Hobgit Web Hosting News

We are told that CO2 and climate change are inextricably linked, and that global warming is a direct consequence of our carbon emissions. But what if these apparent facts were founded on faulty assumptions? That is the premise of documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle. This controversial film presents the case that climate change and global warming are in fact not connected to carbon emissions, but are actually manifestations of an ongoing process of change brought about largely through solar activity. In this overview of the bold claims made in the film, accompanied by the film itself, I talk through:Global warming orthodoxy - how the notion of man-made global warming has gained such international traction as to become all …

It is hard to calculate how many times you might have encountered the phrases "war on terror", "Islamo-Fascist", "IED", "9/11", \’\'ground zero" and "weapons of mass destruction" in the space of your life. Repetition of buzz-words and key phrases are key to any successful propaganda campaign, and as these ideas bounce around the mass-media echo chamber, it is impossible to avoid them becoming a part of our shared language and pool of ideas. But what happens when the propaganda and spin gain such power and traction that the actions of our political leaders spiral out of control? Photo credit: PRWatch.org The answer is what the military calls \’\'incestuous amplification\’\', defined by David Mulholland as: \’\'a condition in warfare where one …

Product placement presents consumer products, brand names and locations to film and television production teams for inclusion in their projects. The goal is the one of raising brand awareness while selling the idea to movie production houses as a “clever” way to reduce their costs while providing greater “authenticity” to the environments and characters shown.

“Product placement appears in plays, film, television series, music videos, video games and books, and is a relatively new idea (first appearing in the 1980’s). Product placement occurs with the inclusion of a brand’s logo, or a favorable mention or appearance of a product. This is done without disclosure, and under the premise that it is a natural part of the work. Most major movie releases today contain product placements.”
(Source: Wikipedia)

Photo credit: Brand Exposure

As a matter of fact, relative to the high cost of ‘above the line’ media, where both producing commercials and booking media space require huge money investments, product placement inside commercial films is a highly cost-effective way to gain huge exposure and visibility at a fraction of the traditional advertising costs.

Indeed, product placement inside movies have been around for at least as long as Hollywood has, but it never before has been as influential and powerful as it is now.

Old staples such as compelling narratives and artful film-making are increasingly taking a back seat to the promotion of brands, while many of the key creative decisions are gradually wrangled out of the director vision and handed over to the marketing people.

America, your movie-making dream machine is broken.

And with the Hollywood film-making in such a dire state, there is little wonder that audiences are rapidly turning their noses to Internet television, online video, to Open Source film-making and even to the newest game-inspired film-making craze, Machinima, to avoid the sanitized, hyper-commercialized fare being rolled out by Hollywood.

The saddest thing among these rampant practices, is that film audiences, especially American ones, are increasingly numb and unaware of the consequences and issues connected to such practices and voice little complaints and open critique to this ongoing creative slaughter.

Obviously, with some due exceptions:

The Media Education Foundation - or MEF - was set up to question our apathetic acceptance of these practices on the part of the mass media, producing a range of thought-provoking documentaries that challenge the media status quo.

”The Media Education Foundation produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation.”

As grassroots, people media emerge as a powerful alternative and competitor to traditional mainstream media, it becomes increasingly important to question the motives, assumptions and practices of the “old” media to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Matt Soar and Susan Ericsson’s film Behind the Screens attempts to tackle the issue of Hollywood hyper-commercialism and supplies a solid critique of current mass media marketing practices.

In three short video clips, including highlights from Behind the Scenes, I have attempted to demonstrate the pervasiveness of blanket marketing in mass media culture.

Read on to see just how far product placement has permeated our culture.

Hollywood parodies its own greed

It is no secret, then, that product placement runs rampant through mainstream media and nowhere more so than in Hollywood cinema.

We know it, and apparently they know it.

And yet, somehow many among us still accept and actively finance with movie entrance tickets the production of such shallow movie content.

In this first video, taken from the Hollywood movie Wayne’s World we see Hollywood parodying its own greed.

