mobiDOCS: Confessions in a Digital Age. Ten filmmakers. Two continents. BLT4WIRELESS.

mobiDOCS: Confessions in a Digital Age. Ten filmmakers. Two continents. BLT4WIRELESS.

will the real 'new media' please stand up?

Because if I have to go to one more panel discussion where a bunch of the most powerful media figures sit there scratching their head as they decry the lack of direction and useful prediction in the online and cross platform space, I am going to chew my arm off.

Seriously.

Like last Friday, I'm at the New York Television Festival panel discussion for Network Building on the Web. And it's amazing - sitting up there is what I believe to be one of the greatest media minds of our time, Fred Siebert. Currently of Next New Networks, he's sharp-witted and sharp tongued, at once needing to be heard and deliciously irreverent. And yes, even he admits that we are all still in the 'testing phase'. Beside him is Simon Asaad, one of the founding fathers of heavy.com - another startup that I believe to be among the most savvy in the whole 'monetize through advertising and build a self sustaining model' game. Whilst he does not admit to being similarly baffled (there is a heartening variety of smugness deployed by the Australian, as he sits up there proclaiming with wonder that his coolness filter is still 'the kind of stuff that personally cracks me up'), it is clear that a few false moves and his venture, too, could still come toppling down.

ON Networks - in support of....

I watch a heckuva lot of online video in a day, and I have to say that most of it - I'm talking at least 80-90% of it - really should self destruct in 30 seconds like the piece of paper Inspector Gadget's mission was written on (remember Chief Quimby? Hunh).

So when I stumbled across the ON Networks portal, I was pretty slow to watch the shows they represent. Once bitten, twice shy and I was justifiably skeptical.

But then pleasantly, pleasantly surprised. And again. And again.

ON Networks houses about 25 original shows, in various lengths ranging from about 3mins up to 10 mins (ten minutes, you say? Well yeah, it is on the looooong side, but the show in question is a really vibrant string of musical interludes called 'Dinner with the Band', and the minutes do fly by...)

Among my favorites are Proper Ollie (where a foppish Brit propounds on such important modern issues as cellphone etiquette as he sips tea):

Backpack Picnic (the 'let's kill science' erm... killed me)

and Searchin' USA (a funny show about the quirky things we search for on the internet)


Check it. Seriously. And tell me whatcha reckon. It seems like a pretty viable alternative to the plethora of destination sites that keep cropping up, and the quality control on their shows is high. Compared even to a babelgum or joost it rates pretty well (at least you don't have to download an entire application to your desktop and then keep updating it - duh!), and is definitely a time saving alternative to daily doses of black20 or any other number of limited release programming by small providers who lack the scale and the infrastructure to keep increasing appetites afloat...

the other players in the space worthy of note are heavy and next new networks - both of whom have a pretty different approach to content and to merchandising. But more of that later.

myspace tv - afterworld

When I heard about the 130 part series 'Afterworld' to be shown concurrently on a destination site and on myspace tv, I immediately rushed to check it. I believe the future of online video - at least in as much as it will compete with more traditional forms of longer programming - lies in episodic bites that keep you coming back for more. Imagine something as catchy as entourage, with the emotional investment made possible only with the amazing writing and execution of a show like the Sopranos, or Six Feet Under? Even something with as many obvious flaws as NBC's heroes, if bottled into online form and with the same amount of technically flawed but nevertheless effective story hooks, could possibly do the trick.

So a cataclysmic show about survival after the end of the world? YES! You scream. Hell yes.

Or not.

I mean, to be fair, it's watchable. Clicking on the play button and what follows does not directly make me want to kill myself, or bill the misguided producer/creators for wasted seconds of my precious life.

But the derivative writing (where the story is told in retrospect for some bizarre reason), the forcibly emotive voice over, and the stiff graphics with occasional movement of machinima esque bodily parts all culminate into not much doing. The fact that there was a typo on the Japanese Hiroshima survivor's name didn't help.

And do we really need to hear

'my name is Russel Shoemaker. I sold technology to the world. Back when there was technology, and people to sell it to...'

as a preface to each show?

It's like, we get it. We understand the premise, we know who you are, can we please move on and quit wasting valuable time that could be spent watching some guy on youtube castrate himself with a can opener? The next viral video, man...

I'm at episode 11 so with an open mind let the count down begin.

Peace.