I'm making a new topic for this as a reaction to a support video that SuzukiRyo made with him dancing to Yarakai Heart and he asked if anyone was interested to do the same.
I'm certainly interested in doing something like this. And I'm going to tell you a story first about a similar project that I've participated in in the past which had a very positive effect. (sorry for the long story
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In mid Januray 2010, word got out that Ayumi Hamasaki was coming to London at the end of January to record her new album and shoot some PVs for the album. Many fans from Europe immediately planned trips to London and camp outside her hotel. But someone also got an idea that we should present a very personal gift to her. This was the A World is ONE project which was to have as many fans as possible to write a letter on 1 page. You could put anything on that page what you wanted, a message, pictures, etc. There were about 50 letters in the first week, and when the weekend came that Ayu had arrived in London and there had been contact with fans, the project got into higher gear and eventually reached between 100-150 letters. These were sent to one person who then printed them out, bundled them and went to London to give this book to Ayu. (the book eventually consisted of 2 books, as there were so many letters that they could not all be bundled in 1 book). Ayu was extremely happy with the book and cherished it dearly and posted several pictures of it on her fan club blog. It was only 1 or 2 months after this that Ayu started to tweet (and became quite an addict ) and international contact was and is still very good as she sometimes tweets in english even .
Because of the big success of the first project, a second project was actually started after this to do the same as the letters, but this time with videos from fans all around the world, because many had not been able to send in the letters as it was under such short notice and many didn't even know ayu had been to London for weeks after that. We were going to collect all the videos and make separate dvds per continent (as many fans wanted to participate) and even subtitle and translate them into japanese as we wanted everyone to talk in their own language. But the video project had a slow start and we eventually only got to about 10-15 videos, mainly because there was no actual event to give it to her to have as a deadline. There was no incentive like in London.
SO why don't we do something similar for Idoling!!!. We had done a poll for international access to FujiOnDemand before and reached 600+ votes.
But what will we do? Shall we all write a letter with pictures and bundle them together? Or shall we all do a video like SuzukiRyo? (or something else?)
Bundled letters are of course something very physical and nice to look at, but there is one big difference with Ayumi, there have 20 members, not 1.
If we do videos, I'd like to do it a bit the same as the Ayu video project I mentioned. The videos would be about 1-1.5 minute long, you could talk about yourself, tell&show something about your city, your room, your collection, etc. or do a dance or sing. You can do what you want with it. I like the idea of speaking in your own language and subtitle it in japanese. Since we have better subtitlers and translators here than with the other project that won't be a problem. We could make several copies of the dvd as we have 20 members.
The last problem would be how to get it to the girls and/or staff. Shinahachi Live for example comes to mind or a handshake event of the next single (since the current single handshakes are almost over).
So what do you guys think?
(I will modify the top post as we go along and come to a decision
my vote is also for a video)