Admittedly it’s funny, but only because it strikes a raw nerve. In the average movie, we are subjected to as much product placement as we are character development, and often considerably more than that.

While Mike Myers is smart for taking a jab at the product placement machine, it is ultimately the studio that has the last laugh. There are no Duffs or Brand X products to be seen here - as we laugh at the blatant hyper-commercialism of Hollywood, so we are fed yet more blatant hyper-commercialism.

Setting a fine example: George W Bush

Hollywood is not alone, however. For while Hollywood might take the most flack, product placement has permeated every strata of society, from the commercialization of schools, to presidential speeches.

That’s right - presidential speeches.

Now certainly advertising isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The growth of online contextual advertising, for instance, has had a great impact in terms of bringing web visitors integrated, non-invasive advertisements that are (at least some of the time) of interest to them.

Product placement is the antithesis of contextual advertising - it attempts to sneak in an entirely different agenda, shaping meaning into meaninglessness in an effort simply to push home its subliminal message. If this is unacceptable to movie goers, it should be even more so to political voters.

In this second brief video we see George W Bush sliding a blatant bit of advertising into a public speaking engagement. Now certainly there are a good few more reasons not to trust Bush than this, but that’s another story. What is amazing is that product placement has moved out of the movie theater and up onto the political podium.

See for yourself.

Hyper-commercialism as a way of life

Advertising does not need to work this way. There are other evolving models that allow for a bottom-up, customized and credible approach to marketing.

But for as long as we accept this Hollywood staple gone wild, we will be subjected to pernicious, insidious, creeping product promotion at every turn.

In this final clip, which gathers highlights of the excellent exposé documentary Behind the Screens, we see how advertising serves as the driving force behind Hollywood movies, at the expense of entertainment.

The film blends actual footage of product promotion with sharp critique from screenwriters, critics and political economists. In this clip, it becomes glaringly apparent that:

• Hollywood has, in the last thirty years, entered a period of hyper-commercialism with much greater ties to marketing, advertising and product promotion

The methods of product placement are much the same as those of propaganda. Through repetition and integration into everyday scenes, the unnatural or unnecessary is naturalized and made desirable

Even as far back as fifty years ago, diamond companies were bribing script writers to promote the romantic connotations of the diamond engagement ring

However, early product placements were ad-hoc, whereas now they have become the norm, impacting upon the entire production process of a film

Film-maker’s are enticed into branding gadgets and peripheral items in a bid to save money from their inflated budgets. The bigger the budget, the greater the need to offset its risk with the use of heavy product placement

Just as TV’s integrity has suffered at the hands of insidious omnipresent marketing, so film increasingly sacrifices all to make a quick buck

The future

Of one thing you can be sure: For as long as we accept this diluted pseudo-entertainment, Hollywood will continue to serve it up.

The best thing any of us can do is vote with our feet and with our wallets by stopping this endless funding of this blatant, unethical, uncaring and relentless corporate propaganda machine.

Media are becoming increasingly personal, and increasingly plausible for anyone to take up and get involved in. The days of mass audiences for mass media are quite clearly numbered, and if advertisers want to survive beyond the next decade, they are going to have to take advantage of new business models.

The engaged, discerning audiences of the evolving new media landscape will demand that this involves film-makers, reporters, videographers and other media makers being allowed to retain their autonomy and integrity.

For while many of us accept Hollywood’s product placement as business as usual, web audiences, who can pull and steer their viewing preferences with much greater control, are less forgiving, as we are going to increasingly witness in the coming years.

As Hollywood box office figures seem to hold steady figures for the last few years it is only up to you to vote with your choice whether you would like to continue seeing this practices expand and conquer what once was a space reserved for communicating insight, vision, philosphy and our own history.

There maybe a good lesson to be learned here and a great opportunity to regain that credibility and value, that, at least in my eyes, Hollywood has long lost.

