In a move that would make Norman McLaren proud, a production crew got together with 67 extras and shot the following clip of a real-life Space Invaders game. Director Guillaume Reymond organized the shoot. Using the pixilation technique, where people (and sometimes inanimate objects) are used to create frame-by-frame animation, he orchestrated a reenactment of one level of the memorable and historic game.

This clip should appeal equally to film buffs and tech geeks.

YouTube may be getting ready to push the envelope of online video advertising even further. Accoring to the folks over at Mashable, YouTube may soon be experimenting with big ads and captions. The idea is that premium content would draw premium viewers who would be inclined to check out premium video ads.

As an advertising professional who is usually resentful of being advertised to, I can say that I like the idea so long as the ads remain specifically targeted to me based on the content I’m viewing.

Read the whole article here: Big Ads and Captions to Make YouTube More Like… TV!

We have used several different formats for shooting video. We own a Sony Z1-U and have fought the HDV battle for a long time. Over the past year or so, though, we have also shot extensively with the HVX-200, the RED ONE and several small consumer style cameras, such as the Canon HV-20 and the Flip. We are working hard to identify the perfect production workflow for acqusition for online distribution.

After having attended an LA area reseller’s seminar on the camera we had initially been unimpressed. Recently, though, our friends at Hollywood Press TV let us borrow their Sony EX-1 for some tests.  The results changed our perspective on the camera. We’re still getting acquainted, but at first glance we know that the camera can shoot 1080p at 24 and 30fps. It can shoot overcrank and undercrank. It has a fairly intuitive menu. The footage looks amazing! We struggled a little bit with some missing frames in After Effects, but assuming there is a fix for that, I think we may have found a great all-purpose camera for web production.

Who out there has used this camera? What has your experience been? If you have shot with this camera and used it for keying, web, or just about anything else, send a comment to let us know if it was a good camera for you.

American Cinematographer magazine had a number of features in its August issue about recent advances in post production for 3D cinema. They highlighted several of these services in their new products section. One such story talks about Burbank post house Stereoscope, which can handle real-time stereoscopic post.

This is exciting! Not only are more and more companies starting to dedicate their services to 3D production, but a respected magazine is finally giving more than just a passing glance at the format. As 3D gains wider acceptance across the industry at large there will be more opportunities to bring 3D onto the web.

Are you interested in or experimenting with 3D for the web? Post a comment and let us know.

Online video is making great strides to providing more content where television networks and nonaffiliated channels cannot. As we all should know, the Olympics are being held in China this year. NBC has been covering the games using traditional television distribution, but this year NBC has put a lot into delivering content via broadband video and the number of viewers is incredible . Check out these numbers: NBC TAMi rating. Looking at online viewers last week (8/8 – 8/13), NBCOlympics.com has attracted 25 million unique visitors, driving 456 million page views and 22 million video streams which total 3.5 million hours of video consumed. As of August 18, 2008 NBCOlympics.com has severed 40.7 million video streams, more than 750 million page views and more than 36 million unique. This shows the reach that online video is having.

NBC used Microsoft’s Sliverlight to create a brand new experience in online video with picture-in-picture, 4 live concurrent streams, zero buffer rewinding and full screen video. We’re seeing a new dimension being added to the online experience. I’m excited to see how other online video players will respond.

New Media Expo

I learned about this expo from a friend and after watching the following video decided it would be a good idea to head up to Vegas…..

If you’re not familiar with that player, it’s Viddler.

The expo was actually a great experience. I got to meet a lot of great great people from a lot of great companies. The ones that really stood out were TubeMogul and Wizzard Media.

Tubemogul is fantastic because for podcasters, content creators, producers, etc. they are a great resource. They have a created a site that acts as an intermediary between users and 20 major video hosting sites. In other words, you upload your video to their site, and they submit it to youtube, Revver, myspace, viddler, break, blip, and many more. They then aggregate all your stats, comments, etc on their site, allowing you to see the full picture of your videos’ success.

Wizzard Media is similar to Veoh. They are a hosting site that has a proprietary player with lots of great functionality. They also work to bring advertisers and content creators together, with specific ads targeted at the right demographic. Since they actually have staffers whose job is specifically to bring producers and advertisers together, the advertising campaigns are much stronger. Recently, they worked with major companies such as Puma.

All in all it was a great experience.

Oh…and I met this girl

DotLot™ recently hosted an event with the OC Ad Club at our studio facility in Irvine. Over 100 Ad Clubbers showed up and by all accounts it was a great night of schmoozing.

While the party was raging on, we turned on the cameras in our studio and pulled in random partiers to help us tell the story of how the internet was invented. We put it up on YouTube as a choose-your-own-adventure style interactive journey. Want to know how the internet was really invented? Start here…

DotLot™’s most recent shoot was an exciting one – we shot an ad campaign for the PSP/Madden ’09 game bundle that was released this week. One of the creative executions involved an excited fan who lowers his buddy over the edge of their stadium seating section to grab a special edition blue PSP from the field below. To accomplish this shot, DotLot™ worked with a stunt crew to rig an actor from the ceiling of our main sound stage. He then climbed over a piece of a scoreboard that we built and was lowered by wires to the floor below where he picked up the PSP. We shot the whole thing using the RED One camera in full 4K mode.

An interesting production note: We shot the video elements on July 29^th, 2008 which was the day of the “Great SoCal Earthquake of July 29^th, 2008”. (Look it up – it’s in the history books.) Our rigging and stunt team was actually in the air on the scaffolding when the earthquake hit, but they were able to get everyone down safely and after a 10 minute break to wait for aftershocks, they were right back up in the air. Huge props to the whole team!

Here are some pictures from this very successful shoot.