After thirteen years it’s become an established medium for branding, art and entertainment. Web Video is now following in it’s footsteps.

Video on the web has only recently become popular. Beginning around 1995 with streaming media players such as RealPlayer. In 1997 Shareyourworld.com was one of the first video sharing sites but failed mainly due to limited bandwidth.

With the birth of Adobe’s Flash Video codec in 2004 and the increase of bandwidth video sharing sites like YouTube emerged in 2005 popularizing web video.

There’s a shift from many TV and Film professionals to the web feeding the demand for web video advertising and entertainment.

Sites like YouTube catered to the users desire to connect and share. The user community varies from vloggers to independent filmmakers. Other video sites cater to a specific community or host certain content such as Funny Or Die, iKlipz and Expert Village.

For Advertising video communities can be difficult because of over saturation of content. YouTube being a good example. There are too many videos being uploaded too quickly for yours to stand out.

This video summarizes the most common techniques. Keep in mind these days everyone and their chimpanzee uses them.

Under three minute, hilarious content will always stick to web audiences. The trick is not just cheating the system by uploading tricky thumbnails or changing the title to “boobs”. Recently high quality content in both entertainment and advertising for the web has become a demand.

You can only watch this so many times. Professional talent and original ideas shouldn’t be excluded from the budget.

To make an effective web advertising campaign Viral Marketing is used like Batman: The Dark Knight and I Love Bees advertisements.
Combining their techniques with web video will insure you stand out and reach your audience.

For independent filmmakers to make a profit from their work many sites have partner programs were ad revenue is shared. To make more profit many use services like iTunes or Amazon.

Also through merchandising and hosting advertisements on the series/films official webpages. Brightcove is often used instead of YouTube or such sites because it allows for high quality video to be streamed.

A good example of this is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog which was created by Joss Whedon starring Neil Patrick Harris. It streamed free online and earned it’s revenue from iTunes sales, merchandise, and DVD and Soundtrack.

Thanks to technology video has become an effective medium that can be incorporated into anything. From games to web sites.

AKQA’s work on the microsite for Unilever’s Peperami Noodles Army and the Philips Bodygroom site are examples of incorporating interactive video into a sites design.

YouTube’s annotations, Video Clix are an examples of easily attaching interactive information to a video.

Web games can incorporate video just like the classic FMV games used to. A simple yet hilarious example being Aliens from Planet Dave.

Like Web Design, Web Video is a new industry emerging from the internet. It is still in it’s infancy but with the rate today’s technologies evolve it is quickly reaching it’s prime.

Dear Babica,

Tanja

Now everyone!! Keep spreadin’ this like yummy hot butter over those internets!

NOOOooow!!!!@!@!

The new blog theme I call “Hollywood Retro” in ode to my new hobby of reading books from the dawn of Hollywood. You can find tons of em’ here.

I just finished Mae Marsh’s “Screen Acting”. It was a very inspiration and informative read, I recommend to filmmakers, actors and film enthusiasts a like.

Here are some good snippets from the book:

“If I were requested to choose from among ten beginners the one who would go the farthest in motion pictures I should unhesitatingly lay my finger upon the one who possessed the following qualifications:

During the course of production in a studio things are at high tension. Time is money. Each of us constitutes a more or less important cog in a great machine. Those cogs that inexcusably to function are eliminated.”

The endings probably one of the sweetest endings of any book I’ve read:

“I have enjoyed doing this book. From time to time I have been forced to drop my work upon the urgent appeal of my eighteen-months’ old daughter. She has gorgeous blue eyes with lashes long as twilight shadows. Her cheeks are exquisitely pink and her little mouth is like a rose-bud in spring. Her name is Mary. She has brought me worlds of undreamed of happiness.

‘There is the most and the best that I knew about the screen back in those old-fashioned days of 1921.’”

Anyways great stuff on the way. on Alexis’s FoD page I promised more episodes around November 24th. Maybe it’ll be sooner.

Cheers n’ Whiskey,
THE Awesome

If you want some of that Papervision power here’s where you get started.

I’m just dying to have a RED. I so got the manual but I hope someday I’ll get closer to that camera then just reading about em’. My GL2 might be jealous but I won’t let him stand between us. *sigh*

Watch this dude hold that beauty in his hands and swap it’s lens. So hot!

Finally. I leave you with The Great Office War. This is why Runaway Box is a box full of awesome!

The second game is a sort of “dress up” with our beloved “princess pretty face” Alexis. It takes place in her room. I took this opportunity to reveal more about the character. Behold, the concept art:

I used to write a lot. Writing wasn’t enough for me though. I wanted to make my imagination reality. What better way to do that then make a movie? I love a challenge. I live for it. I’m that crazy person who’ll go skydiving with a crocodile “’cause it’s totally awesome!”.

When I was about fifteen I wrote a screenplay and began making it into a film all by me little self. It was shot against a blue chroma key cloth. Since the only actor I could get was me and there were no locations I could shoot in. I played both parts of the villain and the hero. Everything else was created and animated in After Effects. Unfortunately it was never completed and I lost most of it. I did however begin a career in videography and worked for some big names. So what I learned from it payed off.

I know it probably would of turned out to be terrible low budget production that would make Ed Wood cry. It’s the fact that I got off me lazy bum and really wanted to bring this to life that really counts.

