Generally speaking, Cannes is considered the grand-mère of all film festivals. For 11 days every spring, the cinematic world descends on this beach town in the south of France to celebrate everything film, from the lowest-budget student shorts to the summer's biggest blockbusters.

Starting today and for the next 11 days, we'll be featuring a diverse selection of content from the French Riviera in our Film & Animation section, including industry panels from the Short Film Corner and the 2008 Real Ideas Studio Community Documentary Challenge, which consists of short works from the best student documentarians.

Finally, what would the world's most glamorous festival be without coverage from the red carpet, courtesy of IFC? With Clint Eastwood, Charlie Kaufman and Steven Soderbergh in the running for the prestigious Palme d'Or prize, and world premieres from Stephen Spielberg and Woody Allen, there should be plenty to talk about.

So tune in to YouTube throughout the festival and get those cameras rolling. Whether you were there or not, we want to hear your perspectives on Cannes -- the films, the fashions, the French fabulousness!

Happy Festival-going,
Sara P.
YouTube Film

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Today is Pangea Day, a global event dedicated to bringing people together through film. With its eclectic mix of movies, live music and passionate speakers, Pangea Day aims to help us see life through the eyes of others. There are live events taking place right now in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro.

But don't worry if you live far from any of these cities or couldn't make the actual festivities: On today's YouTube homepage, you'll find a sampling of the 24 short films being featured in the Pangea Day program. Selected by Pangea Day's international competition from over 2,500 submissions from over 100 countries - many of which came from YouTubers heeding last year's call for entries - these films inform and inspire, and provide a taste of what this event is all about.



Pangea Day has also set up an official YouTube group for you to share your thoughts about the videos on the homepage. And if you were able to make it to one of the live broadcasts, then go on and tell us about that, too.

Be inspired,

Sara P.
YouTube Film

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The Short Film Corner at Cannes is one of the world's premier destinations for shorts. But you don't need to make the trip to France to see the best of what the festival has to offer, thanks to the National Film Board of Canada's Online Film Competition Cannes 2008.

In its fourth year, the contest features ten shorts, selected from among 650 films from over 40 countries. Representing an eclectic mix of languages and genres, the finalists are all available for viewing on the NFB's YouTube channel. The prize? In addition to bragging rights, the director of the winning short film will receive a professional DV camera and a portable computer with post-production software.

Ready for the best part? You determine the winner. That's right -- the winning film will be chosen by audience voting, based on the one-to-five-star rating scale you know and love.



Film jurors, it's time to cast your votes.

Sara P.
YouTube Film

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Updates made to the Inbox and My Contacts features are now live for all YouTube users. After announcing the beta launch for these features a couple of weeks ago, we made some changes to the Inbox based on your feedback. Now mini-thumbnails appear on the list of messages for video responses and videos users have shared with you. Also, the link to view all comments has been restored in email notifications for comments made to your videos and responses to comments of your own.

We'd really like to hear what you think about the newest versions of Inbox and My Contacts, so please share your feedback with us via video, email or leave a comment on this blog.

The YouTube Team

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In case you hadn't noticed the athletes sprinting, crawling and vaulting all over our homepage today: we're happy to present videos of the growing sport of parkour, selected by Julie Angel aka SlamCamSpam. Julie is a London-based filmmaker who has been documenting the sport for the past four years, mainly with an organization called Parkour Generations -- a team of incredible athletes based in London, including some first- and second-generation parkour practitioners, dedicated to teaching and displaying the sport.

So, what is parkour? Dan Edwardes, a member of Parkour Generations describes it this way:

"Parkour is the art of moving through your environment using only your body and the surroundings to propel yourself. It can include running, jumping, climbing, even crawling, if that is the most suitable movement for the situation. Parkour could be grasped by imagining a race through an obstacle course, the goal is to overcome obstacles quickly and efficiently, without using extraneous movement."

Parkour traces its origins to Lisses, France, and a soldier named Raymond Belle, who worked to develop efficient methods "to reach or escape." He handed down these lessons to his son David Belle, who has spent a majority of his young (34) life working on these principles, and is featured in one of Julie's 12 selections. The sport, or discipline, has drawn on myriad sources, been inspired by a number of notable individuals and evolved through several traditions to arrive at the modern iteration known as parkour. The sport's beauty and broad appeal may lie in the fact that it's not that different from what we all did as children: run, jump, roll. Parkour turns our confining concrete landscapes into a big playground.

We couldn't help notice the rising profile of parkour on our site and are proud to play a role in spreading it worldwide. The sport's bounding popularity is growing, in part, thanks to the spread of online video sharing, and, well, YouTube. Parkour may be the first such sport in history to have this symbiotic relationship with online video.

We hope this inspires you to learn more. Before you go running into the street, though, please understand that parkour can be dangerous if not practiced correctly, please seek experienced trainers and practice diligently!

Allez!
Andrew B.
YouTube Sports

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Back in March, we announced an exciting partnership between The Vancouver Film School and YouTube to award full-tuition scholarships to three YouTubers from around the world. The May 9 deadline for the competition is now 10 days away, so consider this your final (gentle) reminder to enter.

The Vancouver Film School's motto is "Results Matter," so we challenged you to create a short film, animation or creative pitch addressing the theme "What Matters To You" and to name the Vancouver Film School program you wished to attend. The competition is open to filmmakers, directors, actors, writers, animators – anyone who can seem themselves benefiting from programs like Acting Essentials, Classical Animation, Digital Design, Film Production and Writing for Film and Television (to see the full list, visit www.vfs.com).

