Irish Folk Furniture - The Sequel

With apologies to Tony Donoghue, (and continued congratulations on his Sundance win), I present as a cutbacks homage, 'Irish Folk Furniture - The Sequel'! Wardrobes and dressers discussing woodworm, dryrot, loose knobs and big screws...

Lovingly made over five hours on a Sunday, using cardboard and masking tape...

Jazis, the threeamazingmen point out that 'it seems a little Sminky inspired'... True enough, the wardrobe does sound a bit Sminky...

 

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/01/irish-folk-furniture-wins-at-sundance.html

 

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/01/irish-folk-furniture.html

Late Night Work Club

Nice Tweet from Eimhin McNamara about his Late Night Work Club project...

Late Night Work Club is a loose, rotating collective of indie animators. That is, animators who do independent, non-commercial work. It’s an excuse to bring a whole bunch of us together and make something great, and also to promote the work of the artists involved. Some of the best, most personal, experimental and vital animation going right now is happening on the internet. It’s being made late at night when other people have gone to sleep and on weekends when everyone else is out. It’s being made by students, freelancers, full-timers and folks with unrelated day jobs. It means something to us. It’s our scene.

We like to make things, so let’s make things together. Grab a seat and stay up late with us.

Direct all comments, inquiries, bribes and threats to LateNightWorkClub@Gmail.com.

http://latenightworkclub.com/

Eamonn O’Neill

Thanks to Eimhin McNamara for tweeting a great Bafta blogpost on Eamonn O’Neill, proud Arklow man and IADT graduate, who's been nominated for a Bafta for his RCA film 'I'm Fine Thanks'...

The Bafta blogpost is a really honest insight into the precarious nature of the personal film making process. I love this quote from Eamonn...

I can say that making films does not get easier. I am constantly filled with self-doubt and always questioning what I am doing. Thankfully, being nominated for something like a BAFTA helps to quell those fears and doubts and replaces them with a whole new set to contend with. Until the next film at least. Nonetheless, it’s become clear to me that you have to keep making things; you get itchy if you don't. You have to keep writing, keep drawing, keep shooting, keep thinking and keep feeling your way through. After that you can show it to people. You never know, maybe good things will happen.

Best of luck to Eamonn in the Baftas! Fingers crossed!
 
Full blogpost available at...

http://guru.bafta.org/blog/short-stuff-im-fine-thanks-1

http://www.eamonnoneill.ie/

SEO links

Below are links to three very handy SEO (Search Engine Optimization) links. I'm posting them here as an aide memoire (for myself)... Before starting today's studio activity, I'm typing my potential subject into the keyword search tools, aligning my content more with what Google and Youtube audiences are looking for... It's not about the money! I'm trying to better understand the internal mechanisms of our internet video platforms. The internet video experiment continues. Videos watching people...

Check the links - compelling.tv has numerous SEO help articles and blogs. The other two links are for youtube and adwords search tools...

http://compelling.tv/blog/post/why-doing-viral-video-is-a-complete-waste-of-time-and-what-to-do-instead

https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

Meanwhile, Rinky has a stab at internet Search Engine Optimization...

Irish Folk Furniture Wins at Sundance!

Congrats congrats to Tony Donoghue, whose 'Irish Folk Furniture' animation has just won the Jury Award:Animation at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival! Well done that man!

The Short Film Jury Award: Animation  was presented to:
Irish Folk Furniture / Ireland (Director: Tony Donoghue) — In Ireland, old hand-painted furniture is often associated with hard times, with poverty, and with a time many would rather forget. In this animated documentary, 16 pieces of traditional folk furniture are repaired and returned home.

http://www.sundance.org/festival/release/2013-sundance-film-festival-announces-jury-awards-in-short-filmmaking/

For the moment, the film is still viewable on Youtube... Follow the link here...

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/01/irish-folk-furniture.html

That's Life!

It’s been another traumatic week of video view culling on our various internet video platforms… I'm not going to whinge... Dailymotion culled 32,000 views off the original ‘cutbacks’ channel.  Youtube culled 27,000 views off my old ‘castopani’ channel, and 2,400 views off ‘rinkytv’. A few weeks ago, I was shocked by such 'adjustments'. Now, I realise that important lessons must be learned from these random and apparently unexplained culls. The yahoo News article below quotes ‘Youtube Video marketing expert’ David Jenyns...

“As part of their terms of service, YouTube is likely to continue de-spamming data to keep their statistics as accurate as possible. But, those of us who publish videos with the audience’s best interest at heart, and don't employ external businesses to falsely bolster watch counts, aren’t likely to be affected at all.”

