by Marc Hustvedt on December 1st, 2010
YouTube today officially rolled out the ability to skip through pre-roll ads on its videos now, begging the question, who will actually watch ads anymore? The feature is called TrueView, first reported last week in AdAge, and lets viewers skip over an ad after five seconds of it playing—if they choose to.
YouTube created the feature, which it has been beta testing for the past month, not for its users but somewhat ironically for its advertising partners. The advertisers only pay if the user opts to watch the whole ad instead of skipping over it, which should, as the theory goes, give a more targeted self-selected audience to the advertiser.
by Joshua Cohen on December 1st, 2010
I can recite all of Rent word for word (it’s an embarrassing artifact from my youth). Seeing Billy Crudup and Jeff Goldblum in The Pillowman was one of the best entertainment experiences of my life. And a performance of Aveneue Q can send me into a nostalgic daze, craving adolescence for at least a day or two. But that’s around where my emotional connection with the theatre begins and ends.
I’m not, for instance, a frequent visitor to BroadwayWorld.com. Well, unless the site is providing behind-the-scenese footage and interviews for a $65 million Broadway show, based on a Marvel comic book conceived by Stan Lee, with music and lyrics created by Bono and the Edge, and riddled with production setbacks and difficulties.
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has one theatre’s most high-profile cast lists (headlined by two U2 frontmen and Tony Award-winning director, Julie Taymor), centers on one of America’s most popular, commercial heroes (who doesn’t love Peter Parker?), and is by far Broadway’s most expensive production ever (it costs more than twice as much as Shrek: The Musical’s reported $25 million).
The music, the subject matter, the price tag, and the hiccups have garnered the production a lot of attention, from fanboys to Conan. They’ve also got me watching Broadway World’s behind-the-scenes series, Spider-Man: Behind the Web.
Paige Davis (of Trading Spaces fame, who also happens to be the wife of Patrick Page, who plays the Green Goblin in Turn Off the Dark) goes inside the Foxwoods Theatre to interview the show’s cast and crew. It’s not exactly a hard hitting expose or Taiwanese animation, but it gives you a better idea of all that goes on behind the curtain in one of the theatre world’s most highly anticipated productions of all time. It’s also kind of interesting to see what kinds of videos and questions count as “behind-the-scenes” for an industry publication about Broadway.
by Marc Hustvedt on December 1st, 2010
Brands are starting to get all gooey when you mention an interactive web series to them, and one of the more ‘progressive’ brands to play in the online video sandbox, AXE, decided to throw their hat at this latest trend on YouTube. That meant teaming up with arguably the godfathers of the YouTube interactive video format—Chad, Matt & Rob-who have been experimenting with a choose-your-own-adventure style ever since YouTube rolled out its in-video annotations technology back in 2008.
The latest project, The Teleporter (below), marks the first time a major brand sponsor has backed one of their highly popular interactive adventures. For Chad Villella, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Rob Polonsky, the young creators seem to have found their sweet spot in online video, having recently teamed up with TV production studio Fremantle Media for their forthcoming western, The Treasure Hunt.
by Joshua Cohen on December 1st, 2010
Woody Allen turns 75 today. I wasn’t aware his birthday was any kind of internet event. Sure, the Diamond Anniversary of the birth one of the most influential American film directors of all time doesn’t receive as much attention from the internet as something like Talk Like a Pirate Day, but it’s getting some play.
New York newspaper articles, the launch of the third season of independent web series duder, and the following spoof tribute on Comedy Central’s Atom.com shows Allen maintains at least some degree of credibility in internet pop culture.
In Woody Allen, This is Crazy, Tony Forkush provides the uncanny vocal impersonation of Allen (which is so good, there’s even a disclaimer at the top of the video indicating it’s not the real deal), while the very talented, Streamy Award-winning animator Dan Meth provides the visual effects, spot on dialogue, and Allen’s picture perfect neurotic, physical gesticulations.
It’s the latest in a series of videos Meth’s done for Atom.com. The cartoon animator’s been on a tear since the finales of his Next New Networks series Nite Fite and Meth Minute. In addition to the Atom videos, he’s done work for Comedy Central’s Ugly Americans, upped the output of “daily illustrations and viral meme fodder” on his highly entertaining personal blog (which you should subscribe to if you don’t already) and produced even more timely cartoons for College Humor.
What’s does Meth’s future have in store aside from a screening of Mighty Aphrodite? Hopefully some television. Meth tells me he’s been shopping TV show pitches around to all the networks. Fingers crossed will see his work on the small screen soon.
