YouTube: An Intimate Guide to Free Entertainment

In celebration of having reached my 500th pageview and the one month anniversary of starting Cinema 13 I thought I'd pay tribute to YouTube. Well no, that's not entirely true. 

YouTube is an incredible entertainment platform where we can watch music videos, vlogs, demonstrations and for people like me; trailers, promos, film clips and at times films themselves.   

This is "The Failure We Call Copyright"

An exposition of films and T.V series' found on YouTube

Hours of boredom and intrigue for a 21st century teenager can only lead to one thing: overcompensation via the internet. Having minimal internet download and access - YouTube was a common solace for the duration of my high school years. It is for this reason that I am aware of every single T.V show and film available for my viewing on the website. I have since picked up a distinct pattern of the types of films and television series on which copyright has primarily failed to protect. 

The cast of Skins (generation 1)

Type One: THE BRITISH 

I am unsure if this is due to the British entertainment business simply not caring or if their copyright is just incredibly weak and useless. But not only one copy of nearly every imaginable television series lands itself on youtube, but multiple uploads can be found, with an assortment of languages, resolutions and subtitles. This has no doubt harboured a particular fondness of the British film industry for me - a beautiful dry, almost crude and sarcastic sort've humour and the best type of sentimental drama without being clichéd - a feat rare amongst the US film and television industry 

TV SHOWS: Skins, (some) Misfits, The Inbetweeners', Shameless, Fresh Meat, The Paradise, Drop Dead Gorgeous, My Mad Fat Diary, Drifters, Emma (BBC), Daniel Deronda, Little Dorrit, Cranford, Lark Rise to Candleford, (some) Downton Abbey, Lost in Austen

FILMS: Cherrybomb, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, Killing Bono, Madame Bovary, Chalet Girl, St Trinians 1 & 2, Mansfield Park

Chloe Grace Mortez in the 2011 indie flick Hick.

Type Two: THE INDEPENDENT

A large variety of independent films can be found on YouTube. These often low-budget films distinguished by their unique style, film festival appearances and quite commonly, a cast of little-known, yet seasoned and veritable actors. These films are often make or break: either unbearable to watch or true treasures of the cinema   

FILM: Silver Linings Playbook, Struck By Lightning, Stuck In Love, The First Time, Hick, The Yellow Handkerchief, The Bling Ring, Spring Breakers, Sleeping Beauty, After School 

The unjustifiably terrible film Just Friends

Type Three: THE BAD

This, of all three categories, seems the most justified. If it's so terrible that no one wants to watch it, then why bother spending money in protecting it? These humourless often direct-to-DVD films with terrible scripts and appalling use of CGI, not to mention boring or nonsensical plots are found in great numbers on YouTube. If the reviews are terrible and it bombs out of the box office then you know it will inevitably wind up on the website. Lifetime films are in their abundance on Youtube, having been shown once on television and then all hope of copyright protection abandoned.    

FILM: The Host, Just Friends, Shark Boy and Lava Girl, Dirty Teacher, P.S. I Love You, Sydney White, Bratz: The Movie, Letters to Juliet, Beauty and the Briefcase, Radio Rebel, Teen Spirit, The Cat In The Hat 

Youtube is swarming with hundreds of films and seasons of television shows. With a DVD priced at over $20 and movie tickets at around the same in Australia, authorities need not wonder why copyright infringement is so common. Entertainment is criminally expensive. As a film lover I endeavour to support the industry but if it does continue down this road, then the industry is no doubt digging its own grave. 

I will be posting two reviews next week: one on "Philomena" and the other on "Her" or possibly "The Book Thief". 

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