For those of you who still haven't entered, here are some thoughts to consider. First, this competition is about finding students with creativity and drive, not with a perfect set of skills. If you already knew how to make a film, write a screenplay or design a game, why would you be going to school? So don't be intimidated by the competition - if you have a great idea, express it!

Second, this competition isn't about why you want to go to Vancouver Film School. It's about what matters to you in the world. Is it family? Is it peace? Is it the environment? Is it love? Is it travel? Tell us a story through your film, animation or pitch, and let this question inspire you. If your work shows you have creativity and drive, you could find yourself in the top 10. The YouTube community will then vote for three winners.

It's not often you get a chance to go to a prestigious, international film school for free, so stop reading this blog and start creating. You have 10 days left!

Good luck!

Sara P.
YouTube Film

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Last month, we posted about our efforts to make YouTube as open as possible and shared a few examples of partners who were integrating YouTube content into their applications. Today, we'd like to point out another example.

Google Docs is a free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application that allows you to share and collaborate with others in real-time. The Docs team just announced on their blog that you can now search for and insert YouTube videos into your presentation slides. This means that you'll be able to insert your favorite videos in your presentations and play them to your audience when you're giving your presentations.

To see this new feature in action, check out this published presentation.

Haven't heard of Docs? Watch this video that explains what Google Docs is in plain English:



The YouTube Team

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You don't have to wait 'til November to cast your vote on YouTube. In fact, the polls close on April 15th for the most fiercely contested battle in the world of comedy video – Sketchies 2.

After the community voted for your favourite semi-finalists, a short list of ten have grappled with the concept of "living the dream," and come out laughing. Indubitably so, some might say. To see how our finalists worked the word "indubitably" into ten distinctly different sketches, you can check out this Sketchies 2 playlist.

For a video rundown on Sketchies 2, we turn this blog post over to last year's winners, Awkward Pictures, who somehow manage to keep smiling despite the fact that this year's prize is much bigger than last year's.



Sketchies isn't the only time of year you'll see great sketch comedy on YouTube, but in this second year of a growing tradition we've seen new faces and established talent take their comedy to new levels. If you want to have your say in this full-on comedic face-off, head on over to the official Sketchies 2 channel and give your favourite videos the thumbs-up (yes, you can vote for more than one entry).

Like most comedians, our finalists are clearly eager for your approval. Your votes really do make all the difference, and cut down on future therapy bills.

Cheers,
Mark D.
YouTube Comedy

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Some very cool new features have just been unveiled on YouTube, check 'em out...

VIDEO SHARING IMPROVEMENTS

We revamped the video watch page by adding more sharing features and a new streamlined design to the Share, Favorite, Playlists and Flag sections. We now show some top social sharing sites directly on the video watch page, making it easier for you to share your favorite videos with your network. These top sites are also personalized based on your usage - so if you Digg more often than you Facebook, Digg will show up instead. Video comments and responses have also been reorganized into a "Commentary" tab, including thumbnails for video responses and a handy scroll bar for easier navigation. The new "Statistics & Data" tab houses collapsible sections for recent ratings, video honors and sites linking to that video.

ADVANCED SEARCH OPTIONS

New advanced search options are now available anywhere you see a search field on YouTube. Just click "advanced search" to choose the results you want, based on different key word combinations such as exact phrases, all words, excluding certain words, etc.. You can also hone down your results further to find videos matching specific upload criteria like language, category, date uploaded, duration of video, as well as videos uploaded within a specific time period (i.e. "This Month, "This Week" and "Today").

MULTIFILE UPLOADER FOR MAC

When we launched our multifile uploader for Windows PC users last year, we promised to follow it up with a Mac-friendly version. Now Mac users can download the software and access the Multifile Upload page where you can upload several videos at once. Each video may be up to 10 minutes in length and up to 1GB in size, and all will be available in My Videos after processing.

Now, for the video version of these exciting changes, here's Mr. Pzottolo with this edition of YouTube News:



Keep your eyes peeled for more updates coming soon,
The YouTube Team

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When we announced our free analytics tool called YouTube Insight two weeks ago, we promised to update Insight with new features and information fairly quickly, and we weren't kidding. Today we're releasing a new feature that helps you better understand the viewing trends of your YouTube videos: a discovery tab that shows how viewers found your video, whether by searching on YouTube or Google, browsing under "related videos," receiving a link to the video from an email or website, or watching it in an embedded player off YouTube. Insight even breaks down the specific YouTube or Google search queries that led to your video, as well as the external websites driving traffic to your content. (Insight will show up to 50 inbound links.)

We think you'll find this helpful in several ways. For example, users can learn how different parts of their identity on the web (perhaps their pages on MySpace or Facebook) are effective in driving traffic to their content. Partners can reach out to form relationships with those publishers who consistently point readers to their videos on YouTube. And since advertisers can now access reports detailing the search queries that lead viewers to their videos, they can make more informed decisions about the keywords and bids they select to appear on Google.com.

You can find these new metrics under the "Discovery" tab within the Insight dashboard. Click on the "Insight" button under "Account > My Videos."

As always, we're excited to hear about the many inspired ways in which you'll put Insight's resources to good use. Let us know what you think by commenting below.

The YouTube Team

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