Jonas Mekas, the 'godfather' of American avant-garde film has a crazy idea: to create 365 short films, one for each day of the year. The videos are intended to be viewed on portable video players, and each download is free on the first day of release. Check out his calendar and see if you can keep up with this breakneck pace, or read this interview from Wired to learn more about the project.365 days, 365 short films
Jonas Mekas, the 'godfather' of American avant-garde film has a crazy idea: to create 365 short films, one for each day of the year. The videos are intended to be viewed on portable video players, and each download is free on the first day of release. Check out his calendar and see if you can keep up with this breakneck pace, or read this interview from Wired to learn more about the project.Cinematical's best of Eat My Shorts!
Cinematical has posted a list of top 10 short films that were covered this year in their Eat My Shorts! series. I highly recommend you check these short films out because they showcase tons of talent and creativity. If I had to pick a favorite from this list it would be Still Life. I don't want to give anything away so just watch it. If you are a big Pulp Fiction fan (like me), you'll enjoy Dick Fiction, a parody of our nations VP and the little incident with a shotgun. Good stuff.
Xbox the top video download success?
A new Variety report claims that Microsoft's Xbox has seen the greatest relative success in the digital download realm, despite the smaller user base compared to online services such as Amazon Unbox. ``Though exact sales figures aren't available from any Web site or studio, insiders agree that it's the most, and maybe only, positive story in digital movie downloads this year."
The ease of use factor seems to be the dominant reason for the success, since Xbox owners need not deal with transferring content from their computer, or have to deal with any funky proprietary software from web services. The Xbox is an all-in-one solution for downloading and watching movies right on the television, the preferred means of viewing for most people. On top of that, Microsoft is offering quality HD versions of many of the available movies and television shows. Ease of use + high quality = pretty obvious reason for success. Of course, the current situation brings this question to mind: how will Apple's upcoming iTV shake up the digital download market? Will it offer the same kind of ease of use and attract more folks to the idea of buying digital downloads?
Doug Bressler of DoogToons shows you how he creates animation
I discovered a new internet TV show called Viral the other day which focuses on what TV shows are available on the internet and often takes a behind the scenes look at how the show is made and the video producers and actors behind it.
About 7 minutes into the first episode of Viral (see below) you get a quick lesson from Doug Bressler of the animated show DoogToons. Doug shows you how he records in voice and brings it to life in animated characters. He first records spoken audio using GarageBand on a Mac and then exports the audio as an aiff file. He then does a rough drawing of a cartoon bear and loads it up in flash to animate it taking you briefly through the tedious part of syncing up the characters mouth movements with the audio.
Here is the video, you'll need to get to about 7 minutes in to see Doug at work.
Green.tv: environmental Internet TV channel
Green.tv is an environmental internet video channel. Web TV Wire recently caught up with Ade Thomas, the director of green.tv. Ade stated that green.tv was built in-house by largeblue, which is his own video and digital media company and also by a company called ESP who Green.tv knew prior to building the website. Ade Thomas has a history of working with digital video production, especially with environmental content.Interestingly Green.tv has a completely unique video player that is able to detect the best plugin to use based on what the user has installed on their PC. It can choose from WMP, flash and Quicktime, with flash appearing to take dominance over the others.
Tracking Santa: video sightings
Norad uses some pretty high tech stuff in it's North Warning System that tracks Santa on Christmas Eve. It's got radar that lets them know when he takes off from the North Pole and satellites that use infrared sensors to detect Rudolph's nose (the same satellites that track incoming missiles so lets hope they don't get them confused). It also uses cameras positioned around the world to keep a visual on Santa. These cameras are obviously top-secret because the only information Norad will give up is that they are "ultra-cool high-tech high speed digital cameras". Hmmm, Red prototypes maybe? He's already started his Christmas Eve run so go check out some video sightings.BBC to use BitTorrent for TV show distribution
BitTorrent will get yet another boost in credibility when BBC will begin to release hundreds of television shows through the file-sharing network after a recent partnership with Azureus, best known for their own Bittorrent client of the same name. Azureus recently launched their own video sharing service, Zudeo, which offers hi-def content unlike other similar services, and BBC will make their shows available for purchase through this network. Unsurprisingly, the content will be DRM-ed, but it's at least interesting to see BBC use BitTorrent for distribution.(via Hacking Netflix)
Apple holds 90% of video downloads
A recent Forbes report claims that 1.2 million households purchased a video download in the third quarter of this year, while five times as many people illegally downloaded videos from P2P networks. Of these legal downloads, Apple is responsible for 90% of the overall market:``Of paid downloads, 62% was TV content, 24% was music video content and 6% was mainstream movie content.... About 90% percent came from Apple Computer's iTunes store, with 5% coming from movie-subscription site Vongo, 3% from movie download service Movielink and less than 1% from movie download service CinemaNow."
