in Lord of the Rings, and, 3kms on there’s a chance to test the intriguing ‘seiche’ at Bob’s Cove. This is the 20-centimetre change in lake level, and it happens more often here than anywhere else. In Queenstown, it’s something like every 27 minutes; at Bob’s Cove, it’s more like every five. Stand a stick or stake in the water, then wait and see. If you’re in no hurry, there’s a nice nature walk with resident bellbirds and tui and an old limestone kiln. You don’t hear bellbirds everywhere in this country, so listen up.

Mt Nicholas Station comes into view as you approach one of the road’s highest points, around 19km from Queenstown. Another four to five kilometres on, you’ll encounter maybe the best sight of all: the lake’s head and three islands. Magnificent.

All too soon, you’ll cruise into Glenorchy: the ‘Gateway to Paradise’ – literally. Stop for coffee or lunch in this small, friendly village; it’s the only place where anything is available. Glenorchy is a centre for outdoor activities, and the starting point for some great walking tracks.

Glenorchy to Paradise

Leave Glenorchy on the Glenorchy-Paradise Road. Now you’re just 20km from Paradise! The first eight kilometres are sealed, but the last 12 are not. After crossing the Rees River and travelling through farmland you’ll enter Mt Aspiring National Park and a stretch of hauntingly beautiful beech forest, familiar to all Rings fans as Lothlorien. Soon you’ll see jewel-like Diamond Lake and ford the little Jordan River. You are now officially in Paradise, with views of romantic Arcadia homestead (not, repeat not, open to the public) – the star of several films. The area itself appeared as Path Galen in the Rings trilogy.

So…you’ve arrived. What do you do now? Simply enjoy being in Heaven on Earth. What more could you want?

Footnote: If you don’t want to drive to Paradise, check with your Queenstown hotel for tour options.

Perhaps to avoid the mad scramble for vanity URLs (i.e. website addresses that contain the brand name such as facebook.com/nzraw), Google appear to be identifying pages in the same way that they identify personal profiles – through a long string of unique numbers rather than any text content (e.g. plus.google.com/117301083128227203723).

This means that a user won’t be able to guess the website address of a Google+ Page which obviously places more emphasis on search and on linking to the Google+ Page from your own website and other social media content. Obviously both of those benefit Google in a big way.

Video Introduction to Google+ Pages

Google’s video introduction to the Google+ Pages service is not surprisingly highly people and ‘community’ focused, narrated by a business owner. Check it out:

Alongside the video, Google say:

In life we connect with all kinds of people, places and things. There’s friends and family, of course, but there’s also the sports teams we root for, the coffee shops we’re loyal to, and the TV shows we can’t stop watching (to name a few).

So far Google+ has focused on connecting people with other people. But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands—so today we’re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide.

It’s great to see that the All Blacks marketing guys are already onto it and have created a page for their supporters. It’ll also be interesting to see if there’s any confusion around what exactly is the equivalent of a Facebook ‘fan’. As you can see in the screenshot below, the All Blacks page has 230 followers so far, but only 63 +1′s. The two are quite different – you can +1 a page simply to show your support and recommend it to your own community, but to actually subscribe to updates from a page you will need to add it to a circle.

This is quite different to Facebook Pages where ‘liking’ a page connects you to that business as one of their Facebook followers.

Enhancing Search with Google+ Page Results

Google look set to enhance Google search further by incorporating Google+ Pages into their search results, possibly in a similar way to that they incorporate Google+ profiles through their authorship tag. For Pages they’ll be using a service called ‘Google+ Direct Connect‘. This video shows it in use.

They say:

For websites that qualify, Direct Connect makes it easy for users to find your Google+ page from Google Search.

Through linking back to your Google+ Page from your website and using a ‘publisher’ tag, you increase the chance of your Google+ Page appearing in search suggestions in the future, as in the video, although this is likely to be the case only for the more popular Google+ Pages.

Creating a Google+ Page

Searchers will also be able to ‘shortcut’ to a Google+ Page by adding a plus sign to the beginning of their search term, like ‘+foursquare’ to search for the foursquare Google+ Page from Google.com. This looks to be a direct response to the fact that many people just search for ‘facebook’ rather than enter the website address ‘www.facebook.com’ (we’re pretty lazy huh?). Google say on their blog post that this currently works for the likes of +Google, +Pepsi and +Toyota, but my own testing on Google.com proves otherwise. Could just be a US thing for the moment.

Google+ also encourage you to link back to your Page through providing options for a Google+ badge or Google+ icon. Interestingly in doing this, they appear to be re-branding! While the +1 button is the same, their old black image doesn’t look like it’s in use any more. It’s been replaced by a simple red icon with a white ‘g’ and plus symbol. This also appears as the favicon for the website.

