The Thomas Beale Cypher is an amazing and innovative short film which can be seen online for free. Its creator, Andrew Allen, believes online video is the way forward for short filmmakers, even trumping film festivals for generating views and interest.

Online Video Trumps Film Festivals?

Creators of independent or short films often have to spend a year on the road showing, talking about, and promoting their work at the numerous film festivals that take place around the world. It’s often tricky to impress or get noticed at these events, purely because of the amount of other films being shown.

However, there could be an alternative that is becoming more and more viable by the day. Online video. Sure, there is even more competition out there on the Web, but with good timing, great contacts, and the ubiquitous dash of luck, it can work out very well indeed.

As the filmmaker behind The Thomas Beale Cypher recently discovered.

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YouTube is moving away from its rather lawless, rather disorganized past at a rate of knots. The latest step on this evolutionary ladder is a ‘Music’ hub to sit alongside the previously-launched ‘Movies’ and ‘Shows’ hubs.

Organized YouTube

YouTube is rapidly changing the site so that it’s less about the sporadic, unfocused occasional video viewing and more about the consistent, organized viewing of content.

The UGC is still there in spades, obviously, but theres also more professional content than ever before. And this is being channeled in order to improve the way we use the site.

YouTube also does well from this change, with people more likely to watch more videos for longer thanks to the randomness of the site being superseded by organized and focused hubs.

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YouTube isn’t really known for its arty content, being considered the actual and spiritual home for funny home videos in this Web-obsessed age. But that could soon change thanks to a biennial event in association with the Guggenheim Museum.

YouTube Video

When you visit YouTube, which is something a great many of us do on a regular basis, you expect a certain type of video. Music videos, funny videos, videos with animals, that sort of thing.

YouTube has made an attempt at opening up its content in recent years. Deals with content creators have seen long-form video sit snugly alongside the more common user-generated video content.

Now comes another attempt to open YouTube up to a wider, more diverse audience.

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Sharethrough is a company at the cusp of new media and harnessing the power of viral video.

It has a platform that is connecting forward thinking companies wishing to utilize the reach of online video with various blogs, websites and social media platforms.

Put simply if you have a video that you want to get more exposure and views on YouTube then ShareThrough can help. It does this by getting your video on popular websites and apps to get it more exposure, for a price of course.

On the other side of the coin if you run a popular website, blog, facebook app, iPhone app etc. that could show sponsored videos to users to get more plays, then there’s the opportunity to partner with Sharethrough as an advertiser.

Does it Work?

I had the pleasure of visiting the ShareThrough offices in San Francisco where founder Dan Greenberg highlighted how the video campaigns work.

In addition to running webtvwire.com I occasionally consult on online video promotion. I was impressed with how ShareThrough works, and that it is actually effective, especially on large budget campaigns, although low budget campaigns might not see the benefit (more on this in a minute).

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Amazon Disc+ On Demand could be a key weapon in the movie industry’s fight to stop everyone switching from physical to digital media, at least while Hollywood gets used to the idea that even their output is now throwaway.

Physical Vs. Digital

Physical media in the form of CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray is taking a battering at the hands of digital media. Whether by legal means or otherwise, people are increasingly downloading or streaming their favorite music, movies, and TV shows.

Has the horse bolted already or are there ways retailers and content creators can encourage the purchasing of physical media? Amazon thinks there are and is currently experimenting with a way to gently persuade consumers to buy DVDs.

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Citizen journalists have increased both in number and importance in recent years. And Google is now seeking to bring some order to the chaos of how amateur footage is delivered online with YouTube Direct matching citizen journalists with news media organizations.

Citizen Journalists

There was a time when news coverage was strictly professional, delivered by paid reporters, photographers, and cameramen. And then everything changed with digital cameras and video cameras standard on cellphones.

Now, any Tom, Dick, or Harry can be a citizen journalist, reporting the news as it happens in front of them. Twitter and social networks are an important facet of this trend, as is online video and in particular YouTube.

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Torrent sites continue to be blamed for the many ills of society. But wait, is it not just a case of the technology not being used correctly and the way in which it was intended? VODO thinks so, and is attempting to open up torrent sites for filmmakers to utilize.

Torrent Sites

What are torrent sites used for? Many of you would have answered that it’s pretty much all pirated content being shared via torrents. And while there is a lot of copyrighted material being shared illegally on them, there is also much that is legal and copyright-free.

There are very few companies and organizations who have taken advantage of the technology as a way to distribute content thus far. But VODO is one of these, allowing and encouraging filmmakers to use torrent sites to seed their features and get them out there being watched.

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