1. What the hell does Movieclips.com do?
2. What does Movieclips.com not do that it should.

WHAT IS MOVIECLIPS.COM

Movieclips.com is an online video site that has,"... over 12,000 movie clips, [where] you can search, find, view, discuss and share scenes from your favorite movies."

Of course, once you find these clips you can watch them on the site and embed them on the usual suspects of movie embeddom. Another big difference is that this is apparently all legal and above the board with Hollywood giving it's hard-earned permission.

Movieclips.com is set up to make money by having affiliate links to buy products related to the clips you watch. There are links to iTunes, amazon.com, allposters.com, Fandango and more. Presumably you watch the clip and then have to have the movie poster. Maybe hearing "Go ahead make my day" isn't enough, you need a full "Dirty Harry" fix streamed to your laptop.

WHAT COULD MOVIECLIPS.COM BE THAT IT IS NOT

With all the iphone/blackberry zombies out there who can't have a single thought without internet backup, having a warehouse of one-liners and scenes at your fingertips definitely has some value. Where the site is lacking is the usability for video content creators.

Think about all the people putting video up on the web. Those who make a living at it, like we do, but also the ones who create mash-ups, film their kids hopped up on novocaine, re-subtitle Hitler movies etc. These are the ones who would love to have access to high quality clips to use for their video projects, and might well be willing to pay a reasonable fee for it, but again are shut out.

I'm not suggesting some way to open the door for video pirates to swashbuckle their way into easier stealing, but think about all the fun videos people love to create in homage to their favorites - why not allow them to download these files and use them for non-nefarious purposes? It's fun to be able to watch scenes from all these movies, but had they gone a step further and made this more inclusive and useful, we'd be stepping in a much better and more interesting direction.

What do you think? Is Movieclips.com good enough just showing you the clips, or do you agree that we should have the chance to borrow some Hollywood magic if it's used for the purposes of good and not evil?

from who dat to the who we give you our outsider perspective to the biggest insider event of the year, the superbowl.

Being at the Superbowl was a thrill for a number of reasons and was definitely something we'll remember for a long time, in no small part thanks to one of the greatest rock bands of all time, The Who.

A lot of the buzz I read on Facebook threads and random outlets on the web was that The Who are not "relevant" and are too old etc... as an act for the biggest TV event of the year. It makes me wonder if in fact, the kids are alright?

This being our first experience (and probably last) at the actual game versus in front of a TV, I'm left to ponder whether the CBS broadcast just couldn't possibly capture the electricity of the live performance. I know in years past I felt ambivalent about performances by Paul McCartney, Aerosmith, Springsteen and other such mega-acts who phoned in halftime show performances.

From where we we're sitting (section 403, third row from the top of the stadium) the aged Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey rocked as hard as two social security aged people could or should. Sure there wasn't the same fire as the "Magic Bus" days and no Les Paul's were smashed (admittedly a disappointment), but to the best of what I could tell, the few missed notes sung by Daltrey or maybe a muffed chord from Pete meant that these guys were actually playing their instruments and singing - NOT lip syncing. If you want to rag on them for anything, it could be the choice to play a set consisting of mostly songs that have been absconded by CBS' CSI franchise; but for the godfathers of heavy metal I'll let that slide.

Back to the whole "relevant" thing. Who would you consider to fit that bill? Would you rather have empty party anthem singers Black Eyed Peas take the stage and sing the most overplayed, uninteresting song of all time "I Gotta Feelin'"? And when I say "play" is there any doubt at all that it would just be a recorded track that Fergie and the boys would hop around to? Or the American Idol of the moment? If that's the case then I guess I'd rather not be part of "My Generation."

Our first official "super" activity took place last night as part of Super Clematis Live - a football-themed version of the weekly nightlife activity in West Palm Beach. Now for all of you fame watchers waiting to be regaled with tales of shoulder rubbing with the Jonas Brothers, you may want to skip this post.

Clematis by Night an outdoor street fair with food, drinks and some live music acts who work tirelessly to cover every cheesy pop song ever written. They nailed it by going from "Don't Stop Believin'" right into "I Gotta Feelin'" - The dynamic duo of overplayed karaoke fare. Now what made this particular night "super" were the few non-descript former NFL players signing autographs and a couple of inflatable games with football logos. Oh, and we think we saw Freddie Falcon and Bobby Bronco running around the place too.

