Star Wars, Via Saul Bass

Star Wars fan films never seem to run out of variations. Here's the opening titles as if Saul Bass had designed them. I'm surprised that this wasn't cut to John Williams music, but the jazz definitely gives it that Man With A Golden Arm vibe. Enjoy!

PS - Naturally, there's a variation on the variation - a modified title sequence for the Special Edition. Very funny!

Joe Valenti Makes Sure His Son Will Hate Batman

You know those parents who make endless home movies of their kids at dance recitals and Little League? Well, this may be the ultimate extreme of that philosophy - Dad Valenti has re-made pieces of the Batman TV show and movie using (I'm assuming) his young son and several of his friends. It's all so darn cute! You won't believe the level of polish on this thing (crane shots, painted backdrops, dead-on costumes and a full musical score), and little Batman is pretty darn good!

"When To Take My Name Off The Door": A Speech By Leo Burnett

I don't have a lot of respect for advertising, but this is a pretty stirring declaration of principles from Leo Burnett. Maybe this is part of why he is still considered one of the titans of the field.

Who's Laughing Now?

NEW YORK TIMES: Homemade YouTube Video Lands Singer in a Web Ad
By SARA IVRY - Published: December 10, 2007

If, as the song goes, video killed the radio star, then homemade YouTube heroes like Tay Zonday have put a hit out on traditional advertising.

In April, Mr. Zonday became an Internet phenomenon after he posted a no-frills video for the song “Chocolate Rain” on YouTube featuring his earnest delivery and his deep voice, which he likens to that of Paul Robeson and Barry White.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Zonday, a 25-year-old graduate student in American studies at the University of Minnesota whose real name is Adam Bahner, posted a follow-up called “Cherry Chocolate Rain.” But in this case, the flashier video was an ad. With a little help from the rapper Mista Johnson, Mr. Zonday extols the virtues of Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr Pepper, a soft drink that will be available nationally from January through April. (Since November, it has had limited marketing in four states.)

Soft drink companies have often based ad campaigns around pop singers, but they are usually mainstream acts like Michael Jackson or Britney Spears, not an online curiosity like Mr. Zonday, who does not have a record contract.

“We’re doing this to try to do something fun and different and connect with consumers who might not see more traditional media,” said Jaxie Alt, the director for marketing at Dr Pepper, which worked with True Entertainment, a production company, in August to approach Mr. Zonday about reworking “Chocolate Rain.” Neither Mr. Zonday nor Dr Pepper would disclose how much Mr. Zonday received for the "Cherry Chocolate Rain" video.

In the months since it has been up, the video for “Chocolate Rain” has had roughly 12 million hits. “I probably posted it like millions of other people upload themselves singing or doing ordinary things in their lives, and I think that’s very much part of our time, part of our culture,” said Mr. Zonday. “It’s not something one gives a whole lot of more thought to than sending an e-mail or making a phone call,” added Mr. Zonday, who has also landed a television commercial for Comedy Central.

The newer video, for “Cherry Chocolate Rain,” has more than one million hits so far. The newer song has the same melody as the original but different lyrics. The viral approach “was very, very deliberate from a marketing standpoint,” said Shari Solomon Cedar, True Entertainment’s vice president for programming. “Our task was to get something in front of a tech savvy, younger audience, to break through and bring awareness that way. That’s what we achieved.”

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We're encouraged to think that there was a fat payoff at the end of the chocolate rainbow, but I wonder. Since experienced screenwriters are struggling to get their fair share of internet revenue, I hope Mr. Zonday ran out and got an agent and/or an entertainment lawyer as soon as he got the call. I doubt I would have at his age, but I imagine one of the biggest reasons for trotting out YouTube posters is that it's a lot easier and cheaper to 'negotiate' with a grad student than a established recording artist. If the experiment works, I would imagine the gap between budget and revenue is huge.

If he did cut a good deal, more power to him! Student loans aren't getting any cheaper.

How To Kill A Chocolate Bunny

Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the most memorable. Like this one.

'Colormation' Screen Test

Here's another alternative to rotoscoping and motion, I mean performance, capture. The makeup on the eyes and face are a little odd, but it's a neat effect. It almost turns people into living Milt Caniff drawings. It'd be interesting to refine this process and shoot "Dick Tracy" or "Sgt. Rock" this way!

PS - Jen Howard's uncle may have developed this - wild, huh?

Viacom Sues Google

LA TIMES: Viacom files $1-billion suit over YouTube
By Dawn C. Chmielewski, Meg James and Thomas S. Mulligan, Times Staff Writers
March 14, 2007

With a $1-billion lawsuit, Viacom Inc. is aiming to upend Google Inc.'s plan to change the way people watch TV and movies.

Viacom, which owns MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures, sued Google in federal court Tuesday, accusing the Internet company of "brazenly exploiting" the power of the Web to make easy money off Hollywood's hard work.

