CNN and AOL launch new video services

Two Time Warner sites are making serious moves into online video. CNN is expected to formally launch today a system for collecting user generated content, with video at the center of its strategy.

The basics are already up at CNN Exchange. The system will be powered by Blip.tv

In related news the New York Times reported this morning that AOL, where many services will become free on Wednesday, will launch a video service on Friday.

Commercial free downloads-to-own will start at $1.99 and various free offerings will join AOL’s video search for content across the web.

More info at Techcrunch

CNN has also released an handy guide called "Trade Secrets" for amateur citizen journalists that has some nice tips and precautions for taking pictures, shooting videos or recording audio.

Links to CNN Tips: [pdf documents]

Shooting Photographs | Shooting Great Video | Recording Great Audio

Tags: time+warner cnn cnn+exchange blip.tv online video aol

The Rushes Soho Shorts Festival

Opening tomorrow and running until the 4th August is the Rushes Soho Shorts Festival.

Now entering its 8th year, this unique festival has grown to become a major event on the festival circuit.

In addition to the 140 screenings of the shortlists held in cinemas, bars, cafes and screening rooms around Soho in London they have also organised special screenings in association with the APA and Straight8.

29th July-4th August.

Official website

Tags: soho shorts film festival rushes london

MTV's Birthday Record Breaker

Partizan is set to take the record for the longest music video thanks to director Alastair Siddons' new promo for Mike Skinner celebrating MTV's 25th birthday.

The current holder of the longest music video, as listed in the Guinness Book Of Records, is Michael Jackson's Thriller, directed by John Landis in 1983 at a whopping 18 minutes long. Siddons' video, however, will stretch to an epic 20 minutes. The spot will be shown on MTV for the first time on August 1st at 8.30pm.

The video will put Partizan in the record books for the second time - it holds the record for the most awarded commercial of all time, Levi's Drugstore, directed by Michel Gondry.

In a reversal on the usual music video procedure, the song was actually written by Skinner after the video was shot. MTV viewers were asked to send in ideas for a film based on the theme of Myths and Legends - Skinner and Siddons then read them and picked the best 25, commissioning them to shoot films with cameras supplied by MTV. The pair then waded through 50 hours of footage and selected the five main stories, with Skinner writing the tune and lyrics around those stories. Skinner features as the thread linking all the stories, singing the chorus of the song after each filmic verse.

Profits from the video will go to the Staying Alive charity, which supports young people with HIV and AIDS.

To watch the trailer for the spot, click here: MTV World's Longest Music Video

More info at Shots.net

Tags: mtv birthday partizan the+streets music+video record

MTV gives audience control over channel with Flux

MTV is launching a new interactive channel and service, MTV Flux, that will give the audience control over content and offer advertisers a wider-reaching network.

MTV Flux will run across TV, online and mobile platforms and will launch in two stages.
The interactive platforms will kick off on August 1, with the launch of a community-based website at mtvflux.co.uk.

At this site, users can register to become Flux members, dubbed "Fluxers", where they can create their own personalised on-screen identity or avatar.

This will be followed by the TV channel, MTV Flux, where content will feature back-to-back music videos chosen by members, with additional user-generated content and text-to-screen applications.

More info: Brand Republic

Tags: mtv flux mtv+flux tv video film online mobile advertising

Cunningham Comes Out for the Horrors

Master of twisted filmmaking Chris Cunningham has shot his first music video for seven years for indie band du jour The Horrors.

The elusive director only sporadically releases new work - the video is his first music video since All Is Full Of Love for Bjork in 2001. He released the very dark short film Rubber Johnny last April.

The song, titled Sheena Is A Parasite, features the talents of English actress Samantha Morton who starred alongside Johnny Depp in The Libertine. Morton, tensing and dancing as if in the midst of a drug induced fit, sweats and rolls her eyes in a dark room lit by strobe lights as the band, looking like something out of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange gone gothic, play in the background.

Cunningham brings his trademark twisted effects work to the video with a host of rather nasty looking alterations to Morton.

More details at Shots.net & Director File

To watch the promo, click here: CLICK HERE TO VIEW SPOT

Tags: chris+cunningham video music the+horrors promo

Mother Enters Toy Biz with "Diving Winker"

Mother has encapsulated the agonies of every English football fan and produced a spoof commercial for a new toy, called The Number 17 Portuguese Action Figure, based on the Manchester United and Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo. "He runs, he dribbles, he collapses in a heap… oh no, he's hurt - referee, penalty! Hang on, he's okay!" says the voiceover.