The Evening's headliners were none other than soft-rock legends Starship Featuring Mickey Thomas, not to be confused with Jefferson Starship. Mickey and a group of musicians half his age trotted out all the classics you know and love (and Elise REALLY loved a little too much for comfort).

For your viewing and listening pleasure here are a few of them captured with our new Kodak zx1 camera.

We Built This City - Encore style (listen closely, at one point it sounds like "live goes to tape)

Just when you thought you had been soft-rocked to the fullest, they encored with the classic "We Built This City." For one brief moment West Palm Beach was indeed built on (soft) rock & roll.

Super soft rock ballad - Sarah

Dedicated to our intrepid sports reporter chum  Sarah Spain, who has been covering media week here in So Fla., by request.

For those still wishing to know about the Jonas Brothers, take solace in the fact that in another 30 years, they will be Starship.

Back for more later, in the meantime, you can follow along with some photos we've added on flickr.

A series of blogs from our experience winning two tickets to the 2010 Superbowl in Miami

West Palm Beach, FL - I'm pretty sure there's a football game taking place on Sunday, and a pretty big one. As a matter of fact it's arguably the biggest sporting event on the American calendar. Yet it seems that all anyone wants to talk about is what celebrities will be on hand (Saints & Colts & Kardashians, oh my) and what party can you get in to, and not who has the better o-line, but who's o-line can sing better at Media Day's none-too subtle tie-in with "American Idol."

So rather than provide another insider report on whether Peyton Manning will root for the team he plays for or the one he rooted for as a child, we've decided to provide the complete outsider's perspective to Super Bowl madness. Throughout our week in Florida we'll make our way to a few of the coveted activities, but overall, let us be your eyes and ears at Society Ground Zero.

Notes from the Almost Front lines...

As noted above, we are not the media elite, we don't have a reality show on E! (yet) and have no discernible ties to the cash-heavy Mafia, so rather than a shimmering ocean view from a South Beach hotel, we're staying in nearby West Palm Beach. I say this not as a complaint, but as statement of fact. The takeaway from this is that we were fortunate to win two tickets to the hottest event and plan on taking full advantage of that - which means spending a week in intermittently sunny Florida during the worst weather month of the year in Chicago. If that wasn't good enough we were handed the keys to a shiny new silver Mustang as our official wheels of the Gregg & Elise adventure. A Super Bowl miracle.

Other things:

- Perhaps the two most coveted parties to attend before the Superbowl are put on by Playboy and Maxim magazines. Remember magazines? Those were the paper things that have all but been replaced by the Internet. If I were a more suspicious person I might surmise that these publications have stayed in business past their relevancy just to host the yearly bout of bacchanalia.

- The stories not involving the parties and celebrities are all about the advertisements during the game. Are these not the very same 30- and 60-second bits of cleverness that we go out of our way to DVR right past the other 364 days a year? The Superbowl spot seems to be the Betamax in a Blu Ray world. Do these ads bring a return anywhere near what it costs to air them?

- Why does politics ruin EVERYTHING? The Superbowl and its sideshow are beloved for the unnecessary excess, over the top half time and anything else that amounts to no actual substance. Now we have to tread out the abortion debate in between quarters of the Bud Bowl? What a downer!

Stay with us as the game approaches and we take you to all the places that you want to be.... when you couldn't afford the places you actually wanted to be.

1. My wife was out of town and left to my own devices very little happens.
2. British sitcoms tend to be only six episode seasons, and last about 3 seasons total. That's 18 episodes. In the early years, "The Simpsons" would knock that out before Thanksgiving.


So, right here on this very blog I am advocating the British Sitcom Model for the advent of the Web TV Age. As the medium matures and the inevitable mixing of regular TV with web TV takes place, this seems to make the most sense. What has made Web TV so intriguing so far is the experimental nature of it. The fact that you can produce a program by yourself, with little to no money, and distribute it as far as your Facebook friends will take you, truly lends itself to the short and unsentimental style of our former masters (oh I hate that King George III).