Quiting right in the middle like that didn’t sit with me very well though. I vowed to never write again until I had the proper resources to completed a project from start to finished. Over dramatic? Maybe. Just felt defeated and I didn’t want to put my passion into something I knew wouldn’t work.

Sometimes I wish I would of gotten caught up in something other then the movies. I mean, who doesn’t want to be a filmmaker? What pretty girl doesn’t want to act? We are all in it for a hundred million different reasons. Some of us because we love it some of us because we want that oh so pretty fame and glory.

Me? I’m in for the challenge and to finish what I started. I’m taking small steps. Alexis being one of them, but I will. Oh yes. I will finish that damn movie and make it damn awesome. After I do that. I’ll go and make more. ‘Cause I’m crazy like that.

To those chicks who are fifteen or even younger. If you want to make movies, go and do it. Even if you end up making a few you’ll never finished. The earlier you stack up on experience the better you’ll be at it. Working and fighting for your dreams is damn worth it. You might not think so, you might even get suicidal and that whole “don’t give up” will just sound empty to you. It’s a damn hard long way but being able to do what you love, is so worth it.

At the request of the man who we won’t name. Or call nasty names like “Jerk”. I reveal to you, my old “writings” if you can call them that.

At thirteen I’d write and perform short stories and poetry in L.A. You can hear my preteen voice read: Heart of Hate and Deep Under The Bright Green Grass.

Just so you know. I kept that “never write again” vow up until a few weeks ago. Hanging onto the past is for super heroes who mope in dark corners. Not me. I’m skydiving with crocodiles!

Whooooooosh!

ARGH!! it’s got my FAAACE!

Driving a black 1967 Chevy Impala “hunting things and saving people” a long with two brothers. Yes. I did watch like tons of Supernatural while I was drifting between the sleep world and the real one. The only question I have is how in the world did I get Dean to let me drive the Impala, and why did he owe me fifty bucks?

I just signed up for FireFox download day. Got back to continuing work on the untitled game project and also wrote a song for the next Alexis episode. You will loves it.

While compiling a shopping list for upgrades I ran into those super sweet RED cameras. Ooh lordy lord. What pure and so beautiful technology I saw there. The only downside is it’s big budget stuff there. I’d have to scrap up over a hundred thousand for everything I’d need and my kidneys aren’t worth that much.

So I’m settling for an indy classic. The Panasonic AG-HVX200. Unless I run into something new from Panasonic or something new and tapeless from Canon. I just want some sweet HD tapeless love. I’ll most defiantly be editing on a Mac Pro. On the software side I’ve got my Adobe CS3 but everyones been screaming FCP editors and Motion I figured I’d give in and get Final Cut Studio.

I’m working on getting the cash together. I’ve estimated about ten thousand dollars is what I’ll need. If any of you got that kinda cash and need my skillz. Contact me.

Last but not least, a link dump. If you’ve got a demo reel you can put it on Reel Exchange. It’s an awesome site run by even awesomer people. I dig new developments in the web video arena. Check out MediaMobz a developing new service from the same awesomeness that brought SpinXpress.

Off I go back to reality. “Hunting video and saving files; the family business.”

I’ll tell you how a normal day of shooting goes. It consists of putting the equipment up and taking it down everyday because the studio space is also living space.

I really enjoy being cast and crew at the same time. I love the challenge of balancing the creative side and the technical side and hallucinating do to lack of sleep. Everyday I have to place the lights, set up the camera, get into character and start shooting. And everyday I feel like it takes a piece of my soul…

When that’s done I take it all down, then go through the footage and write some notes for post production. While I’m shooting I also think about post production. You want to shoot it right and avoid the “We’ll fix it in post” because sometimes what you could of fixed on set in less an a minute will take you weeks to fix in post production. Which can cause you to feel just a bit homicidal.

When I am editing and throwing down some VFX madness I use a combination of random ideas I have in my head and the story board and some hardcore drugs. Since almost anything is possible with the software; I love to improvise and let my creative side go insane in all the stages of production. Sometimes I just plane ol’ go insane but I have meds now.

I’m also a sucker for tedious precise planning and knowing exactly what I want. Since I’ve learned what can happen if you don’t keep those two sides in balance. If you get too creative you’ll end up re-doing and re-doing and not ever finishing. Plummeting into creative madness without any sign of a deadline. If you stick to close to the plan it tends to drain the creativity like a hungry vampire… except it’s not so kinky.

When I think it’s finished I pass it on to everyone else for a critique session. I don’t settle for “it’s perfect” and that drives them up the walls crazy. I think they’ve started putting rat poison in my coffee. Thankfully their brutally honest (and don’t have a place to hide the body) so I always have a few things to fix. I run through it again and again and have them review it one final time. When we all agree it’s finished I encode it and upload it onto the wide wide webs.

Were I wait for spiteful comments from slackers living in their parents garage thinking they can convince me to commit suicide, messages and friend adds from weird greasy hairless men posing as fourteen year old girls who want to “go shopping” with me.

At the end of the day it’s exhausting and leaves you kinda cranky with the “after project blues” but it’s damn worth it because now it’s done and it’s awesome. And you really didn’t have anything better do to for those two whole weeks.

That’s how I roll. None stop till it’s done. No excuses and no half awesome. With plenty of cynical jokes along the way.

Now I’m taking a break and working on some games. With the creature that sits next to me all day. The Nathalie. She will eat your brains and make little patties out of your liver. That’s why she’s the captain.