26 September 2009 | in news - Internet

An all-star jury ranging from UKFC Premiere Fund head Sally Caplan to YouTube's Sara Pollock will judge the Pixel Pitch award for a cross media project, with details of the seven finalists now released and detailed below. One winner will walk away with the £6,000 Babelgum Pixel Pitch Award.

Tickets are now on sale for the event, which will accompany the Power to the Pixel conference, where a host of names from the Open Video Conference (including Brian Newman, Ted Hope, Nina Paley, Lance Weiler) along with Age of Stupid's Franny and Lizzie - will talk about digital marketing and distribution strategies for filmmakers.

Written by Nic Wistreich | 05 June 2009 | in news - Internet

New digital agency AG8 has partnered with Scott Free - digital agency for Tony and Ridley Scott - to launch PureFold, which 'enables participating brands to take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework'. The project will launch at the upcomming B.Tween Festival in Liverpool.

From Paid Conent:

Purefold is described as an “open media franchise” and has the rather grand aim of answering “what does it mean to be human?” But the short, inter-linked, sci-fi styled films are real and will be created by RSA’s global pool of directors—and the film-makers will use the web as their inspiration, taking chatter from FriendFeed and turning it into plotlines and dialogue. The clips will be distributed via YouTube on a Creative Commons basis. The Leftbrainrightbrain blog reports that there will be seven interlinked storylines and the project wants 10 brands to come on board.

And from the AG8 site:

"What happens when content production frees itself from the shackles of copyright?

What happens when people’s lifestreams influence and drive fictional storytelling?

What happens when storytelling becomes decentralised, grown through a collective rather than through an individual author?

What happens when product and service invention, rather than product placement, drives the development of branded content?

What happens when transmedia thinking is embedded into stories from the very beginning rather than as an afterthought?

What happens when media agencies are able to sell StorySpace rather than AirTime?

Written by Nic Wistreich | 16 May 2009 | in news - Internet

It's kind of like a guy who grows his tomatoes in his kitchen complaining about never benefiting from all that lovely sunshine outside. Sony was the company who were five years behind Microsoft with web access for the Playstation, created the alliwantforxmasisapsp.com web hoax PR bomb, and resisted shipping an MP3 player in favor of their own proprietary DRM'd format for three years after the record breaking launch of the iPod (and which they've only just conceded was a mistake). Sony Pictures CEO Michael Linton's blaming of the web for his company's first loss in 14 years is - as we say round where I'm from - like a bad workman blaming his tools.

The film industry has had over 10 years to prepare for the web as it exists today. In an early life back then I wrote management reports that I know were sold to the media executives as did many people around me. The success of broadband, filesharing, youtube and the lack of central control or agreed-upon delivery standards is unsurprising, other than for being slightly slower to materialise than expected and - I suppose - for the film industry's failure to learn the lessons of the music industry and produce a legitimate service which competes with the piracy model, if not on price, at least on availability and ease of use.

To this day it is still near-impossible to rent or purchase some of Hollywood's greatest films online, forcing those too lazy to order a copy from Amazon an easy excuse to download it illegally. While some kind of penalty for major pirate filesharers may be only a matter of time, for as long as the industry resists providing a legitimate alternative, as the music industry finally has with Spotify, then at least the filesharers are keeping the pressure on the studio executives to resolve the licensing disputes and put their libraries online asap. It's not like they aren't already available illegally, taking away any argument about waiting until DRM/watermarking issues are resolved - if people want to rip these films, they probably already have. And if they couldn't grab them online, they'd just get it from their local DVD-wielding pub tout. For the majority of us who don't want to steal (but may like to sample from time to time when unsure if a film will be any good) we are just being encouraged to learn a new way to break the law. This is before we come onto the thousands of incredible films that aren't available - even on DVD or VHS - and are otherwise consigned to the dustbin of fading memories.

Written by Nic Wistreich | 15 May 2009 | in news - Internet

Apologies for the quiet around here lately - I've been completely emerged in a family health crisis. I hope to pick things up in the next few days. Meantime here's some suprising news (by way of BoingBoing) from Markus Weiland, who has compared the license agreements from the main video sharing sites. Netribution's (until now) prefered site Vimeo comes off the worst:

"By submitting your Submission to VIMEO, you hereby grant VIMEO [...] a worldwide, perpetual, non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, sub-licensable (through multiple tiers) and transferable license (with a right to create derivative works) to use, copy, transmit or otherwise distribute, perform, modify, incorporate into other works, publicly perform and display your Submission or any portion thereof, in or through any medium, [...]. VIMEO shall be entitled to unrestricted use of any Submission for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to the submitter."

