Big Teeth Productions Blog

MOVIECLIPS.com - What is it, and what isn’t it

In a recent completely unscientific survey of web video usage, I estimated that people watch and share video clips online no less than 1 billion times a day. Most of these are via YouTube, but now there's a new player in town, Movieclips.com.

According to "Fierce Online Video," Movieclips.com online video service is seeing growth, which leads me to wonder...

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?

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