By developing an idea that you can play around with, get a feel for what the characters are like, but remain experimental, this could free up people to constantly come up with new material and challenge the network structure that would rather try out an unfunny, large chinned hack in prime-time over an interesting scripted show.

This is just a theory I'm playing with, and in trying to develop a few series of my own I decided to throw it out there and see how the rest of you feel. So, let me know what you would like to see from the shows coming out on the Internet.

Should we go with 6 episodes a season, 3 seasons max; or should we keep going and going and going until we get to the "Facts of Life Down Under" episode in Season 10?

 

I get asked all the time how to do certain tasks pertaining to video by people who dabble but haven't dedicated their lives to the dizzying world of video production like I have.

So, in our continuing series of helpful tips on video for the web, today I'll introduce you to a free piece of software that does some pretty heavy lifting in terms of converting, compressing and even simple editing of video files. Ladies and gentlemen, please say hello to MPEG Streamclip.

MPEG Streamclip is put out by an Italian company called Squared 5 (http://www.squared5.com) and thats as much as I know about them. According to their site, "MPEG Streamclip is a powerful free video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows. It can play many movie files ... encode movies to many formats, [and] can cut, trim and join movies. MPEG Streamclip can also download videos from YouTube and Google by entering the page URL."

Thats a useful little gadget there. Let's look a little deeper.

CONVERT AND COMPRESS

• Sometimes you're given a Windows Media file (.wmv) and need it to be a Quicktime (.mov), just drag and drop it into MPEG Streamclip's simple interface and export away.
• Maybe, you have a video recording with a great song that you want to put on your ipod - you can export just the audio and be in earbud heaven.
• You've got your wedding video on a DVD and want to put it on the web for your Aunt and Uncle to watch online - take that giant file and bring it down to a web-friendly size.
• You need a frame grab of a video to put on a website or send to the press. You can scrub frame by frame and find the one you need, export and you've got your picture.

EDIT, JOIN AND TRIM VIDEO

Sometimes you want to do a little editing and don't have the time or money to hire a professional, such as yours truly - you guessed it MPEG Streamclip is the answer. You can set an in and out point of your video and delete the bit you no longer want.

Or, say you've got two clips that you want to bring together - drag them both in and export out. Voila!

CAN'T BEAT FREE AND USEFUL

This just scratches the surface and I'm sure there are tons of other uses that I don't partake in since I have my fancy editing software, but I just wanted to share this little gem with those in need.

There are many programs that can do similar things but at a much greater price than free. The happy price tag comes with a few drawbacks - an ugly interface with a bunch of extra drop down menus you don't need; a terrible name (nobody uses MPEGs anymore); the accompanying help document is nearly impossible to read.

All in all, MPEG Streamclip is a valuable tool to add to your box. Any questions on the above or to delve further into what it can do, feel free to drop me a line.

We're a video company, right? So the brain trust got together and realized that our previous sites lacked videos in prominent spots - not a good idea when trying to sell them. Thats why with the recent redesign of bigteeth.tv we made sure that you would be able to see lots of videos - and with ease. Knowing how important the video samples were, we thought long and hard about the best way to host 'em and post 'em based on the following criteria:

1. Do you upload and host the video yourself, or host it on the web and embed it?
2. Will it take up lots of bandwidth and server space?
3. Will the video player integrate with the design of your site?
4. Can you track the number of plays that your video gets?

Using the above as a guide, we decided to host our videos on the video hosting site www.viddler.com. Viddler is similar to YouTube mainly in that its a place where you house the videos separate from your own site. This frees up space for other files and pages and takes away a lot of the hassle of worrying if people can view your videos in Quicktime or Windows Media or Flash. Unlike YouTube, Viddler allows much more control over how your videos on the web are seen. How so?

- Customizable Player - You can design your video player to be branded with your colors, and even add a watermark of your logo to the bottom of every video.

Here's an example of extremely popular web show Wine Library TV's viddler player.

- Easily embeddable - This is true not only of Viddler. Most video hosting sites you've heard of (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) will do this. Viddler lets you choose your video size and type of player and then you just copy and paste the code into your page.

