We mentioned The West Side several months back. Since then I had a chance to meet one of the filmmakers behind the project in NYC, Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo. Ryan is a motivated guy with a strong indie sensibility; I suspect he’s destined for filmmaking greatness. And after watching this second in the series of West Side online episodes, you might agree.

So what’s a striking writer do with their time in the picket lines? Write, it seems. “Not the Daily Show” is one such outlet, and offers a slice of snarky insight that will remind you why you miss The Daily Show. This is why you want good writers on your side. Watch the video below. For another take on the WGA walkout, Variety has an article in which the IATSE takes aim at the strikers.
Continue reading ‘Writers Strike a Chord with “Not the Daily Show” Parody’

We here at FreshDV are excited to announce two new resources for the online film and video community. CrispyFeeds News is a quick and convenient way to get a snapshot of current news and blog posts from respected sources like HD For Indies, DCN, The EditBlog, Cinematech, Studio Daily, fxguide, and of course FreshDV. You may discover a few sources you haven’t heard of before.

Likewise, CrispyFeeds Discussions trains it’s lens on popular discussion forums like DVinfo, DVXuser, Reduser, 2-Pop, DV Doctor, IndieTalk, CGFocus, and many others.

Why did FreshDV develop CrispyFeeds? I’m glad you asked, and I’ll tell you why! We believe information is a good thing. And today’s extensive number of blogs and news sources makes getting fresh news and information extremely convenient. Unfortunately, managing these disparate info sources is sometimes difficult and overwhelming. Many people use RSS Feed Readers or services like the Google Homepage. But there exists a demand for those that don’t wish to manage a full-fledged feed reader, who don’t require that level of control, but still need access to quality news and info. Enter CrispyFeeds. It’s not a feed reader replacement, it’s something completely different. We hope you’ll like it and use it daily. We welcome CrispyFeeds feedback and suggestions here.

The DVD title on Compressing Video for the Web by Aharon Rabinowitz was released recently, and Creative Cow is hosting the first chapter online, free. Look for the 60mb link at the bottom of the page. This instructional title looks like a good one, as web compression can be a bit tricky to master. So go check it out already!

You may recall some months back that Director Darren Aronofsky had some issues with the DVD release of “The Fountain” by Warner Bros. He was quite candid, in fact, stating;

“Everything at the studio was a struggle. For instance, they didn’t want to do a commentary track cause they felt it wouldn’t help sales. I didn’t have it in me to fight anymore. Whatever.”

So instead of fighting the studio, Darren has made and is freely sharing his own unauthorized commentary track. And in a ironic twist, the audio commentary is being distributed via Bittorrent’s The Pirate Bay, Meganova, and the recently relaunched Suprnova community. Nice. The Fountain DVD is available at Amazon for $14.99, or $27.95 for the HD-DVD.

(Via Scott Simmons)

The Pirate Bay, worldwide Bittorrent tracker and host to content both legal and illegal, is turning the legal tables by filing their own lawsuit against movie and recording industry studios in Sweden. Two days after International Talk Like A Pirate Day, TPB filed charges of infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, and hacking and spamming. They maintain that all this illegal activity was commissioned by the media companies and executed by MediaDefender. More on that in a minute. The companies that are being reported include:

* Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
* Emi Music Sweden AB
* Universal Music Group Sweden AB
* Universal Pictures Nordic AB
* Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Atari Nordic AB
* Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
* Ubisoft Sweden AB
* Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB

Continue reading ‘The Pirate Bay to Big Media: “Prepare to be boarded!”’

Scott Kirsner notes that he has updated his list of video sharing sites that pay filmmakers/content creators. Scott does an excellent job of keeping the community updated on the business of media, both at Cinematech and the various other publications he writes for. FreshDV interviewed Kirsner on the topic of Alternative Distribution a few months ago.

This is way offtopic, but hilarious. There’s an extensive compilation of cringe-worthy CSI: Miami David Caruso lines over at Youtube that cracked me up. Nearly every cliche’d line is delivered as Caruso dons his shades…and the inanity of it all just keeps building as you watch. You can also watch the video below. Continue reading ‘OT: CSI Miami, Sunglasses Edition’

NBC announced the other day they they will be pulling their TV lineup from the iTunes catalog, citing Apple’s resistance to “better piracy controls” and the inability to bundle shows instead of the iTunes ala carte model. Scott Kirsner covered this over at CinemaTech. So NBC decides not to renew the contract in December, and Apple just upped the ante by dropping the shows now…

“Apple’s agreement with NBC ends in December. Since NBC would withdraw their shows in the middle of the television season, Apple has decided to not offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming television season beginning in September. NBC supplied iTunes with three of its 10 best selling TV shows last season, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes TV show sales.”

The best coverage by far I’ve read on this whole debacle is by Phill Ryu…in a article entitled “Welcome to Zuckerland” he picks apart NBC’s complaint with Apple, their ensuing followup damage control statements, and highlights “…the distinctive mix of paranoia, confusion and fear that is the mark of a corporation that doesn’t understand its customers, is backed into a corner, and is too chicken to fess up and apologize.” Foot, meet bullet. Bullet, meet foot.

