TuteSpark Week 4: The wonders of the internet and short films.

Since the creation of cinema in 1985 film has come a long way. From the birth of the talkies in 1927 to the first movies on television in 1955 and now to films that are specifically designed for an Internet audience.

This week in the lecture it was all about cinema, once again. Though it was not about the big screen, motion picture, blockbusters, that we all are familiar with. Instead it was about the little guy, the short film and the distribution of films via the World Wide Web.

Typically, cinema and the World Wide Web do not go hand in hand, for obvious reasons. (Everyone has seen the illegal downloading is a crime ads) and though this may be the case for feature length films it is completely different in relation to independent short films.

The Internet in conjunction with short films allows for many emerging, talented producers and moviemakers to advertise themselves and distribute their films to a wide audience. As a result of this the popularity of short film distribution on the Internet is bigger than ever.

There are many websites devoted to the uploading of short films and in addition, an amounting number of filmmakers prepared to showcase their work to an audience of the Internet.

In saying that this blog will be uncovering such websites and videos, which have been and are primarily, focused towards an audience, that is watching from no other place than the comfort of their…computer screen.

The most common place that film distribution occurs is YouTube. YouTube has been the home to masses of independent short films. Some that have become famous due to their accessibility and universally available content.

One such company that is devoted to uploading films on the Internet is ‘College Humor’. College Humor started out on YouTube and after gaining a wide fan base created their own website dedicated to the uploading and streaming of their short films.

Website: http://www.collegehumor.com/videos

Video Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBPPNmdYEjI

‘Smosh’ is also another web-based comedy duo that began their short film career on YouTube and are now a company devoted to presenting videos to the general public through the Internet.

Alternatively to short comedy sketches on the Internet like Smosh and College Humor, there are also websites specifically designed for the showing of webisodes.

A webisode can be explained as a short episode that initially airs on the Internet for Internet television.

Some examples of Webisodes include, “Michael and Clark’, a webseries staring Michael Cera and a ‘made for the web’ horror series by Stephen King.

The following is a link to the first episode of Stephen King’s web series:

http://www.simonsays.com/specials/stephen-king-nishere/?bcpid=1659850666&bclid=1659879445&bctid=1670082224

Although the Internet has created a negative market for feature films, it has done wonders for short films and short web episodes. In concluding, it can be stated that as a result of the vast rate of the advancement of technology, the Internet has once again changed the way we view films all over the world.