The activity online in offering services for independent filmmakers is hotting up. YouTube has announced their Screening Room where a selection of four films, chosen by an expert panel, will feature each week. But it’s not quite a free for all to post your films up on the site.

But if chosen, the benefits are immense. As well as the prestige of being selected and sharing screen space with Oscar winners, ie. “I Met The Walrus” from Josh Raskin, there are the financial rewards.

In a similar fashion to Bebo, YouTube will share the advertising revenue generated by a film’s popularity. So it pays to exploit the established YouTube audience to make a few extra dollars. Quite a few dollars more actually; YouTube quotes that a million viewers could generate a few thousand dollars a month.

Additionally, filmmakers can opt in to sell DVDs of their films from the YouTube profile page.

Mydeo.com, founded by Cary Marsh, offers high quality video hosting for films up to 90 minutes in length. They differ from YouTube in that they are not an entertainment channel but offer a service for private or business users to share video. From her LinkedIn profile, Marsh states the benefits of Mydeo as:

• They offer statistics in order for you to see how popular your videos are
• Videos can be played in widescreen format
• There is no additional compression so the original video quality and resolution is retained
• Your film appears in an advertising-free zone
• No Mydeo-branded content appears on the video

There is however a charge for this service; around $15(AUS) a month to stream videos of 90 minutes duration.

For those in need of good quality music for your production, US musician Moby is generously offering royalty-free compositions for independent filmmakers and students. For commercial releases there are different licences which apply. But what a breakthrough for acquiring rich and professionally-produced music for your next project. See the video at YouTube.

Lacking a production management space? Then LoftCity might be your answer. This online film studio is a community where you can find cast and crew, collaborate with the inbuilt script and storyboard tool, build your project profile by adding production schedules, scripts and other materials for the crew. The showreel showcase space could facilitate pre-release audience feedback as well as gaining exposure. The exciting feature is the distribution channels on offer. They have already garnered distribution agreements with Buzzwire, providers of media content to US mobile carriers, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless, and Joost, an internet TV platform. LoftCity is still in its infancy but has 5000 filmmakers from around the globe. Not bad for five months’ work.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

On Tuesday last week, after an application and judging process lasting several weeks, where TechCrunch UK, Doug Richard (Dragon’s Den), UK Trade Invest, Oli Barrett and Polecat all put their heads together to work out which of the many applicants could most realistically do meaningful business in the US, TechCrunch announced the 20 companies selected for Web Mission 08, and GroupSpaces was on the list (at the top)!

The judges also assessed the companies based on their business viability and the strength of their management team, and it’s going to be fantastic for Andy and my credibility now that we’ve successfully run this gauntlet.

Sponsors Heller Ehrman issued a statement saying:

“The sheer volume of applicants provides convincing evidence of the depth and breadth of emerging growth technology companies in the UK. The shortlist of companies selected demonstrates that the UK is able to produce credible web businesses.”

As the mouthwatering agenda takes shape, this is building up to be one of the most exciting weeks of my life, and it all starts on April 19th.

We’ll be staying at the Clift Hotel in Union Square, San Francisco, and the hotel is home to the Redwood Rooms, a plush bar we first visited with Kirill Makharinsky last year.

The week kicks off with cocktails sponsored by TechCrunch on the evening of Saturday 19th, followed by a few days hardcore networking with Valley start-ups and VCs. On Wednesday we’ll have the chance to attend the Web 2.0 Expo, and that evening we’ll be having drinks with Michael Birch at Bebo (or should that be AOL?). Thursday contains some PR, accounting and legal masterclasses then we’ll be flying back home on Friday.

Picking up on Michael though – he’s a fantastic example of what British entrepreneurs can achieve. Having graduated from Imperial College London with a Physics degree in 1991, he’s now just sold a $850M company. And when you think that Bear Stearns is selling for $236M, that ain’t bad.

Hopefully Brent Hoberman and Michael will be just the first of a long line of highly successful British Internet entrepreneurs. Is the next one going on Web Mission?

The final list of 20 companies is (in the order TechCrunch listed them):

GroupSpaces – Web-based tools for groups

Tioti – A social network around TV

Exabre (TheFilter) – Advanced music recommendation

Coull – Interactive video platform

Zogix – Employee services platform

Byteplay (dotHomes) – Real estate search engine

Trampoline Systems – Enterprise software harnessing social behaviour

Hubdub – News prediction social network

WAYN – travel and lifestyle social networking community

TrustedPlaces – Venue recommendation network

Slicethepie – Enabling bands to raise money directly from their fans

Mydeo – Mainstream application for storing and sharing video

Skimbit – Research and share decisions

Huddle – Enterprise 2.0 collaboration

Rummble – Mobile social networking and recommendation

Zebtab – Desktop TV application

Silobreaker – Contextual and graphic search results

Kwiqq – Social Website builder

edocr – Making business documents interactive

ShortFuze – Online movie creation tools for social networks

We already know Douglas at Byteplay and we did some filming with Alicia from Skimbit at the BBC recently; however I’m really looking forward to meeting another 17 awesome companies next month.

Doug Richard said:

“some of these companies are as good as anything coming out of the Valley”

So as Mike Butcher entitled the post on TechCrunch.com – The British are Coming. America – watch out!

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