Google's YouTube video-sharing service has "deliberately chosen not to take reasonable precautions" to stop users from posting unauthorized clips of shows including "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "South Park" and movies such as "An Inconvenient Truth," the suit says. "YouTube profits handsomely from the presence of the infringing works on its site."

Viacom isn't the only old-media company with that opinion. Several book publishers and news agencies have sued Google for alleged copyright infringement, though none has Viacom's deep pockets or fighting instincts.

Until recently, Viacom was one of several companies struggling to reach deals that would allow them to share in the YouTube advertising revenue that their shows generate. NBC Universal recently sent a letter warning that Google should better protect copyrighted material.

"Everybody recognizes litigation is not a particularly desirable business outcome," NBC Universal General Counsel Richard Cotton said in an interview before the Viacom suit was filed. "What you have is everybody going the last mile to try to find a constructive business solution. But I guess what I would say is this is the last mile."

Viacom's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, seeks at least $1 billion in damages for alleged copyright law violations. A Viacom spokesman called that "a very conservative estimate." Under copyright law, Viacom could win $150,000 per "willful" infringement, meaning that penalties on the more than 150,000 alleged violations would approach $23 billion.

Google attorney Glenn Brown said the company was confident about its case.

"More importantly, we're proud to continue giving creators a place to post and discuss their videos, whether it be a family's home video or a company like the BBC or any of the other big professional media companies to partner with us to host their content," he said.

The Mountain View, Calif., company has become both friend and foe of TV networks, newspapers and other traditional media companies. They crave the traffic Google can direct to their websites but fret that it's making so much money off their material.

"Google has said its mission is to be able to provide quick access to all of the world's information," said Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff. "Much of the world's information is copyrighted. So unless there is a resolution to this question, they can't succeed."

It was clear Google was in for a fight when it bought YouTube in November for $1.6 billion. TV networks, movie studios and record labels were already complaining about the website's failure to block pirated videos.

YouTube launched in December 2005 with videos of a founder's cat. People began to flock to the site's karaoke bits and online confessionals, then figured out that they could share and watch snippets from thousands of TV shows, music videos and movies. The site became perhaps the Web's largest collection of buzz-worthy TV highlights.

The site's traffic rocketed to more than 34 million U.S. visitors in February, up from 4 million a year earlier, according to Web research firm ComScore Networks. Networks and producers were happy to be along for the ride, until it became part of an emerging Internet behemoth.

"When YouTube was a fun start-up that wasn't monetizing the content, I was fine with it," said Ben Silverman, executive producer behind such popular shows as "The Office" on NBC and "Ugly Betty" on ABC. "But the moment they sold themselves for $1.6 billion and became a service that was making money off other people's content, the game changed."

Viacom contends that since YouTube has successfully screened pornography from the videos its users contribute, it should be able to police the site for copyrighted material. When Viacom asked Google to take action, "they kept saying, 'It's difficult,' " Viacom spokesman Carl Folta said. "If it's difficult, shut your site down until you get it right."

At NBC, executives have struggled to decide how to deal with YouTube. A year ago, the "Lazy Sunday" skit — a satirical rap about cupcakes and the "Chronicles of Narnia" — found its way onto YouTube and reintroduced NBC's "Saturday Night Live" franchise to millions of young viewers.

The leak triggered conflicting impulses within NBC. It wanted to use the emerging technology but couldn't let what it saw as copyright infringement go unchallenged.

NBC decided to play along with the online video start-up, if only to gauge YouTube's promotional potential. Perhaps this online community attracted by videos of toilet-trained animals and skateboard antics could be harnessed to lure young viewers to professionally produced new shows such as "Heroes" or "The Office."

The video-sharing site reaped only $15 million in revenue for 2006 — roughly the same amount broadcast networks typically collect in advertising in one night. But TV executives resented that their shows had helped make multimillionaires of YouTube's young founders, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.

They also feared that YouTube would disrupt their advertising business by becoming the gatekeeper between online viewers and TV programming.

NBC went full circle: from demanding the removal of "Lazy Sunday" and other NBC clips, to striking a broad promotional partnership, to once again considering legal action.

The company declined to comment Tuesday.

Legal analysts said the case would test the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law that shields Internet service providers from liability for material their users post online. To qualify for protection, service providers must remove unauthorized material when notified of its presence by copyright holders.

YouTube has long maintained that it is protected because it immediately removes copyrighted video when notified.

"We feel it's a very clear law," said Glenn Brown, Google product counsel. "It makes clear that sites like YouTube basically enjoy this safe harbor, providing they make this removal process easy for content owners to make a choice about what they want to do with their content."

But Greg Gabriel, a Santa Monica entertainment lawyer, said YouTube was stretching the boundaries of the safe harbor provision, which was intended to protect Internet service providers that wouldn't know that infringing materials were on a website unless notified.

