Hollywood continues to be bullish about its approach to online video. MovieClips has managed to license content from six major Hollywood studios; unfortunately, they’re only two-minute clips, and only available in the U.S. and Canada. Why am I not surprised?
Hollywood Reticence
Hollywood views movie piracy as a big problem. And to be fair it is, just not as huge a one as Tinseltown makes out. But worse than its pronouncements of the sky falling in is the fact it seems very reluctant to do anything mature and progressive about it.
Movie studios keep saying yes to a lot of half-baked services which offer just a fraction of the amount of content that’s out there, when what is really needed is one service which encompasses all studios and all movies anyone could ever wish to rent or buy.
Instead, Hollywood sticks to a scattergun approach while pursuing pirates out of business and throwing money at filmmakers who have even the slightest hint of talent.
MovieClips
is part of this scattergun approach, offering as it does an estimated 12,000 short movie clips for people to watch free and legally. The site has now entered a beta period and there are a few teething problems but the concept is sound.
The idea is to give fans a chance to watch and share their favorite parts of movies. Whether it be The Terminator uttering, “I’ll be back” for the first time or Napoleon Dynamite dancing his little heart out, then it’s here for perusal.
Clips can be browsed by movies, actors, actions, or moods, which is useful if you have the perfect movie quote in mind to sum up your day. However, clips are slow-loading and the whole interface feels a little clunky at the moment.
In future MovieClips hopes to monetize its content not only by advertising against each video but also by building affiliate partnerships which would see a few cents earned every time someone clicked through to rent or buy the full movie from one of the many sources on the Web.
Conclusions
MovieClips is a good idea, although it faces stiff competition from the as-yet-not-launched AnyClip. I can see the site being successful both in appeasing movie fans and making money once all the revenue streams come online.
However, MovieClips is currently only available to people in the U.S. and Canada, with the rest of the world blocked from even browsing. And if Hollywood hopes to ever beat piracy it needs more than partnerships with a site containing only partial clips of movies.
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