Darth Vader’s fatherly coming out. Tinanic’s King of the World moment. There Will Be Blood’s sobering lecture on milkshakes.
Whether you want to poke fun at something, embellish a love note, or just prove a point, there’s probably a movie scene out there that can help you do it. People reference scenes all the time in their daily lives, and on the web it’s not uncommon for a blogger to accentuate their post with a particularly relevant clip. But for their popularity, there still isn’t an established site that’s known as the place to find a movie clip — YouTube and Hulu are always worth a shot, but they can be very hit or miss. AnyClip, a new startup that’s launching today at TechCrunch 50, wants to be the solution, with a searchable database of movie scenes.
There are, of course, other places to look for movie clips on the web. But these all have their faults: YouTube is riddled with content that may be somehow related to the scene you’re looking for, but acted out by people who most definitely aren’t the original actors. All of Hulu’s content is licensed straight from content owners so you don’t have to worry about issues with user-generated clip, but their library is still quite limited.
To help make the search engine as accurate and thorough as possible, AnyClip draws its data from a number of sources: first, it has compiled publically available data on the web and associated it with each film. The site has also created a Mechanical Turk-style operation, with a team of humans inputting meta data for each film (workers are contributing from all over the world, with most of them coming from the US and Israel). On average, each film in the database has 500 tags.
The site is also launching a public API, which will allow developers to query its database of movie clips from their applications.
SP: The content deals are really hard.
A: Yes, they’re very challenging. We’re in discussions with everyone. Mickey Schulhof (former Sony of America CEO) is a principle investor.
SP: I’ve seen deals like this take a decade…
A: Everyone has an emphasis on long from, but nobody is paying attention to the short formats. As a result you can acquire content for less than you would elsewhere.
SP: I think fear is a big factor, and if you’re focusing on short form content you may be able to overcome some of that fear.
RH: I think you’ll be competing with tags on YouTube clips. Another question is I would elaborate some kind of discovery. One of the other things is that people will only type so much on a search, but they’ll keep clicking on things. And the more money you make the more the studios will try to renegotiate deals to take that..
A: We invigorate interest with these clips, so it helps them.
Jason Calacanis: If not all the studios sign up. What do you think you can do with fair use? Could you do 15 seconds of content?
A: I’m not that interested in having tons of content that they don’t want us to have. We can’t build a business on the backs of their content illegally and hope it works. Over time we will get it all. AnyClip is a dream, a vision. We can start with very comprehensive comedy, or horror coverage.
JC: Do you see this going into other verticals, like AnySportsClip?
A: There’s a reason we didn’t name it AnyMovieClip. But we’re on film now because they’re used to selling it.
SP: I totally believe your argument that this allows studios to better monetize back catalog. Lets people monetize stuff that there would be no other reason to talk about. This is the kind of thing that absolutely should happen. But it will take twice as you long to make those details.
Images:
Videos:
Other Coverage:
TC50: AnyClip searches movies for quotes, famous moments VentureBeat.
if this works and gets further than being buggered over by the industry, this will be a popular site. I really like it and I’ve wanted something like this before.
think how easy youtube mashups will become, a couple of minutes on anyclip and you’ve got all the video you need. They should so partner.
I agree. This has some solid potential. Unless the movie studios act really anal, this should be able to pull through since the clips themselves will be pretty short. They also have a solid revenue model since you can sell DVD copies (and later, full streaming movies, if possible) to searchers, etc.
They need a better design, btw. That logo looks like something I would create in a 5 minute Photoshop job. Makes them look lazy.
I can’t see this not being stomped on in some way by the movie industry.
I really liked this one.
most definitely – this is one that will change the world
http://www.tech...ng-the-worldsh/
This is my top TC50 company so far. A lot of possibilities and I was really impressed with the team.
“Tinanic’s King of the World moment.”?
The one you recreated with your boyfriend on that Ferris wheel in Tijuana
Tinanic = Titanic… the movie.. “I’m the King of the World”
I really like this one as well and I’m interested to see how quickly they can iron out licensing deals with that argument. I believe they are right however the companies they need to grease aren’t always the most forward thinking in any way shape or form.
On a guilty side note I also like this because If it works a certain company I met with a while back is going to wish they had not written me off so carelessly. A good idea can come from anywhere, never be so quick to dismiss information.
Another huge issues is knowing when is the right time to cut the clip or when/how to extend the clip. Answers?
Full Disclaimer: I am cofounder of Entertonement
Entertonement has hundreds of thousands of these clips already, and millions of users. Come check us out!
Glad to see AnyClip fight the fight with this. At killerclips.com we tried to do this since 2002, but DMCA/copyright stuff kept is down.
Salud!
Looks really interesting. I can see it being used just like (or in combination with) Google image search
If YouTube starts showing movies–as there have been talks of them doing–then it would only be a matter of time before they added similar features
Definitely the most exciting of the bunch, and I wrote this post about why http://bit.ly/47nVl before they got the audience choice awards and runner up!
Very cool. I just hope that the movie industry feels the same way and sees the potential in letting these guys live.
AnyClip won the BizSpark Web Audience Award. The people viewing the web cast from around the world voted AnyClip the best in show.
Impressive technology. The challenge will be monetizing the service, and negotiating deals with content owners. This could be a grand slam home run if they can get through those issues.
Evidently I’m the first one to note that this is likely to be one more great service quickly coopted by mass pornophilia.
Cool does not translate to viable.
AnyClip claim seems misleading. They say, ” With AnyClip, you can search and view any moment from any movie, ever.” By their own admission, however, they do not yet have licenses for those movies.
Second, they are fuzzy on monetization. Even with $10 CPM’s (and good luck getting that), they appear to have no way to monetize licensed material that is not viewed much.
Nice personalities and loads of enthusiasm are good, but a viable business plan is necessary.