Sweet Awesome Sauce!

Video on the Web: From Static to Interactive

Web Design was one of the first industries that emerged out of the Internet. It’s beginning is mainly attributed to marketing companies and graphics designers brining their industry to the web.

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 sky rocketed in popularity. 

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. Good examples are ARGs like Batman: The Dark Knight , I Love Bees and iDGi’s projectB6. Combining their techniques with eye-catching 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, Amazon or Mandy’s Film Market.  Also through merchandising and hosting advertisements on the series/films official webpages.

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.

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

Thanks to technology video has become an effective medium that can be incorporated into anything. From games to web sites and attaching information such as YouTube’s annotations, and Video Clix.

Mixing interactivity and video is an easy powerful creative tool in online advertising and entertainment. 

Posted 2 years ago

Mae Marsh on Screen Acting (circa 1920)

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:

(1) Natural talent.
(2) Ambition.
(3) Personality.
(4) Sincerity.
(5) Agreeable appearance.
(6) Vitality and strength.
(7) Ability to learn quickly.”

“Natural talent, as I have called it, is no more than a tendency toward, or an aptitude for, some form of endeavor.”

“A natural talent for acting implies more than a mere desire to act. It is the art, usually discovered during childhood, of mimicry, and the joy in that art.”

“Ambition must, of course, go hand in hand with natural talent. In any form of vocational training it is assumed that the student has a feverish desire to succeed in the particular line that he has elected to follow. It is the same on the screen.”

“… one has an ambition to gain the top, and that to reach that position one has the enthusiasm to practise all the forms of self-denial, discipline and study that are important to artistic success in any line.”

“Personality is important for the reason that the camera has a way of registering it unerringly. It is keen in detecting the weak or vapid.”

“It is precisely the same with sincerity. In any line there is probably little hope for those who lack this salient quality. But a motion picture camera seems especially to delight in exposing insincerity.”

“I now come to the matter of personal appearance. This is a topic in which every man under 65, and every woman under 100 vears seem interested. I sometimes wonder if it is not the desire to see how they would look on the screen, rather than how they might act, that fills so many boys and girls and men and women with an ambition for a screen career.”

”..it is not only because good health radiates from the screen that it is important. In point of nervous and muscular strain, and the often long studio hours that are necessary when production has begun, good health is essential.”

“My candidate, then, will have strength and vitality and, equally important, he or she will cling to both, whatever social sacrifices may have to be made to preserve them.”

“The ability to learn quickly will save anyone going into screen work so much trouble and possible humiliation that it may well be listed as an essential qualification. The screen is no place for the mental laggard. The beginner, particularly, must be alive to learn the new lessons that each day will bring, and learning them he must remember. 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. Someday Mary may want to go upon the screen. Even now she acts before the long mirror. If she can, in any way, secure her mother’s hat she gives a complete performance. My blessed baby! When the time has arrived for her to start upon her career I shall place my little book in her hands and say: ‘There is the most and the best that I knew about the screen back in those old-fashioned days of 1921.’”

Posted 2 years ago

Skydiving With Crocodiles is Easier than Writing

Writings is something that has always been in the family. From my parents to my grandparents. From poetry to short stories. Story telling was the best way to kill boredom during long trips by car. A great escape from this dull reality.

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. 

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 (and dudes!) 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.

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!”

Posted 5 years ago