Computing in the cloud is not a new concept, but it seems to be more relevant today then ever before.  Cloud computing is internet based computing.  So instead of having a single computer filled with all of you files, you store things remote servers and access them through the internet.  When I transitioned from a IBM to a Mac computer, I started to use Google documents to replace my WORD and EXCEL documents.

Another common way that we a using cloud computing is through uploading and sharing videos.  I recently submitted an audition video to be a host on Oprah Winfrey’s network.  I didn’t get the forms all turned in before the deadline, so I didn’t even make it to round one.  (Watch the video below and then call Oprah and tell her to put me on the show).  As I was finishing my audition video, I noticed that the contest submission site had an online video editor.  You could upload your videos, trim them up, combine them and then submit.  Instead of simply uploading your videos to the cloud, you could now do something with them.  It’s not as fancy as other video editing tools, but its free and it’s pretty easy to use.  Shortly after I DIDN’T make it into the contest, I heard that YouTube had introduced on online video editor.  YouTube.com/editor   It will pull all of your uploaded videos and let you trim and combine them and make an new video.  Pretty cool stuff. Here’s the audition video…

Here’s an overview of the new video editor on YouTube…

So I’m thinking that it would be a great idea to set up a user name to share with some of the other dad’s in the neighborhood. That way, when we are all standing around video taping our kids at their concert or other school functions, we can upload to a common area and then we can edit the videos down to one new video.

I was first introduced to the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (LXD) on season 5 of “So you think you can dance”.  I was pretty impressed with their dance and equally impressed with their Geek Chic name.  Well, it looks like they are taking the name of the group to a whole new level.  In association with Paramount digital entertainment the LXD will be releasing a web series in early July.

According to the groups creator Jon M. Chu, the series tells the story of superheroes extending their powers through dance.  Each episode will feature different styles and themes as each hero chooses a path to fulfill his destiny.  You can check out the trailer for the series in the video below.

I think that we are all familiar with the epic duel between David and the “giant” Goliath from the first book of Samuel. Twice a day for forty days, Goliath, the giant champion of the Philistines, comes out and challenges the Israelites to send a champion of their own to decide the outcome of their conflict in single combat. The Israelites are afraid of him, but the boy David steps up to the challenge. Armed only with his staff, a sling, and 5 stones, David faces Goliath and his armor and sword and shield. He strikes Goliath in the head with the first stone from his sling, and the Philistine falls on his face. David takes Goliath’s sword and decapitates Goliath.

While this story is an example of faith and trust in God, it has also become the rally cry of the entrepreneur. One person CAN compete. An individual can stand up to the big man and over come the odds to win. In this story we see that there was only one person in the whole army that was willing to take a chance, but those numbers are changing. With today’s technology an individual can set up a business and be a success.

As I am working to understand more about this changing market and my place in it, I’ve found a prime example of this principle on the internet. With the popularization of web and mobile applications, there is a rush to cash in on the next big iPhone app. The iTunes store seems to have its favorites, its Goliaths, that gain in popularity as they are pushed to the front lines, but where are the Davids? How does a little guy compete with that ocean swell? That Gigantic corporate structure with it’s herd of fans doesn’t know me or what I might want but my friend Blake has an idea.

Blake is David. He’s the guy with the idea. He recognizes that there is a vast ocean of opinions about these different applications so he’s made a way to turn to and trust his friend’s opinions called Appteria. By tying into his social network on Facebook, and inviting his friends to join together with their social networks, he has made a way to get a more trusted recommendation on new applications. Check out the site and find some great new programs. It’s such a great idea that Apple decided to make their own fan page on Facebook.

Goliath is not as tall as we once thought, and the stones in my sling just got better.

So let’s say you own and operate your own video production company.  You may not be the biggest or the best, but in today’s new media you don’t have to be.  Rhett & Link are self-proclaimed “Internetainers”. They have created over 200 web videos to create a super web presence to show off their musical comedy filmmaking talents. They came to my attention as they teamed up with illustrator Billy Reid and Rush T-shirts to come up with this amazingly clever video.

