Cutbacks - Justin Bieber!

Dominic and Iggy make a 2014 start with 'Justin Bieber Bad Boy!'. The cutbacks2010 site on Youtube is at 809 subscribers and 182,376 indicated views (although it's 397,000 over the channel's lifetime. I've just started work on my next animated short - not quite a 'cutbacks' project, but using parts of the 'cutbacks' production pipeline...

Liverpool Irish Film Festival

Thanks to IndieCork's Una Feely for inviting me to show 4 films at the Liverpool Irish Film Festival... 'Mister Heaney, a wee portrait'. 'Leitronium'. 'Rinkydink and The Salmon of Knowledge'. 'Furniture - Murder and Love' in the Irish Shorts programmes on Sunday and Monday... According to the programme, I shall introduce the films....

Sunday October 13th, 6:30 pm
Monday October 14th, 6:30 pm
FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L1 4DQ

A programme of classic and contemporary short films curated by Úna Feely of IndieCork Film Festival

IndieCork’s Una Feely brings us some of the best and most interesting short films produced in Ireland this year, as well as some of the great shorts of the past. Once again the screenings will be introduced by some of Ireland’s finest young filmmakers. IndieCork is a new festival of independent cinema based in Cork, Ireland.

http://www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/events/irish-shorts/

http://www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/events/irish-shorts-2/

Skin in The Game

Donald Taylor Black's documentary 'Skin in The Game' (2012) was shown in The Pavilion, Dun Laoghaire last night (091013), to an enthusiastic audience of 120 people! Several people in IADT were surprised to see me onscreen, with my long hair... My Gawd! Only two years ago - seems like a lifetime!

'Furniture - Murder and Love' marches on...

The 'cutbacks' short film 'Furniture - Murder and Love' will be screened at the 2013 Dublin International short Film and Music Festival DISFMF (quite a mouthful). Doesn't appear to be in competition though...

http://www.disfmf.ie/

'Furniture - Murder and Love' - funniest film I saw...

Whilst Laura describes the film as 'FILTH', Melissa says 'Doorty' and Joachim Pietsch says 'brilliant', Padraig Fagan's comment is still my favourite... 'the funniest film I saw at the film fleadh over the weekend'. Praise indeed! Thanks to all! Keep watching!

Submit 'Furniture' to 2013 IndieCork Film Festival

Have just submitted 'Furniture - Murder and Love' to the 2013 IndieCork Film Festival! Deadline for entries is 29th July. Festival is on from 16th to the 20th of October. Fingers crossed...

http://indiecork.com/submit/rules-and-regulations-for-entries-indiecork-film-festival/

Lucinda Lucinda

Enda worries about what his darling Lucinda might do in the abortion vote... Which way will she go? Could we care less? Shot in a Gas Mark 7 studio in the middle of a heatwave...

All the Fastnet Windows!

The addresses for the Fastnet Short Film Festival windows in Schull, County Cork... The frontpage of the Festival website describes the installations like this...

Check out Arundel’s, Whyte’s Bookshop, Schull Dentist, the festival Box-Office, Headquarters Hairdressers and Divecology have all had their windows transformed by David Quin and Katy Goodhue into a temporary museum celebrating 36 years of stop-motion animation by the Quin family.

http://www.fastnetshortfilmfestival.com/

bailebeag window from schull

The information for the windows is at the following blogspot addresses...

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/05/fastnet-bosco-and-bailebeag-window.html

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/05/fastnet-daisy-shoe-floradora-and-neddy.html

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/05/fastnet-to-forget-window.html

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/05/fastnet-dunin-and-circus-window.html

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/05/fastnet-art-of-animation-window.html

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/05/fastnet-twas-terrible-hard-work-window.html

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/05/fastnet-cutbacks-window.html

Internet - No Breaks Allowed!

Having been interrupted by flu over Easter, cutbacks video production was seriously curtailed... Subscriber senzers69 noticed...

senzers69 5 days ago

It seems like ages since you posted a video Cutbacks, this is the internet no breaks allowed!!!lol, good to see you back at it.

Thanks senzers69!

Youtube Video Views culled!

The dreaded day has come! Video views on the 'cutbacks' channel on Youtube have been slashed back to October 2011 figures, from 373,000 to 158,000. How could this happen? Well, channel video views now only counts views from what Youtube term 'active' videos. Naively, in the past, I used to delete videos from the channel, to 'freshen it up'. How wrong was I!

Here's the rather formal message from our friends in Youtube...

The view count shown on your YouTube channel now includes only views from public videos. To include views from private or unlisted videos, change them to 'public'. YouTube Analytics channel view counts will continue to include views from all videos that were public at the time the view occurred even if the videos are now private, unlisted, or deleted.
It still feels like a 'loss' of 215,000 honestly earned video views. Wow, these internet video platforms sure have a way of demoralising content producers and creatives... Don't they know how paranoid, tired and vulnerable we are? I don't take these issues to heart...

Pope Resigns - Shock Continues

The shock continues in the wake of the Pope's surprise resignation. Who'll be the next Pope? Someone from South America? A liberal moderniser? A woman?

Clare Daly Innocent!

Clare Daly, cleared of all drink driving charges, now wonders why the gardai handcuffed her, locked her in a cell, tweeted their friends and called all the newspapers... 'standard procedure' they assured her... Here are Ming, Clare and Vincent...

http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0208/366798-clare-daly/

Ireland's Miracle Bank Debt Deal!

Enda Kenny's Irish government can do no wrong - forget no government apologies for the Magdalene Laundry scandal, forget hospital closures, patients on trolleys, the closure of rural garda stations, Fine Gael cronyism within the cabinet and a raft of new taxes on all citizens (but especially on the poor). Enda's riding high (on our backs). He's secured his deal on Anglo promissiory notes and is now in Brussels, fixing the European Union's budget!

Next stop, a General Election - time to ditch those pesky Labour parasites!

Twitter Hacked!

As 250,000 Twitter accounts are hacked by 'China-based hackers', Google chairman Eric Schmidt calls China "an internet menace", "the world's most active and enthusiastic filterer of information" and "the most sophisticated and prolific" hacker of foreign companies!
The New York Times quotes Schmidt's new book 'The New Digital Age' - "The disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics will put both the government and the companies of the United States as a distinct disadvantage." Never mind the United States! The entire world will lose this cyberwar against the massed Chinese hackers if things stay as they are! Who's teaching the next generation of western internet hackers? Where are our government-sponsored hacker training programmes?

China dismisses such hacking accusations as "groundless" and "totally irresponsible".
Meanwhile, Rinky revels in The Twitter hack! Every cloud has a silver lining!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21304049

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21307212

500th Cutbacks Episode!

Jazis! I've just noticed that yesterday's video 'More Folk Furniture' is marked as the 500th episode of cutbacks! 500 episodes since September 2009... I feel it!

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

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...

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