White label “viewing Party” provider SocialVision launched YouTubeSocial, a product that combines Facebook’s Social Graph with IM-like chat to create a live video experience in which viewers can watch and comment on YouTube videos simultaneously in real time.
A recent question in the “Ask The Attorney” column of Tubefilter led us to launch this series of articles on NDAs. Perhaps it’s because we have a soft spot for misunderstood contracts, which is true—the misunderstood part not the soft spot—because many people believe that one size NDA can fit all (or most) circumstances. We can’t change that behavior (everyone insists on using standard forms), but we can explain a few of the critical elements of an agreement.
In this first article of the series, we’ll summarize the main issues and provide a few pointers on the first of the topics: the purpose for the disclosure of the confidential information. Subsequent pieces in the series will go into more detail on some of the issues. For purposes of simplicity, we’ll use NDA to cover just about all forms of confidentiality obligations, but keep I mind that they show up elsewhere—such as the nondisclosure or confidentiality provisions of other agreements (e.g., employment agreements). OK, now, stay awake!
Roku announced a complete refresh today of its lineup of popular streaming players, swapping the three models with three new ones, all of which offer 720p or better HD video. The headliner here is the $99 Roku XDS which brings full 1080p, dual-band Wireless-N technology, optical audio output, and an added USB port for quick plug and play of media from your other devices.
We’ve been fans of the Roku box for a while now, with its more than ample selection of online video and web series from the likes of networks Revision3, Blip.tv and Break. But for more mainstream consumers it seems to be Roku’s simplicity, modest price and let’s face it, access to Netflix’s instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows that struck a chord.
Ever just get fed up while at your desk job? You ask yourself, after 2.4 million years of evolution, this is where human beings have arrived? To sit in front of a computer all day? Don’t you just want to say f-it, I’m claiming back my inner animal. Then you renew your gym membership, rent Fight Club, pass out on the couch right around the soap-making scene. Well the folks at San Francisco-based new media production company Portal A Interactive feel your pain. Yesterday they launched a brand new documentary web series White Collar Brawler, a documentary web series about two office workers who decide to quit their jobs and train to become amateur boxers.
When Jim Jarmusch published his poster-sized manifesto on the art of filmmaking, he borrowed his thesis from Jean-Luc Godard. It reinforced his point that nothing is original. But you don’t have to be a fan of Ghost Dog or the French New Wave to know everything’s derivative of something else. All you have to do is watch Everything is a Remix.
Created by Kirby Ferguson (who you should remember from his engaging output of video art and observations under the banner of Goodiebag, and you may remember from his earlier, sexier productions), the four-part series is an examination of how our world is the way it is because of an innate cut and paste culture. Stealing, borrowing, remixing, or whatever verb you prefer isn’t just how a handful of things come to fruition. It’s how everything gets made.
In the first installment, Ferguson chooses to look at remixing through music and lyrics of Led Zeppelin. “I want people to watch it,” Ferguson said over the phone. “I could’ve started with Shakespeare or Michelangelo or Homer, but I thought Zeppelin had an opportunity to pique the interest of more people. They’re also a particularly bad case of remixing without attribution.”
With the archival footage and informative voice over of a Ken Burns documentary and the fast-paced editing of an MTV News segment, Ferguson takes you on a historical tour of sampling in late ’60s rock ‘n roll. Further installments will touch on movies, low culture, and high art. They’ll be released whenever Ferguson receives enough donations to cover production costs.
Ferguson knows he isn’t covering entirely new territory. He’s borrowing from predecessors like Copyright Criminals and Walking on Eggshells to give the topic a new spin. “Other people have done the legal side,” said Ferguson. ” I wanted to do something that’s more about the creative side. It’s just something everybody does. Remixing is how the creative process works. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at, you’re either doing it in a crude way or an ultra-sophisticated way, but it’s all the same thing.”
On Monday, YouTube announced the shortlist for YouTube Play, its high art collaboration with the Guggenheim museum. Yesterday, Vimeo, “the video sharing site for grown up You-Tubers,” made an announcement of its own.
After receiving more than 6,500 submissions across nine categories, the Vimeo Festival and Awards finally made public its finalists. Let me break down how it all works.
vimeo-festival-and-awardsThe good people at Vimeo pared those 6,500 submissions down to a shortlist of 20 entries per category. Then they handed the paring responsibilities over to a panel of 27-esteemed judges (which includes names like David Lynch, Ze Frank, Ricky Van Veen, Fred Seibert, M.I.A., Roman Coppola, DJ Spooky, and more). Those judges voted to select the five finalists and winner in each category. You can watch the finalists’ work now, but the winners will be announced at a ceremony hosted by the internet’s golden child, Ze Frank, at IAC headquarters (IAC owns Vimeo) in New York on October 9. One grand-prize festival winner will take home a $25,000 grant to create something spectacular.
A la the Webby Awards, Vimeo will announce a “Community Choice Award Winner” in each category in addition to the judge’s selection. Anyone with a Vimeo login is encouraged to vote.
In the Original Series category, finalists include: The Specials (a “docu-soap series which follows the lives of 5 friends with learning disabilities”) Coolhunting (a video offshoot of the popular arts, culture, and design blog), Break-Ups (a series of one-shot, improvised break-up scenes), Take-Away Shows (live and uncut recordings of bands playing impromptu concerts in unconventional venues) and One-Square Mile (a documentary series that “examines life in individual square miles around the United States and beyond”).
If you haven’t seen them before, all are definitely worth checking out, but don’t limit your viewing time to the episodics. You can click on any of the 45 finalists, and not be disappointed. And if you want to see them with a live viewing audience or attend any of the related festival workshops, pick up your tickets at Vimeoawards.com.
Lionsgate has become such a staple of the entertainment landscape that it’s hard to believe the studio only dates back to 1995. TV and film have been its bread and butter, churning out hits like the Saw franchise, The Expendables and Kick-Ass along with Emmy-winning TV standouts like Weeds and Mad Men. For the most part, however, the studio has remained on the digital sidelines, aside from a few toe-dipping exploits like the companion web series to Weeds.
But now Lionsgate is ready to dive head first, committing real production dollars into crafting its own web original content.
Today the studio announced that 24-episode animated web series Trailer Trash will be their first entrant into the online-only arena. In the wispy, cutout animation style of South Park and Katalyst’s 2008 web series Blah Girls, Trash follows a group of hillbillies at a trailer park. If it feels in fact like a redneck version of Blah Girls, that would probably be Blah Girls creator Todd Harris Goldman’s doing, who created Trash along with Hud:sun Media’s Max Benator.
A number of writers have been tapped to pen the comedy, with Pop-Up Video’s Amy Jackson and Skunk Fu!’s Andy Rheingold on as head writers.
The Fine Brothers just released a whopper of an interactive video adventure (above) on YouTube, American Idol Interactive Experience. This follows a successful release of their last interactive, Lindsay Lohan’s courtroom drama, and puts the Brothers into my elite list of creators that have effectively used YouTube’s annotations to deliver a user-navigated storyline—alongside other standouts ChadMattandRob (The Birthday Party, The Time Machine) and SecretSauceTV (Interactive Hot Tub Girl).
No major pop culture phenomenon is safe from The Fine Brothers. Their LOST action figure parodies were so popular that it’s all but certain that they were ripped off by none other than ABC itself last year. With FOX’s megahit American Idol set to announce their newest judge tomorrow now that Ellen decided to part ways, it’s about as topical as you can get this week.
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