Additional reading

If this article has been of interest, you might also want to check out the following websites:

• The Media Education Foundation’s website

Further information about the Behind the Screens documentary

Brandhype.org excerpt from Freedom Expression, related to product placement

Interesting critique of product placement in the recent film Brokeback Mountain

Wikipedia on Product Placement

Internet video and online collaboration were massive growth sectors in 2006, and as 2007 forges ahead the two are finally coming together.

With the emergence of the first real-time video synching and sharing solutions, the Internet video experience is definitely bound to become a critical work platform for video and television production as well as for a thousand more applications from research to collaborative review, where watching video together while being at a distance, provides a truly breakthrough new opportunity.

Photo credit: Tomasz Trojanowski

The ability for groups of people to watch the same video in real time - from different locations - has two main applications so far.

On the one hand we are seeing communal video watching and commentary emerge as an extension of social software. Groups gather around a video playlist and chat about the videos as they view them, just as friends might talk as they sit in front of a TV show.

The second major application of this emerging technology is that of video review, and is likely to be of more interest to video professionals or online independent producers looking to discuss video footage at a distance.

As online collaboration has made working from remote locations increasingly easy, and popular, it was only a matter of time before the opportunity to work on video projects joined the list of possibilities for those working in different cities or even countries.

Our own team at Robin Good’s Media Network is scattered around several countries, and the ability to discuss video productions in real time has become increasingly important in our day to day work. As such, the time seems ripe for online collaboration that allows for a strong audio-visual element, and several contenders have risen to this gap in the market.

Last week I looked at how the innovative ConceptShare has made it easy for designers and visual communicators to enter into visually rich online collaboration.

Today I am going to take you through three recent applications that promise to do the same for Internet video.

Three levels of complexity

It would be unfair to compare the three applications I’m going to take a look at, as they are attempting to reach different audiences and satisfy different needs. On the other hand, depending on the level of complexity you may need for your remote video viewing and sharing needs, one or more online tools may be suitable for your requirements.

The services under review are (in order of complexity):

• YouTube Streams, a beta project from the YouTube people that offers a no-frills way of chatting about online videos with friends or strangers.

ClipSync, which ostensibly aims for the same social networking audience, but has the capabilities to be used for professional video review, up to a point.

syncVUE, which offers a professional, paid solution for video professionals looking for timecode perfect syncing of video footage at a distance.

At the time of writing all of these projects are in the relatively early stages of their development and each is improving at a rapid rate. Doubtless there will be other services emerging in the coming months, as online collaboration and Internet video continue to dominate the evolving web.

YouTube Streams

YouTube Streams is by far the simplest of the bunch, and is currently in beta, so has some rough edges. But if you are looking for a way to easily discuss videos with a group of your contacts, your online audience, or a group of strangers it may provide just what you’re looking for.

Streams will not be any use to you if you want to synchronize your videos, though, as it doesn’t currently have this capability. The concept is simple - any YouTube member can create a stream - which is effectively a chat room, add videos to it, and choose from a limited list of options before their stream goes live.

These streams cannot be set to private, although as the person that created the stream you can remove attendees from the proceedings. The choices you will be faced with in setting up your stream are:

• Selecting a name and background image

Choosing a maximum number of attendees (up to 300 are allowed by YouTube

Creating a welcome message for those that join your stream

Deciding who can add video content to the stream (only you, or anyone that joins the stream)

Whether you want to allow ”racy videos” in your stream

How many inappropriate ‘flags’ a video must receive before it will be automatically removed

Given that the streams are open to anyone that cares to attend them, the primary function of YouTube Streams seems to be social, and in practice it seems to be used in much the same way as any other chat room, with the addition of video providing a talking point for those attending.

With the ability for attendees to select videos activated, this makes for a great way for people to share their video finds with one another, and freely discuss them in real time. However, as videos cannot be synchronized in any way, chatting is limited to discussing the videos in general, rather than commenting on specific moments in real time.

As such, this will be of limited use to video professionals who may need to discuss specific moments in a video as it plays. On the other hand, for semi-synchronous review, discussion or even online classes, this could prove to be a valuable tool.

