Feral Dream

Wolverine Leaked Online

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:07:56 -0700

Variety reports that Wolverine leaked online a month before its release. The studio is, of course, totally scared (and pissed). Their greatest fear is that they will spend a hundred million dollars to make a product and everyone will watch it for free. They've announced that it's an early rough cut of the movie and that some effects and scenes are not in it.

I for one won't be spoiling the experience by watching an early version. If I love the movie, I may go back and see the early version to compare, but I want my first impression to be the best one they can manage. I don't think the studios need to worry so much about this one. I mean, come on, they have Wolverine, the greatest X Men bad boy ever; Hugh Jackman, a man who was born to play Wolverine; a long-simmering mystery of the origin of Wolverine; and Hollywood visual effects with an unlimited budget. What more could you ask for?

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Make your own game or world!

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:12:56 -0800

Okay, boys and girls. This stuff is super cool. You can now make your own games and your own worlds even if you don't know how to program. Whoo-hoo! First of all, it's pretty awesome to be able to make your own game or world. But even if your primary focus is on your filmmaking or novels, with all the talk (at least on this blog) of cutting edge marketing for your product, this ought to be a cheap, DIY way to promote your film/book.

With Microsoft's XNA Game Studio, you can make your own games. With this product, you're better off if you know a little programming. They are now live.

With Metaplace, you can build your own virtual world. Just think of the possibilities! I've been watching these guys for about a year. They've had their first beta and have been closed to the public for months. And now, they just opened up their latest beta phase and are accepting applications for early users. Obviously, they're still testing out their system but if you want a taste of the world to come, check it out.

And this little gem is pretty sweet: Little Big Planet. It's a "game" for Playstation 3 that lets you build your own world/game. Check out this demo:

Life in LittleBigPlanet- Ep 3

Have fun!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Online Stats

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:55:11 -0700

Comscore released some interesting data re online video. 44% of all videos viewed online are off YouTube. The second most popular site is Fox Interactive at 3.9%. Next come Microsoft and Yahoo sites at around 2.5%. Hulu gets 1% of the views.

According to the WSJ, on average, the viewers spent 235 minutes watching online videos in July. And this is the most interesting part: they rarely spent 2.9 minutes on any one video. Something to consider when you're planning out your webisode.

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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Events next weekend

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:27:06 -0700

Here are two interesting events coming up next weekend.

The Conversation in Berkeley - exploring the future of the entertainment industry.

Interactive Writing for Video Games in LA, presented by WGA.

They both sound great. Too bad they're happening at the same time.

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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Hulu hits 100 million streams a month

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:47:30 -0700

According to the Washington Post, NBC announced that 25 million people have visited its website to watch new episodes of their TV shows. Hulu is now at 100 million streams a month. Wow.

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YouTube increases upload size

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:00:45 -0700

If you opt-in to use their new video uploader, you can input metadata for your video, upload multiple videos at a time, and you get a new limit of 1G rather than the old 100MB. You can opt-in through here.

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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Webisode gets DVD distribution

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:48:55 -0700

Here's what Stacy Parks of Filmspecific has to say about Prom Queen, a successful webisode:

Take Vuguru for example, Michael Eisner's year and a half-old
production company set up expressly to produce web content.
They have a big hit on their hands with PROM QUEEN, a 90 second daily
soap averaging over 200,000 viewers a day. The show was recently
picked up for a traditional DVD distribution deal by a major
company willing to experiment with this new medium. They are
packaging 2 seasons worth of shows together, adding in a ton of
never-seen-before footage, cast interviews, vlogs, and other
extras - and introducing it to the market to see if customers
are willing to actually buy a DVD of something, that they can
essentially see for free on the web.
But that's why all this 'extra' material is critical to the
equation....
In any case, PROM QUEEN is broadcast on a few different web
outlets including it's own PromQueen.tv, You Tube, and My
Space among others -- but to date, My Space has been the
biggest outlet, and with the thousands upon thousands of
registered My Space friends PROM QUEEN has, advertisers are
chomping at the bit to get in on this -- and thus is born
a very big revenue stream for PROM QUEEN.

Interesting, eh? After the first 2 shows, Techcrunch said:

There was a three second pre-roll ad for the upcoming Hairspray movie, a short ad for Verizon Vcast and then a fifteen second post-roll ad for Hairspray again.

After the first season, Washington Post said:

Each episode? Just 90 seconds. ("When we were watching online content, we noticed that we started looking for something else after 90 seconds," explained show co-creator Chris Hampel.) The full season, in fact, is just two hours. Air date? Seven days a week, since on the Internet there are no programming schedules. Commercials? Let's just say the characters drink a lot of prominently placed POM Wonderful and Fiji Water for a reason.

The Post reported that the budget for the show was between $100k-$150k but I'm not sure if that's per episode or for a whole season. I'm guessing it's for the season. It's a whole lot of money if it's coming out of your piggy bank, but it's oh, so cheap compared to the overwhelming majority of production budgets. And it's being reported as profitable. Of course, you do have the Eisner brand behind it which engenders a whole lot of confidence with the advertisers...

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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They're winning the Internet war

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:27:25 -0700

Looks like the Internet video content race has a new lead. I was rooting for a startup -- a real startup, not a child of a giant like Revver, who is Sony's child. But Hulu opens to the public tomorrow. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal and Fox. They have content from over 50 media companies including MGM and Sony. They also have ads, probably lots of them. Although I don't think they'll take over YouTube -- YouTube is a different animal in my opinion -- they'll dominate over all the other professional content sites.

Indie filmmakers and startup web video companies are like the democratic party right now. We're so busy trying to get attention for ourselves and competing with each other that we're actually killing our own chances to put up a real fight against our biggest threat. The Internet is our turf and we're losing the war.

The only real contender I've seen on our side is more of a potential contender. Withoutabox was recently bought by IMDB which in turn is owned by Amazon. Virtually every indie filmmaker who puts their film into festivals channels their content info through Withoutabox. Although they haven't implemented the really cool stuff yet, it looks to me like they're headed there. If Withoutabox can filter content via their partnership with the festivals, they could be THE indie provider and have an endless supply of good indie content. Amazon could be the new cable industry of the Internet. Amazon could be our champion. They have the resources to make it happen... the problem is that they've been buying and partnering up with so many companies lately that I'm not at all sure they know what they have. Withoutabox could be their (and our) golden goose. Will somebody please tell them? Have them give me a call and I'll set them straight. :-)

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com/

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