Sister site of Ourmedia.org, the “community of individuals dedicated to spreading grassroots creativity,” Bid4Vid.com is launching a new way for media creators to make money from their productions.

Instead of taking the same path as, say, Revver, the way creator’s will be able to cash in is through bidding on projects posted on the site and vying for the opportunity to work on the production.

And, for reassurance’s sake, the preregistration website says:

• Transact business in a trusted environment where you’ll be paid through escrow payment services.
• Guaranteed settlements (arbitration is in place if needed). No need to submit an invoice ever again.

So this hopes to alleviate the worry of whether, once you’ve completed the work, you’ll even get paid for it.

The idea is interesting, no doubt, and I certainly hope that there’s a market there for it.

It would remain to be seen, however, if there are enough people able to make professional level productions, under the pressure of time and somebody else’s money. It’s one thing to make a film on your own schedule, with your own money, and at your own standards of quality. It’s entirely another when there’s somebody out there with certain other expectations.

That’s not to say of course, that this is merely appealing to casual hobbyists. No doubt current professionals, or those aspiring to be, would be perfect for this as well.

But their media releases statement that, “currently, demand for short online video clips is exploding so Bid4Vid wants to hook video producers up to this flurry of activity. It puts you directly in the path of this financial and creative opportunity,” makes me concerned that this is a little too focused on short online clips, ones which are produced in great numbers every day, with no need for anyone to provide monetary compensation to the producers. They seem content with producing them for the fun of it.

In any case, it will be interesting to see this develop, and to see what sorts of productions come out of it.

Studio Daily has pointed out an awesome resource: Canadian director Bruce McDonald is making all the footage from his latest feature, The Tracey Fragments, available for free online for re-editing as part of a cool contest. The contest is for Canadians only, but anyone can download the footage and play with the footage under the terms of the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 license.

Adding to the cool factor is that the film features rising star Ellen Page, who is starring in the critically lauded upcoming film Juno. Now, my footage admittedly has not finished downloading yet. However from what I hear (and you can check out the trailer for an example) the film uses some complex Mondrian frame layouts throughout the entire thing. I’m curious to see how this is handled in the included Final Cut Pro files.

All the files are Torrents, except the script which is just a simple downloadable PDF.

You can read more about the initiative, called “Re-fragmented” by visiting either the official movie website or the official movie blog.

Vimeo, a video sharing site I have reviewed in the past (and personally endorse for all my video content) has released an update to their player that supports native resolution HD in Flash.

Needless to say, the update is being widely embraced by the video community and beyond, getting coverage in Motionographer, Kottke, and many others. Although I’m no Flash expert, I’m guessing this is using Adobe’s new “Moviestar” technology because

1. Flash Player 9, the latest version, is required. Found this out the hard way when I was using a crappy old Windows PC with outdated software earlier today.
2. Jakob Lodwick, Vimeo’s founder, wrote about the Moviestar technology at his personal blog.
3. Really, how else could they do it? Current Flash tech doesn’t support high def video (at the codec level, like H264 does), and certainly streaming video with the VP3 codec at a high def size would kill your average server.

Why do I care if Vimeo is using Moviestar? Mostly I’m just curious, but I also am interested because this would be the first major real world application of the technology. If so, props to Vimeo; this is a very strong addition to their recent series of changes that have turned Vimeo into a world-class video sharing community.

If your film or podcast needs a little sprucing up with some music (perhaps an intro theme?), there’s an excellent resource out there to help.

Magnatune. Its purpose isn’t specifically for licensing music for home-made productions, but they have great terms that allow you to use music you find on the site for free, as long as it’s for a non-commercial work. And if you plan on making money from your project, their license prices are quite reasonable.

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No, not really.

First off, there’s nothing especially wrong with the show. It’s just not very impressive. It’s disappointing, really.

If you’re a Revision3 fan you’ve already seen the ads for it. Promised to be “BIG,” the show instead feels utterly small, simple, and nothing we haven’t seen before.

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For the second time now a video podcast has changed, making my earlier statements incorrect.

First it was Morgan Webb backing away from the camera, and now it’s the Revision3 Gazette being made available to everyone. As I mentioned in my “Problems with Revision3” post, I thought it was a bad move to make exclusive content that users couldn’t preview, especially when the payment system is deeply flawed.