The other major drawback is the inability to create ‘closed’ rooms, which will be a major hurdle for those wishing to use the service uninterrupted by uninvited guests. If you add to this the need to upload your videos to YouTube, and thus to the general public, this automatically discounts its use for copyright or confidential works in progress.

YouTube Streams‘ interface is simple and works pretty well, though. Along the top of the screen is the line up of videos on offer, which can watched by clicking on the thumbnail of your choice. Center-left is the YouTube video player, and hanging to the right a chat box, with a list of current attendees.

Videos can be easily added from within the interface, either by adding a URL, or else by choosing them from your user profile’s Quicklist or Recently Watched videos, which makes sharing your latest finds a very easy prospect.

In summary, this is a service that will appeal to those looking to share and add a social dimension to their Internet video viewing experience, and will only prove lacking to those who require privacy and video synchronization features.

ClipSync

With a far more impressive feature set, the ability to sync videos with other users, and a choice of Internet video networks, ClipSync provides an attractive solution that will appeal to social networkers and semi-pro videographers in equal measure.

Certainly ClipSync would seem to be aimed at the same target audience as YouTube Streams, and this is evident in their overall interface design and basic pitch. In actual fact, I think that some of the design choices the company have made radically undersell the power of the technology behind them.

Take for example the hideously tacky cartoon characters that adorn both the service’s front page and video interface. Apologies to the person responsible, but I can’t help but feel that these poorly conceived gargoyles are likely to appeal to anyone over the age of ten. While the social networking scene certainly appeals to a young audience, it is my personal belief that these characters are likely to alienate more potential users than they will please.

If that sounds a little harsh, it is only because I have a lot of respect for what is otherwise a very powerful, useful tool that goes beyond the social chat function of YouTube Streams and offers quite a lot more besides.

So what are these features? In a nutshell, ClipSync offers the ability to:

• Watch video sourced from any of the major Internet Video sharing sites, including YouTube, Google Video and MetaCafe

Synchronize your video, so that all users are viewing the same video clip at exactly the same point in time

Create private or public sessions, with varying degrees of moderation in terms of who is allowed to add videos to the playlist

Search from the main (flash-based) interface for suitable videos to add to your playlist

Make use of the aforementioned horrible-looking faces, which have assigned sound effects including laughter and snoring, in addition to being able to use text chat

The impressive ability to integrate the software with Skype, including the ability to add your Skype contacts to your video sharing sessions

This is a very impressive list of features that while still leaning heavily on the worlds of chat and instant messaging, with their use of emoticons, the creation of rooms, and the ability to boot out the undesirable, nevertheless takes things a step further than YouTube Streams.

What sets this apart from YouTube Streams, besides much better interface (cartoon characters aside) is the aforementioned ability to synchronize clips with other viewers. For anyone hoping to actually analyze or talk through specific moments in a video, this is priceless and already takes ClipSync to the next level.

If you add to this the ability to be much more selective about how enters your video sharing session, it already becomes apparent that ClipSync has a much broader range of applications than its YouTube counterpart. This could easily be used by those giving presentations, teaching or working in a learning group, quickly discussing video content for production purposes, or - as was intended - simply socializing and shooting the breeze about the latest viral video.

There are effectively four options in terms of moderation and privacy, as listed here:

Just by adding these basic settings, the ClipSync team have acknowledged the fact that different users will have different needs for the service, and that these will involve greater or lesser degrees of control.

VJs, presenters or teachers will enjoy the ability to set the session to hosted, so that other participants can contribute to the session without taking total control of it. Educators might also make great use of the moderated setting, as could corporate trainers who want to extend the sharing to those taking part, but effectively reserve the power of veto for themselves. And then, if a group of friends or colleagues are using the service, the ‘free for all’ setting removes all formality from the clip selection process.

By being given the option to remove a session from the site’s directory, users also have the choice of creating invitation only sharing sessions, which will be vital in a number of environments and settings.

In summary,then, ClipSync is a very versatile tool that will appeal to a great many audiences, in spite of its narrow, slightly mawkish marketing as a social networking digital youth destination.

