twentysomething minutes with Marshall Herskovitz

I just posted over at Art Film Talk an interview with Marshall Herskovitz in which he discusses the origins of Quarterlife, the new web-based project he’s producing with Edward Zwick. In the interview we cover the origins of the project, the writers strike, and what’s different about producing for the web compared to traditional film and television.

Join me at the Web Video Summit in New York, Dec. 10-11, 2007

I’ll be participating in the Web Video Summit to be held at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York on December 10-11, 2007. Check out the conference schedule, the event will provides a balance of technology and business topics. If your a web video practitioner or enthusiast and live in the Northeast, this is the not-to-be-missed end-of-year event. I’ll be participating on the Lights, Cameras, Sound: How to Get Great Results panel (1:00pm-1:50pm on Monday) where we’ll be discuss stratagies, tactics, and techniques for better video and sound that will not break your production budget. The session will be moderated by Asa Aarons (Columnist, NY Daily News) and my fellow panelists are Alex Lindsay (Producer, Pixelcorps) and Josh Wolf (Independent Journalist, The Rise Up Network, peralta.TV, Free The Media). Hope to see you there.

Moby makes free music available to independent filmmakers

Moby has made a nice collection of tracks available at mobygratis.com which can be licensed without a fee for use by independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, anyone who needs free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short. Take a listen, there are some really good tracks available on the site. The site allows you to listen to the tracks and if you choose to use a track, there’s an easy licensing process.

Web Video: Move Over, Amateurs

I read an article today in BusinessWeek by Catherine Holahan titled, “Web Video: Move Over, Amateurs” that claims that “as more professionally produced content finds a home online, user-generated video becomes less alluring to viewers—and advertisers,” and while this may be true, in part, and certainly makes pundits like Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur) happy, I think that no matter how you slice it, the rules will be different with internet video and there are still many opportunities yet to be explored and user generated content ((I’m not thrilled with the term user generated content, in spite of Keen’s demonization of the term, Amateur, as in someone who does something out of love rather than money, is a apt term, but I digress…)) is here to stay. Of course this article follows on the coat tails of the premiere of “Quarterlife,” the new made for internet episodic from Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creative team behind “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething.” There are several aspects of “Quarterlife” that I find particularly interesting in terms of the change that’s going on in the media industry: first, the show sets a new standard for web video with network-television production values, second: the storytelling and acting is better than 98% of network television, and third, the show is owned and controlled by its creators. This is old media reinventing itself with a new set of rules. Just as “thirtysomething” raised the standard for production values and storytelling in episodic television, I think “Quarterlife” will do the same for fictional internet video. If “Quarterlife” draws in an enthusiastic audience and generous advertising revenue, it could be among the first proof points that it’s possible to produce a financially viable fictional episodic on the web.

Reframe Offers a New Model for Online Film Distribution

We’re finally right in the midsts of the digital media distribution inflection point. Several key trends that have pushed us along include: 1. the ubiquity of digital media and computation, 2. widespread adoption of high-speed internet connections in middle-class households, 3. dramatic improvements in video codecs (H.264), and 4. the popularity of viewing video on the web, fueled by sites like YouTube and Joost. We’re also at a point where a critical mass of media caretakers, rights owners, and media makers are seriously exploring the avenues available for them for digital distribution. There is no shortage of players who are trying to take old media business models and cash in on digital distribution (e.g. Jaman , iTunes , et al.) as well as a whole legion of start-ups experimenting with more interesting business model variations (e.g.Jalipo, Caachi , et al.) and then there are some folks who are thinking more along new lines (e.g. Participatory Culture Foundation , Renew Media , et al.).
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Using SATA drives in the raw with your MacBook Pro

A while back I wrote about Using SATA drives with a MacBook Pro, and I also compared MacBook Pro external drive performance using SATA, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800. Today at the Boston Media Makers meeting I discussed my solution for cheap backup and archiving: bare SATA drives, this is attractive when you consider that Seagate 500 GB SATA drives are now down to $120 and come with a 5 year warranty. Other backup and archiving options like DVD-R or Blu-Ray disks takes a long time to burn and LTO3 tape systems are expensive. Hard drives offer a fast and cheap solution (but with the caveats I mention later).

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Philippe Lejeune’s video of my Podcamp Boston 2 sessions

Artist Philippe Lejeune shot and created a wonderful video page based on the two Sessions I did at Podcamp Boston 2. Thank you Philippe for creating the page, which elevates web video to a new art form (I’m referring to Philippe’s page, not my work). I would love to see an authoring tool that made it easier to create dynamic pages like these that’s easier to use than the existing Flash authoring tools and conceives of video as one of many elements in the design of a page, rather than something that’s relegated to a player like on YouTube. I’ve seen several progams written to construct pages dynamically similar to this, but none that I’ve seen are as easy to use as iMovie. Art leads technical innovation, maybe this is prescient of the next iLife tool, iVideoPage…

The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media literacy

The Center for Social Media has released a new report titled, “The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media literacy” which is available as a pdf download. The report sheds light on the fact that media literacy education is compromised by unnecessary copyright restrictions and lack of understanding about copyright law. Copyright law permits a wide range of uses of copyrighted material without permission or payment. Educational exemptions sit within the realm of fair use, however, far too many educators don’t have a good understanding of what constitutes acceptable fair use practices.