We’re Just Getting Blipin’ Started

There’s something electric about creating something out of nothing.

A few years ago, when we were looking for a place to put our newly-created series, Break a Leg, we found Blip.tv. Oh, sure, we put the show wherever we could — and sites like YouTube and Metacafe and Revver (may they rest in peace) served their purpose — but something about Blip.tv was different.

It wasn’t that you could personally talk to any of them (right from Mike Hudack, the CEO, and down), it wasn’t that they were the little guys fighting an uphill battle that they certainly would lose (or so I thought), it wasn’t even that they were from New York, and therefore hipper than everyone else. It was that — when those other sites catered to low-budget, poorly-shot, amateur of amateur video (your Sleeping Cats, your Embarrassed High Schoolers, your People Getting Hurt in Amusing Ways), Blip catered to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of filmmakers yearning to create anything other than a cat playing piano.

Blip was on the forefront of something that didn’t have a front. Blip was the cutting edge of a dull block of bad content. Blip was so ahead of their time that when I uploaded Break a Leg on it, I thought — wow, what a cool company,

I bet they’ll be out of business soon!

You see, at the time, online video was the guerilla warfare of art, it wasn’t about razzling or dazzling, it wasn’t about creating magic, it was about running out of the metaphorc trees, creating something as fast as humanely possible, throwing it at people,and hoping it spread like plague. Online video was the polio blanket of art.

But not on Blip. Their video player was higher quality than anyone else’s. Their shows were… well, shows. And while a very pretty girl at Metacafe told us very prettily, “Nobody watches content above one hundred and forty seconds,” Blip was waving their hands wildly and saying, “We do! We do! And everyone else will too, just trust us.”

And we did. And it was the best thing that we could have done. For my company, both because of their support of our shows and when we started working more personally with Evan Gotlib (their lovable, curmudgeon-ey head of Sales who is responsible for us being able to not only eat, but for me to not only afford a car but crash it) and the entire web community.

There’s a reason that over 400 people showed up to the Blip.tv launch party on Thursday. Because Blip.tv helped make thiscommunity. Blip.tv catered to creators. Blip.tv offered solace to those of us who saw the potential of this genre by pushing us to push ourselves to push that envelope to push this art where it needed to be pushed. Hell, Blip.tv is this community, and much like us, it started as a fledgling stubborn little company with a fledgling stubborn little dream and now, when web shows are starting to finally make some money, when quality is becoming King, when any TV, Film and Ad executive with an ounce of brain is trying to find out how the hell to get into this world — Blip.tv is expanding and opening an LA office. Blip.tv is this community — and when they’re doing well, it means we’re all doing well too.

There’s something electric about creating — and there was something electric about the Blip party. It had that new art smell, (what Charlie Chaplin must have smelled when he was busy revolutionizing film), it had that feeling of creation that very few people get to experience together. Sure, writing a great script or painting a great painting can feel damn near divine, but who gets to say they were there when a new genre was created?

We all do — and there’s a camaraderie in that that we’ll all be remembering for the rest of our lives.

…or maybe… maybe I’m just being unnecessarily mushy after drinking 600 Blip Bergamots and being told lovingly that I look like a serial killer by Zadi Diaz… who knows anymore?

See you all at “Blip London” in 2012!