Worth Reading: Crowdsourced Animation...AMPAS Rules & The Internet...'United Breaks Guitars'...The Etsy Economy, And More

A bunch of great stuff to point you to... some of which I've tweeted about earlier in the week...

- Sony Pictures is going to handle theatrical distribution of a crowd-sourced animated short called "Live Music" this November, from the start-up company Mass Animation. The budget was about $1 million (spent on what, exactly?), and 51 people around the world contributed shots; each was paid $500 (that adds up to about $25,000 of the budget) and will get a credit on the film. Here's the press release, the Mass Animation Facebook page is here (they don't seem to have a corporate site), and the teaser is below:



-Filmmaker Noah Harlan has this thoughtful rant about the Academy's Rule 12, which limits experiments with day-and-date releasing (at least if you want to be Oscar-eligible.) The rule says: "No type of television or Internet transmission of a contending documentary feature may occur anywhere in the world until 60 days after the completion of the New York and Los Angeles seven-day qualifying runs.” Here's an earlier Deadline Hollywood post on the issue.

- Some analysis of the impact of the music video "United Breaks Guitars" (worth watching if you haven't seen it) -- a customer complaint about United Airlines that turned into a viral hit.



- Fortune Small Business looks at the online crafts marketplace Etsy, where a few artists earn six figures annually -- but most are still working day jobs.

- Adam Chapnick points us to this important explanation of how to create "overlays" on your YouTube videos -- for instance, to suggest to viewers that they buy your DVD/CD/book.

- I'm a big Steely Dan fan, and I love the approach they're taking on their summer tour: playing some "Internet Request" concerts, where the entire set-list will be determined by fans.

Crowdsourcing and the Entertainment Industry: `Mining the masses for the next big thing'

My monthly Boston Globe column focuses on how entertainment players like MTV and Netflix are using crowdsourcing to develop new kinds of content and software applications. The gist of the piece:

Crowdsourcing essentially means throwing your arms open to the Internet community and inviting them to help create content or software. Often, there is prize money involved, but sometimes people pitch in for fun or glory (see The Internet Movie Database, originally built by users before it was acquired by Amazon.com).

Frito-Lay tried crowdsourcing last year, when it invited any wanna be advertising execs to create a Super Bowl ad for its Doritos brand chips. The company received more than 1,000 entries, and the finalists were virtually indistinguishable from a TV spot that a Madison Avenue agency would've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce. The snack-maker, by dangling a $10,000 prize and the promise of Super Bowl airtime, got to pick the best ad out of a very large pack.

Bands like The Decemberists and Modest Mouse have invited fans to craft music videos, using a library of raw footage they provide. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who owns a pair of high-definition cable channels, recently put out a call on his blog for ideas for new shows. MTVu, the college cable network run by MTV, recently doled out $30,000 grants to teams of college students who are creating new software that could eventually be integrated into the MTVu website.