Hotmail
Messenger
My MSN
MSN Directory
Post that video — land some work
This is not to say everyone who airs dumb stunts or lip-synchs on YouTube has a chance of landing real work. Representatives of professionally produced content sites who pore through user-generated videos see more rough than diamonds. When there are decent finds, competition can be intense.
Jason Marks, a former MTV executive who oversees programming and development for Heavy.com, swears this story is true, and that similar things happen several times a month:
A while back he came across a YouTube video of some young guys “in their dorm room, flicking boogers on their wall.” Marks was only mildly amused, but he sensed there might be something in these kids, so he figured he’d scope them out. Marks says he left a message for them — and got his call returned by someone in a very prominent talent agency.
“They refer us to their agent!” Marks says. “I’m not even kidding, man.”
Talent search boom
In many ways, today’s talent search is a reprise of the height of the dot-com boom. Then, sites such as AntEye, Icebox, Mediatrip and Z.com cast themselves as “incubators” and served as scouts for film studios and television networks, essentially producing low-cost pilots and hoping for a hit.
That model has resurfaced. Last year, UTA, one of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies, launched an online division to scout for people who could be in videos for ad agencies, Web sites and traditional media outlets. While most agencies refuse unsolicited work, UTA encourages online submissions.
Grouper.com, a site owned by Sony Corp., recently decided to stop trying to make money from user-generated videos and will focus instead, under the name Crackle, on scouting online prodigies for Sony.
But Steven Starr, a former talent agent who heads the Web video site Revver, says what he sees emerging is “a creator economy online” whereby the Internet will carve out its own slice of the action, rather than just serving as a development league for TV and film.
“That will start to make it possible for any creator to develop income and careers online and not just be fodder for large media enterprises that are looking to move them off onto other platforms,” Starr says.
Even if untapped talent is not necessarily easy to find, the economics of Web entertainment startups dictates that they try hard to do it. Old-school casting calls — and Hollywood’s union contracts — wouldn’t work for digital media that comes together quickly and relatively cheaply.
“Hollywood as it exists today was built to produce a relatively small number of very large productions,” says JibJab’s Gregg Spiridellis. “The new studios ... in digital are going to exist in a way where they can produce a very large number of small productions. I need to produce content at the price of the craft services table on a television shoot.”
A needed boost
Sometimes, online video can juice an entertainment career already in progress.
Nick Stevens had a decent life as a comedian in New York, supporting himself with acting and writing gigs on TV and radio. But things got more interesting after he launched a zero-budget video blog in his living room. Called TownieNews.com, it features rants by fictional Boston sports nut Paul “Fitzy” Fitzgerald.
Fitzy developed such an online following that a Boston TV station, believing he was real, called to set up an interview. (Stevens set the reporters straight.) The blog also got noticed by the people at Heavy.com, who hired Stevens to host their regular “SportsCenter” takeoff known as “The Burly Sports Show.” Stevens plays himself, more or less, but Fitzy appears as a character.
Stevens, 33, says he lives pretty well on what he gets paid to do two of the online episodes every week — which sometimes amazes him.
“The guy who was buying his coffees with nickels and dimes in 2003 and having beans on toast for lunch is very thankful,” he says. “The Web is great. The single greatest distraction from employment is also the single greatest enabler of employment.”
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
- Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM INTERNET |
 Internet Section Front |
| Add Internet headlines to your news reader: |