Internet Video Newsletter

This is a great time to be shooting video.

There are a bunch of web sites that allow you to directly monetize your videos.

For example, if your original clips or video gets selected and posted to the Break.com homepage, you can get up to $1,000. At Revver.com, when you upload a video, they add a small advertisement to the end of it. When someone watches your video and then clicks on the ad, you get paid.  Blip.tv also hosts online video and then posts it to iTunes, Flickr, blogs and more.  Blip.tv offers an opt-in advertising program, splitting all advertising revenues with its users 50/50. By the way, in an August 2006 review, Light Reading ranked blip.tv the #1 online video sharing site. 

Another interesting option, especially if you are a pro or semi–pro shooter, and have some great looking video footage that would work as stock footage, is to visit iStockVideo. This new site launched in September of 2006 and functions as a clearing house for those who make and for those who need great looking video.

The market for films and videos is also evolving.

For examples, companies AOL, Amazon, Break.com, Limelight, Real, Tivo and others are buying short films and independently produced films to sell as direct to home downloads. This is a new and growing phenomenon. Over the next few years, we predict that there will be a plethora of companies competing with each other to sell downloadable video and they will all need content to compete with each other. This is going to be a great opportunity for the independent video and film maker.  In addition to fictional films and music videos, this will be a great opportunity for how to do it video and cleverly disguised infomercials.

Some of these companies will source their content from the traditional and broadcast organizations while others will be opening their doors to everyone, looking at all kinds of products and at all levels of subject matter and pricing.

If you are interested in making some cash with your video, this is a path that you absolutely need to explore.

A Few Good Online Videos to Share

Do you like rap music? Are you into Rosh Hashana and the Jewish High Holidays? Put them together and what do you get? AISH's new Rosh Hashana Rap Video

This is a very interesting concept. Creating a short animated video to promote a book.

 Animator vs. Animation

Every artist struggles with his craft.  But rarely does it come to blows quite like this. Check out this hysterical work of animation featuring a stick figure who decides to fight

Looking for a GREAT deal on a camcorder? On a digital camera or a computer or video editing and production gear? - check B&H Photo Video

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New Articles, Cool Stuff, Columns and Items of Interest

ATOM FILMS announced the winners of their Cell phone video contest Carrie Wolberg won the $5,000 grand prize in Alltel’s Are You Circle Worthy?  contest for her 30 second film, "Hot, Hot, Hot". This video contest required the participants to shoot a short with just a cell phone. Check out all the finalists.

·  Microsoft launching online video service      Microsoft Corp. is hoping to tap the explosive popularity of online video sharing by joining startups and major Internet rivals with its own video service.

U.S. uploads anti-drug videos to YouTube

The White House is distributing government-produced, anti-drug videos on YouTube, the trendy Internet service that features clips of wacky, drug-induced behavior and step-by-step instructions for growing marijuana plants.

Warner announces deal with YouTube -  A revenue-sharing deal between video startup YouTube Inc. and Warner Music Group Corp. is likely to be the first of a spate of content distribution partnerships between Web sites and music companies, industry officials say.

You can now submit your web video productions to the Webby Awards! The Webby Awards launched its 11th Annual Call for Entries with the debut of major new awards in online film and video and interactive advertising.

Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times and "one of the most prestigious awards in the world" by the BBC, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. more

Do you want to know the down and dirty details of what it takes to get an indie film made? TALES FROM THE FRONTLINE OF INDIE FILMMAKING & OTHER ASSORTED TIPS FOR THE ASPIRING MOVIEMAKER, that has a bunch of articles and also stories of Peter John Ross's adventures as a filmmaker. From how he met his girlfriend through to how Horrors of War got started. It’s his E! TRUE NOT-HOLLYWOOD STORY “tell–all” book.

self published, 212 page book for only $10 - http://www.lulu.com/content/426325

HORRORS OF WAR, a feature film - www.horrorsofwarmovie.com

SONNYBOO PRODUCTIONS -- www.sonnyboo.com

Move over low-quality, amateur videos. Startup Dovetail (www.dovetail.tv) delivers the technology to distribute professionally-produced independent films in HD/DVD-quality, via the Web - downloadable for free by consumers. In conjunction with its beta launch this week, Dovetail (www.dovetail.tv) is putting out a call for entries for a film competition to be judged by Dovetail users. The winning filmmaker will receive $1,000 cash and 10,000 shares of stock in the new company. Dovetail invites independent filmmakers to take their best films off the shelf and put them onto screens in the homes of Indie film fans everywhere via Dovetail. The call for entries in Dovetail's "Off the Shelf and Onto the Screen" film competition is now open through September 30, 2006. more

muveeMix.com is a brand new site that allows anyone to automatically create polished video montages – called muvees – online without having to do any video editing. muveeMix intelligently cuts highlights of a user’s video and pictures to the beat of personally selected music, and adds in other themed artistic elements based on the video creation style that the user chooses. more

