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Waiting for the Download Revolution... And Weird Al's Comeback?
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Will there be a point when feature films are downloaded as much as trailers, film clips, shorts – and Weird Al Yankovic videos?
Hold on a second, before I get to the question at hand, is '80s icon "Weird" Al Yankovic staging a comeback through YouTube and MySpace? Rated #5 and #12 on Thursday's daily Viral Video ranking chart and seen over 1,271,498 times on YouTube, Weird Al's unremarkable "White and Nerdy" rap has got to be some kind of revival for Al, whose MySpace page has received nearly 2 million visitors. If YouTube can make Weird Al a star, just think who will be next: Vanilla Ice? The Bangles? Debbie Gibson?
Anyway, while short clips continue to make up the bulk of downloaded content, a survey conducted by Lovefilm.com, Europe's largest online movie rental site, shows that only 33% of those polled from their 450,000 subscriber base download feature films, as reported in Variety. While 60% predict they will download more in the future, respondents said that there are still too many barriers to grabbing features off the net, blaming most of all, the time it takes to download (34%), followed by the cost (33%), the quality of the picture (30%), and the quality of the sound (20%).
According to the poll, the most popular online video content was movie trailers (56%), followed by video clips (50%) and short films (48%). If filmmakers and companies want to grow the download movie revolution, it sounds as if they have to improve the simple basics of the technology first. Or at least get consumers to overcome their prejudices – and drag them away from Weird Al.
Don't Underestimate Weird Al
Weird Al has been the king of parody since April of '83 and has since put out over a dozen albums including a soundtrack to his motion picture, UHF. He had great success all throughout the 90s including the following hit songs: Smells Like Nirvana, 1992; Amish Paradise, 1996; Pretty Fly for a Rabbi and All About the Pentiums, 1999.
So while he did have a slight flop with his 2003 album, I say cut the guy some slack. He certainly didn't stoop to Playboy for a career boost like Debbie Gibson did in 2005.
As for his success on the web, his videos are typical of popular content on the web; short and funny. Humorous videos aren't as subject to a loss in quality the same way a feature film is. If it's funny, it's still funny no matter the quality, whereas the same can't be said of a feature film.