On the street I saw a small girl cold and shivering in a thin dress, with little hope of a decent meal. I became angry and said to God; “Why did you permit this? Why don’t you do something about it?” For a while God said nothing. That night he replied, quite suddenly:

“I certainly did something about it. I made you.”

For many months, I have been silently following a website that is interestingly called InvisiblePeople.tv. It is an interesting play on how humans shun away from looking at something they wish to eradicate from their minds. All too often, we walk quickly past the people begging on the streets, stealing a glance or two from the side of our eyes.

We’re afraid – that’s the truth. Afraid of being asked for donations, afraid to be caught staring, and worst of all, afraid to care.

This project heavily invests in social media and uses it to make the invisible people, visible. Mark Horvath, the man behind this project was once known as the Lizard Man of Hollywood Boulevard, when he himself was once homeless. Mark had strong media beginnings as a Hollywood distribution executive, but lost it all to drugs and alcohol. In a nutshell, thanks to the LA Dream Center, he was set right again and freed from the bondages he once had.

Today, he goes out to the streets armed with a small camcorder, mic, laptop and iPhone. Mark posts raw unedited footage (sometimes deemed too raw) of the people he interacts with as they share their homeless stories with him.

So, how exactly does Mark use social media? Sites that are frequently updated include: his blog, Twitter, Facebook, Whrrl, MySpace, YouTube, uStream, Vimeo and Flickr. They serve as his own broadcasting channels to reach out to the public and update them on-the-go. Through the true-to-life updates, he has caught the attention of many and this has served to further propagate the message and his mission.

Is there any magic to it? From what I see, there isn’t: it’s about being true to your project and being as transparent as possible. Picking the right social platforms is probably very important too, as you would want to target the relevant audience through it. Frequent updates help too, and we can see videos are uploaded very often on the InvisiblePeople.tv site.

With so many platforms to manage, I was very curious as to how Mark manages them and sent him a couple of tweets. Here’s his down-to-earth reply.

Stats to date: CNN reports more than 1,000 videos are watched per week on the Vimeo channels and the project has more than 10,000 followers on both his Twitter accounts (@hardlynormal and @invisiblepeople). Mark has been featured on Huffington Post, CNN and loads more media as a result of him being extremely social with a fantastic mission.

He’s raised sponsorship and donations from many companies amongst which are Ford, Hanes (they give out socks to the homeless) and Virgin Mobile. Truly, it’s a powerful testimony of how one man has shared the stories of hundreds of homeless people with the world and brought smiles to those who are in need.

More importantly, via social media, an entire movement has been formed, out of people who are more aware that these problems exist. To all those who are interested in making a difference, Mark in a very practical way asks them to start helping in their own neighbourhood. There’s little point in helping out halfway across the country when the problems are prevalent in your own backyard.

May the invisible become visible, via the power of social media.

For the iPhone 3Gs, I did use the tap-to-focus on the subject feature. All photos are not touched up, and are saved at the highest quality after adding the watermark in Photoshop.

Initial observations are that the tap-to-focus on the iPhone 3Gs also is for metering, and in certain cases, can over or underexpose images depending on where you tap. Overall, the images from the iPhone 3G pale in comparison, as the iPhone 3Gs adds vibrance and a certain warmth to the images. Gone too is the milky film that overlays the iPhone 3G images.

A satisfying meal for a mere RM5.95? That’s a pretty sweet deal, and I thought so. When Grace and I found out there was a contest going on to write a creative blog post, we seized the opportunity to compete, as we do believe in the McValue lunches! We discussed a concept, whipped out our Canon 5D Mark 2 DSLR camera, a few lenses and off we went to McDonalds.

We also invited a good buddy, Joseph, to come along with us as he enjoys photography and videography too. Armed with our gear, we battled the traffic at the drive-thru and secured our spot. The friendly faces of the McDonalds crew were a delight to work with and they were ever so supportive of our crazy ideas!

Alright, enough about the history behind it, here’s our innovative and creative video clip, that is infused with some humor… NOW HAND OVER THE IPHONE… please?

If you have a faster Internet connection, do click on the HD icon above to watch it in MUCH better high-def quality!

Ingredients for a successful McValue Lunch:

• Canon 5D Mark 2 and a tripod
• 50mm F1.4, 135mm F2.0, 17-40mm F4, 70-200mm F4
• 1 MacBook Pro
• 1 iPhone (borrowed from Jo. Thanks!)
  
• 1 wheelchair
• A pair of Crocs
  
• 1 McDonalds VIP sticker
  
• Some friendly faces from the McDonald’s drive-thru
• A beautiful and skilled wife
• A friend named Joseph
• Oh, and 2 McValue meals of course! (which sure beat an average plate of noodles!)
  

Here are some behind-the-scenes shots of us having fun while filming.

Friendy Halim and I at the Bandar Utama drive-thru

Grace and Jo setting up the 5DMkII to pull focus

Joseph shooting a close-up of the iPhone

Weaving between cars was a challenge!