But now it’s free to download by all users, not just paying members.

The Revision3 Gazette is hosted by Rev3 Director of Production Sarah Lane (you’ll remember her from G4TV’s Attack of the Show, and she used to be Digg founder Kevin Rose’s girlfriend). It’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the Revision3 network operates day-to-day, with the first episode focusing on their move into new offices.

Link to Revision3 Gazette.

Link to Sarah Lane’s announcement at the Rev3 Forums.

I’m pretty confident that my Video Podcast Tip had nothing to do with this, but Morgan Webb’s WebbAlert is now much more comfortable to watch.

Why?

Because she’s a person now, and not a floating head. She’s farther away from the camera.

Compare this episode from Tuesday to today’s episode. Isn’t it so much better now?

You might not be able to tell from the still shot that it’s a huge improvement, but press play on the episode from Tuesday. It gets really creepy and uncomfortable to watch really fast.

Then watch today’s. See the difference?

Remember this when you’re making your own video podcast. Unless you’re making a horror show, you really don’t want to creep out your audience.

I’m really sad about this.

InDigital was a fantastic program on Revision3 — one of its best. It was geeky, relaxed, and, above all, really fun to watch.

Hahn Choi, co-host and co-creator of the show, says in this episode that it’s ending because he was told by Revision3 to either relocate from L.A. to San Francisco, or end the show.

And he chose the latter.

Far be it from me to question Revision3’s decisions, but this seems a little like what G4TV did to their TechTV hosts, which has led to a network that’s more a horrible parody of real content than it is something decent to watch. But I’ll leave the ranting to others.

Co-host Jessica Corbin will be moving on to host, along with Patrick Norton, Revision3’s new show Tekzilla. Wil Wheaton is plenty busy aside from his webTV responsibilities (he’s got a new book coming out, and he’s a professional voice actor and blogger), but he’ll be contributing to Tekzilla, too.

InDigital leaves a huge gap at Rev3. No other program deals with consumer electronics like it did, and certainly not with the sense of style and humor that the InDigital team did (and certainly not with the hilarity that Wil brought).

I’m going to take my own advice and keep this post short, but you should all do yourselves a favor and check out InDigital’s last episode. I know that when you’re done you’ll go back through and watch the old ones, too.

Link.

In traditional still photography, framing is everything. Because you don’t have a moving image to adjust in real time, you need to capture the exact moment in a single still frame. If you capture too much visual “junk”, viewers might strain to see the subject. If your camera is positioned awkwardly, you may end up getting an image with the top of your subject’s head trimmed off.

Because of the problems involving accurate framing, photographers have long used the “Rule of Thirds” to help define the appropriate size and scope of an image and its subject. The rule is actually quite simple - if you split an image into thirds horizontally and vertically, you will have clearly defined lines that will help you arrange your picture.

As an example, let’s use this image of a refugee from Myanmar (learn more at Wikipedia) taken by David Iliff (used under the CC-By 2.0 license).

You can see if you open the full-size image how the photographer has carefully framed the image with the Rule of Thirds in mind (at least subconsciously). The girl’s hands run along the bottom horizontal line, and the eyes are accented by being placed along the top horizontal line (the usual location for an eye line). Her body is generally between the two vertical lines, and the bulk of the background takes place in the side, making this young girl the obvious focus of the image.

Let’s look at another image, this time by famous American photographer Ansel Adams. Adams’ image of the Hoover Dam (public domain) is a fine example of the rule at work.

Adams takes the approach of lining up elements along the intersections. The Dam itself is placed along the top-left intersection, and the lower part of the river is in the bottom left. The rock formations are placed on the top-right spot, and the water spillway are on the bottom-right. By placing these major four points in these four intersection, Adams makes them more pronounced to the observer.

These principles aren’t just for still photography though. The Rule of Thirds is just as applicable in cinematography. Granted, you are able to experiment more because of the more dynamic and changing nature of the medium, but the basic principles still apply. Just remember to keep your subjects close to the line, and you will have a solid image. And a solid image means a happy viewer.

Those never hurt, right?