Bite Me, Warner Brothers

One YouTuber was not pleased at the recent spate of video removals because Warner Brothers was claiming copyright infringement for use of music without permission on member's videos.

Milton The Monster

Another Halloween has passed.

Many thanks to seedmoon for sharing this wonderful distraction with me:

VideoTheVote.org

Bring your cellphones, digital and video cameras to the polling booths and document anything you think is delaying, preventing or disenfranchising your vote this Nov. 4th.

videothevote.org

"Video the Vote is a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process. We organize citizen journalists—ordinary folks like you and me—to document election problems as they occur. And then we distribute their footage to the mainstream media and online to make sure the full story of Election Day gets told. Watch our 2006 highlights and join us as we Video the Vote this November."

Not a big fan of Front Page picks usually

I'm one of those guys that just thinks YouTube picks some downright crappy videos for their front page, there is the shining exception from time to time. I give you: ANXIETY ATTACK.



Looks to be shot with a webcam or small camcorder, all stop frame animation, an original soundtrack/song - it harkens back to when MTV was sorta good. Chalk it up to a nice 2:52 of eye candy to enjoy. Don't let it be said that we can't enjoy a good video that's not serious material. This might be the latest meme.

-zen

Red State Update

The comedy duo Travis and Jonathan at YouTube has taken the notion of blue state vs. red state politics to a level of comedy heretofore unseen on YT with their show "RED STATE UPDATE". Claimed to be shot in Los Angeles, the two hosts are from Murfreesboro and Huntland, Tennessee, in deep south territory. Their beer drinking, on-screen political antics have been delighting viewers for about a year.

Before you dismiss their show as a fluke, or a neer-do-well Jeff Foxworthy ripoff, I implore you to stay tuned. These two are producing some biting political satire at it's best, and their weekly comedy show has traveled from the Iowa Caucus to the debates, and comments on all things in the political realm have been drawing a large audience.

Here is their latest video, a farewell to Joe Biden & Chris Dodd, as a music video:



And here is a atypical episode of theirs where they discuss Hillary & McCain Winning in New Hampshire:



I like these guys a lot. They spoof red-state politics with sophistication that's just under the radar.

-zen

Mark Day Comedy

Mark doesn't get enough credit for his timely vlogs covering topics from current events, sports and politics along with everything in between. The Scottish born, San Francisco resident performs stand-up comedy, and has a large web audience through which he plies his observational humor with ease. Add in a cafepress shop, and he's making a few bucks along the way. He remains one of the shining gems I found on Current TV and I wish him lots of success on YouTube.



-zen

Politics: NetCenter08 - GOP YouTube Debate

I have been very caught up in things lately so I apologize for the lapse in posting.

I think this video is an excellent representation of the possible future of media. Dubbed "NetCenter08," It is 2 new media personalities: Dan Manatt from Politics TV.com, and David All from TechRepublican.com to discuss the latest CNN Republican Presidential debate which used YouTube questions.

It looks to me like they are talking on webcams much like the old media talks through satellite links. These two webcam videos are then composited together with some graphics and footage from the debates. It is a really good use of widely available, relatively low cost, technology to create the look and feel of your typical news debate. Because it is coming from the netroots rather than TV producers, this conversation feels more authentic to me. I hope we see more of this format. Todays TV media feels more like a pro wrestling circus among elite media pundits and hosts. That is what the old media thinks is good television but it has been done to death. This new media technology can bring more diversity to the national conversation. That is what this site is created to celebrate.

As for this CNN YouTube Debate, I like the national town hall format that it represents. The problem for me is in the details, however. Stalin once said that it's not who votes, it's who counts the votes. In this case it's not who asks the questions, it's who chooses the questions that make it in. There were 5000 submissions for this debate. CNN chose somewhere around 34 questions without any input from anyone but CNN. Now, do you think if CNN had a list of questions they wanted to ask ahead of time that they couldn't find one of the 5000 that asked it for them? What's to stop them? In that sense this whole thing feels more like an exploitation of the new media as a pool for low cost content ideas and as a marketing gimmick rather than an authentic tool of democracy. In that measure, it troubles me.

