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YouTube Meetup in NYC Tomorrow
In what is an apparent attempt to convert Washington Square Park into a techno-hippie love-in of Haight-Ashbury proportions, hundreds (maybe thousands?) of video geeks will descend tomorrow into Greenwich Village, handycams in hand, for the first-ever New York YouTube Meetup.
If you keep tabs on the vid zeitgeist then you know the event — the latest such meetup, after a similar geeky bacchanalia in San Francisco earlier this year — from this video by Happy Slip, which has received over 2.6 million views since June 9 and reached as high as number 6 on the vidmeter index. Or maybe you heard of the meetup from this video. Or this video. Or this one. No shortage here. Really. I can keep going. See?
Europe Finds YouTube’s G-Spot
Really bored at work? Titillated by advertising masquerading as softcore porn? Really bored at work? Then check out the latest international YouTube phenomenon, an advertisement posted on the European Commission’s YouTube channel — a.k.a “EUTube,” a.k.a “Really? EwwTube? LOL” — which shows snippets of lovemaking from several award-winning European films.
The clip, entitled “Film Lovers Will Love This,” ends with a crescendo of orgasms and the double entendre “Let’s come together”.
44 seconds. 18 couples. 283,000 views. Congrats EU, you’ve found the Internet’s G Spot.
Technically, the video simply advertises the EU as a great place to film movies. But thanks to YouTube’s related videos function, it also serves as a gateway to less PG-13 fare. My favorite: Boob Shot! Runner-up: Stripping on the way to the NoHo pool.
It’s Revamp Week for Video Sites
How have vidshare sites changed this week? Let us count the ways:
- 1. Vimeo, the vidshare offspring of College Humor, launched a new version. The biggest change (besides lookin’ a whole lot more chill) is the addition of user-level privacy settings. You can choose which of your contacts sees your uploads. Granularity like this makes Vimeo more similar to a personal blogging tool like Vox than to YouTube. It’s good to see a vid site that’s more attuned to community than to broadcast. (See our Vimeo profile from April.)
- 2. Ad-and-lad-centric Heavy.com also rolled out some changes today, including a completely rebuilt video player that focuses on sequencing videos inside channels. Thus: If you’re browsing a curated channel, Heavy sequences the videos in that channel; once the first video ends, the next vid in that channel loads. Same goes for other areas like search results and most popular vids. Thumbnails for related videos are shown at the bottom of the player. A Heavy rep tells me they want to provide a continuous experience of related videos so the audience can relax with their finger off the mouse.
Heavy is also working on being more search engine friendly, so they’ve surfaced a lot of metadata outside the player.
Dove’s “Evolution” Web Vid Wins Top Ad Award
In what’s being touted as a milestone for web marketing, the viral phenomenon Dove “Evolution” advertisement won the Grand Prix at the 54th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this weekend.
For the three people and my dad who haven’t seen the vid: It’s a 74-second web-only affair, showing hairstylists and Photoshop artists manipulating an attractive woman into a flawless, airbrushed beauty. Its has been seen untold millions of times on YouTube and various vidshare sites. The Cannes judges awarded the top prize to “Evolution” after removing it from the corporate message category and placing it in film.
Sicko Leak Benefits Moore
Execs at the Weinstein Company announced this week that Michael Moore’s Sicko, scheduled to open nationwide on June 29, will open Friday on a single screen at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square theater in New York. Distributor Lionsgate, meanwhile, will be offering sneak preview screenings in 27 markets where Moore’s docs have played well in the past. The decision to open early, according to Weinstein execs, isn’t related to the film being widely distributed on the Internet.
So there’s a small conundrum for you. If the early release isn’t due to Internet piracy, then that piracy isn’t the profits-munching jabberwock studios say it is. On the other hand, if the film does poorly in theaters, does that give the lie to the oft-espoused idea (in techie circles anyway) that giving away content for free drives rather than undermines interest in a product? And if the film does well, does that mean piracy drove interest? And how much? The answer, undoubtedly, is similar to that old Tootsie Pop commercial: The world may never know.
But at least we know Michael Moore is pissed. Moore, apparently a fan of piracy when his movies aren’t being pirated, complained that the two users who uploaded Sicko to YouTube wanted to undermine the doc’s success.
