The shorter the better when it comes to Internet content, says Trailervision

A group of upstart actors, producers and web-heads are hoping to challenge some pre-conceived notions about Internet content with a series of new websites designed to push the bounds of the short-format film. Trailervision Inc recently won a half-million dollar investment from Toronto-based Internet incubator itemus Inc, money the small company will use to hire the technical staff necessary to create two new sites: Zapavision.com and Blipvision.com in addition to their current Trailervision.com spoof site. The sites will feature ever-shorter content, eventually licensing pieces less than 15 seconds long to portals and other sites eager for fresh, hip content to attract eyeballs. To date, Trailervision has been a hot Internet fad, garnering international attention and winning several top 10 list mentions, including a much sought-after chart appearance on Yahoo. The company’s content, movie-trailer spoofs, has hit a chord with a mainly youthful audience. Dozens of partners are paying licensing fees to the company to feature the material on their own sites, including shift.com and others. The company has also been commissioned by a "major Hollywood studio", the name of which president Al Nerenberg won’t disclose – though he says authorship will be clear when the trailer launches in theatres this fall. Nerenberg says the short, 90-second format has more web appeal than longer pieces, and that its "wild" content works well in the new medium. "When you have some of the big TV players coming into the Internet, they start acting a lot like television executives, and they expect the same kind of limitations," he told Canadian NEW MEDIA. "We’ve noticed that some people have been kind of scared of Trailervision’s content. It’s so wild. But, we’ve been enjoying that a lot because the great thing about having, let’s say wild or freer content, is that in a competitive market, wild and free wins. Conservative and straight loses. So, (television) people are going to have to be able to wake up to that. They won’t be able to hide in their offices forever. That’s what’s exciting about web content. It’s a bit like a showdown between old, straight television and the new web." Still, he says, even at around 90 seconds, not everybody is able to enjoy the content given technology limitations. Zapavision, which will spoof advertisements, and Blipvision will both open the medium by further compressing file sizes and reducing time frames to around 15 seconds. File size is important, says Nerenberg, because the company is committed to progressive downloads – transferring an entire clip to a user’s hard drive before and during playback, as opposed to streaming which isn’t stored to disc. "Very little that is streaming is working right now. Streaming is like this buffered, low-resolution nonsense that dribbles across your screen…. One of our strategic things is avoiding streaming like the plague." He adds that technical work continues on the product. "We are dealing with a few companies that want to specifically develop proprietary video for Zapavision, but it’s all development and there’s nothing to talk about," he says. The itemus investment will help Trailervision hire more technical and creative staff, including HTML coders and graphic designers. The company is currently made up of a core of about a dozen actors and 10 to 15 freelancers throughout North America who handle post-production and publishing work. Trailervision will also migrate to a database web-publishing strategy which presents significant up-front costs, but should keep further work to a minimum as it produces more content. Down the road, it is examining a portal strategy to act as a user’s gateway to the Internet, though Nerenberg says it has no specific plans to do so now.

The shorter the better when it comes to Internet content, says Trailervision

Broadcast | August 23, 2000

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