YouTube doesn't come off much better - only Blip.tv, which we were pushing in the last funding book - has a filmmaker friendly End User License Agreement (EULA) that lets the producer choose the license under which their content appears. DailyMotion, which has been premiering some great indie features recently, also gets a thumbs up. The full list is at the Advancing Usability blog.

Written by Lauren Archer | 27 March 2009 | in news - Internet

More4 launched a brand new online pub quiz on March 20th, held in virtual pub The More4 Arms. The game will allow players to pit their knowledge against four of the channels most famous faces – Jon Snow, Tony Robinson, David Starkey and Kevin McCloud – at the presenter’s specialist subjects. All four will also be seen in The More4 Arms bar, where a pub blackboard promotes upcoming programmes and seasons.

Written by Nic Wistreich | 03 January 2009 | in news - Internet

Not quite sure if this film fits within YouTube's guidelines : "Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone being physically hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don't post it... YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies or similar things intended to shock or disgust."

The original video was claimed by the Israeli army to be Hamas workers loading rockets onto a truck before being bombed, but in fact seems to be a shop owner and his family loading oxygen canisters onto a truck to avoid looters. The video is(was) here. Three of those killed in the attack shown on the video were apparently children - Wisam Akram ‘Eid, Mahmoud Nabil Ghabayan and Ahmad Ibrahim Khila.

From Michael Shaw at the Huffington Post: Reading The Pictures: Is That A Snuff Film The Israeli Air Force Has Posted On YouTube?:

Three days into the Israeli bombing campaign on Gaza, when the media was still reporting separate Hamas and civilian statistics for injuries and fatalities, it looked like the Jewish state might actually succeed in carrying our a largely successful surgical bombing campaign.

On the 31st, I even wrote a post at BAGnewsNotes crediting Israel's for "substantial tactical and PR strides" since the Hizbullah/Lebanon engagement, while acknowledging the propaganda value of the Israeli Defense Force's YouTube channel and the Israeli Consulate's application of Twitter.

That, however, was before my readership called me out for linking to an IDF bombing video I, following the Israeli Air Force, read as a direct hit on Hamas members loading a flatbed truck full of rockets. Going back and investigating what one reader went so far as call an "IDF-YouTube snuff film," I amended my post with the following update:

Research from a number of sources, including the Israeli-Palestinian B'Tselem group in Gaza, indicate that the owner of the truck in the Israeli Defense Force bombing was not a Hamas member transporting rockets, but instead a civilian transporting gas welding canisters from his metalworking shop. According to B'Tselem, eight people were killed in the bombing, including the son of the shop owner, Ahmad Sanur. As best as I can tell at this point, the video I linked to yesterday from the Israeli military's YouTube Channel (posted above, for as long as it remains on-line) documents the same attack on Mr. Sanur's shop. The second image of the gas canister was taken by B'Tselem field workers after the fact.

There are many issues this story raises, not the least involving the fallacy of aerial precision. What troubles me most, however, is how the IDF, in the name of transparency and smart public relations, has not only posted quite a few videos of bombing runs, but continues to show the one in question (at least, as of Thursday night), as if this apparent evisceration of civilians doesn't merit correction.

Another way of looking at it is that it is now a piece of historical record, or even evidence, that no rocket fire or shell bombardment can  destroy. As more footage and photos are uploaded, YouTube and similar sites have new social responsibilities for documenting and preserving such records. More on this on BBC news here and B'TSelem below.

Written by Nic Wistreich | 06 December 2008 | in news - Internet

David Holroyd's independent British thriller WMD, produced by Netribution member Christine Hartland , is to receive its online world premiere on Daily Motion simultaneously to its screening at the Brighton CineCity Film Festival. It is part of a campaign to promote and sell the film which is utilising every digital option.

"We are hoping that you, as someone who enjoys film and cares about the issues in wmd., will honour our decision to [release film free online] and hopefully pay (at least once) for the chance to see it"
The filmmakers Filming began in January this year on the story of Alex Morgan, an  MI6 desk officer who uncovers critical inaccuracies in the evidence being used by politicians to justify the imminent invasion of Iraq and attempted to expose the truth. Written after extensive research and filmed on surveillance, CCTV and home video cameras, ‘WMD’ is a fictional account inspired by real events, aiming to show what intelligence circles really knew in the build-up for the recent Iraq war. The film was shot in London, Rome, Berlin, Washington DC and Morocco.

With the massive online success of films such as Loose Change, Four Eyed Monsters and Zeitgeist Addendum the filmmakers are hoping to get a level of exposure for the film previously unheard of for a micro-budget, self-distributed feature.