It’ll be great to see what Google+ do with this service and how well it takes off in direct competition with the highly successful Facebook Pages.

Oh and if you’re anything like me, the first thing you’ll try to do when visiting a Google+ Page from one of your favourite brands is to comment on their wall! Fail! That’s not Google+’s way. Head back to your own profile and post an update just to that Page and it will have the same affect … but then your own followers won’t see it as well … unless you post pit publically too. Circles huh? Gotta love ‘em.

You can read more about Google+ Pages or look at creating your own by clicking the button below.

I visited the mall yesterday and was quite impressed with what they have done. The cargo containers have been nicely converted, brightly painted and smartly branded to create some good looking stores.

Rather than just placing them in the street as I had expected, the containers are off to the side in new cleared spaces, and there’s plenty of new tarmac in place and even some greenery and other landscaping features.

There are two main mall areas now – one on either side of the street with the south-side mall replacing what used to be the Guthrey Centre, and the north-side mall replacing what used to be the Shades Arcade as well as the Whitcoulls building and the Old Weekly Press building – my former office.

Cashel Mall Cargo Containers South Side

Cashel Mall Cafe

To the right of Ballantynes

You’d think it would be strange to stand where my old office used to be and view these cargo-container-stores, but the reality was that it was so far removed from what used to be there that it was actually quite difficult to make the connection. It was only when straying to the attractive wooden boundary fences and peering over that you’re suddenly taken back to the time running right up to, and shortly after, the earthquake.

Looking further up Cashel Mall towards Manchester Street, you can see dusty and damaged streets, car parking buildings with gaping holes along one side, and, of course, the ever-present Hotel Grand Chancellor which is at least now surrounded by cranes suggesting that maybe the end of the building is in sight. There’s even a Fletcher Construction flag hanging from a window way up at the top of the building.

The other side

A building held up by a steel cross on Hereford Street

Hotel Grand Chancellor - Demolition on the way?

Cargo Container Stores

The stores that have secured a place in what is really quite a tourist attraction include quite a few boutique stores as well as a few other large players. Some of which were in the mall before the quake plus a few others that were in nearby streets that can no longer be accessed.

They include Scorpio Books, Johnson’s Grocers, Diesel, 3 Wise Men, Yoobee (an Apple reseller) the Contemporary Lounge (and Ballantynes still in its original place), Kathmandu, Simply New Zealand and more. There are also two cafes – Crafted Coffee Company and Humming Bird, both of which had queues out of the door.

Cargo Container Stores - North Side

The 'before' shot. Back when the tram tracks were being installed.

Cashel Mall ASB

ASB is the only bank to grab a container, which is fair enough seeing as they appear to be a large sponsor of the mall. The ‘Re:START’ Cashel Mall signs also display the tag line ‘Supported by ASB’.

Parking

Parking around the area is plentiful with a few Wilsons $1 an hour car parks along St. Aspaph Street as well as another on the Hereford Street side of the mall and one more right on the land where The Bog used to be (accessed from Lichfield Street).

The old Cashel Mall

If you do head to the mall on a busy day, patience is definitely required while driving along the damaged roads as there are obviously lots of places where the lanes suddenly merge and, of course, also lots of people driving while looking at the destroyed buildings and streets either side.

Definitely worth a visit though. It’s fantastic to see some life back in the city centre and even the return of a few buskers.

Links:

• View the video on YouTube or Vimeo
• View more New Zealand Photos

If you happen to know the musicians and singers that appeared in this video, let me know in the comments below and I’ll add a link to them above.

I once read a great piece of advice – celebrate every victory.

With that in mind and in the spirit of writing, I figured I’d write another blog post!

I’m quite proud of that statistic although it’s quite a messy one as statistics go. Mainly because this blog ran quite sporadically for a fair time and has had a fair few over-hauls and identity changes during its life. Often with quite a change of purpose – from its early days as a ‘direct support’ blog that was highly related and inter-linked with my role at the time, to what it is today. This.

Following that, I transferred to a more personal Blogspot blog, and then a free-hosted WordPress blog (which you can still find here) called the Redarmband of New Zealand. I think I’d just watched a Terminator movie and liked the whole ‘red armband to show you’re human’ idea of the movie and transferred this concept to my blog with the intention of writing more human blog posts than some of the robotic news posts that were being published to the net.

These posts have now been imported into this hosted WordPress blog that you’re reading now. Back then I was basically writing about whatever I happened to enjoy at the time, which tended to be interesting stuff that was going on in Christchurch as well as the occasional web-related post.

The blog has always been a great opportunity for me to learn more and experiment with blog writing, social sharing, CSS and html coding and WordPress set-ups, and these days I’m tending to do less of the ‘news’ posts and more of what I love; primarily posts discussing the use of social media in New Zealand.

