Tuesday night, at the salubrious Baoli restaurant on the Croisette, Spike Lee made the day of several young filmmakers from around the world when he announced the winners of the first Babelgum Online Film Festival. Shooting People has been supporting the Babelgum Online Film Festival since its launch at least year’s Venice Festival, and SP’s James Mullighan was at the ceremony. Alongside Joe Bateman (Rushes Short Film Festival) and Stefano Martina (Arcipelago, Italy), Mullighan was a juror for the Babelgum…

Films uploaded to Shooting People can now be embedded across the web (you can turn this option off when you upload your film if you don’t want it to be shared). Have a play and please give us feedback. Here’s the trailer for Paul Taylor and Teddy Leifer’s documentary We Are Together to show you what the player looks like.

If you want to create a video blog but don’t have a clue where to start the New Media Literacies project may be just the ticket. This MIT project was set up by Convergence Culture author Henry Jenkins and others to integrate new media materials into compelling activities for high-school students and includes a really simple video blogging tutorial featuring Steve Garfield and others.

FourDocs have a series of very useful video guides to shooting, editing and uploading a short doc. While you’re there check out their awesome online archive of classic  docs. I recommend This Is A True Story by Paul Berczeller, The Lift by Marc Isaacs, Divorce Iranian Style by Kim Longinotto, The Dinner Party by Paul Watson . . . oh there are lots of gems in there, too many to name here. Check it out.

Shooting People! Yes Shooting People! We’ve recently added a video component to our website so now members can upload their shorts, reels and trailers and anybody can watch them. Check it out, add your films, and rate other members’ films.

If you want to download films from YouTube or other supported sites try KeepVid. Be aware of rights issues but if the films have a Creative Commons license that allows you to use them in your own creative endeavors then go ahead and mix and mash.

TubeMogul is a free service that allows you to upload your film to the top video sharing sites and then track who is watching it. Sounds like a good idea to me. Has anyone tried it? Feedback?

If you need to convert a media file fast and don’t want to download software then Media Convert is a really nifty online solution. Just upload your file, select the output format, and bob’s your uncle! And it’s free.

This post by Dan Ackerman Greenberg on TechCrunch has riled up quite a few people who object to the spammy, underhand methods he suggests for making your video truly viral. So much so that Dan contributed a follow-up post. Dan is talking about using viral videos for advertising (and a lot of this stuff does sound very sneaky indeed!) but there are some important lessons here for filmmakers too. If nothing else it’s a good wake up call about what’s…

The Participatory Culture Foundation are the forward-thinking people behind Miro (formerly Democracy), a great open-source internet TV platform. In the spirit of openness they have also created a very handy website called makeinternettv.org (does what it says on the tin!). The site covers everything from the equipment you should use to licensing issues to how to promote your work through RSS feeds. It’s not exhaustive but it’s a really good starting point if you’re dipping your feet into the water…