The UK’s Factory Media LTD, the parent company of Surfer’s Path, Kingpin, Onboard, Surf Europe and 10 other action sports magazine titles is launching a video channel called Mpora.tv today according to a story on Marketing Week UK.
The channel, which launches in the UK today (4 August), is set to extend across Europe during the year. The launch is intended to supplement the user-generated video website Mpora.com and is aimed at expanding its core audience to include mainstream viewers.
Nothing like video to bring in that mythical “mainstream viewer” huh? Guess we can add Mpora to the growing list of action sports video crapragators because it doesn’t look like they’re doing anything new.
According to the press release “New Emissions of Light and Sound, Globe’s most recent surf film release, was honored with the “Most Innovative Film” Award at the 2008 Huntington Beach Surf Theatre Film Festival. The event, in it’s 6th year, is hosted by Big Red Productions, following their week long Surf Theater during the US Open of Surfing, and is a big honor for all filmmakers involved.”
New Emissions was nominated in three categories, including Best Corpo Film and Best Cinematography, but took home the big prize for Most Innovative Film. . . . “Winning the Most Innovative Film award is the ideal award for what we set out to achieve in making this film,” said the film’s director Joe G. “Combining an originally scored electronic soundtrack from DJ Sasha, with our Super 16mm film was always going to produce something different than most of the films put out today. We’re just happy that the response to the combination has been so positive.”
Hey look: another movie about stoned surfers. Starring stoned actor Matthew McConaughey and his stoned celebrity friends. Here’s what New York Magazine has to say about it:
Really, though, this looks less like a movie and more like a ploy to have someone else foot the weed bill for a summer (thanks, Anchor Bay!); he and his friends (including Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson) appear to be doing pretty much all the things you assume they do when cameras aren’t rolling (it’s unclear if any of them knew they were acting in a film). Even so, to a daydreaming employee in an East Coast office governed by an Orwellian mandatory shirt-wearing ordinance, this actually sort of looks like stupid, Netflixable fun.
Shaun Tomson’s autobiographical surf film Bustin’ Down The Door (narrated by Edward Norton) hits three theaters in Southern California and one theatre in Honolulu next week.
Shaun will be present at each of these screenings and other stars from the movie including Mark Richards, Ian Cairns, Rabbit Bartholomew and Peter Townend will be in attendance for some of them as well.
Following the February Transworld Business site relaunch, TransWorld Surf has redesigned their website and pushed it up on the free WordPress MUplatform. Web 2.0 has arrived and it looks even busier than it did before.
Cruise around the site and then let us know what you think. We’ll do the same.
After one year at the helm of Water Magazine, writer and editor Joel Patterson has left to become editor-in-chief at Surfer Magazine, according to sources close to the deal.
Former Surfer Editor Chris Mauro will reportedly be transitioning into the position of global editor at the end of August, and Patterson will officially step in on September 1, 2008.
Patterson, the former editor of Transworld Skateboarding and Transworld Surf, brings a boatload of editing experience to the task. We’re looking forward to seeing what he does with the surf world’s “bible.”
Visitors to the Transworld Media website today were greeted by a list of stories featuring “Amateur Porn Teens,” and a long list of “Recent Articles” with links to the following (NSFW) page: http://rfdantos.transworld.net/.
The site appears to be offering up user generated content and hancock plot twist (probably a bot) looks to have taken advantage. Ouch. (Not safe for work screen shot after the jump). Apparently, anyone can sign up right here.
The new ad campaign for the Summer X Games features an evil overlord named Darkmane (a featured member at Vitalskate.com, way to go Brad) who wants to destroy the X Games and convince people not to watch them. His plan, ironically, is to kill all the creativity involved with the X Games athletes by creating rules and regulations and forcing all athletes to wear uniforms.
The X Games universe it about to get the proverbial beat down Darkmane style. I will crush originality at the X games with conformity and these new heavily starch heather gray athletic uniforms.
Aside from the fact that ESPN already did Darkmane’s job for him years ago and the reality that the athletes are wearing uniforms more corporately emblazoned than a NASCAR racecar, we don’t really get what The Martin Agency was going after with this campaign.
Maybe being based in the action sports mecca of Richmond, Virginia has a little something to do with their misguided sense of pseudo insider irony, but they seem to have forgotten that this event is one of the least creative, most corporately controlled sporting events this side of the WWE. And to point that out to kids in advertising messages seems, well, almost retarded.
Then again, if the whole point of the Darkmane ads is to discredit and make fun of any form of credible judging or authentic competition in the minds of the audience and just let the event producers choose winners based on which athletes have the highest Q score, then maybe, just maybe Darkmane is genius advertising.
Either way, the guy’s got us convinced: we’re not watching.
The UK’s Factory Media LTD, the parent company of Surfer’s Path, Kingpin, Onboard, Surf Europe and 10 other action sports magazine titles is launching a video channel called Mpora.tv today according to a story on Marketing Week UK.