Need some help finding a video or clip on the net? ClipBlast! (www.clipblast.com), a pioneering video search technology, today introduced the industry's first online video search toolbar. ClipBlast’s patent-pending technology gives users the ability to search for video clips from across the entire web – a capability that even search-engine stalwarts like Google and MSN do not provide. more

Want to get your Internet video masterpieces seen by a BIG audience? Blip.tv, an online video sharing site that hosts and distributes Web-based TV shows and videoblogs, announced today that its premium content will be available for television viewing through Akimbo’s Internet video-on-demand service.  By showcasing its highest-quality and most popular online video series through Akimbo, blip.tv ensures that the best user-generated video will be available in millions of homes across the U.S. and Canada. more

Adobe rolls out upgraded versions of Adobe Elements - Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. These are the light versions of Adobe's top of the line imaging products for digital cameras and camcorders. Both programs include much of the performance of their higher level brethren but with a much simpler and easier to use interface.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced two milestone upgrades to its digital photo and video products for consumers, Adobe(r) Photoshop(r) Elements 5.0 for Windows(r) and Adobe Premiere(r) Elements 3.0 for Windows. The unique integrated functionality of the products allows users to do more with their photos and videos, whether adding impact to photo slideshows with video effects and transitions, providing dramatic pauses to videos with freeze frame effects or creating professional-looking printed CD/DVD labels and covers. more

More about the new Adobe Premiere Elements 3

THE MUCH ANTICIPATED TRIGGERSTREET  THIRD SHORT FILM FESTIVAL SEASON HAS BEGUN!
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Short Filmmakers and enthusiasts -- the moment you've all been waiting for has finally arrived. The Third Season of the TriggerStreet.com Online Short Film Festival is now underway! more
 

               The Long-Awaited Mac Pro Arrives -  

Creative professionals have been anxiously anticipating The Mac Pro since last year when Apple announced their computers would be transitioning to Intel processors. Much grumbling has been heard over the past months as folks sat back and watched Apple roll out a myriad of Intel-based notebooks and consumer desktop models, like the iMac and Mac mini, leaving editors, photographers and other power-hungry pros wondering "what about us?"

Are you involved in web design? The indispensable reference for JavaScript programmers since 1996, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fifth Edition is completely revised and expanded to cover JavaScript as it is used in today's Web 2.0 applications. more

This is really cool - SanDisk ® Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK)  introduced the V-Mate™ Video Memory Card - a video memory card recorder that allows users to record video from video inputs such as over-the-air television as well as cable, satellite, DVD players, personal video recorders (PVRs) like TiVo and video cassette recorders (VCRs) onto their flash memory cards. Consumers can then take their memory card from the V-Mate and insert it into their mobile phone, PDA, handheld game console like the Sony PSP™ (PlayStation® Portable), video music player or notebook computer to play back their videos on the go. more

Looking to make money making video? ExpertVillage.com announced it has budgeted $2 million to produce 75,000 new Internet friendly how-to videos over the next eighteen months, using freelance filmmakers and videographers. With the dramatic increase in availability of Internet video, consumers have become accustomed to getting information on the Internet in video form. ExpertVillage.com currently has over 1300 high-quality expert-based Internet videos available online, and plans to significantly expand its catalog of content available either direct to consumers via the Internet, download onto portable video players, or via corporate partners seeking to package content into broader service offerings. more

To celebrate the release of the new National Lampoon feature Dorm Daze 2, http://KnuckleHeadVideo.com is giving you the chance to win a trip for 2 to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.. Register from now until Sept. 30th 2006 and submit your videos. The more original videos you upload that get voted for, the better your chances are to win, so be sure to tell your friends and family. There will be only one winner, but many chances to win.

