Random Culture

YouTube Screening Room

The online video trend is certainly shifting towards more long-form content. Wayne Wang's new film, The Princess of Nebraska, has debuted in the YouTube Screening Room. Every two weeks, the Screening Room releases 4 films. Although many are short films, The Princess of Nebraska is a nod towards what's to come.

HD Filmmaking for the Masses?

This November, a digital SLR being released by Canon is taking the SLR to a new level, as evidenced by some preliminary testing with a short film, Reverie, by Vincent Laforet. According to Laforet:

"You no longer need [a] half-million dollar’s worth of high-definition video cameras and lenses delivered by a truck with its own driver to shoot a high-definition film in low light — you just need a $2,700 camera and a few lenses."

Read more about Laforet's experience at his blog.

Link via Digital Ramble.

Mumblecore

Ever heard of Mumblecore? It's been around for a little while, but some notable news sources, such as the NY Times and Village Voice are just now picking up on it. The Wikipedia entry for Mumblecore defines it as:

An independent filmmaking movement characterized by ultra-low budget production, focus on personal relationships between twenty-somethings, improvised scripts, and non-professional actors.

Need some examples? Andrew Bujalski's "Funny Ha Ha" kicked off the movement. So what's the big deal? And why the heck are you writing about a film movement on this blog?

The NY Times points out a fundamental connection between the Mumblecore movement and technology:

Mumblecore bespeaks a true 21st-century sensibility, reflective of MySpace-like social networks and the voyeurism and intimacy of YouTube. It also signals a paradigm shift in how movies are made and how they find an audience. “This is the first time, mostly because of technology, that someone like me can go out and make a film with no money and no connections,” said Aaron Katz

Technology has clearly changed not only the way movies are being made, but their distribution as well. The Mumblecore movement is a great example of filmmakers taking more of a DIY approach. This is just the beginning.

Link via Fimoculous.

Simpsons Promo Swiped from Leo Burnett?

According to NPR's "Morning Edition" from yesterday, July 18th, it looks like the clever promotion for the Simpson's Movie may have been "co-opted" from Leo Burnett when they pitched the business.

Listen to Morning Edition's take on the story.

Sad to hear, if it's true, that one of the best promotions I've seen may have been the result of this kind of behavior.

Mark Cuban: Hating on YouTube Again

I don't quite understand why YouTube rubs Mark Cuban the wrong way, but it clearly does. You may remember his comments in September of last year when Google announced they were purchasing YouTube. Well, he's at it again, with some very strange comments in light of the Oscars. Mark is arguing that the Oscars, as well as other "content creators" are being hurt by YouTube because they're losing control of the content as well as the brand. So what does he advocate? From Mark Cuban's blog:

"To capture Youtube viewers, the first step would be to OVERWHELM Youtube with partial clips of full length that tease Youtube users and point them to Oscars.com. For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said " Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com"

IN addition to the billboard in the video  you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldnt post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times."

Say what? Not only is the idea of Mark Cuban advocating spamming YouTube preposterous, what does he want to do, turn YouTube into nothing more than a 10 second preview site? Mark has a bias because he himself is a "content creator", with his entertainment ventures. But it's an irrational bias. There are plenty of other "content creators" who have embraced YouTube, and certainly not in the manner he's advocating. CBS, Showtime and many others have formed partnerships with YouTube to distribute their content, because they KNOW that it isn't going away anytime soon. In fact, YouTube traffic is still growing at an astronomical rate.

Why can't someone who's supposed to be at the forefront of technology not come to terms with this? Frankly, I'm surprised, Mr. Cuban. Read his full comments here.

Link via Podcasting News.

Documentary: 8 Bit

8 Bit is an interesting new documentary about video games and their influence on art, music and more. Check out the trailer below:

"The Fountain" Experience

Warner Brothers has launched an "experience" website for Darren Aaronofsky's new movie, The Fountain. It's definitely not your average website experience, reminiscent of the Donnie Darko and Requiem for a Dream sites. Definitely worth checking out, if you have some time to surf around and figure out what to click on. No word on who created the site.

M&M'S + Hieronymus Bosch

Mars has created an advergame to promote dark chocolate M&M'S. Keeping in line with the "dark" theme, the Dark M&M'S Movie Challenge puts users on a mission to guess the titles of "dark movies" as illustrated in a Hieronymus Bosch-like "dark" painting.

Link via Three Minds @ Organic.

NYC Film Location Mashup

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the New York City Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, iDeutsch created an interactive Yahoo! Map mashup that allows visitors to see where scenes from their favorite movies and television shows were shot in New York.

iTunes Has Movies!

The iTunes Music Store has updated, and is now selling movies. If you remember my post at the end of August, Business Week speculated that Apple would be charging $14.99 per movie, an increase from the original $9.99 that Steve Jobs wanted to charge. Well, it looks like there was an even compromise, and new releases are selling for $12.99. Older movies are selling for $9.99. At least, that's how I think it works, although I wouldn't say "The Life Aquatic" is a new release, and it's selling for $12.99.

I've got kind of a lukewarm reaction to this. It's still not attractive for me to get a small discount on new releases, since many new releases can be bought for $19.99. But it will be interesting to see what happens with the older releases. The Long Tail in action, baby!

The weirdest thing in all of this, I think, is how Apple has branded the store. First it was the iTunes Music Store... now it's called the iTunes Store. They dropped the music, but they haven't dropped the "Tunes." Anyone think we may see iStore or iDownload any time soon?

Update: Engadget has some great info around this subject from the Steve Jobs keynote. A couple interesting facts from that presentation:

• iTunes has a market share of 88% for legal US downloads
• iTunes is the 5th largest reseller of music in the US, behind Amazon, projected to surpass Amazon in January
• 45 million TV shows have been downloaded from iTunes since last October
• Resolution of video has increased to 640x480.