Category: Online Video

Tomorrow morning I’ll be making a cameo appearance with Microfilms, a new production company established in Kilkenny by some good friends of mine. If you’re in Kilkenny tomorrow morning, I’ll be the one freezing in a Santa suit on Kieran street, making a quick appearance as a decoy Santa before hitting the office for my day’s work.

It is great to see more of the creative talents in Kilkenny hard at work.

Microfilms are, as their MySpace suggests

… a filmmaking collective in Kilkenny operating with the intention to create new short films, music videos, animation, features (fingers crossed). We want to utilise the talents of many of our local filmmaking brethren and create top quality entertainment produce geared towards internet distribution.

Because sometimes, just sometimes, Irish films don’t need to be about men chasing cows around fields to fiddle music.

Our first production is VULTURES and it’s currently into it’s second week of shooting. It’s a web based sitcom following a hapless trio of private detectives as they run a humdrum business in a small Irish town. Our first online episode is entitled THE KRIS KRINGLE KONUNDRUM and will be aired around Christmas 2007. It’s preceded by a promotional trailer for Vulture Private Investigations which can be viewed above.

I’m sure that discussing the development of ‘webisodes’ and the video production sequence for the online market would be a welcome addition to the billing at CreativeCamp in Kilkenny come March.

I’ve been distracting myself with other blogs, client launches, giving talks in Wicklow, a chest infection, an ingrown toenail (which got sorted yesterday) and so many other things that I’ve missed a few posts here over the last few days. Today too is the first time my laptop has been switched on since Sunday.

That much aside though I should say that one of the things I was working on towards the end of last week was getting Young Irish Film Makers on YouTube and sorting out some kind of online direction for them for 2008.

While some of the members have been posting to Google Video or YouTube under their individual accounts, there was nothing centralised to view the works produced by members, those involved in outreach activities and more. At present they’ve posted the second trailer for upcoming 2008 feature release ‘Suckers’ along with a clip from 2006 release ‘Stealaway’.

I’ve been assured there will be several clips added to the YIFM YouTube channel a week so if you’re interested in following the works produced by members (aged 10 upwards) then keep an eye on it.

Related link: YIFM.com

Intruders.tv have an interview with Walter Higgins of Pixenate online this morning.

Keep em coming.

Pixenate will be on display at DemoBar this coming Thursday.

Interesting one this, Google announced over the weekend (or at least I read over the weekend) that they are due to introduce a new screening technology into the YouTube realm which will ‘recognize infringing videos’. Google has been getting it in the neck and everywhere else from Viacom of late in relation to copyright infringement and the uploading by YouTube users of copyright protected video footage to the video sharing website.

“We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by sometime in the Fall,” a Google rep added in an e-mail to Sandoval. “But this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it’s difficult to forecast specific launch dates.”

The story appeared in the New York Times online edition (via AP) on Saturday morning. While the Google and YouTube family hope that the move to introduce the screening will “hopefully eliminate such disputes in the future” and a lawyer for Viacom states that they would be “very grateful” for the introduction of the technology to eliminate copyright infringing videos appearing on YouTube, I can’t see it do anything to quell the existing lawsuit or actions planned by the likes of Viacom, the Premier League

Note: You won’t find any copyright infringing footage on the KilkennyMusic.com YouTube channel (yes, we’ve a long way to go yet…)

One of the problems of my recent RSS diet is that I miss out on certain news stories – this one in particular from Saturday when it was announced that the Verizon exclusive control over YouTube Mobile (m.youtube.com) has passed and the service is now open to the public. Of course, if you flick open the address in your mobile you’re likely to be greeted by

YouTube Mobile is a data intensive application. We highly recommend that you upgrade to an unlimited data plan with your mobile service provider to avoid additional charges.

but in saying that, if you’re on a flat-rate data plan or mobile wifi service then you’ll be pretty happy. Although I mention it here I’ve yet to try the mobile service – 1) having only discovered this morning that it is gone live and 2) I’m making an effort to cut down my mobile bill, not increase it. Good news for mobile users though is that handset support is pretty extensive with all videos for YouTube Mobile encoded in the 3GP format.

At present there’s only a small portion of YouTube’s current content available on the mobile service but if you’re a YouTube junkie then there’s more than enough to get you started.

Have to say I’m disgusted at the news that BalconyTV had their videos removed. Hopefully there’s a quick fix. From all of us at KilkennyMusic.com, we’re sorry to see it happen! We’ve dealt ourselves with acts who have appeared on the site and I’ve used their videos in one or two posts as well.

YOUTUBE TAKES DOWN BALCONYTV

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Put together by a great friend of mine, Paddy Dunne, and given that I haven’t blogged it before (as much as I remember) and as much as it might be controversial – of sorts – I think this a fantastic video, put together with scanned sketches, a large series of PNGs and put through the mill in Flash before winding up on YouTube.

Video originally appeared on YouTube just in time for the release of Damien Rice’s latest album, 9.

YouTube has been served – with a subpoena that is, to reveal the identity behind one particular YouTube member following the appearance of full episodes of 24 and The Simpsons on the site.

A browse on TV.com over breakfast turned up this story showing Fox are gunning for YouTube under the Digital Copyright Act. What they do with the person if their identity is revealed remains to be seen but it can’t be all that good! As of this morning it appears there is no word or reaction from YouTube, at least in the public domain so it will be interesting to see how it pans out or just how tough it gets for YouTube in the future.

Odds are nowadays that if you missed a clip from a show you’ll be able to find it on YouTube, or some other video sharing site. No word on RTE scrambling for additional license fees for being able to catch clips of The Panel or Podge and Rodge on it anyway…

….yet.

A look inside the PS3, but not how you may expect….

A show that I watch on NBC, Kidnapped, has been cancelled due to poor ratings – but I have to find out what happens!! The show was originally penned for 13 episodes which NBC commited to producing the airing. Although they’ve pulled Kidnapped off their tv schedule, they’ve decided to air the episodes exclusively online at the usual time, where you can also go back and watch every episode from the season.

The show looks like its only available to US viewers and I’ve tried a handful of proxies with no joy this morning – has anyone got a decent one for the US that would allow viewing of the show?

Not too often I get to do nothing on a Friday night thanks to this baby, especially of late with the birthday and the relaunch… so tonight I get to take Friday at 88mph and mark the fact that I just picked up the 4-DVD set of Back To The Future.

Found this clip as well on YouTube… very well put together and perfect choice of song. Give it a watch if you’ve a spare five minutes…

Just a little something for the office on a Friday….

During the week off, you find a few gems to bring back to the office… this is one of them. Lessons to be learned – do not mix a merry go round with a moped, and for the love of God if you do – DO NOT get into the damn thing as well.

Some people are just pure stupid….

Continuing with some viewing for Monday (plus the fact that I had discovered the two results of the NYFS on Google Video), here is the second of the shorts entitled ‘Sins Of The Father’. Running time is just over six minutes and it should do nicely for a cup of tea to help beat that 3 O’Clock Slump.

Click to view the other short, Self Defence… And You. The short above features the track ‘Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking‘ by Snowpatrol, available on ‘Final Straw’ from CDWow.ie. (Affiliate link)

I’ve had the pleasure of working with and continuing to work with Young Irish Film Makers for a great number of years now and most recently they have just wrapped the 2006 National Youth Film School, their annual youth film training initiative (thats damn good!).

Anyway, for your Monday viewing, here’s the first short of two that were produced over the few week of the NYFS, each of the shorts being scripted, produced, directed, shot and edited within a week.

Enjoy…