Both sides have claimed early victories in the case of documentarian Joe Berlinger vs. Chevron over access to the raw footage he shot for his expose “Crude” on Amazonian oil exploitation. I’ve blogged about the case and the filmmaking community reaction here.

On Thursday, the appeals judge ruled that Berlinger must turn over Crude footage that does not appear in any public version of the film’s release if it shows the counsel for the plaintiffs in the Lago Agrio class action lawsuit against Chevron or any experts or Ecuadorian government officials involved in that case.

This is bad news for the plaintiffs in that case, and likely good news for Chevron. Thankfully, the court also found that Chevron had to use the footage strictly for legal defense purposes and could not use if for marketing or other PR purposes. But whether this decision means that filmmakers can rest assured that their footage is safe from similar “takings” is still pretty unclear.

As for the case’s potential use as precedence on non-confidential information and journalist’s privilege in the future, Floyd Abrams, the famed First Amendment lawyer representing the media amici, cautioned that a ruling alone is not enough grounds to gauge its future applications. “We have to wait for the opinion of the court to see how they applied the law,” Abrams said. “It’s too early to tell where we’re going in this area.”

Berlinger himself seems both confident that the court will ultimately uphold the narrowing of the original request and the difficulty of any court appeal to prevail:

Most appeals are unsuccessful and the appealing party has a lot to prove. I was very relieved the court seemed to be sympathetic to my primary concerns about the case. Nobody expects the decision to be completely reversed. Having covered the legal process, I know there are times you want journalists to be compelled. But it can’t just be a fishing expedition. If I knew I had any evidence that was exculpatory, I would want the footage to be turned over. But only if the First Amendment standards of true relevancy and exclusive access of information are met.

Why Online Video Fails To Meet Its Lofty Expectations

With television advertising being a $70 billion market and total online advertising weighing in at $22.7 billion for 2009, you can’t help but wonder why online video advertising only represents a $1 billion market.

In fact, according to the IAB, video advertising grew from $734 million to $1.017 billion from 2008 to 2009 — or 38%.  That’s not bad, but when you consider that total video consumption per month has soared from 10 billion videos in July 2008 to over 33 billion in December 2009 (or 230%), you wonder why the revenue growth hasn’t mimicked the viewership.

For sure, economics tend to trail consumer patterns.  Moreover, the recession and advertising slump didn’t help either.  And yes, the so-called experts might not be all-knowing either, after all.

I personally think there’s more to it than that.

The Genie is Out of the Bottle

In 2000, I worked at a search engine company.  We gave away our search engines for free and sought to generate revenue via advertising.  The Nasdaq crashed and took down the ad market, after which point we sought to collect licensing revenues for our technology.  With the cat out of the bag, it was impossible to get people to pay for the product afterwards.  Lesson learned: If you give something away for free, you can’t charge for it subsequently.CTD…

An argument that professional content will continue to dominate the audience’s attention and that the likely way it will be paid for is through ads. But will the ad revenue be enough to fund the programming we’re fond of? Maybe a reality show, but probably not Lost, or CSI.

Tribeca looks to expand notion of film festival

By JAKE COYLE (AP) – 6 days ago

NEW YORK — When British director Mat Whitecross was growing up in Oxford, only so many movies screened in his local cinema — and not the intriguing movies he read about playing at film festivals or elsewhere.

Whitecross estimates that 90 percent of the films that were influential to him — such as “Taxi Driver” and “La Dolce Vita” — he watched “on very dodgy, knocked-off VHS tapes” or on TV early in the morning with commercial breaks.

“Better to have seen them that way than not at all,” he says.

Whitecross’ experience guides the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival, which kicks off Wednesday amid concern that the volcanic ash disrupting air travel in Europe might ground some of the many European filmmakers who were planning to attend.

. In an effort to help films find audiences, movies won’t just be screening in downtown Manhattan.

A new distribution company, Tribeca Film, founded by the festival’s parent company, Tribeca Enterprises, will make a dozen movies — including Whitecross’ directorial debut “sex & drugs & rock & roll” — available on TV by way of video-on-demand in some 40 million homes. A “virtual festival” will also stream eight movies and 18 shorts online for viewers willing to shell out $45.

…ctd

A win-win for indy filmmakers and indy-loving audiences who can’t get to Manhattan (or can’t get a ticket.) Get the films on VOD and watch in your home theater. Now I’ve got to convince my little cableco to sign up!