It’s just like the Superbowl, we don’t mind being advertised to if we’re entertained. Check out the video below.

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief opens in theaters today. Last night at 11:00 I went upstair to wake my 11 year old son and 9 year old daughter to take them to the midnight showing (SURPRISE! They were already awake and dressed). The three of us have read all of the books in the series, but were curious about the film adaptation based on the movies trailer seen in the video below.

The movie was great. I would recommend going to see it. My 9 year old jumped a bit at the monsters, but it was rated PG so they didn’t have any gore. After reading the books and knowing the characters, the movie felt a bit rushed, and the plot-line from the books just wasn’t the same. Here’s the thing, you can’t really pack 375 pages into a 2 hour movie.

Chris Columbus the director of the Harry Potter movies took the helm on this project and sifted through all those pages and distilled them down to a 120 page movie script. To do that, he took elements of the original story and repurposed them for HIS story. Some things were left out, and some things were added. Don’t spend too much time thinking about the color of Anabeth’s hair or the type of pen that Percy has because there are much bigger issues to think about. Disney has bought the rights to the property, but that doesn’t mean that they have to make a carbon copy of the book. Interestingly enough, if they did make a 100% faithful film version of the book, the fans would probably pick out all of the little details that they left out. I may have been easier to just make a new version.

As the heroic tale is re-told throughout time, it tends to adapt and change and become a different story than the way it started. So, in my opinion, this movie is a re-telling of the book, it is not the book. It’s the Legend of Percy Jackson. I enjoyed the book enough to go see the movie, but I wasn’t so married to the book that I couldn’t enjoy the film adaptation.

As I’ve been writing and thinking about video on the internet, I came across a dusty CD case in my office.  Within this case I found a CD I had burned and marked simply “BMW Films”.  You see, way back in 2001 I didn’t have high-speed internet at my house.  I was working for an online training company and I would use my work access to learn all about what was going on on-line.  When I found something marvelous, I would save it and store it.  *shrugs* Yeah, I’m a bit nerdy.

In 2002, BMW teamed up with 8 different filmmakers to produce a series of 10 minute long “Branded Content” entertainment.  The idea was a HUGE hit.  More often than not, the idea behind creating a viral video is to somehow hid the sponsorship or message in the video (just like the MegaWoosh).  BMW didn’t need to hide their message in their video, they FLAUNTED it, and the message was simple, “Our Cars can DRIVE”.

These films introduced me to Clive Owen as the BMW driver.  He’s hired on various jobs to get people from point A to B, but he does it with flair.  Later when Clive showed up in The Bourne Identity I elbowed my wife and said, “HEY! It’s the guy from BMW films!”  In my mind, it made him more of a star because I had already seen him.

This form of online video marketing was super successful.  It’s sure does say something when people are keeping a copy of your advertising.  You can learn more about The Hire here and see more videos like the one below on YouTube.

As I’m working to try and figure out how to be self employed and try to make money from the internet, here’s another example of viral marketing that really didn’t mean to be viral marketing.  The difference between this one and the one I wrote about earlier is that this video was not created to market anything, it was a fun video that caught fire on the internet.

In the above video, a Minnesota couple enter the church dancing to the Chris Brown song “Forever”. They just did it for fun.  They posted it on YouTube, and the video got VERY popular.  It was passed all over the internet.  So YouTube posted links to buy the Chris Brown song on iTunes and Amazon and they started to advertise on the video page. The song was originally released on April 22, 2008 and had, for all intents and purposes, completed it’s life cycle.  With the 24 million views in just a few weeks on YouTube, Chris Brown’s song went to #4 on iTunes and this video revitalized the market for the song.  What about copyright?  Well, YouTube doesn’t have to pull the video under safe harbor until the owner of the content says to pull it.  Chris Brown’s managers were smart enough to ride this successful video and they had a surge of profits.  The downside is that the video creator gets no benefit from it, BUT, if they were a partner with YouTube, they could have taken advantage of some profit sharing.