I read yesterday that the Wachowski brothers (you know the ones…filmmakers behind The Matrix, and one of ‘em thinks he makes a nice lady as well) are “using a new camera” in the filming of Speed Racer to create the effect of the entire frame in focus at one time. Which is ironic when you consider the countless indie filmmakers jumping through countless hoops to get a shallow depth-of-field look. If they had called me, I could have rented them a stock Sony FX1 for a lot cheaper…but I digress. On a more serious note, Susan Sarandon (starring in the film) is gushing over this new technique, stating in an interview;

“They’re doing something where they’re layering film so that the front and the back are in focus like a cartoon and they’re also doing two dimensional and three dimensional stuff and mixing and everything is very, very saturated with some new kind of film, so they actually have to treat the actors in some way so we can hold our own with the background.”

Sounds tedious. And interesting. Which may account for the fact that the intarwebs are abuzz with this (tiny and unsubstantiated) bit of news. Unfortunately no real details have been shown or explained. Just this mysterious layering technique. I even read one commenter say in a definitive statement that they are shooting Speed Racer on the (forthcoming) Red Digital Cinema camera. Surely we would have seen this first at Reduser, no? Stay tuned, I’m sure that Larry the cross-dressing director will clear everything up shortly. Expect the film to be released sometime in Spring of 2008.

NASA has signed a contract with The Internet Archive to digitize and publically host over 50 years of images, video and film. Wow.

Much of what is in the collection may be surprising when it is released as the five-year project gets up to speed, he said. “I don’t think that any of us know the depth to which a lot of these assets are stored. You finish one project and you open up another box filled with things you’ve never seen before.”

The Internet Archive currently manages 5 petabytes of storage across three continents, and has pledged to add whatever capacity is necessary to complete the project. The History Channel is going to have a ball with this…

The latest version of Adobe’s Flash 9 player will support H.264 quicktime streams, as well as a number of other useful video formats. This is significant…not only does the flash player have nearly ubiquitous market penetration in browsers, they are now leveraging that to even further extend the capabilities of the standard. With the addition of 3GP codec support, imagine how soon will we see Youtube-like sites that can instantly stream uploaded video from cellphones, no transcoding required! Impressive stuff. You can read a lot more technical details and specifics here. In summary, the latest Beta Flash Player will include:

*An file format parser implementing parts of ISO 14496-12. In terms you might understand this means a very limited sub set of MPEG-4, 3GP and QuickTime movie support.
*Support for the 3GPP timed text specification 3GPP TS 26.245. Essentially this is a standardized subtitle format within 3GP files.
*Partial parsing support for the ‘ilst’ atom which is the ID3 equivalent iTunes uses to store meta data. This really more a de-facto standard which came through the ubiquity of iTunes, there is no official documentation on the format. Look here for an incomplete list of supported tags iTunes does use.
*A software based H.264 codec with the ability to decode Base, Mainline and High profiles. This is also an ISO standard with the identifier being ISO 14496-10.
*An AAC decoder supporting AAC Main, AAC LC and SBR (also known as HE-AAC). The corresponding ISO specification is ISO 14496-3.

Bravo, Adobe. Bravo.

Here at FreshDV we love to stay connected with our readers, and site traffic patterns and statistics are oftentimes very revealing. By watching how visitors arrive at the site and what they tend to read, you quickly figure out what the hot topics are, and what the general audience appreciates most. The tools that gather and analyze traffic metrics are very helpful. They also have inherent flaws, and are sometimes just plain misleading. As a result, we’ve come to rely on a number of disparate tools and software to get a better overall “weighted” perspective of our site traffic. It’s somewhat nebulous to work in that fashion, but I believe that one simply cannot rely on a single metric or tool to get an honest snapshot of your site traffic. And it appears that one of those tools, Alexa, is slowly going the way of the buffalo. Techcrunch points out that they have seriously flawed data on Google vs Youtube traffic patterns, and that major oversight is an indication of just how irrelevant Alexa is in today’s online world.
Continue reading ‘OT: Traffic Metrics - Alexa Has Jumped The Shark’

Destined to be a viral hit, here’s a funny commercial for Creative Cow’s “Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web” training DVD. Very well done. Tip of the hat to Shane Ross.

“The West Side” bills itself as a modern western, the contemporary serial novel. Episodes will be released online, free of charge. You can view Episode 1 here. There are no ads on the site, nor any noted sponsors. The imagery is compelling and the original music is a perfect fit. It had me hooked from frame one. And with the exception of a few technical niggles (gg and grain), it is quite well made. I can’t help but wonder…is this the new way for indies to garner attention and make a name without necessarily getting into a film festival? Is the online viral effect enough for a young filmmaker to build a reputation?

Many thanks to Josh Oakhurst for the heads up. He has a fantastic writeup on the new series and online distribution in general at his site. UPDATE: Read the comments for some very, umm, very spirited discussion on “Four Eyed Monsters”.