Watch it here: Diving Winker

Tags: mother ad+agency toy+biz world+cup football ronaldo

Yahoo Invites Film School Students to Create their New Ad's

In a departure from traditional advertising campaigns, Yahoo! and its agency, Soho Square / OgilvyOne, invited film school students to participate in creating the new advertising.

Yahoo! and the agency worked with the London Film Academy, Parsons, the San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University to develop scenarios in which a person directly or indirectly reveals that his or her "Yahoo! has changed."Additionally, Yahoo! created a new Yahoo! Video category where users can easily upload their own videos to be viewed alongside the film school work.

For the first time, Yahoo! has made available a variety of creative assets for consumers to incorporate into their videos, including the Yahoo! logo, yodel and sample scripts. Yahoo! will select the best submissions to feature in its ongoing advertising on the Yahoo! network.

Watch the film student's films here and add your own

Source: tmc.net

Tags: yahoo video advertising student film ideas user+generated+content

Google Eyes Up Your Telly

Having conquered the web and the earth, Google has now set their eyes on your television.

An initial research project, announced at the Euro ITV interactive TV conference, covered a method of delivering contextually relevant web content based on TV audio.

Confused? Put simply, your PC will listen to the noise your TV’s emitting, recognise the programming and offer you further relevant content, chatrooms and the like. Although this seems a fairly clunky process (surely quickly superseded by combined TV/PC entertainment systems?) it shows how the future of the web is in adding depth to other channels.

You can read the full research document in a PDF here, if you so wish.

Source: hyperhappen.com

Tags: google tv audio content web pc

Giants of Advertising: The Video Interviews

Come face-to-face with the giants of advertising. Watch interviews and archival videos of the industry's top thinkers and influencers.

These rare video interviews with Keith Reinhard, David Ogilvy, George Gallup, George Lois, William Marsteller, William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, Lester Wunderman, Tom Messner are certainly worth a minute of your time.

Source: Fallon planning blog

Tags: advertising agencies video interviews Keith+Reinhard David+Ogilvy George+Gallup George+Lois William+Marsteller William+Bernbach Leo+Burnett Lester+Wunderman Tom+Messner

"New Media Misses"

On the heels of Coke's foray into social media, Advergirl scripts a hilarious fly on the wall meeting "between a Big Agency and a Big Client on New Media."

She says, "When your client makes a couple billion a year and is to all appearances unstoppable, no matter how inane the advertising and marketing gets, just how much strategic advice are they really looking to the agency for?"

Tags: coke agency advertising new+media

Absolut Launches Musical to Promote Ruby Red Vodka

To promote its new Ruby Red, Absolut has launched Ruby Red the Musical, an animated online "musical" that lets the viewer choose how they'd like the musical to proceed in the next scene.

At the end of the show, the musical can be downloaded to PSP or iPod and there are wallpapers to slap on the desktop. There;s also a send to a friend feature and the option to view the musical a different way.

Source: Adrants

Tags: absolut ruby+red vodka ad musical online film animation

Eyespot: Create Video Mashups, Edit & Share Films Online

Eyespot offers an impressive feature, mixing of videos with video and adding audio.

There is an interesting option called harveting in which you can choose videos from other accounts (only the ones made public), add it your account and mix it with your own videos.

Apart from the mixing, it also has a tagging feature for easy navigation and searches.

An amazing example of what you can do with Ajax, Perl, and a little innovation.

Others in this area include previously blogged Vpod, Jumpcut, Motionbox and Click.tv

Check out the Inside the Net Podcast with David Dudas from Eyespot.

Tags: eyespot vpod click.tv online video mashup edit film ajax perl

Site Tempts Video Makers by Offering to Pay Them

If creators of homemade Internet video get tired of producing something for nothing, they can post their work on Lulu.tv

The Web site, which lets people upload and watch video clips, said last week that it would begin charging a $14.95 monthly fee for a "pro" account and putting 80 percent of that money into a special fund. Each month the money will be distributed among the video creators, with the biggest share going to the person who attracted the most viewers.

Other video sites are trying different approaches to bringing in cash. YouTube, the most popular of the genre, has a deal with NBC to promote its new television shows on a special section of the site. Revver.com will share 50 percent of its advertising revenue with those who post videos there.

Source: The New York Times (subscription required)

Tags: lulu lulu.tv video money internet tv