Digital Media

(Credit: SHARK)

A rodeo association has agreed to pay $25,000 to an animal welfare group to settle a lawsuit over the improper removal of videos from YouTube that showed roped calves being dragged off to die and tasers being used on tame horses to get them to buck.

In December 2007, YouTube removed dozens of rodeo videos after getting takedown notices from the Colorado-based Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association that claimed copyright violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The group that posted them, Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued the rodeo group last summer. The group sued for misrepresentation, alleging that the videos could not have infringed any copyright because the rodeos themselves weren't copyrightable, the EFF said.

The EFF announced on Thursday that the two sides had settled the case. In addition to the payment, the agreement requires the rodeo group to run any future copyright claims by its own general counsel and by SHARK before notices are sent to YouTube. It also bars the group from selectively enforcing a "no videotaping" provision against SHARK.

The settlement, which is available on the EFF Web site (PDF), is part of the EFF's No Downtime for Free Speech Campaign, which fights misuse of the DMCA.

PARK CITY, Utah--The Sundance Film Festival broke the mold--so to speak--when it kicked off Thursday night with a feature-length clay animation film, Mary and Max, which innovated on many levels.

Robert Redford opens the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Thursday night.

(Credit: Michelle Meyers)

Robert Redford's annual opening night speech, which preceded the screening, was the perfect prelude to the Australian-made film. After assuring the packed auditorium that "even when times are bad (economically and politically)...it can be good for artists," Redford assured the audience that Sundance would continue to be a showcase for work that's diverse, unique, and often full of "surprise."

And when it came to Mary and Max, all three applied. It was certainly no Nemo or Wallace and Gromit film.

Directed by Adam Elliot and produced by Melanie Coombs, Mary and Max is the tale of two unlikely pen pals: Mary, played by Toni Collette, is a lonely, chubby, 8-year-old girl living in the Melbourne suburbs, and Max, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is a 44-year-old severely obese New Yorker with Asperger's syndrome.

The film is dark in terms of humor, content, and aesthetic. Both main characters are constantly struggling personally, death surrounds them, and even their relationship goes through tumultuous times.

But at the same time, it's also a sweet film, conveying the importance of friendship, and of accepting oneself for strengths and weaknesses.

"We all have disabilities," Elliot said in a question-and-answer session after the screening. "It's about accepting your flaws and not trying to hide behind them."

No matter how immersed you get in the characters and the storyline, it's impossible to watch the film without marveling at the impressive animation, which got zero help from computer graphics. It was 100 percent "in-camera," as Elliot explained, which meant every single shot was taken of an actual, physical object that had been manipulated. The rain was actually fishing wire; the fire was red cellophane; the water was 50 tubes of sexual lubricant, he said.

That also meant the 92-minute film took 57 weeks to shoot, working almost seven days a week.

A promo from 'Mary and Max'

"It was like making love and being stabbed to death at the same time," Elliot said about tedious filming process. "It was like watching paint dry."

The film's old-school stop-motion animation techniques were, however, helped along tremendously by modern day technology: Each frame was shot with Canon Digital SLR still image cameras, which capture raw images in a 4K motion-picture resolution. Cutting-edge software allowed the filmmakers to get instant feedback on shots. And an innovative post-production content management system was also used and designed especially for the film.

Still, what drives Mary and Max is the story, which Elliot said was based on his own "pen friend" who he has been writing for more than two decades and to whom he dedicated the film.

This is Elliot and Coombs' second film at Sundance. Their 2004 Sundance film Harvie Krumpet went on to win the Academy Award for best-animated short film. It was announced Thursday that Mary and Max will also screen at the Berlin International Film Festival in February.

Mary and Max is just the first of 118 feature-length and 96 short films that will premiere at the festival, which runs through January 25 and is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Click here for more stories from Sundance.

The Sundance Institute's decision to open its upcoming film festival with a clay animation flick shines a light on one of the oldest forms of filmmaking--molded with a modern day twist.

Robert Redford's film institute last week announced that the opening night film at its annual festival in January will be Mary and Max, a feature-length movie directed by Australian animator Adam Elliot and produced by Melanie Coombs of Melodrama Pictures. Elliot and Coombs' 2004 Sundance film, Harvie Krumpet, went on to win the Academy Award for best-animated short film.

A promo from 'Mary and Max'

Mary and Max, narrated by Barry Humphries, is described as the tale of two unlikely pen pals: Mary, played by Toni Collette, a lonely 8-year-old girl living in the Melbourne suburbs, and Max, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a 44-year-old severely obese New Yorker with Asperger's syndrome.

The film also has an interesting off-screen story related to technological innovations that have helped bring an old-school laborious, time-consuming filmmaking technique--stop motion animation--into the digital age.

That story starts with a 2 1/2-person Melbourne-based software company called Stop Motion Pro, which launched about eight years ago out of a water-cooler conversation. Company founder Paul Howell showed his colleague Ross Garner, a self-described "backroom boffin," the stop-motion film he had made over the weekend.