As a totally free service, it offers a halfway house between the simpler YouTube Streams and the professional-level, paid service syncVUE. ClipSync may very well satisfy the needs of independent video and media producers looking to quickly look over their work, although again the issue of having to upload video footage to a public, hosted site may still prove an issue for some. This is where syncVUE comes in.

syncVUE

syncVUE sits at the other end of the scale. While upon first impressions it bears some resemblances to the other services under review, it is clearly aimed at video professionals looking to collaborate remotely.

While the first two services rely on streaming video that has been uploaded to the web, syncVUE’s job isn’t so much one of sourcing media files as it is synchronizing time code accurate data between video files. These video files are resident on the hard drives of the team members collaborating via the service, and as such remain entirely private.

With the ability to sync and annotate video files in real time it is possible for whoever is leading the session to scrub and scan through the video and have all of the other user’s footage mirror theirs instantaneously. Furthermore, syncVUE allows you to add annotation to videos at exact time codes, which can be imported to professional editing software such as Final Cut Pro, which will prove priceless to the pros.

syncVUE’s time code precision puts it in the pro-league

This is much less a video sharing application as it is a very well conceived video review product clearly geared up to enabling online collaboration between video and film professionals. The service seems priced to allow for independent producers to get in on the act however, as payment takes the basis of a one of license, depending on the amount of users. While the prices aren’t in pocket money terms, they are unlikely to pose too great a threat to anyone that can afford a copy of Final Cut Pro.

In short, the features that set syncVUE apart are:

• Integration with Skype to provide a total teleconferencing/video editing environment

Time code specific editing in real time, allowing for millisecond by millisecond precision in discussing and reviewing video content and editing decisions

The ability to scrub through video footage in real time and have that footage do exactly the same on every computer connected to the service in real time

The ability to work with incredibly high resolution / high definition video without the restrictions that web streaming places on video quality, as all files are hosted on individual computers

The possibility of going in and out of sync with the group, should you want to prepare footage without everyone seeing you do so

The incredibly useful feature of being able to collaborate regardless of whether participants are on Windows or Mac machines, which has been until now a major issue in the world of video editing

Will work in pretty much any format or aspect ratio that QuickTime can handle

syncVUE makes smart use of Skype’s open API to synchronize video

This is top-drawer online collaboration for those engaged in intensive video review sessions, and may be well beyond the needs of most users. For those who don’t need this level of precision and video quality, ClipSync’s impressive range of features may well be enough. However, if quality, precision and privacy are of paramount importance, syncVUE provides an affordable solution for getting video review jobs done efficiently without having to be in the same location. That is a major breakthrough in and of itself.

Like ClipSync, syncVUE makes use of Skype, who wisely opened up their API in 2004 to allow third party developers to make use of their technology. syncVUE is a great example of one such development team making use of this ubiquitous, free technology to provide a new and much-needed service.

In conclusion

Internet video and online collaboration are converging in a number of interesting ways, and in these three synchronized remote video viewing services it is possible to see a hint of what’s to come.

As Internet video grows to dominate the web as we know it, and social networking continues to define the Web 2.0 paradigm we are inevitably going to be seeing a lot more of social and collaborative video technologies emerge in the coming year.

The diversity of the three products touched on in this overview is likely to expand even further into niche categories, fulfilling specific needs as it does so. As it is, though, we have in these three services three levels of complexity that are likely to fulfill a range of users needs making online collaboration and sharing all the richer for it.

Synchronized remote video viewing and sharing is certainly here to stay.

Additional resources

If you found this overview of the video sharing scene interesting, you may want to dig into the subject in more depth via the following websites:

• YouTube Streams - the beta website for YouTube’s social video experiment

ClipSync’s website - where you can sign up for their totally free sharing solution

syncVUE’s website - which has a host of extra information on the service

syncVUE’s own video demo of their service

A list of video tutorials from the syncVUE people on how to use their service

Coverage of ClipSync at NewTeeVee.com

DV.com review of syncVUE

NewTeeVee.com’s coverage of YouTube Streams