Who is Randall Bennet? Why my fellow DV Guru blogger and this weekend he was on MSNBC to talk about the iPhone. It’s weird seeing a friend on a national news channel especially since we use to do a semi-regular podcast together. Oh well, I’m glad to see Randall hitting it big and still blogging for a living. Keep it up buddy!
I just finished participating in the first Jason Calacanis and Friends live show on Operator 11. You’ve probably seen UStream.tv and Stickam.com for streaming live video and heard about Talkshoe.com for live audio casts; Well Operator 11 is like both of those things combined and it makes for a whole lot of fun.
If you ever wanted to have your own show live with user participation, than Operator 11 is the way to go. The Flash controls are intuitive and the quality isn’t too bad. As the director you can determine who is live and it lets you switch to different people with a click of the button. Participants can request they be put on camera via a simple button which shakes their video on the directors screen. Everyone in the live area can participate in the text chat that also gets displayed across the bottom of the video screen so people on the outside of the studio can see what the comments from the peanut gallery too. Other cool features include drag and drop video sources which let you switch to lpre-recorded clips and the whole show is recorded, saved and viewable to anyone who wasn’t there during the live recording.
Back to the CalacanisCast, things were going smooth at first and then Jason managed to crash the servers causing everyone to go into a spin-off room. After that, mayhem ensued and Jason began playing clips live off of YouTube and switching to shots of his dog Toro. Other highlights included Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg.com, and Robert Scoble who did a mighty fine Steve Ballmer impression (check the video at -21:15). I even got to say a few words but I was feeling shy in front of all the A-List bloggers; Afterall I am a nobody in the blogging world just like everyone else.
At the end of it all I had a lot of fun interacting with a bunch of different people from all over the world live and with video and sound. Operator 11 is sure to take off once more people start playing around with it. If you do go over and sign up add me as a friend and let’s get together and chat face to face sometime.
Check me out at -11:50, before the show ends.
Learn more about Operator 11.
I’m a right clicka and a PowerBook flippa. Best line goes to the Mac for “Pay attention, I’ve got a new invention. Steal your next idea at the MacWorld convention.”
The future is here, and this time it’s not an iPhone… It’s a big ass table! Take that Apple.
For the past couple of weeks I have been following Fox’s newest reality show called On the Lot which is like American Idol with wanna-be filmmakers instead of wanna-be singers. Maybe “wanna-be” isn’t the right word for everyone on the show but it certainly describes 28 year old Kenny Luby.
Kenny comes from a small town Owego, New York, but unlike his residence his dreams are big. He got into movie-making because of skateboarding (me too!) and is proud of the fact that he didn’t go to film school. In fact, he points this out many times in the earlier episodes claiming he doesn’t need a proper education in film if he knows in his heart that he wants to make movies. But for goodness sake I wish he had gone to film school to get all of these pieces of crap that he has been producing out of his system before making a fool of himself on national television.
Now I am on his side when it comes to the notion that you have to go to film school these days; you certainly do not. There are great resources out there to help you learn the art of making movies both on the technical side and on the artistic side. Apparently Mr. Luby didn’t take a gander at these offerings all over the net and instead has fallen victim to the “lets use effects because we have them” mentality. Take a look at his first video on the show titled “Wack Alley Cab”
Note the use of “explosive” text effects, random uses of color filters, and a poor job at even setting up a story. Looks like two people needed a cab home from bingo. I wish this cab would have come over to take Kenny Luby back home to Owego.
Observe his second video aired just a few hours ago called “Edge on the End.”
Kenny, what are you doing?!?! Have you ever shown anyone your films? Do you have anyone you can show your film to who will give you some honest feedback? The whole Internet can be your stage by simply uploading it on to Youtube and shopping it around on some forums for a critique. Is there any connection to the Internet in Owego?
This is the type of work I saw at the beginning of college by students who thought making videos would be neat but never got around to doing any research into how it is actually done. It is a shame you never went to film school so you could get a dose of reality before being thrust upon the cruel world. It’s not too late now. How Kenny made it on the show is beyond me, but I guess every reality show needs someone that the audience loves to hate. Kenny Luby, you are the Sanjaya Malakar of On the Lot.
I must have spoken too soon as Internet video giant YouTube has released their embeddable flash video player. Try it below…
All of these features are available in the embedded player and not just on the YouTube page.
If you were thinking that all you had to do was just make your video available to an online audience, think again! Now you have to make it as easy as possible to keep them entertained giving them more control over their viewing experience.
(via DownloadSquad)
Last night Break.com launched a new video player with some unique features. The video of the player in action can be seen below.
Some of the new things are…
Of course to play with the new features you will have to view a video on Break.com’s pages not an embedded version like above.
(via NewTeeVee)