I have the same issue with Current TV. They talk about democratizing the media by letting anyone submit things but that is useless if some group of staff TV producers then gets to choose from those submissions and sit down with editors and change the perspective, or cut stuff out and put on their own graphics to "punch it up". How is this any different from approaching any producer anywhere to pitch our work? The democracy is in letting the people decide what goes on the air and putting it on as chosen. It is not bestowing people with the privilege of pitching your video to a media person. In this area both CNN and Current TV are failing the democratic potential of the web media. When these old media and new media representatives decide they will have the guts to put real democracy into the process, then they can talk about how great and innovative their ideas are. Until then they are just selling used cars with a new paint job.

If you want to see real political democracy in action go to 10questions.com THAT is a YouTube town hall forum worth praising. Both PoliticsTV and TechRepublican and tons of other netroots organizations are sponsors. On that site you submit YouTube videos and then vote for the ones you want and the top 10 are presented to the candidates to make their own response videos. The submission and voting phase is over but the questions chosen are all good and it will be nice to hear some answers. You also get to vote on how well each candidate's answers to the questions are. So far Mike Huckabee, Rona Paul and John Edwards have agreed to participate. Barack Obama also answered 1 question by putting in a clip from one of his speeches as an answer. You can send a mass email to every candidate from their website. Please do so if you want to support real democracy in the new media.

Producers To Watch: Lasse Gjertsen

Lasse Gjertsen isn't your typical YouTube video creator, he's actually good... scary good. The quirky young resident of Larvick, Norway (age 22) has, for the last year, had his videos seen online by scads (think: 10,000,000+) of webizens. And he keeps getting better at it, that's the scary part.

In the first video he posted, he edits a series of beatboxed drum beats, and in the editing style of Acid or Ableton Live, put it all together through editing, a compelling, creative short video called HYPERACTIVE.

A self-professed electronic musician, Lasse then created his first huge, and I mean HUGE, viral video by filming himself playing on a drum kit and then on a piano. Editing the footage to the note and the beat, he sequenced an experimental movie called "Amateur", which has been viewed over 4.8M times. Lasse's self-admission on the video is that he can play neither the drums nor the piano. He sure fooled us.

Now if that impressed you, his latest video (in 2 parts) shows what he's been doing since he learned Adobe After Effects and teamed up with Cellist Giovanni Sollima to edit his playing of Sogno ad Occhi Aperti in stunning style, layers and musical tracks. He said the piece took 5 months to edit, and I think it was well worth the wait.

Watch Part 2

I think Lasse is a great example of how the Internet has allowed for creative minds in obscure parts of the world to not only expand their craft online for all to see, but also allows us to watch them grow as artists over time. The level of creativity that keeps growing in this young man is very inspiring to me as a videographer. And for an artist, he has some fairly strong views on the commercialization of his work, check out his own position on using his talents for advertising:

"To All Advertisement Companies: ...A long time ago I promised myself never to do commercials. That's because I don't think it's right to push (usually unnecessarily) products on fellow human beings, and I'm not very fond of advertisement because it's annoying and nothing more than annoying, and in my eyes a evil way of marketing. I also consider myself a true artist, with a conscience and a soul, and I would not feel good at all if I used my (so called) talents to promote a commercial product. I know I might get a lot of money from it, but I would feel awful if I made money in such a dishonest and cynical way. In fact, I see no difference in doing a commercial than sucking an old, fat, rich white guy in a suit's little dick and getting paid for it. I will much rather starve to death than being a part of your huge corporate marketing empire, scouting the world for things you can claim ownership over so that you can make more dirty money, lowering the quality of entertainment, society and life in general for the rest of us. So if you ask me to do a commerical, you're offending me, and if you, like some companies have allready done, the egoistic human filth and shit as they are, use my ideas without my permission, and make money on it, I sincerely hope that you all get heart attacks on Christmas Eve and slowly and painfully die in front of your crying families, while everything is being filmed and put on youtube for all of us to feel better..."

I like this kid.

Article Link: Apple and YouTube up a Tree . .

Apple TV, the new set top box that streams iTunes to your home entertainment center, will now also be able to access YouTube video content as well. This is a big development. Apple is already doing a great job of leveraging it's music distribution infrastructure into a major TV distribution network. Now, with YouTube aboard, they will be bringing grass roots media to the TV set as well. If Apple TV is as successful as I think it might be, how long before other internet video hosts follow this lead? Google video? Yahoo Video? Current TV?

There is a full article on this development HERE