Rocketboom has announced that it has signed another sponsor for its daily video blog, the Rechargeable Recycling Battery Corporation.

“Today, I am happy to announce Rocketboom has partnered with the Rechargeable Recycling Battery Corporation to create and run three post-roll ads,” notes show creator Andrew Baron at the Rocketboom blog. “The ads, which will star Joanne, will be released in about one month.”

No numbers were released on the deal, but Rocketboom’s sponsorship page prices the ads starting at $13,000 each.

Rocketboom’s continued success at signing sponsorship deals is a sign of confidence in the show, post Amanda Congdon, and a leading indicator for the potential value of indie vlog content.

iStockphoto, a community-powered marketplace for stock photography and illustrations, today announced it is now accepting user-generated video. The site is expanding its image collection to offer royalty-free (RF) stock video, film, and animation clips for as little as $5.

Anyone can apply to become a video contributor at the site. iStock videographers will collect downloads, earn royalties and receive “video reels” like photographer canisters to show their sales levels.

According to the site, “iStock has received thousands of requests to offer high-quality, low-cost video over the years. This is the right time to answer that demand because of the explosion in consumer appetite for video combined with the relative affordability of HD video cameras.”

Collection to Launch in September

Beginning in September, iStock will sell broadcast-quality footage, with a focus on digital formats, including HD video. Thirty-second clips will start at $5. The new video clips will be accessible at both http://video.istockphoto.com and www.istockvideo.com.

“There is a huge demand for video; people want up-to-the-minute, top-quality footage, but current prices are keeping most potential clients out,” said Bruce Livingstone, founder and CEO. “iStock is excited to provide videographers that same immediate connection between artists and global customers, just as we did with stills.”

A new camera system, the Contour, promises to make it possible to create compellingly realistic synthetic actors by capturing the facial movements of real actors in much greater detail than is currently possible.

David Fincher, who directed the films “Fight Club” and “Panic Room,” is planning to use Contour next year when he begins filming “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a movie based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald in which Brad Pitt will play a character who ages in reverse.

“Instead of grabbing points on a face, you will be able to capture the entire skin,” Mr. Fincher said. “You’re going to get all of the enormous detail and the quirks of human expression that you can’t plan for.”

The technology will let filmmakers transform the appearance of actors in the computer, raising the possibility of a new form of digital video in which the viewer can control the point of view — what is being described in Hollywood as “navigable entertainment.”

via New York Times

Director Kevin Smith has joined the ranks of movie makers using video podcasts to promote films with Train Wreck! The Making of Clerks II, described as a video journal chronicling a disaster in the making.

Smith is offering the videos via the Clerks II site, as a video podcast and via YouTube.

A recent episode takes a look at Loving the Camera:

You can subscribe to the Clerks II podcast by adding this feed to your video podcast client:
http://clerks2.com/clerks2.xml

Andrew Michael Baron, creator of Rocketboom, talked to the first gathering of the NYVideo vlogger group Wednesday night, July 26,2006, and vlogger Randolfe Wicker captured Baron’s talk:

According to Baron, vloggers have a unique “window of opportunity”; vlogging offers even niche markets a previously impossible worldwide audience; and Rocketboom is just the poster-child for a media no longer monopolized by multi-millionaires.

He announced a new sale of $40,000 for one week’s advertising on his show. He also revealed some of his most personal feelings about the departure of Amanda Congdon, and the effect of Congdon’s leaving Rocketboom.