For those of you in the Los Angeles area, check out Dorm Daze 2 actress and model Vida Guerra for an in-store signing at the Virgin Megastore on Hollywood and Highland. Wednesday September 6 between 3:00pm and 5:00pm

Are you shooting and editing high definition video? Are you thinking of entering that space? Check out this new book - Working with HDV by Chuck Gloman and Mark J. Pescatore. Written by two authors with loads of hands-on experience and rigorously tech edited, this book aims to demystify the technology and techniques of working with HDV so that people can get the most out of the format. This book is written at a level accessible to beginners and is heavily illustrated with stills, charts, and photos. The whole process, from project planning to distribution on DVD, is covered. more

Great Video Web Sites and Videos to Check Out

 www.dovetail.tv is a new online destination for independent film, television and music content.  Dovetail features professionally-edited and produced content - independent from Hollywood - including short-format and feature-length films and undiscovered television and music programming. In short, Dovetail encourages artists and audiences to "Declare Your Independence." They currently offer multiple channels produced by independent producers and film festivals. Content channels, including SF Shorts, HowtoBehave, LAFCO and Dovetail Presents are intuitively organized to enable users to easily find desired content.

  Are you getting tired of wading through hundreds of bad videos to find one good one? Well it appears the blogger community is coming to your aid. Check out Google Video Highlights - Highlights of the best Google Videos. See reviews of documentaries and films, highlights of short clips and funny parodies, and the latest Google Video news and content updates

Unlike most video web sites that are "user generated" video sites where most of the clips are recycled amongst the hundreds of YouTube clones, Watchmojo.com is taking a different route. They produce and publish all our own video in-house and feature it on our site, free, and updated daily. They have only been around since February and we have already built up a library of over 2300 clips covering a wide variety of genres and categories.

There are thousands of sites - with hundreds seemingly springing up every week - that offer to host and promote videos and clips. This new and very unique entry into the horserace combines a very nice collection of videos with an intriguing web design and organization. Without your typical text based format, http://www.myextreme.ca/ offers up dynamic and extremely tiny thumbnails - "pinkie-nails?" of the videos for you to pick from. There is no text description, metadata or even search function so you have to choose by what your eyes recognize from the tiny icon or image. Interesting and visually stimulating, it might not be the most effective way to find videos. You be the judge.  Check it out. And like the other web video hosting sites, they are looking for your videos.

ClipBlast provides an easy way to find videos scattered across thousands of different providers. They aggregate and index the web for Video content and provide real-time access to new video as it becomes available.  

In addition to listing current clips that users can click and watch, ClipBlast’s powerful search tool makes it easy for users to find and watch other informative, enlightening, and entertaining video that they crave. ClipBlast’s personalization technology allows users to search, save, and share video clips with friends, family and community. Users receive instant access to video clips directly from providers, and content owners rest easy knowing their clips, which reside on their own servers, will be seen exactly how they intended. 

ClipBlast’s real-time live video guide is continuously updated to give web users immediate access to unlimited video clips from thousands of quality providers, across multiple categories and interests.

Here's a very useful site for film makers, actors and actresses. They feature indie movies, fanfilms and cool videos.  Ruby Filmz is a place for filmmakers to promote their movies. This is an excellent resource for the aspiring filmmaker.

The Harvest Eating website contains lots and lots of great looking cooking videos. Don't watch this while on your lunch break at work! They add new videos each week as the harvest seasons change. Many of the videos are accompanied by recipes. They are in the studio year round, shooting more videos so that you can learn how to cook new recipes with seasonal ingredients. The videos are easy to understand, easy to follow. You can sign up so that they will send you a new video every day.

If you like cars, trucks and bikes - anything with wheels - you ought to checkout the new and improved WheelsTV.net. They have over 300 video organized into 18 broadband television channels. And, if you got some great video of your car or truck, they would love to see it! Auto Shows. Adventure Travel, Classic Cars - they got it all.

Here is a nice collection of funny short films with a definite theme and attitude. Have you ever wanted to wreck havoc at your place of employment? Check out Jeremy Kruse's web site. He is a writer, actor, producer and director. Kruse has written, produced, directed, edited and acted in over 20 short films.

That’s it for this September 22 issue of the Internet Video Magazine Newsletter. And as usual, if you want to be removed from this newsletter, please hit reply and put TAKE ME OFF in the subject area.

Copyright 2006 – SRS Productions

Internet Video Magazine