 
-  SEO Friendly - Viddler videos allow you to upload your own thumbnail so you can choose what people see before they click. Also, you can enter tags and descriptions that if chosen wisely will bring the right audiences to your site (This is also true of YouTube and the others).
- Analytics Friendly - Viddler has its own tracking but is also tied in very well with Tubemogul, a video distribution and tracking site (more on this one in a later post). With viddler and Tubemogul you can see how many people are watching your video, and even for how long - you'll know if that 12 minute video is only getting 16 seconds of play it might be time to edit.

There are many other cool things you can do with Viddler that involve tagging and commenting in specific places of the video, but for our purposes we just want to be able to play them for you.

I hope you find this helpful if you're looking to put videos on your own page or blog and if you want to dig further by all means give me a shout and I can dispense more of my homespun good ol' fashioned web video wisdom. Also, if you use Viddler or another hosting site, or host your own videos, we'd love to hear how and why you came to that decision.

In fact, forget the social media part of the equation. If you have little to no time or money to spend on marketing – period – the first place you should turn is Facebook.

Here’s why. While consumers must seek out your website, which usually remains static, a Facebook fan page allows you to communicate with current and future customers on their home turf. It’s essentially a soft sell – an interactive, ever-changing gateway to your website that allows consumers to get to know you in a casual environment. If they know you, they’ll turn to you when needs inevitably arise. 

So, for you social media beginners, here are a few quick and easy steps to Facebook success.

1. Set up your fan page. Add contact information, a link to your website, photos (at least one profile photo is vital), video if you have access to it – make it as vibrant, engaging and rich with information as possible. It’s free and it doesn’t take long.

2. Build up your base. Start inviting people you know who already appreciate you and your business – friends, family, customers, co-workers – to become fans. Also seek out other businesses that you support or have worked with in the past and add them to your “favorite pages” list and ask them to do the same for you in return. The more fans and other businesses that add you to their network, the more new fans you can reach. 

3. Post items to your wall. Good ideas for posts include links to relevant news articles, brief updates about you and your business, promotional offers, contests, polls or even just random thoughts. Remember, you’re trying to show some personality here. Don’t be afraid to have a little fun; it doesn’t all have to be directly related to your business.

Since every wall post you make will show up on each of your fans’ homepages, the idea is to post stuff they would not only want to read themselves but would be compelled to comment on. When a fan comments on one of your posts, every Facebook friend of theirs will be exposed to that comment and potentially click on it and arrive at your page. And that’s how you gain new fans, who will, in turn, attract more fans.

Once your page is up and running, it’s pretty much all about keeping people involved by consistently posting new items to your wall. Try to post at a minimum of once a week and as much as once a day. This will keep you in your fans’ minds but not annoyingly so.

And there you have the basic formula. There are always new lessons for advanced students, but this should suffice for you beginners. A Facebook fan page costs zero money to start, and upkeep is quick and painless.

So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and get started. And, as always, if you have any questions, feel free to write me at dan@bigteeth.tv. Also, if you want to see how we practice this, check out the Big Teeth Fan Page.

A big mistake I’ve noticed companies making as they test the waters of marketing online is to think of social media marketing as a separate category from traditional marketing. This approach doesn’t make any sense to me.

Of course we all have budgets to stick to, but by taking advantage of the power of social media, you’re not subtracting from your marketing plan, you’re adding to it. No, wait…make that multiplying.

Anyone who’s ever had success in marketing will tell you the best approach is an integrated approach. Your work within one medium should complement your work in another medium. So when deciding to add social media to the mix, why treat it differently? Don’t you want your radio spot to gel with your TV spot? Same thing.

If you have an existing TV spot, put it on the web. If you have a website, create a microsite for an interactive twist. While you’re at it, Facebook is a great venue to bring your existing brand identity to life. Twitter can be an excellent gateway to your website. A blog can help create more personal relationships with the public and gain their trust.

To sweeten the pot, content created through your traditional marketing efforts can usually be transferred to online venues for little or no additional cost. (Don’t you love “synergy”?) Sprinkle in a few expertly executed videos (hint, hint), and you’re good to go.

It’s just common sense. Why not get more bang for your buck while also making your message more relevant to today’s more sophisticated consumer? It’s that simple.

But if it still doesn’t seem that simple, it’s okay, don’t throw up your hands in frustration. Write me at dan@bigteeth.tv, or follow more of my amazing insights on twitter, and I’ll be happy to walk you through some of the basics.