This is a rather sycophantic misrepresentation, lumping honest Youtubers in with spammers, hackers and ‘fake’ views. The reality is that lifetime channel views are now being differentiated from what’s being described as ‘active’ video views. In the past, some of us (naively) deleted successful videos in order to keep our internet video channels ‘fresh’. Now we’re losing credit for those fairly earned historical views. A simple option would be for Youtubers to be able to select ‘video views’ or ‘lifetime views’ on their channel frontpage (I'm not holding my breath in anticipation).

The main lesson is that internet video as a medium changes every hour.  The next lesson is that IP producers do not and will never control internet video! It’s a no-brainer, but there’s a huge flaw in our ‘internet video is the future of broadcasting’ optimism.  The flaw is that platforms like Youtube and Dailymotion are (of course) running the show, treating IP producers like so many parasites who are just along for the ride! The internet video platforms are controlling revenue, information, stats, procedures and access to audiences in the same ways that tv broadcast companies did in the past, except now the system is working at light speed! Our future resembles our past, except much faster! SEO is the way forward! That’s life!

 Interesting times!

In the meantime, here's 'Enda Kenny Worse Than Herod', although killbotone suggests that Enda's now becoming 'worse than Cowen'! How times change! Or, same old, same old?

http://news.yahoo.com/youtube-keep-deleting-billions-channel-views-melbourne-video-070028750.html

Irish Folk Furniture

Tony Donoghue's excellent animation 'Irish Folk Furniture' has been officially selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The film is on Youtube for 10 days and it needs views! Eight and a half minutes long. Please watch, share, pass around!

Advice On Starting Your Youtube Channel

My old pal Terry Reilly is a recent fan of 'cutbacks' and he's dipping his toe into internet video with his BrainFreeze channel 'animation comedy nonsense'. Terry's asking for some advice... What can I say?

Keep the videos short and funny. Set regular upload targets - if it's one video per month, then upload one video per month. Regular uploads keep your audience coming back - they want to see new stuff if they already like your stuff. With IP that's not topical or news related, you can produce a few of them when you have time, then upload them when you've no time. Every video uploaded is a learning experience. You'll find out what the audience likes, what's working, what's not working. Comments and emails will build your ideas about what's working. I'm not sure about mixing the animation, live-action and how-to videos - as in the TerrysDope channel? It could be viewed as 'lack of focus'. It could be seen as 'healthy diversification of your IP'. Whether live-action or animation, keep the funny videos short - top quality timing in all of them. Upload regularly! Keep going!

Here's Terry's latest 'knockers' video... Not a bad start!

 http://www.youtube.com/user/BrainfreezeMediaAnim

Youtube Video Views Lost

Jazis! Having spent the last month apparently losing Youtube subscribers, Youtube now 'adjusts' my video view stats to reduce my numbers by 4,030 to 361,000. Curiously enough, this brings my video views right back to where they were this day last month, on 13th December 2012... Peculiar...

I hope this isn't a Dailymotion-style, ongoing 'death by a thousand cuts' (Dailymotion regularly and randomly trim viewing numbers by hundreds or thousands of views without any explanation). It's demoralising... My Youtube channel numbers and earnings are treading water anyhow, seemingly going nowhere fast... January is long enough, and dark enough without this additional Youtube admin shit!

Thanks to all loyal viewers, subscribers and commenters... We will persist!

DQ Portrait

A most excellent portrait of DQ by the gifted Aoife Balfe - final year student in DL041 Animation. Makes me look cooool... Thank you Aoife!

http://supamagdaline.blogspot.ie/2013/01/bringin-it-back-to-mama.html

Brazil Smuggling Prison Cat

True story from Brazil - the Jason Bourne of cats smuggles escape equipment into a prison!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20920848

Light Fire Under Arse!

Following visit to GP, am now on Amoxicillin - feeling very rinsed out, trawling through Peter Hook's crazy, entertaining book about Joy Division 'Unknown Pleasures', whilst working on a couple of submissions for my latest Teaching and Learning Module - Technology Enhanced Learning. Gawd.

No animation being done!

To light a 2013 fire under my arse (get me up to the studio to work on some animation), I give myself this Randi Zuckerberg quote from Anya Kamanetz's newsfeed...

What did you learn in 2012 that you will carry forth with you into 2013?
"Don't be afraid to take risks that other people are going to call you out on. Nothing worth doing is easy. If people didn't care about my show, they'd just be like, 'cute show.' It's better to elicit passion than a lukewarm response... the haters are an opportunity to engage."
How I'll apply it in 2013:
"We're going to be taking risks in our business, pushing the envelope with programming that evokes a full on emotional response."

http://tinyurl.com/amp6tqt

Nothing worth doing is easy! I feel briefly brave again. Maybe it's the antibiotics? Courage mon brave! Courage!

2013

We start 2013 with 364,000 views and 710 subscribers on Youtube - 133,000 views and 200 new subscribers for 2012. Thanks to all subscribers, supporters, commenters, emailers and encouragers! A Happy New Year to all!