Is this indicative of future trends? Will Apple be able to maintain such numbers in the future? Remember, these figures only represent 1/4 of this entire year, and 2007 will be a whole new ballgame.
(via Hacking Netflix)
Podaddies new video advertising startup
Podaddies is a new video advertising internet startup that, according to founder and CEO Nigel Pagel, wants to "support independents by providing targeted dynamic ads that are maximized based on a cost basis."This sounds great for small time video producers bringing more possible ways to make money from videos that are broadcast over the internet. The company is looking for customized solutions rather than automated ones, which still leaves the video advertising industry open to an automatic contextual video advertising platform comparable to Google Adsense.
Pagel also believes that pre-roll adverts are too much of a deterrent, and I have to agree that they are too intrusive and often stop me watching a video altogether, whereas I will quite often sit through a short advert at the end of a video.
Sundance comes to Second Life
The Sundance Film Festival is coming a bit closer to home next year, when it lands in the virtual world of Second Life. Ok, that might not be quite what you were hoping for, but Sundance is hoping to mimic the film fest experience by creating a virtual festival where folks can view films, and get into the vibe with other online attendees. I'm not too keen on trying out Second Life myself, but how well will the experience translate? Anyway, the opening film will be none other than Four Eyed Monsters, the recent Sundance Channel award winner.Best & Worst of 2006
In the Best and Worst of 2005, I defiantly declared that Blip.TV was the Best Free Video Hosting site. I still believe Blip.TV and Revver are among the best video hosting sites for filmmakers. They offer video in various codecs (including a very good Flash Codec) that can be easily downloaded. Currently with Revver (and very soon with Blip.TV) you can even make a buck or two. However, as 2006 progressed, I realized that video hosting sites don't become popular because they serve filmmakers but because they serve their audience. After the break, our first award!
Viacom having second thoughts about YouTube killer
Remember all of this talk about big media companies making their own YouTube? Well word got out today from Broadcasting&Cable that Viacom, owners of MTV, Nickelodeon and other big channels has backed out of the talks with NBC Universal, News Corp. and CBS. It looks like the big guys simply can't agree on anything for their own good. Until Tuesday afternoon, Viacom was a big part of the talks. Why they backed out is unknown at this point, although it could be due to the fact Viacom's MTV Networks Online and News Corp.'s MySpace are direct rivals to each other.(Thanks for the tip Barb)
Video blogger gets Google Video ad revenue
Google Video adverts are now making their way into user generated videos. NewTeeVee said that Andy Plesser of Beet TV has tied up one of the first arrangements with Google for sharing revenue from the video adverts. This now provides another revenue stream for video creators and video bloggers. Plesser says the adverts are bringing $15 per 1000 views which is split 50/50 with Google. I personally think this is quite a decent amount for 1000 video views compared to other options such as Metacafe which offers $5 a video. When mixed in with other advertising this is a reliable revenue source for small time video producers.inDplay: matchmaker for content buyers and sellers
inDplay is a marketplace-type website where content creators and potential content purchasers can find each other. The site attempts to streamline the process and make it easier to sell or buy distribution rights. Buyers and sellers are free to negotiate their gigs, but inDplay will take a cut. That's not a bad thing, it's just that in this age most people expect web services to be free. Make sure you read the FAQ and especially the membership agreement carefully before you decide to use this service. 
It may look a little like eBay meets film distribution, but it is not an "auction" site. Digital rights and all that legal mumbo jumbo is not an easy process. It will be interesting to see just how valuable this service will be and it's definitely worth keeping an eye on.
[via Videomaker]
Dare Junkies: do you dare to take on this video competition?
Dare Junkies is a new video sharing website with a difference. Each month it runs a competition where video creators are given dares in the form of challenges by Dare Junky users. Video creators must then go out and film the dare to take part in the competition. The top ten winners each month will split a cash prize of $5000.Dare Junkies has only just launched in beta so is a little short of video and doesn't look like the best designed site on the net but co-creator Ben Bascol (who is a veteran of the entertainment industry) reminds everyone that "we are limited beta - a lot more features are going to be rolled out in the New Year," in an interview with NewTeeVee.
Ben Bascol goes on to say that "when users finally see really creative work posted it will only bolster their imaginations and drive to create something better and truly kick in artistic users' competitive energy."
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