In the old format, I made a blog post for when Christchurch took the title for the world’s largest scrambled egg and I attended my first Christchurch TweetUp where I met a few of the Christchurch personalities that I still chat with today.

Then people started to read it …

In its new format, I hit my most views when I posted a few photos and information just after the September 2010 and February 2011 earthquakes. On the day of the September quake, I managed to get a laptop running at my aunt’s place (my own house had no power) and quickly put up a blog post about the earthquake. With information that I’d heard on the radio, I wrote:

Aftershocks are expected for the days following the initial earthquake. Many could be reasonably substantial.

I still have a recording from the radio with a representative from EQC saying that the aftershocks could last for a week or two! Talk about positive thinking.

Later on, after going for a wander with the camera, I posted this blog post with some more photos. In that one I said that I was sitting in a house with two collapsed and one about-to-collapse chimnies. Looking back on it I can’t believe we were inside that house without knocking down the last chimney and clearing the rubble from the roof .We spent a fair bit of time doing just that in the next few months but until that last chimney had come down, the house was quite dangerous!

Since then, after being linked to from a few big earthquake websites, I carried on to write some more earthquake blog posts seeing as, owning a camera and a laptop, living in Aranui and having an office in the red zone (it’s still in there and unable to be accessed), I was right in the thick of it.

Moving on, like I said, today I’m more focused on writing blog posts that are much more closely related to what I do for a living. Namely: online media and digital marketing, with a spot of PS3 gaming thrown in for fun. You can find my more recent web-related blog posts here.

So anyway, my wife has just handed me a copy fo Battlefield 3 so I’m off! Thanks for reading!

Rather than just providing another video sharing service that would stand very little chance of competing against the big boys (namely YouTube and, to a lesser extent, Vimeo) the people behind Howcast have created a video sharing service that provides quite a bit of extra functionality.

For a long time, YouTube have allowed people to link to a specific time within a video by allowing you to link to a video’s timestamp.

However, Howcast have taken that a good few steps further by providing simple title sections or chapters that you can very quickly jump to. Just hover over the dots in the grey bar above the timeline to view the chapters.

Publishers that use this service properly can display ‘steps’ under their video with the information that is relevant for each chapter or section.

As an example, check out this video from the people behind Foursquare that explains a little more about what Foursquare is.

You can also click on a green arrow icon in the video’s top right corner to view text versions of the steps.

If you watch the video on Howcast, you can see a heap more information and tools, like a simple ‘What you will need’ section plus detailed steps and tips.

There are already heaps of videos within a range of categories. Many of which have been created by Howcast to show off their service but it looks like their are plenty of other users as well. Check out this video on ‘How to Handle Awkward Facebook Friend Requests’:

And how about this useful and informative video on how to survive a cougar attack?

When creating your video, you can add tips (green) and facts (blue) that also appear as coloured dots on the timeline.

Pretty cool huh? Hopefully Howcast really picks up and we’ll see more and more businesses using this unique service.

The film is called ‘When a City Falls’ and has had over 30,000 views in just a few days.

Created by Christchurch-based Frank Film, directed by award winning film maker, Gerard Smyth, and produced by Alice Shannon, the documentary movie is likely to be well received by Cantabrians as well as New Zealanders throughout the country.

The trailer sets the stage for a powerful movie that is sure to touch the hearts of thousands. Particularly those who experienced or were closely involved with the earthquake and devastating afterschocks themselves.

The trailer has already attracted a number of people asking if the film will be released overseas – in Australia (yes) and the UK (no answer yet) – and has incited some emotional comments from Christchurch-based YouTube users, such as:

Well done to the maker of this film. Its hard for me to watch as I was in the CTV building with my two young children when it collapsed.Its great to see the people of CHCH staying strong and rebuilding their beautiful city. Thanks to the wonderful men and women who rescued us x

freeflyer81

The movie will first screen at Reading Cinema at The Palms Mall on November 16th when it re-opens for the first time following the earthquakes, and will come to cinemas nationwide from 24th November.

The disturbing scenes coupled with the fact that Reading Cinema viewers will be sitting in a building that has been closed for so long following earthquake damage may be too much for some people to stomach, as this commenter suggests:

I still live here in Chch, still cry. Know what you mean about not trusting buildings but putting my faith in the Palms Mall for premiere. It use to be MY Mall, only 500m from my house, scared to go back, was there on Dec 26th that was the end for that mall, I’ll go back for movie, be brave, keep strong.

RuthCL100

The film was produced with grants from New Zealand Film Commission and NZ On Air.

While it’s obviously nowhere near the same quality, you can also view my own video from inside the red zone.

Film Links:

• When a City Falls on YouTube
• When a City Falls Facebook Page
• Frank Film Website