Via Scott Kirsner’s CinemaTech blog comes potentially important news for film and video makers interested in distributing their work online: YouTube is enabling paid downloads. From Kirsner: If you want to pull down a high-res, MP4 copy of a video from the site (which will play on an iPod), you can pay to do so. No word on what percentage of the revenue goes to the creator. But the one way to pay for videos is Google Checkout, Google’s own PayPal-like payment system. YouTube is currently only testing this with select partners. Wired News notes that the files aren’t DRM […]
Just after I posted a link to Lance Weiler’s article in the current issue in which he discusses data portability and how filmmakers should not aggregate all their social networking content on third-party networks like Facebook, and a day or two before I post my interview with Tommy Pallotta on why he left the popular site comes a series of of postings online about Facebook’s new Terms of Service policy. In a post titled “I’m Done with Facebook,” Edward Champion writes, “I would advise any writers, artists, and photographers to remove their content posthaste, and not give Facebook the right […]
The Purchase Brothers are a pair of independent filmmakers and commercial directors whose online short, Escape from City 17, premiered this weekend and is the first in a series based on the Half Life computer game. On YouTube the short has already reached almost one million views, and the film’s production values on what they say is a $500 budget are quite impressive. From their website: The Escape From City 17 short film series is an adaptation based on the Half Life computer game saga by Valve Corporation. Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, […]
Over at his 401st Blow blog, producer Noah Harlan, who has contributed posts to this blog on trends in film viewing and online video, takes his thinking a step further. He runs a bunch of Google Trend comparisons, measuring over the last few years the traffic associated with the terms “independent film,” “online video,” and “streaming video.” After reading the post, I emailed Noah some questions, which he incorporates into an updated version. From the blog: Scott Macaulay makes the very good point about units of comparison: “”Streaming video” and “online video” both refer to delivery mechanisms, whereas independent film […]
If you keep up with this blog, you’ll have read a bunch about the Google Book Settlement and its implications for the future of copyright, the information age industry and creators’ rights in the digital realm. (Check out my previous posts.) This week Google issued its official notification to authors in a press release, reprinted below. (Hat tip: Digitization 101.) As Google has already indicated that similar endeavors may be planned using online video, I think filmmakers as well as authors should know something about the search giant’s plans. NEW YORK, Feb. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Court-ordered process of officially […]
Thanks to Jamie Stuart for this link to Unfolding the Aryan Papers, a 17-minute short available online that is a riff on a planned but never made film by the late Stanley Kubrick. As the film is described on the site, “Unfolding the Aryan Papers is as much about a film that never happened as it is a portrait of the chosen lead actress Johanna ter Steege.” It was commissioned by Animate Projects and the BFI with the Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London. From the artists’ statement: It begins with images of Johanna taken in 1993 by […]
Because our Winter, 2009 issue went up online during the Sundance Film Festival, I think some of what’s in it has been slightly overlooked by the blogosphere. One article I want to point you towards is Lance Weiler’s “Virtual Discovery.” It looks at some of the ways that creators are building audiences by embracing collaborative models of marketing and even production. Weiler also discusses the importance of data portability — the ability for filmmakers to take the aggregated info about their audiences from online platform to online platform. Why is this important? From the piece: The real strength of data […]
Fans of Michel Gondry should tune in to HBO tonight, February 15, for “Unnatural Love,” the episode of Flight of the Conchords he directed. Calling the show “pure, unadulterated pleasure,” the newsletter Very Short List writes, “The Conchords, of course, are a New Zealand folk band. But the love interest here is Australian, and that allows for endless, over-the-top Aussie jokes (expect plenty of references to the continent’s criminal past). As for Gondry, his distinctive, dreamlike touch turns both of the episode’s musical numbers into surreal showstoppers.”
Following its Gotham Award and the week of the Spirit Awards, for which its director, Nina Paley, was nominated for the Someone to Watch Award, Sita Sings the Blues scores a Sunday New York Times feature article by Margy Rochlin. In the piece, Rochlin discusses watching the film when it played the San Francisco International Animation Festival and talking with Paley afterwards, a talk that reveals that the film will play on PBS next month. After the final credits rolled, the gangly, curly-haired Ms. Paley bounded onstage and announced, “You’ve all just participated in an illegal act.’ ” Though Ms. […]
CLIVE OWEN AND NAOMI WATTS IN DIRECTOR TOM TYKWER’S THE INTERNATIONAL. COURTESY COLUMBIA PICTURES. German writer-director Tom Tykwer, arguably one of the most exciting auteurs in world cinema, has been immersed in movies since he was a child and always seemed destined to become a director. Born in the town of Wuppertal in 1965, by the age of 11 Tykwer had picked up a Super 8 camera and begun making films. At the age of 14, he got a job at Cinema, the local arthouse theater, where he would stay after hours, repeatedly watching Blade Runner. After completing his compulsory […]