In stop-motion, or frame-by-frame animation, an object is physically manipulated by small amounts between individually photographed frames. When the frames are played as a consecutive sequence, it creates the illusion of movement. The technique is very different from computer-generated animation--used in films like Toy Story or Shrek--in which you actually create the animation in the computer itself.

The historical challenge, however, prior to digital formats, has been that stop-motion animators would make all their movements without getting any feedback until the film was sent off to the lab, processed, and returned, sometimes over a matter of days. "You wouldn't know whether you moved the model too much, too little, or whether you had knocked it by accident," Garner said.

Recognizing that problem and realizing that there was no related software on the market, Garner and Howell decided to write their own.

"With Stop Motion Pro, we control the computers," Garner said, explaining that every shot gets recorded into the computer and can be viewed immediately. "So if you've made a mistake or moved too fast, you can see it instantly."

Stop Motion Pro's animation software was used to make the latest Wallace and Gromit movie, scheduled for release on Boxing Day.

(Credit: Stop Motion Pro)

The software (ranging in price from $70 to $1,800 a copy) quickly captured the attention not only of the likes of Aardman Animations, which used Stop Motion Pro in its newest Wallace and Gromit film coming out on Boxing Day, but also of educators and hobbyists.

"What we've created with our product is within two minutes, anyone from 5 years old to 85 years old can create an animated film," Garners said, excited about creating a tool that helps people exploit their creativity. "That works for people like Adam Elliot, who are making spectacular films like Mary and Max, but also applies to the 6-year-old who gets a tremendous amount of joy out of making animated films."

Stop Motion Pro's Ross Garner, left, and Paul Howell on set with Mary and Max director Adam Elliot.

(Credit: Stop Motion Pro)

Mary and Max was filmed using the most recent version of Stop Motion Pro along with the latest generation Canon Digital SLR still image cameras, which capture RAW images in a a 4K motion-picture resolution.

Once captured, the images were then processed using software from Australia-based XDT. They then went through a post-production content management system specifically written for Mary and Max.

The Sundance Film Festival, celebrating its 25th year, will take place from January 15 to 25 in Park City, Utah, and CNET News will be there covering it with an eye for technology. The rest of the festival program lineup will be announced on December 3 and 4.

The latest Internet celebrities, 5-week-old Shiba Inu puppies.

(Credit: Ustream.tv)

I've been wanting to write about the phenomenon of animal Web cams for several years when I first learned that my good friend Susan was addicted to the sea otter cam at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Every time I would see Susan she would regale me with information about her favorite sea otter, Toola. Toola, who often serves as a surrogate mother to stranded otter pups, doesn't like to be weighed on the scale, she only leans on her right side and grooms her fur with both paws and feet, and she is very shy despite assuming center stage in the exhibit.

Then last week, my friend Amy sent me a link to a Web cam trained on a litter of six Shiba Inu puppies. Initially, it didn't seem to be working, probably because the site was getting inundated with traffic as the link went around the Internet.

Two of the six Shiba Inu puppies featured in the Ustream.tv live Web cam.

(Credit: Ustream.tv)

A little bit later, Amy e-mails me: "that puppy thing i sent you is LIVE@@@@ and they are going nuts right now!" Sure enough, the dogs were all playing, three of them tugging on the same toy, others play fighting and falling over each other.

Later that night I got a text message from her: "ALL the puppies are sleeping! All of them."

Amy, a busy nursing student, says she keeps the puppy cam playing on her computer in the background so she can hear the sounds of their toenails on the ground, their grunts and growls and the soft rustling of them chewing on and moving around on blankets.

I asked Susan to explain her obsession with Toola and the other sea otters. "I think I find it comforting that no matter what horrible things are going on in the world, the animals follow their own private rhythms," she wrote in an e-mail.

For the puppy fans, the Web cam gives them an escape from larger world issues and from the monotony of their own lives.

"I was feeling a little lost and bored after the election-I really needed a dose of puppy love! Thanks so much for sharing their lives with us...," wrote a viewer named Sarah in a comment on the Ustream.tv blog.

If Shiba Inus or sea otters aren't your thing there are numerous other animal Web cams that might help keep your mind off the economy:

• From alpacas and chinchillas to elephants and waterfowl, Animal Webcam Locator links to animals and habitats around the world. Another list of Web cams is here.

• The Smithsonian National Zoological Park has Web cams trained on giant pandas, naked mole rats, orangutans, kiwi and octopi, among other animals.

• Africam bills itself as "the world's first virtual game reserve," and offers live "safari" cams. However, the time difference means that what I see during my work day in San Farncisco is dark landscapes. The chirping crickets were nice though.

• When I visited the San Diego Zoo animal cam site the apes were active but the polar bears weren't around.

• National Geographic's WildCam Africa requires a Real Player plug-in.

• American Museum of Natural History has a Live Butterfly Cam.

• You can see cats at The Oregon Humane Society's Portland Petcam and dogs at the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

• SeaWorld's Shamu Cam offers cool underwater footage.

SeaWorld's Shamu Cam has the videocamera under the surface of the water.

(Credit: SeaWorld)