As almighty overlord of all online video, YouTube has a lot of expectations to live up to in 2012. Throughout last year the web video channel dominated the Internet as it’s content filtered through all parts of our lives whether through comedic viral videos or the incredible documentary footage of natural disasters or uprisings from across the globe.

All this content helped to amass the trillion views that YouTube received during 2011. A trillion seems like a ludicrously high number but the only way is up for YouTube and they are positing that soon enough 90% of all web traffic will be made up of web video. This is a statistic that Cisco were quoted as saying last year, stating that we would be waiting until 2013 for almost total video domination on the Internet. YouTube seem to want to push the date ever closer.

The third revelation at YouTube’s CES pitch was their vision for the future of television. They believe that in the next 10 years 75% of the channels available will be Internet based. Another bold statement but with the way things are going for Internet TV, streaming and downloadable content it might even come sooner.

For all those businesses and brands not using video on their websites to promote and advertise. It’s time to wake up and realise that this is the best medium on the Internet for engaging content.

If you have a video production enquiry, get in touch and our creative team will help you visualize a fantastic film for your business or brand.

Another new year – and this time it’s a change in the senior management at Spectrecom. Because, after nearly 7 years at the company, Sarah Aynesworth has resigned her directorship. Sarah was a founder director of the company and instrumental in getting us off the ground and to where we are today. Anyone who’s ever tried it knows that starting a company without any customers, any significant finance or capital, trading track record or experience, is an incredibly demanding challenge. The early years are as much about survival as they are about growth. Sarah helped to shoulder this responsibility with guts and determination. The hard work paid off and the company is now a successful going concern, but we really couldn’t have done it without Sarah.

For those soap fans out there who love a bit of drama, I’m sorry to report that there, was no disagreement, no falling out, no slammed doors, no spilt blood on the board room floor! Sarah has simply left to start a family. However, she still has a 22% stake in the company and will retain her role as Company Secretary – and I’m sure she’ll be popping into the studios to check up on us from time to time. 

Sarah’s departure means a management restructure at Spectrecom, and now that we’re up to 30 employees and growing, I’ve asked 2 of the longest serving and most experienced staff members to join Steve and myself on the board. Christiaan Harden has been the driving force behind our online marketing strategy and strong sales performance for the last 3 years, and he becomes Commercial Director. His new brief will see him continue to work ever more closely with the production and post-production teams to develop a distinctive identity for our films. To that end, he has recently recruited 2 talented new creative writers to his team. Ben Franklin, who started out as our first editor, has gone on to develop and manage his own  team of 8 full time editors together with the technical infrastructure necessary to harness their collective creativity. Ben is now Director of Post-Production with a brief to continue to raise the quality bar of our output.

Finally, Steve Milton has taken over from Sarah’s role and becomes Director of Productions. The job description is changed slightly from Sarah’s in that we now have a stronger accounts team and Sarah’s company secretary duties will remove the burden of most of the legal admin work. This will leave Steve free to oversee the day-to-day running of all the work in production. And I’ve promised him that he’ll still have time to pick up a camera and shoot his own work, on his own projects, when he wants to. I feel that’s one new year’s resolution he’ll be holding me to!

Home-grown film production in these normally rain ‘n’ windswept isles is a perennially thorny topic, this controversy being entirely down to the fact that public money, most recently in the form of Lotto funds, is awarded to selected projects. Yesterday, David Cameron demanded this money be spent solely on ‘commercially viable’ productions in future, and Spectrecom’s own head honcho, Andrew Greener, was invited in by Sky News to give his verdict on this blueprint for supposed success.    

The PM was down at Pinewood Studios yesterday, weighing in on the debate about the direction the British film production business should be headed in following the axing of the UK Film Council back in summer 2010. That defunct body is being replaced as funding-awarder-in-chief by the British Film Institute, while Cameron’s comments about the privileging of commercial appeal comes ahead of the publication next week of an industry-wide review by former Labour Culture Secretary, Lord Smith. 

So, wise ol… er, still-young head that he is, our very own Andrew Greener was duly summoned to Sky’s Westminster studios to give his opinion on the Cameron plan, and an edited version of his interview can be seen about halfway down this webpage (yes, skip right on past Michael Winner), appearing as it does about a minute into the video entitled ‘PM David Cameron Visits Pinewood Studios’. And yes, those whizz kids at Sky News did indeed misspell our company name as ‘Spectreom’. Tsk, eh?

If you’re working on a film production but are still seeking the perfect vessel to house your vision, then you should run your eye over our studio rates.

There is some great news for the video productions that never got a distribution deal at the world famous Sundance Film Festival; the Sundance Institute have commissioned all the festival alumni to become online videos and in partnership with New Video will be uploading them to the major streaming players including YouTube, Hulu, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and SundanceNOW.

The best part of the deal is that any video production that has ever played a part in Sundance is eligible to take part in the new scheme. This means that an entered film to the festival is guaranteed some form of promotion and distribution, carrying the highly thought of Sundance brand of course.

For your film to be part of the new online deal it must have been shown at Sundance, taken to the festival lab or given a Sundance grant. So far seventeen filmmakers have signed up with a potential for thousands more.

The bonus of the scheme is that filmmakers retain the rights to their video productions. It must be noted that many films that are now owned by studios or other distributors may be unable to take part due to issues over ownership but those who don’t have to buy themselves out of deals will be offered great opportunities with marketing and promotion.

The festival begins next week and we’re definitely looking forward to seeing some of the entrants. If you want a studio for your next big shoot, why not come down to Waterloo

That original online video programming would continue to surge in prevalence, to compete on an ever-more even footing with network and cable television, has been widely predicted for several years now. And even though 2012 is just a mere handful of days down, it looks as if it’s already shaping up to be the annum in which that prediction hardens into something approaching solid fact.   

This year has already seen Netflix unveil its first original show, culture-clash comedy-drama Lilyhammer, starring Sopranos actor and Springsteen sidekick Steven Van Zandt. Meanwhile, also in its pipeline are a US refit of BBC political drama House of Cards, due to star Kevin Spacey, and the much-anticipated new series of Arrested Development, which is due to begin airing sometime in 2013.    

Determined not to be left behind, internet behemoth Yahoo! is shoehorning in on the online video action too, via a just-announced collaboration with Hollywood’s Mr. Aw Shucks himself, Tom Hanks, who is on something of a comeback trail after the Forrest Dump of a disaster that was his self-penned, self-directed and self-starring Larry Crowne.   

The project which has yielded this Hanks and Yahoo! marriage is an animated science fiction show entitled Electric City, which has apparently been created by the actor. It is billed as being interactive, although Yahoo!’s own publicity would seem to indicate that this ‘immersive’ element doesn’t extend much further than the typical branded social media channels and the kind of additional content which is de rigueur for any entertainment product these days.   

So what is Electric City all about? Well, apparently the world as we know and barely tolerate it has ended. Bit of a bummer, eh? However! In its stead has arisen the titular Electric City, a ‘functioning, yet dystopian metropolis’. Sigh. Cut to the chase. What does this all actually mean for we ordinary online video user-type persons? ‘Short-form connecting storylines combined with vivid animation [that] will keep audiences watching.’   

No word on when the show will see the light of day, so until then content yourself with a fond look back at this skeleton from the Hanks’ closet.

Interested in web video? Then keep up to date with the latest developments via our blog.