You can watch the film exclusively on Dailymotion from 6th to 8th December. You can also apparently buy the film from the WMD website and Amazon, although links did not work at time of writing. The filmmakers intend to donate some of the proceeds to the WarChild charity.

Written by Nic Wistreich | 21 November 2008 | in news - Internet

Remember, if you can, ten years ago. You connected to the web by rubbing two telephones together. The film world was a dark and mysterious place, illuminated only by the appearance of Jones and Joliffe's Guerilla Filmmakers Handbook, and Rodriquez's Rebel Without A Crew some three years before. For most outside the demilitarised zone of Soho, digital was just a watch that was not yet retro enough to be cool, and film jobs were for the most part passed through families like hereditary peerages. Until one day, out of this primordial soup, a mailing list appeared.

A year later, on a dark night, in a pre-Nathan Barley Hoxton, a group of early Shooters came together for the first birthday party. We were all stunned to see that a) we were mostly real normal people, b) no-one told us we weren't important enough to stay and c) quite how many of us there were - at least twice as many as expected with the planned screening split in two. It's easy to disregard it in today's web with a gazillion websites and contests trying to appeal to filmmakers, and 13 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute - but back then - other than The Eejits Guide to Filmmaking and a monthly updated Six Degrees, there was nothing for UK film. And in turn we had no idea how many of us there were making films - I remember being shocked to learn of 3,000, then 6,500 members when Tom interviewed Jess for Netribution in 2000, long before it hit 20, 30 and 40,000.

To think of the number of careers, friendships and films that have been started and inspired as a result of Jess and Cath's baby is quite awe inspiring. Indeed it was that evening I first started asking people's opinions about a free website of funding info and industry resources and it was on the SP bulletins again a few months later than Netribution was launched. Two years on (almost seven years ago, gawd!) when Netribution had run out of money and steam I was fortunate to join Jess, Cath and Stu as preparations were made for the switch to a subscription service. It was an exciting time, brimming with possibilities. Even just learning the secrets of the then crude moderation system felt like being admitted to a secret society (every possible post arrived in your inbox as an email, which could either be rejected or accepted by clicking a link, and which if you were clever you could do in the right order to get the paid work at the top and the chatter at the bottom, and if you were dumb could see you post a whole heap of gunk to the list irretrievably).

If there is a winning quality to Shooters, which launched before Cluetrain was published, I'd say it was the approachable human-ness of it all amidst a huge amount of energy. Even now, as Jess heads up the UK's leading doc organisation, she finds time to respond to criticism in blogs. It always amazed me how between keeping full time jobs, running SP, making shorts, studying, DJing and keeping abreast of the cool they still managed to cook a cracking dinner for the weekly meetings. And how huddled around their kitchen tables, the overwhelming memory from discussions that could go well into the night was the sense of responsibility to serve the members well, while constantly moving forwards, something I was proud to be a part of and played a hand in.

So Happy Birthday Shooting People! Many Happy Returns and congratulations on being such a vital part of indie filmmaking for so long. It's brilliant to see you such an established and important part of the film world now - here's to many many more years.

  (some great images and messages from SP members, here )

 

Written by Nic Wistreich | 04 November 2008 | in news - Internet

Apparently when YouTube's big content partners are offered the choice between pulling copyrighted content that a member has uploaded, or serving adverts on it, 90% of the time they choose to keep it up with adverts - ie they prefer to profit from that 'infringing' content than act against it.

With this in mind, the AP news report MySpace has signed a deal with Viacom to let members repost Comedy Central and MTV Networks video, such as The Daily Show (below) and share the ad revenues with MySpace.

 

In case anyone thinks this news story was largely an excuse to post a Daily Show clip, well, after a near year mesmerised by The Huff, poll trackers, election blogs, middle of the night primary counts and presidential debates for an election I can't even vote in, with a final 24-hours of breath-holding, I can only answer with this cheese-fest from Ultimate Improv:

For those wanting to watch the results online, the Guardian has a good list of links and an excellent roundup of some of the key TV moments, cut and tracked by YouTube users.

Written by Rachel Devenport | 03 June 2008 | in news - Internet

Gordon, Tony and Boris lead CEO and celebrity support in new viral sensation supporting climate action 

Shoot the Company are leading the way in green filmmaking with their new viral created to celebrate the anniversary of Together (www.together.com) – the UK’s biggest climate campaign. The London-based production company made the commitment to produce the video with the lowest possible carbon foot print.

Shoot the Company shot the video in just two weeks, travelling in between locations on public transport and using natural light to illuminate their handy work. The company minimised energy output by pooling resources and crews with contributors such as Sky and The Premier League.