The Brazen Heads - Who's Yer Paddy

The Brazen Heads - Who's Yer Paddy

If anybody has been wondering where I have been lately this is why. I just finished the second music video for my Celtic rock band The Brazen Heads

Music: The Brazen Heads - One Eyed Reilly

Click to play

The Brazen Heads are a Phoenix based Celtic rock band with a surprisingly hard driving sound for a band with no electric guitar in 99% of their work. This is primarily because of the amazing drum and vocal stylings of Roy Plisko (who also writes the blog descriptions) The other guys do stuff too though: Liam Mackey sits in front with a guitar, tells dirty jokes and sings most of the songs, Tim Sadow has this long, hairy, stick thing that he strokes a little instrument with, Mark Lanus plays with just about anything he gets his hands on and bass player James Cowley has really cool hair.

This is the first music video released from their new album Who's Yer Paddy.

For more information go to www.thebrazenheads.com and feel free to drop us a message on our band forums too.

Politics: Plisko - What is supporting the troops?

I am working on a commentary video where I address the issue of supporting the troops which I will be posting within the next day or two hopefully. This question was done after that shoot as a submission to a website called "10 questions". Anybody can submit a question and vote on the questions that have been submitted. The top 10 submissions will be answered by the presidential candidates with their own response videos. This question is really for a member of congress, but I think it is still applicable since there are members of congress running for President. I am also interested in knowing how the candidates will feel about their own power as President being restrained by the people through congress if necessary.

NOTE: I changed the upload and it is still processing currently so it may not be available to those who read this too soon.

Politics: Plisko - Outlaw In Chief

This Scooter Libby clemency thing has basically made my head explode and, as I sometimes do, I caught it on tape. . . .

I just posted it on Current TV last night.

MC Original Release: Plisko - 2 videos

As a way of testing out Metacafe further and to promote this blog, I have uploaded 2 more videos as "Media Crashers Original Releases" That makes 3 including the ones below. My metacafe profile with the videos can be found HERE.

The two new videos under this blog's name are:

A Chapman Stick Demonstration by Michael Kollwitz which is additional footage from a previous project:




And a morphing animation I did of Ann Coulter a while back while doing prep for a sequel to a previous project. The sequel was never finished and It was a shame to waste some of the work I did so I uploaded one of the bits in the hopes that it might bring in a little viral traffic:




The way that the producer rewards program at Metacafe works is that uploads have a review period when they are uploaded. The video is public and it is getting views and rankings by a group that looks at videos early. It is not listed on their primary web page yet, however, where it will be seen by the community at large. Part of what they say a video needs is a rank of 3 stars of greater. The ranking system is pretty harsh in the beginning so if anyone wants to participate in the competition, feel free to create a Metacafe account and throw some star love the videos if you like them. The video also needs to hit 20,000 views to begin really taking off so feel free to watch them multiple times if you like them. . lol. . .

Views and ranking can be tracked from this page and watching them from this location counts as much as it does from the Metacafe site. Enjoy

Animation: Metacafe - Plisko - Desktop Danceoff

Desktop Danceoff - The most amazing home videos are here

I discovered Metacafe while doing a google search last night at about 2AM my time. I noticed it was a video hosting site with embeddable videos. Since we are in the business of surfing around on video hosting sites like this I decided to take a look around. Then I noticed they had this thing called a "Producer Rewards Program" Intriguing. . . Upon closer examination I discovered that this is another uploading site that will pay people for their videos! I immediately did the upload embedded above to test it out. It's a little doodle I did testing out a free Mac application called Single Framer which makes stop motion or timelapse Quicktime files with a DV camera plugged into your Mac. I have also now included Metacafe as part of our collection of video host links in the right column.

I am a little embarrassed that I have missed them up to now. They have over a million unique viewers per day and it looks like they've been around a couple years already. The way it works is a producer uploads a video as a special submission to this rewards program (they host lots of other stuff too). If that video gets 20,000 views it qualifies for the program and they will pay the producer $100 for the 20,000 views and $5 per 1000 views after that. This is a non exclusive agreement which means you can license the video anywhere else but metacafe will retain the right to use it themselves and market the video to any other media. . . forever. It looks like that means they could distribute it as part of their podcast or any number of other things as long as it is their own use of the material.

As I browse through the videos that get paid it appears like a mix of attention getting schemes like amazing shots of this or that, mechanical stunts, magic tricks etc. There is also a lot of short, how to videos and of course. . woman in bikinis on the grass, women getting wet, women in low cleavage shirts on a bed playing with kittens. . . . you get the idea. There is a martial arts/acrobat that is the highest earner. He did a montage video of his moves that has had over 5 million views and earned over $26,000.

It seems like it may be a challenge for anyone who wants to earn money with videos that are trying to make a difference in the world. It is a lot easier to find a woman in a bikini. There may be room, however, for the John Stewart approach that is grabbing attention and entertaining people while also being informative. It remains to be seen.

Metacafe is also the first commercial video hosting site I have found of this kind where there is actually and adult video category which appears to have nudity of the rated R variety.

Media Crashers Contributor: Plisko

Roy Plisko, better known as just Plisko on the web, has had formal training in music, video, and film production from both The Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale and New York University. He lived in New York City for 9 years after graduating NYU where he worked full time as a freelancer on the production of major music videos, television promos, commercials and feature films.

Plisko has been a web video enthusiest since the .com bubble in the late 90's. As the infrastructure made it more and more possible, he began tailoring his projects specifically to a web audience. In 2006 he teamed up with America Blog founder John Aravosis to produce "The Path To Mickey" a parody of the ABC/Disney Release "The Path to 9/11", which received over 35,ooo hits on YouTube in the first 48 hours it was posted (and has since been taken down when the Aravosis account was singled out by YouTube for posting John Stewart clips and closed). He has also been very prolific on Current TV where 5 of his uploads were chosen by the web audience as the number one pick to go on the TVnetwork. He has also maintained a web presence on YouTube, Blip.tv and mania TV.

Pisko now lives in Phoenix Arizona where he is raising a family and doing freelance commercial video with his production company: Zebra Motion Arts. He is also a video blogger, a teacher of video production at The Art Institute of Phoenix and a drummer/singer for a professional Irish rock band.

Selections from Current TV:








Selections From YouTube:







Selections From Metacafe:








The Path To Mickey on LuLU TV:





Note: This version of The Path To Mickey is a third party post from someone who must have grabbed it from YouTube before the account was closed.