The moral of the story is to put things up on YouTube with a plan in mind.  The comedy site College Humor has made a sequel video called the “Divorce Video”, but it’s just not the original.  I need to start working up some ideas of my own.

I really enjoy the idea that anyone of us can sit down and write a story and then make something out of it.  We could Blog about it, or make some drawings and turn it into a comic strip or comic book or even turn it into a movie.  We have the technology to run our own TV station out of our garage.  I wanted to work for Disney, or sculpt special effects, or be like Spielberg and be be a visionary storyteller.  Well, I have a stack of rejection letters and a very short list of film credits.

So I never made it to Hollywood.   Oh well.  I like to imagine the day that Hollywood makes it’s way out to me.  I’m not alone in this line of thinking.  There’s quite a few Web Shows out there that are making their own stories outside of Hollywood.  Some of these shows are even blurring the lines a bit.

In 1982 Ridley Scott made a movie called Blade Runner.  In the far distant future of 2019, Los Angeles has flying cars, skyscraper advertising, and genetically manufactured humans called replicants.  Some of these replicants escape their off world jobs that they’ve been created for and seek to be real people.  Here’s the trailer for the movie.

The movie has a cult following that has resulted in many releases of the movie with slight variations each time.  The 25th Anniversary edition sought to put an end to some of the debate around the story and titled, The Final Cut.  Now that everything is final, Ridley Scott is working on a new WEB PROJECT. He is working with an independent studio called Ag8 and a number of Ad Agencies to produce a new sci-fi webisode series titled Purefold.

Scheduled to start in about 3 months, Purefold will take place 2 years in the future and run for a series of of 5-10 minute shorts that will be set some time between now and the beginning of Blade Runner’s story in 2019.

Ag8’s founding partner David Bausola said, “We don’t take any of the canon or copyrighted assets from the movie. It’s actually based on the same themes as Blade Runner. It’s the search for what it means to be human and understanding the notion of empathy. We are inspired by Blade Runner.”

It would appear that they are also inspired by the skyscraper adverts in Blade Runner because they intend to bring in advertisers whose products and brands can be featured in the series - just like the advertising you see featured in Blade Runner, but that’s not all. They’re thinking quite creatively about brands and marketing and integrating these ideas into the stories. Here’s a quote from their site. “Taking place in the near future, Purefold enables participating brands to take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.” They also have a 28 minute elevator pitch at their site.

Tuesday, JUNE 20th at the Wembly Arena in London kicks of the ONE NIGHT ONLY WORLD TOUR of SPINAL TAP! heh…hehh….one night only…..world tour…. hheheheh.

1984 Rob Reiner created a fake documentary mock Rockumentary about the fictional band Spinal Tap. Reiner plays the part of filmmaker Marty DiBergi as he chronicles the bands first US tour. The film satirizes the wild personalities and antics of Heavy Metal bands, but then accidentally makes the fake band quite popular. To mark the 25th anniversary of the movie, the actors are staging a “Come Back” World Tour (that will only be held one night). They have a new album with a fold out cover that includes paper dolls of the band. I find myself laughing about this world tour and the whole premiss of the movie, but I don’t remember it being too family friendly.

I checked on the IMBD guide for parents has the following bit of information about this movie;

Some innuendo, some in the form of lyrics. Suggestive scene involving tight trousers. A pickle is found in someone’s pants. 23 F-words. Some S-words. Highly suggestive lyrics.

Spinal Tap Website.

I was so happy when I saw this video on Facebook last week.  I’ve written before about the art of Sampling music or sounds and re-organizing them into a new composition but this is different.  A street musician by the name of Roger Ridley was playing the song “Stand by me”.  Hearing his passion started the organization aptly known as “Playing for Change”.  Their goal is to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music.  They recorded Roger playing and then used that recording as a base track and had other musicians from around the world add to it.  The result is magical.  It’s not truly sampling, it’s a collaboration on a global scale. 

You can learn more about this project at their website.