The $99 Music Video Lie…

NextNewNetworks and Verizon have teamed up for a new website/series in which bands are given $99 to make a music video.

In addition to seeing the results on the site, there is a nicely produced short “making-of” that claims to tell us how they made their video for only $99.

The one thing that is clear from the featured “making-of” for the band La Strada is that they were able to make a gorgeous video for only $99 by have thousands of dollars worth of equipment and a large crew seemingly working for free.

What bums me out is that it could have been such a cool challenge if the bands were truly limited to what $99 can actually buy.  It is watching people work within strict limitations that makes shows like Top Chef and Project Runway so successful and entertaining.

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• MTV-Inspired Network Gives Bands and Filmmakers $99 to Make Music Videos (mashable.com)
• Next New Networks Has 300 Million Views in 2008, Plans To Announce More New Shows This Year (beet.tv)

Spike Lee, Nokia and You(Tube)

Fresh of the pages of dead-tree media elite NYT comes news of a new media partnership:

“Mr. Lee, the director, is teaming up with Nokia, the cellphone maker, to direct a short film comprising YouTube-style videos created by teenagers and adults using their mobile phones.

By hiring Mr. Lee for the project, Nokia is seeking to combine the populist appeal of user-generated content with the power of a famous director’s pedigree. The film will have three acts, each three to five minutes long, with the theme loosely based on the concept of humanity.”

This is far from the first time a mobile carrier has tried the filmmaker approach.  I remember watching a bunch of shorts made for VCast by well-known filmmakers.

Obviously, Spike Lee’s involvement ups the ante, but the big question is whether or not this kind of social-network/crowd-sourcing method can lead to truly entertaining content.  It is all well and good to have a cool method for creation but the creation itself has to live up to the process.

Verizon Mucks Up Flickr with Text Ads

There is a nice little post on Brand Noise about Verizon’s decision to place ads on all photo’s uploaded to Flickr using their phones. Thus turning what had been a nice service into making the consumer an unwilling participant in shilling for Verizon.

Brand Noise sums things up:

“Mobile needs to understand that it is selling experiences – not phone plans – if you mess up the vibe of those experiences you can never expect people to jump on to new services.”

Amen.