Here’s a cute little idea.
Finnish animation studio Anima Boutique have developed a series of episodes called The Guys. They get people to send in their home videos, which they re-interpret, import their animated characters (The Guys) into the scenes and re-publish on their website. 
They’re all short, they’re all silly, so they all have potential to become your daily 10 seconds of nonsense.  On your mobile of course .

David Lynch embraces the internet yet again. On June 1 the director/artist will launch Interview Project,  a website that will release a series of 3-5 minute portraits of people that his crews met on a 20,000 mile road-trip round America. 
Watch the trailer and Lynch’s own little Lynch-style plug on the Interview Project website. Entertainment Weekly also has a preview of the first episode.

Would have been great if Lynch himself had interviewed all these people; the extraordinary meets the ordinary meets the extraordinary. Still, this looks like a nice piece of human content being dripfed into our digital brains over the course of a year.

A lot of production companies are understandably a little nervous these days. Trying to keep up with the rapidly dwindling commercial budgets. Pondering whether they should bother making that 5K music video. Trying to make sense of ‘that digital thing’. 

So it’s inspiring to see the people at Paris-based Mr Hyde moving into interesting territory with the start of their online film festival called The Hyde Tube. Now, setting up an online video festival obviously isn’t that special, but the company are selling it as a talent-spotter place for agencies, labels,… i.e. their clients. 

I can see why they’re doing it.

It’s obviously a good way for them to spot talent and possibly ’sign’ them to the Mr Hyde roster. You know, let knowledge come to you, rather than you go and find it all yourself and all that. 

The festival aspect is fun and obviously a good thing PR-wise. 

But the thing I find most interesting is that they’re trying to position themselves as a quality brand. “If it’s not on here, it’s not worth watching”-type of thing. 
Social curating (i.e. you look at your peers to see what’s recommended) is highly effective, but I can see there being a place for this kind of stuff within the creative industries. Even the hottest creative director or art buyer with the fattest finger on the throbbing creative pulse, can’t see it all. The Hyde Tube seems to limit the amount of films/directors, so this selective curating model could well have some added value.
Especially as brands are gagging for video content and there’s more and more stuff commissioned on the lo-budget side of the spectrum. So new, keen (and cheap), creative talent is in demand. 

Speaking of money, the unusual thing is that The Hyde Tube are very open about finances. In their own words: 

Clients will contact The Hyde Tube in order to pass on a project to a specific director, who is then free to decide whether or not to accept it. If accepted, the director will write a treatment or make an animated test within 3 to 5 days. For this work you will receive approximately 500€.

If the client is happy with the treatment and decides that the director will make the film, The Hyde Tube will connect the director with the client, and Mr Hyde or one of its affiliate studios will oversee the production until the film delivery.

The director’s fee will be 10 percent of the budget, the first half payable on the first day of production and the rest upon delivery of the finished film.

Open. New. Creative.
It’s not perfect, but I’m definitely going to keep an eye on it.

Obviously, that’s all very true and useful and what not, but 2009 is set to be the year of video. On the digital platforms of course.
‘Groundswell‘ already mentioned video as an integral of any good communications strategy, and more and more industry people and blogs are talking about it. What got me thinking was this article on Video Insider, bigging up the importance of video. I particularly agreed with the bit where it mentions that it’s time to be creative with online video.

Creative in production, but very much creative in thinking. So not just re-purposing tv content into shorter ‘webisodes’, but making something that truly complements a tv show.
Not just re-purposing a tv ad into a pre-roll, but creating specific, short, funny, interesting messages that actually make sense in an online environment.
And not commissioning a viral without actively trying to seed it. 
Creative in translating your message for that right environment.  

If you move to a new country and want to integrate, you speak the new language, right? But to me it seems that brands/clients/communicators seem to struggle with or even avoid that new language.
True, it’s far from clear yet what the online video ‘language’ really is. Correction: make that ‘languages’, plural. Because that seems another pre-conception: that there’s one solution. Not necessarily, me thinks: why not have a variety of ‘translations’ of your core message. Another topic that Video Insider writes about very well.
Why not have different versions of online ads, all based on the same message or tagline. And with all the power to measure online behaviour, you must be able to target different varieties of your message to different people. Why not have…

I’ve been involved in quite a few online (video) projects over the last few years and “It’s only for the web” is still a phrase commonly used. And while they say that, they divide the ‘big budget’ by 8 and give that to online. TV STILL seems to be THE one platform where a lot of people want to be.

Shame, because while production costs are much lower than they used to be, I think the development of concepts and ideas are gonna be key in 09, the year of online video.