Michael Moore’s Sicko leaked on the Net
Sicko, Michael Moore’s scathing look at the healthcare industry and the pharmaceutical companies that are destroying it, is scheduled to debut June 29 in theaters. But, if you’re the savvy keyboarding sort you can download the documentary now. (Check TorrentSpy for copies.) I know, I know. Piracy! Don’t everybody gasp in surprise at once.
Sicko’s not the only new release you can grab at Canal Street these days, though. Hostel II, Eli Roth’s gory flick about rich people cutting up kids, was also leaked earlier this month. Not sure which film, Sicko or Hostel, is more adequately described by the phrase “torture porn.”
Of course Hollywood execs, ever quick to blame piracy for declining ticket sales — I saw Hostel II. It sucked. Blame that. — is sure to cite these latest leaks as proof that piracy is hurting business. The MPAA estimates that piracy costs the industry $18 billion a year in lost revenue. But those same execs would do well to remember a little AT&T study from way back in 2003 which said the prime source of unauthorized copies of new movies on file-sharing networks appears to be movie industry insiders, not consumers.
Moore, not so long ago said, “I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people. As long they’re not doing it to make a profit off it, as long as they’re not, you know, trying to make a profit off my labor.” Prophetic words!
YouTube Fails Us Politically (or is it vice versa?)
There’s a blog-sharp maw waiting to gnash anyone who is critical of the democratizing power of YouTube. If you deride its star-making potential, you’re accused of old media partisanship. If you doubt its meritocratic infallibility, you’re a curmudgeon, scribbling from behind the fame-inflaming footlights of “most viewed today.” If you giggle at the candidates try — God, how they try! — to connect with their constituents, you are jaded, jaded, jaded.
Well here’s more jade: YouTube fails us politically. Or maybe it’s we who have failed YouTube. My circumstantial evidence: The top three most popular candidates in each party are also the top three most viewed candidates on YouTube. Hilary, Barack, Edwards, McCain, Romney, Guliani. We’re not exactly shaking the bowes of the ol’ ossified liberty tree with the winds of change.
Horror, the Next Big Web Video Genre?
Oh, the horror. Hollywood, having just begun to grudgingly accept online video dramas like Prom Queen, is now facing an influx of slasher flicks and gorefest vids on the computer screen.
I’m not sure why anyone would want to watch horror videos on their computer — it’s hard to snuggle in this Aeron, I’ve tried — but Hollywood and a few vidshare sites are intrigued. Below, four new horror films coming to a desktop near you.
Devil’s Trade — Spider-Man director Sam Raimi, best known to horror fans as the director of the Evil Dead series, is the executive producer of FEARNet’s Devil’s Trade, a series of seven short episodes that follow three teenagers who are cursed after buying an item online. The first episode debuted Thursday, and the miniseries is Raimi’s first work following Spider-Man 3. FEARNet is a Comcast property.
Taking in the Webby Video Scene
You’re only allowed five words when you accept a Webby award, and the best five-word speech yesterday evening came from Eepybird’s Fritz Globe, who, after the audience had watched Diet Coke and Mentos fountains explode on the screen at the New World Stages in Manhattan at the inaugural Webby Film & Video Awards, walked to the stage microphone and said:
“Eighteen million views, still no dates.”
Well, six words. But that kind of frustration knows no boundaries. As Globe walked off stage, host Rob Corddry (yes that Rob Corddry) pointed down to Halcyon, the creator of Hug Nation, and said “give that man a hug.”
When the Camera Becomes a Character
Of all the consequences of our culture’s infatuation with reality programming, our increasing preference for “behind the scenes” shows — big air quotes there — is the most intriguing.
By “behind the scenes” I mean everything from literal fare like American Idol and SNL Backstage (the making of commercial personas) to mockumentaries like NBC’s The Office and CBS’ web series Clark and Michael (the making of the making of faux personas) to even, yes, YouTube itself (the making of “real” personas).
In preferring to be entertained by this process of making entertainment, it’s as if we’ve stepped back from original received experience — sitcoms that maintain that fourth-wall suspension of disbelief, for example — and embraced media that includes us. The camera is no longer a vessel for the audience, the camera is the audience. And since we are participants in the media, the camera has become a character.
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