Kathleen Grace and Thom Woodley alias Dinosaur Diorama Productions, the creators of The Burg, have released their new web docu-comedy The All-For-Nots !
Interesting concept, as the musicians of the band are actors but still planning to become a real band. All the music is originally created by the band and the creators. I really enjoyed the first episode, the character scripting is very strong and unique.
Of course the series offers the whole package a social-networking-drama needs these days: They are prominantly featured on Bebo, all the characters have profiles and blogs.
“Come along on a rollicking roadtrip through America with the next great indie-rock-pop-punk-Americana band. Meet The All-For-Nots (or “AFN” as their true fans call them): Johnny, Caleb, Paul, and Shirley - four Brooklyn rebels whose epic quest is to bring the masses their own brand of rock ‘n roll (okay, and maybe to get famous in the process). Witness every kick-ass performance and every devastating setback as they blaze across our great nation in their clunky van.”
via NewTeeVee.
…and once again, all the great photos in this entry are made by the very talented Anne Helmond!
And on yet another rainy morning in Amsterdam (not surprising, you get used to it after a while!), full of curiosity and hopes for the day, I went to the second day of the Video Vortex - Responses to YouTube conference. I was hoping that today would be more fruitful than yesterday, and indeed, what a pleasant surprise! Well, call me selfish, but instead of giving a general overview I will focus on the session that was the most interesting for me personally: Curating Online Video.
On a rainy morning in Amsterdam (that demanded lots of coffee!), the Video Vortex - Responses to YouTube Conference was kicked off at Club 11. I will be blogging on the conference for movingweb, but I was also there because I have been involved with the project through my work at the Netherlands Media Art Institute where we made an exhibition with the same title and related topics. Well, the program of the conference is quite extensive, and I was very disappointed by some of the presentations today (that seemed unprepared, unfocused, had nothing new to say…a total contrast with the first Video Vortex conference in Brussels!). So I will focus on the gems of today’s presentations!
Houyhnhnms.tv is a new community for web video creatives. Very nice design and good performance. I like the idea of the integrated quality control. Every uploaded work stays on the site for one week. If it doesn’t get a public voting of 4 out of 10 points, the work gets deleted.
“At Houyhnhnms we have decided to go for a thrilling opportunity:
Create a community of creators with TV format.
A television which grows directly on inspiration.
A place to experiment new concepts for a new audiovisual market.
An environment to share the most authentic audiovisual dreams, with no need for intermediaries.”
“A Swarm of Angels is a groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members. By subscribing for £25 members become part of a revolutionary process to make an open source feature film.”
Berlin based web TV station Hobnox goes online today!
Right now they’re running four channels, all connected to youth culture. What separates them from other web tv stations is the massive amount of self produced content. They’re having a handful of hosts, running different show formats. They recruited some german MTV-faces for that. Reminds a little bit of G4, although they are shifting the focus from game-related-content to music, film and street culture.
To push the whole web2.0-participatory thing they are having a contest where you can win 25.000 Euro to realise your project!
Many of you might now Jonathan Harris, but as he has a portfolio site up for some weeks now I’d like to point you to his works.
“Jonathan Harris is an artist and storyteller working primarily on the Internet. One part computer science, one part anthropology, and one part visual art, his work seeks to explore and understand the human world through the artifacts people leave behind on the Web.”
Out of his many amazing ideas I was deeply impressed by We feel fine - an exploration of human emotions when I saw at OFFF 2006 for the first. As most of his works it uses data sources on the web to show cultural/social doherences.
YouTube VideoMixer lets you remix your own Video and Images as well as material from youTube - well done Flex/Flash9-App with a rather functional interface and good flv-export.
Surprisingly, the new Mobile (Handy) Version of YouTube comes in dark grey and features not flv but streaming .3gp Videos (besides a slimmed down interface)
I just came across some interesting video community websites that might be a nice addition to the ones listed by Simon here:
Stage6 can briefly be described as a hi-resolution youTube-c using divx-files instead of flvs that can easily be downloaded.
Joox is a supporting bookmarking service/website for Stage6-Videos.
Many people are thinking about promoting their independently shot movie over the Internet…here’s the first story of success: FOUR EYED MONSTERS !
Directing couple Susan Buice and Arin Crumley pulled off every community driven internet marketing tool available: Myspace, YouTube, Podcast, VideoPodCasts, Facebook, Soundtrack, selling DVD’s, selling HighQualityDownloads, Flickr, Twitter, del.icoi.us… They asked people to set up screenings of the movie in their town, cinemas could request a screening…
But how came the breakthrough?
They pulled off a deal with an american movie community site, which pays them a buck for every new subscriber they bring in. This great idea was combined with a YouTube Front Page Feature of the film - and BOOM! 333.000 thousand plays until now and 18.000 bucks through subscriptions, and I think this is just the beginning.
One small detail to consider if you wanna do the same: The film is amazing, watch it!