Reel Pop

Boobs evolved for thumbnails, and other lessons learned

After pimping this blog for almost two years -- 1,260 posts, 776 comments, agita, heartache, carpal tunnel -- I'm moving on to other projects. Namely, concentrating on my full-time job as the New York editor of Thrillist.com. I'll also be freelancing here and there, plus reviewing new online-only content for THR's dead tree edition.

(Editor's Note: Much as we'll miss him, The Hollywood Reporter will continue this blog without Mr. Bryant; more details to come. We thank him for his contributions to Reel Pop and wish him well.)

In parting, I thought I'd leave a few brief, high-level notes covering some of what I learned about online video in the past two years. This list is by no means exhaustive. It's not even in order. It does not end in a number divisible by two ...

Trite the Power

Odd week for YouTube rap. First the beef between leonine gangsta rap MC Ice-T and upstart teen phenom Soulja Boy grabbed the attention of super-producer/rapper/blogger Kanye West and renewed a conversation about Soulja's place in the MC pantheon.

Then Shaq told Kobe to taste his ass.

And now Average Homeboy Danny Blaze is back on the YouTubes, "knocking on every computer" so he can become the most downloaded rapper ever.

The mind boggles.

'Rescue Me' minisodes debut

Minisodes of the hit FX series "Rescue Me" debut on Crackle on Tuesday -- an effort by the channel to keep the Denis Leary vehicle salient between the months-long, strike-imposed interregnum of Season 4 (ended last year) and the start of Season 5 (sched'd for April 2009). According to Sony, the episodes aren't necessarily in storyline, and they'll also be available on YouTube, MySpace, Hulu, AOL Video, Tidal TV, Joost and Sprint TV.

If you haven't watched "Rescue Me," get on it, if only to check up on Leary, whose career evolution from comic crooner of the pro-prig ballad "Asshole" is penultimate only to Ice-T's transition from "Cop Killa" MC to "Law and Order" mainstay. And there's a lesson in flinty-eyed opportunism that Soulja Boy, given his recent anti-T YouTube sassin', will doubtless understand when, in 40 years, he's co-starring alongside a spry Jon Cryer on the Emmy-nominated "Two and a Half Gangstas."

RIP: George Carlin in 7 Words

George Carlin died at age 71 this weekend.

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There have been a smattering of YouTube commentary videos uploaded since, though none of have achieved many views. Most of the traffic seems to be going to Carlin's infamous "7 Words" routine, in which he explains the seven words you can never use on television.

See what other THR.com bloggers have to say about Carlin's passing: Past Deadline and Gold Rush

Report: Online vids have very short shelf lives

Online video analytical firm TubeMogul published a report this week illustrating how quickly audiences lose interest in online videos, concluding that 50% of all views occur in the first two weeks, peaking at day three, which constitutes 11% of all views.

TM's research should be considered a rule of thumb for typical vids and doesn't account for viral vids. What I'd really like to see is some in-depth analysis of how/how quickly viral vids permeate different social groups. IOW, please mathematically explain why my mom just forwarded Diet Coke and Mentos.

YouTube starts screening short films

YouTube launched Wednesday evening a new microsite called Screening Room, which will bring lovingly produced short films to the world's largest audience of vociferous, illiterate commenters. Yay?

The first short films to be screened include Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody? written by Miranda July (Me and You And Everyone We Know), directed by Miguel Artega (Chuck and Buck), starring John C. Reilly, and originally from one of my personal fave DVD magazines, Wholphin; Our Time Is Up, by Rob Pearlstein; The Danish Poet, from the Canadian National Film Board; and Love and War, "probably the world's first animated opera."

MySpace hottie ID theft spawns video meme

[via] When MySpacers photos and pages are borrowed/copied/hijacked by would-be impersonators, the owner of the original account -- typically a young, attractive girl -- appeals to the social network's admins to shut down the fake accounts. In order to prove their identity, the MySpacer makes a video of themselves repeating their MySpace ID tag.

It's a bizarre but necessary process -- analogous to soliciting meatspace credit reporting agencies -- that's indigenous only to MySpace. YouTuber haggardtown collated a few of these videos, and the result is the eerily beguiling video Proof.

John McCain sexist slur is YouTube popular

A sexist slur that John McCain directed towards his wife back in 1992 -- in the company of reporters, no less -- has re-emerged as a YouTube hit. After a vicious lampooning on "The Daily Show" last week and innumerable blog posts, comedy troupe Public Service Administration uploaded a video that deftly and hilariously explains the cultural politics and web virality of McCain's potty mouth. Uploaded on Monday, the video has almost 200,000 views.

In the video -- easily my favorite political vid of this tortuously long campaign -- a quartet of faux TV newsmen discuss the slur itself, why it's not discussed by traditional media, and how the back channel of the Web -- which is basically culture's delirious id unbound from media's politically correct ego -- allows the news to spread regardless.

IFC.com premieres "Good Morning, Internet!"

From the writer behind viral hit Hipster Olympics, Good Morning Internet's a weekly, five minute-long vid series that satirizes morning TV talk shows, a format typically under the protective comedic aegis of Al "Big Pun" Roker. Internet sports a pair of smarmy hosts supported by an inept man-on-the-street interviewer (first episode: "what's makes you have low self-esteem?"), an audience participation MC, and an androgynous producer who's sole task is to sound the alarm when someone uses "Internet t@lk" (oddly, also the working title of David Sedaris' follow-up novella "Me Talk Geeky One Day).

Though groan-inducingly funny-less during the first three minutes, Internet's unceasing awkwardness  eventually evokes snickers through repetition of its visual puns. Sadly though, the subject matter here's been mined previously by successful series like Goodnight, Burbank, which satrizes the format with a more deft and subtle hand. It's early yet for Internet but if it's to be successful, the show will have to do more than just be a Hipster Olympics for talk shows.
Good Morning, Internet! premieres today at IFC.com

Puppy tossing YouTube Marine kicked from service

Two Marines who appeared in a YouTube video showing a puppy being hurled off a cliff have been disciplined, according to a USMC press release and several news accounts.

Hawaii-based Lance Cpl. David Motari, the Marine shown tossing the yelping puppy, is to be pushed from service. The original video has been removed from most sites, but is still available in some abbreviated forms.

Interestingly enough, the response and reaction videos to the marine puppy tossing video still remain, and they form an eerie sewing circle around a subject we're no longer allowed to see. While the Marine Corps made the right decision in ejecting Cpl. Motari, I fear the lesson most learned here is not to create digital evidence of your wrongdoing.