Trailer competition update
Thanks to many readers, I think there’s a pretty clear game plan emerging for how to do The Nines Trailer Challenge. Several people have offered specific help, both advice and hosting. Bless you. Your email addresses have been duly noted for future follow-up.
Here are the questions I asked, and the answers I got.
1. What’s the best video format for sending out the trailer footage?
For good quality, DV or Motion JPEG are platform-agnostic choices that will end up in solid web video. I’m meeting with the editor tomorrow to start figuring out just how big the files would end up being.
Some participants will want smaller files for an easier download experience. MPEG-4 is super-compressed, but can be up-rezzed acceptably. It will never look as good as the DV footage, but that’s a trade-off that some people will accept.
There are other possible formats, but at a certain point, the paradox of choice kicks in. Offering the footage in six flavors could actually make it less useful, increasing confusion and limiting torrent seeds.
2. One clip, or many?
Almost everyone felt that separate clips in a .zipped file would make life simpler. Some readers suggested distributing project files for Final Cut or Avid. My gut is that a folder of clips is pretty much just waiting to be dropped into a bin, so there’s no great advantage in creating separate templates for FCP or Avid (or whatever editing system you chose to use).
We’ll also include portions of Alex Wurman’s musical score, perhaps as a separate download. Using the “official” music won’t be a requirement.
3. Should it be a competition? If there’s a competition, how long of a deadline?
Across the board, yes on a competition. A week would be enough time; adding in a second weekend might be even better. At this point, the start of August is looking like a possibility, but the exact dates are TBD. The prize would be bragging rights, and inclusion on the DVD if we can clear rights issues.
4. What’s the best way to get the footage out there? Torrent? Download?
A torrent is pretty much a must for the big (DV) file. With good initial seeding, a clear start date, and fair practices on everybody’s part (i.e. keep seeding), it should work out. But I’d still like more information and examples of people who’ve done this thing successfully.
In terms of traditional downloading, generous offers of bandwidth should help with getting the smaller files distributed — and possibly setting up the initial torrents.
Articles
June 5th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
When is The Nines trailer footage going to be released for us to toy around with?
June 5th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
The start of or middle August sounds great to me since I’ll be in Spain for most of July. I’m really looking forward to the competition, should be fun!
June 5th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I think it will be really cool to see what people who haven’t seen the movie do. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a lot of official trailers for movies are cut by people that have never seen the movie.
June 5th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I know that I simply won’t be able to participate in the contest – no time, unfortunately.
However, since I won’t be able to participate I could safely start seeding the footage early. A good idea might be set up the torrent prior to the contest and seed it out to a few volunteers. Then when the contest is announced the initial swarm would be able to handle the first come rush.
And of course I’m volunteering.
June 5th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Steve (#1):
The idea is that the release of footage would begin the competition. So, maybe the start of August, with a week to cut a trailer.
June 5th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Awesome!
June 5th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Upon reading my reply I realize that made no sense. I’m not referring to making the content public, of course, just getting the swarm set up.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:52 am
Hmmm, maybe you could consider September? Since August is generally a month of vacation.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Have you considered this type of a system?
http://www.nikemashup.com/
The footage is hosted on a web server. The people build it and distribute it from the website itself.
June 6th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Can you clarify if outside material(video and music) will be allowed, since you mentioned mash-ups in your initial post?
June 6th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Hi John,
Long time listener, first time caller.
A couple of comments:
You can have a look at MoveDigital’s plans here: http://www.movedigital.com/mover/choosePlan
Depending on size requirements, if you restrict downloads to torrent only and if people are not lazy and seed back, you may even be able to use their free account type!
Looking forward to the comp.
Best regards,
June 8th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Thanks, Avi (#11).
I’ve been reading up on torrents, and how it’s not necessary to .zip. Makes sense.
DougJ (#10):
Good point about outside material. My hunch is that we might pick one winner who used exclusively footage from The Nines, and a second winner for best mash-up with outside material. (Regardless, my hunch is that outside music will be used, since almost all trailers use pre-existing music from other soundtracks.)
July 24th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Hi John,
Just a follow up from my last comment with regards to digital distribution.
Another great (and free!) service to use if you want to offer simple web downloads for your competition files is the Coral Content Distribution Network, sometimes referred to as Coral Cache.
You can read all about it here: http://www.coralcdn.org
A quick summary though:
upload the files to wherever you are hosting them.
add .nyud.net:8080 to the hostname of where your file(s) are hosted in your HTML links (eg. the logo’s URL on this page would become http://johnaugust.com.nyud.net:8080/Assets/bee_logo.gif) and they will automatically cache your content and users download it transparently from them instead of you!
Eagerly anticipating the competition,