Internet video

'Cult of Sincerity' is the first full-length film to debut on YouTube. ('Four Eyed Monsters,' you'll recall, played the festival circuit and in independent theaters before it showed up on the 'Tube.)When you watch the full-length version on YouTube, there's a lengthy, infomercial-like intro that explains that, if you sign up for an account on the music site AmieStreet.com, the filmmakers get $2. (You'll also get two free songs from AmieStreet.) If you actually buy a $3 credit on AmieStreet to get more music, you get a free downloadable version of the film.Here's how co-director Adam Browne describes the movie in an e-mail he sent to me (and presumably, other bloggers):“The Cult of Sincerity” is an off-beat look at life after college.

People who invest in digital media and Internet video content have one belief: that creatives are gonna find a way to produce really compelling content that attracts big audiences much more cheaply than the studios. When you've attracted a big audience, advertising dollars will follow. That has been the thinking behind Vuguru, 60Frames, MyDamnChannel, FunnyOrDie, and now, EQAL, a micro-studio formed by the guys behind the lonelygirl15 series and KateModern.EQAL just raised $5 million from Spark Capital in Boston; Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape; and Ron Conway, one of the original investors behind Google. Here's the Wall Street Journal coverage ... the NewTeeVee story ....

- Sony Pictures Television is developing PIX, the first movie network for mobile phones. It'll be available on the recently-announced AT&T Mobile TV service in May. From the Hollywood Reporter piece:Sony eventually might convert PIX to an on-demand model and might take the brand online as well. The full-length linear strategy is just one of many different content plays with which the studio is experimenting. "We're not doubling down and saying it's only about longform," [Sony VP Eric] Berger said.

YouTube is announcing a new feature called "Insight," which gives video creators a way to see where there video is being watched (there's a cool map of the world with countries that light up) and when (is your video a Monday-morning-at-the-office-hit?)

From the NY Times coverage:

...YouTube executives suggest that marketers can use the tools in several ways. A movie studio might run several versions of a trailer to see what is catching on where, and if a humorous spot is catching fire in Texas, might start running that trailer as a TV ad in the state.

A political campaign could test spots of a candidate discussing the environment or the economy; if an environmental spot is popular in Pennsylvania, that might help decide what the candidate stumps about there.

Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece last week titled 'Size Matters. Morgenstern seems to side with David Lynch: movies are intended to be seen on the big screen, not on an iPod or in a Web browser window.

And a lot of the Web content that's proving popular, Morgenstern complains, is about titillation: what better way to capture a viewer's attention than to present an attractive actress in a bikini?

I'd point out that a lot of the movies that made movies popular in the first place featured foxy ladies doing things you didn't ordinarily see ladies do in the 1890s. Like Annabelle and her serpentine dance:

The NY Times explores Michael Eisner's online video ventures, in advance of Eisner's appearance next week at SXSW to promote his new online series, 'The All-for-Nots.' (Eisner will be interviewed by Mark Cuban -- sure to be news-making.)

So now the question is: who'll crack the creative challenges of Web video (and figure out the right economic model) first.... Eisner, or his former employer, Disney?

Spent the afternoon and evening yesterday at Harvard Business School's annual Entertainment & Media Conference.

I filed a short piece for Variety about the opening Jeff Zucker keynote, which felt pretty news-y to me. Liz Gannes from NewTeeVee was there, too -- and has some video and notes on the Zucker talk.

Some other notes:

From the "If a video-sharing site falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it" department...

The San Diego tech company DivX is shutting down its Stage6 video-sharing site, which aimed to be a higher-resolution version of YouTube -- and had plans to share revenue with its users and enable pay-per-download. The site launched in the fall of 2006, but never attracted much of a following.

Last year, I wrote about how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences requested that YouTube yank any clips from the Oscar telecast...and yet the official Oscar site didn't offer much video to Oscar-obsessed Internet users.

The same thing is happening this year. Oscar.com offers mostly footage from the "thank you" cam, a backstage opportunity for winners to be more profuse in their gratitude.

- The NY Times offers some interesting data about how people consume video online: the 20 percent of viewers who watch the most video view more than 140 times as much of it as the 50 percent who watch the least. With data from comScore and Media Contacts, the Times found that the top 20 percent of viewers see 841 minutes (or 14 hours) of video every month, on average. The bottom 50 percent watch just six minutes a month.

- The Times also has a very smart examination of how studios are trying to sustain their DVD sales -- both high-def and standard-def. Brooks Barnes and Matt Richtel write:

Last night's sold-out MITX panel, 'Internet Video: What's Next?', was a lot of fun... and a full house despite dire warnings of impending precipitation. (Which always get Bostonians agitated.)

In the audience was a big contingent of video folks from the Globe, at least one exec from Visible Measures, video analyst Will Richmond, blogger and consultant Cesar Brea, and lots of folks from PermissionTV, one of the event's sponsors.

I won't try for a comprehensive re-cap here, but we talked about three areas: how is viewing behavior changing on the Web; how are videos made and distributed, and how are they monetized and measured.

A tentative deal between writers and producers was reached on Saturday; work in Hollywood could resume as soon as Wednesday. The big win for the Writer's Guild of America was securing a percentage of revenues when shows and movies are delivered online (rather than receiving a fixed fee.)

Cynthia Littleton of Variety has some thoughtful analysis of what the WGA strike meant to TV and screenwriters, in economic terms. She writes:

For the WGA, it was all about setting precedent and cementing the idea that scribes deserve to be paid for Internet exploitation of their work. More specifically, they wanted a deal that paid them a percentage of distributor's gross, on the principle that "when you get paid, we get paid."

CNET and NewTeeVee say the pioneering vid-sharing site Revver has been trying to sell itself -- with no takers so far. Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee writes:

Public traffic measurers show Revver with flat growth, though the company sees quite a lot of views in its embedded players, which aren’t typically measured. The company hasn’t figured into anyone’s top 10 video sites by traffic in quite a while. We’d reported on video stars who have moved off the Revver platform as their primary host, such as Ze Frank, who left for blip.tv; Ask a Ninja, which chose Castfire; and Lonelygirl15, which went back to promoting its YouTube clips.