Broadband Jungle Blog

Liam Lynch podcasts Tenacious D

Liam Lynch, writer / director and composer of United States of Whatever-fame runs a very entertaining website that showcases almost all of his talents. In true 2.0 storyteller fashion, he muses on his experience with Tenacious D, whose upcoming The Pick of Destiny Liam directed, by posting his own behind the scenes footage on his site.

An entire Tenacious D episode of Lynchland, the director’s own podcast series, is dedicated to following the director to various post production sessions. Absolute highlight: Jack Black conducts the orchestra during a scoring session with passionate abandon to the delight of LA’s finest classical studio musicians.

StimTV

StimTV is a quirky channel streaming from Oxnard, California. Launched in the fall of ’05, the player exclusively serves up short clips of movies, television and music videos with some interviews thrown in, sort of like a multi-DVD player stuck in shuffle. If a clip catches your fancy you can play it full length if it’s in the archive. Most certainly sending every viewers ADD into overdrive, I also wouldn’t want to run their legal department and deal with Rights and Clearances issues.

Their StimTV promos are highly original and alone worth the click: Located under ‘tutorial video’ you can find promos that are shot like old fashioned educational films with the occasional low-tech effect thrown in, and there are more hilarious tutorials hidden in search. My absolute favorite—cardboard cutouts of StimTV templates to demonstrate how to navigate the site.

Machinima.com

A player dedicated to the genre of Machinima—'machine animation'—created by using low-end consumer real time 3D software found inside computer games.

The site explains the process nicely:
"Machinima creators act out their movies within a computer game. We treat the viewpoint the game gives them as a camera - Shooting Film in a Virtual Reality."

Giving the clips a distinctive computer game feel, the results are stunning. Some of the storylines are breathtaking and highly imaginative, and both the genre and the site have come a long way since Machinima.com launched in January 2000.

Machinima made appearances on the Matrix 4:1 TV-series on the WB, music videos on MTV and a recent Coca Cola commercial; the site also features its own Machinima Film Festival page.

Viewing tips: The Afflicted, a compelling sci-fi drama by Kate Lee at Chat Noir Studios about “a future world in which strong emotions have been genetically eradicated, and humans have become efficient information processors.” The impression that we are experiencing this story from within a computer game makes its impact even more haunting.

Forbes on YouTube

Your future’s so bright, you’ve got to wear shades? If anyone, that’s YouTube’s wunderkind-CEO Chad Hurley smiling from the cover of the October issue of Forbes. The old school flagship runs with seven (!) articles on the Internet video phenomenon.

Video Fixation is the cover story by Scott Wooley, and he recounts the fine line Hurley and partner Steve Chen have been treading on their way to becoming broadband revolutionaries.

You Tube for Grownups by Cesar Suero has all the stats and provides a map to navigate the site for the uninitiated. More than Words examines the fledgling video search industry, while Can YouTube Grow Up And Stay Cool? by Peter Kafka deals with licensing issues and upcoming solutions like the arrangements with Warner Music and NBC.