"This is where YouTube is in trouble," he said. "You can't even log on to YouTube's Web page without seeing a half-dozen infringing clips."

The stakes are incredibly high in the fight, San Francisco intellectual property lawyer Annette Hurst said. The outcome could tilt the balance between allowing technology to flourish and protecting the creative community's interests.

"Google is probably the only company that could have bought YouTube," she said. "They had an already-existing business model not premised on infringement. And they were the only ones who could afford to take a risk."

meg.james@latimes.com dawn.chmielewski@latimes .com thomas.mulligan@latimes.com Times staff writer Joseph Menn contributed to this report.

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I've got mixed feelings about the lawsuit. I certainly understand wanting to protect intellectual properties that you own (I really don't agree with posting entire films or TV episodes), but at the same time, it seems like everyone involved understands how YouTube operates and what makes it valuable.

What would happen to YouTube's audience if you remove all infringing clips? Why did Google buy it if infringement is a significant part of its appeal? Are YouTube and Google simply being punished for being too successful?

Why not strike a deal with them, rather than trying to sue them into the ground? Allowing some content to be viewed (or more content for a limited amount of time) could potentially broaden a paying audience, or (best of all) reveal demand that hadn't been known to exist before.

Maybe I'd be more hardline about the infringements if it were one of my films on the site. Still, I don't think YouTube clips make me not want to buy something - most of the videos are of such poor quality that I'd still buy anything that I'd want to own permanently. I think, properly used, YouTube could be a very powerful promotional tool, with exposure to a huge audience.

He Who Proposes With The Tube, Breaks Up With The Tube

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Student’s hostile breakup witnessed by thousands on campus, YouTube
By MIKE BAKER
Associated Press Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Was it live ... or was it just a stunt for YouTube?
A one-time college couple say their melodramatic Valentine’s Day breakup — complete with singers, hundreds of spectators and a profanity-laced tirade — was real. Those who were there say it all seemed a little too staged.

Still, there’s no question it’s an Internet hit.

“It really wasn’t supposed to be like this,” said Mindy Moorman, the girlfriend who got dumped. “The fact that it’s gotten so big is quite comical to us.”

The various videos of Moorman’s hostile breakup with University of North Carolina senior Ryan Burke have been watched more than 300,000 times as of Wednesday — making it one of the most popular clips on YouTube.com in recent weeks.

Burke said Wednesday he invited Moorman, a sophomore at nearby North Carolina State University and his girlfriend of four months, to join him at a popular gathering spot on the UNC Chapel Hill campus for a “surprise.” It was not only Valentine’s Day, but Moorman’s birthday. The couple had plans for a dinner date that night.

Hundreds of students and several photographers were waiting for the couple on campus after Burke promised “a bad public breakup” on the Web site facebook.com: “You don’t want to watch, but you can’t look away.”

Burke greeted Moorman with a hug. Then she appeared surprised when an a cappella group of singers started belting out the Dixie Chicks hit “I’m Not Ready to Make Nice” instead of Moorman’s favorite tune, Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.”

Burke confronted her about her alleged infidelity and dumped her in front of the raucous crowd. Moorman responded with an angry rant filled with unprintable words. Those watching surrounded the couple, their cheers and chants keeping the argument going for several minutes.

“To be honest, it wasn’t really about her,” Burke said. “I thought the relationship was headed that way anyway, so I just wanted to see people’s reactions to the breakup.”

Burke, a history major, said the breakup was something of an experiment in human behavior. But he also said it was genuine — he was furious about Moorman’s alleged cheating.

“It was like they were reading from a script,” said James Mundia, a manager at UNC Chapel Hill’s student TV station, who helped edit the online footage. “There wasn’t a lot of passion for a breakup where there’s a lot of raw emotion.

“But I guess that’s YouTube. It didn’t matter if it was real or if it was fake, everyone wanted it to be real. People wanted that entertainment.”

Despite the very public breakup, Moorman and Burke said they are still on speaking terms. The Charlotte natives have known each other for years, and Moorman said they have since shared laughs remembering the incident. Burke said he has received thousands of comments and e-mails — some vulgar, some encouraging.

Moorman, a political science major who is thinking of going into politics, said she does have one regret: With her public breakup forever memorialized — and easy for friends, family and potential employers to find on the Internet — she admits, “I probably did say the f-word a little much.”

“As my mother said, ‘Mindy, how do you expect to be elected now?”’ she said.

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This is even weirder than the proposal-via-television-ad. I feel kind of guilty even posting about it, since that's feeding it in a way. Is reality TV warping our behavior that much? Is this the natural result of video cameras being so (relatively) cheap and plentiful?

What is the endgame of this? Will we become incapable of living without an audience, spending our lives constantly recording one another, interaction reduced to whatever provocation is effective?

I watch this stuff too, so I'm not holier that thou or anything. But sometimes it weirds me out a little.