I came across this article about a new startup company Revver. At first it sounded a bit suspicious but the concept is actually very interesting.

The Internet is buzzing with amateur videos, the kind that feature kids lip-synching or imitating Jedi knights. They get e-mailed and posted on Web sites and often become the topic of water cooler chat. But few, if any, make money. A new company called Revver is trying to change that by attaching advertising to the videos and giving the creators a cut of the profits. The technology, which also tracks the content as it is shared across the Web, is not limited to amateurs. Major media companies, which are just beginning to experiment with offering TV shows and movies online, are also looking for ways to distribute across peer-to-peer networks while avoiding piracy.

Basically you submit a video to their site and it then adds some advertising to the end, as well as some kind of tracker so they can see how widely it is distributed. The creator of the video then gets 50% of the profits from the advertising in the video.

As an example of the potential profit, Revver estimates that about 80 million people viewed the cartoon produced by JibJab Media of candidates George Bush and John Kerry singing a version of "This Land is Your Land" during last year's presidential election. If Revver had been able to sell advertising on that video at a rate of $8 per 1,000 viewings, it would have generated $640,000, half of which would have gone to the creators.

Very impressive earning potential, especially if the advertising is just attached to the end of the video and isn't too obtrusive. One would hope that when you submitted the film to have the advertising attached you would specify what kind of video it was, subject matter etc, and relevant advertising would then be attached.

Latest segment of movement. Lots of layers here - wood, grass, flowers and leaves. Click the image to view the movie (1.2 MB).

Apple recently introduced pay-to-download TV shows in conjunction with the release of the new iPod Video priced at $1.99 per episode. In this interesting article about the dynamics of pricing and network television with relation to advertising they state the following:

Consider for a moment that the average US household television consumption per day is a mind-numbing (both figuratively and literally) 8 hours and 11 minutes PER DAY. At Apple’s $1.99 pricing model that works out to an average television bill of $486 per month. Is it possible that people might start turning off the TV if they were charged per show? Is it possible that the economics of television assume a passive audience that’s willing to watch ANYTHING as long as they don’t need to move?

If this is accurate that is just a massive amount of TV watching! That equals the average working week of 40 hours. Scary.

I found a link to some interesting software art experiments by artist Alex Dragulescu. He has some very interesting artworks that use computer software to generate art. What makes it really interesting is that he uses various sources of data on the internet to drive the artwork. With {pseudocode} he states:

{pseudocode} is a collection of software art experiments foregrounding computational models and algorithms driven by data sources derived from databases, spam emails, blogs and video game sprites.

And with blogbot:

blogbot is a software agent in development that generates experimental graphic novels based on text harvested from web blogs.

Some of the images that are produced by his software are just incredible. This one from algorithms of the absurd really grabs me. I wonder if he shapes and changes the finished composition much himself or whether the artwork is created entirely by the software.

I decided to go searching for ways to make a home-made steadycam and found this website. According to the directions on the site you can build a Steadycam for $14. Pretty impressive if it works as well as it claims. The directions are very straight forward and easy to follow.

Steadycams are used to smooth out handheld video/film camera footage, smoothing out all the little bumps and sways that would otherwise be recorded. Usually when you are using a video/film camera to try and record smooth footage you have to either use a dolly (a kind of track for the tripod/camera to run along) or invest in an expensive commercial Steadycam attachment. A home-made Steadycam would be an ideal way to have the advantages of a commercial Steadycam without the large cost.

I checked out some of the sample footage and was most impressed. I'm definitely going to have to build myself one of these. I've got some great ideas for some interesting things to shoot with my new camera but lots of them require nice smooth movements so this would be ideal.

I found this article on the Apple site about artist Naomie Kremer. The article was very interesting and I enjoyed reading about what other artists are doing with bringing their paintings into the digital world. Kremer starts off with high resolution digital photographs of her paintings which she brings into Photoshop. She then uses the lasso tool to outline particular areas of interest and certain brush strokes in the painting. She then puts them onto separate layers - around 1000 of them!!

She then moves them into Apple Motion and animates the strokes to create a kind of 'abstract narrative' based around the original painting. You can view some of the finished videos of the 'moving paintings' here and here. They are quite impressive and the way she works with the large amount of strokes is very well done. It definitely gives the audience a different way of viewing and appreciating the paintings. The way she transforms the abstract strokes into a somewhat narrative style is very interesting. I would love to see them in real life alongside the original paintings.

I do feel that there are some other ways she could approach the process of making her paintings move. In the pieces that I have seen there is a distinct separation between the original painting/strokes and the digital movement. It is almost as if the piece is saying 'this is a painting that is moving'. I feel that she could dissolve the boundaries between the original painting and its digital moving counterpart; thus creating an entirely new and separate creation. It would also be interesting to view the pieces in more of a non-linear style, where there isn't such a clear progression from one scene to the next.

Well I decided to buy myself a Sony HDR-HC1 HDV (high definition) video camera yesterday. I was considering saving my money and grabbing a normal standard definition MiniDV camera but decided that the extra $1000 or so was worth it to get something where my footage would be of a quality to last for many years to come. The camera itself cost $2700 but as always these days you have to grab lots of accessories that aren't included in the box. The battery it came with only lasts for 45 minutes!! I grabbed one which apparently lasts for 3 hours.

I did some filming up in the Dandenongs yesterday and have been playing around with it today. The quality is fantastic... 1920x1080 - bigger than my 1280x1024 display. Pretty impressive! I am amazed at how the gap between 'consumer' video cameras and pro video/film cameras is getting smaller. Although there still is still a noticeable quality difference between film/high end HD cameras and HDV, the HDV footage holds up extremely well. And to think only 10 or so years ago consumers would only have been able to record at VHS or similar quality! These days a filmmaker can take fantastic footage on a very limited budget. Great for us independent filmmakers! Here is a quick still of a composite I did of a couple scenes. The full resolution link is way less than HD resolution. I will get some movies up here sometime soon...

Following many rumors in the past few weeks, Apple has just released a new video iPod. The iPod has a larger screen with more colors than the previous iPod Photo. It even has TV out so you can watch videos/TV shows on your TV. Apple have also just released iTunes 6 which allows syncing of videos and downloading videos from the iTunes Music Store. If only we had it in Australia that is!!

What is really exciting me though is the potential for distributing short independent films. Video podcasts are supported so users of iTunes should be able to sync videos from people's blogs to their iPod. This could become a fantastic delivery method for filmmakers to deliver their films to an audience. I wonder how hard it is to actually get your films or music on sale on the iTunes Store? I haven't tried importing any of my short films into iTunes yet.. I think I need to update Quicktime which requires a restart. I sense the need to get a new iPod to experiment with this exciting new technology!!