You may (or may not) recall that in my opening salvo on this blog I specifically said that I was interested in reviewing online video for the sake of promoting the medium – not just the big professional producers, but especially because I wanted to give the average Joes and Janes of this medium some well-deserved attention.  And I’ve done that, for the most part. I’d say that my ratio of pros – to – amateurs has been in keeping with that idea.

But today, I’m going to be talking about the pros…some serious pros. I don’t have to introduce Stephan King. I don’t have to introduce Marvel Comics or CBS.

Some of you might remember that King used the net in 2000 to further his love of serialized story telling (remember the Green Mile?) to release a made-for-the-online-medium story called “Riding the Bullet“.  This time he’s telling a story using online video, and the story is called “N“.

Let’s be clear here. This is a marketing tool. The story is one of several which are to be published in his forthcoming story collection “Just After Sunset” to be released in November of this year (2008 for all you time travellers). It also is being used to promote the graphic novel that Marvel is putting out about this story.

Ok, so now that we got that upfront and taken care of, let’s look at the videos. The story is told in 25 segments (5 episodes a week for 5 weeks), each about 2 minutes or less. Making much use of the Ken Burns effect, are actually a pimped-for-video graphic novel. When I first saw this, I thought to myself, “not interesting.” I was wrong. It’s actually quite good.

The the “production values” are excellent. Thesound is eerie and I love how the static pictures are brought to life with a kind of 3D and with the subtle use of movement (using episode 1 for example: the TV in the background flickers, the shadows on the Doctor’s face lightening, the tear running down the narrator’s face).

I’ll admit it, I’m hooked. I’m certainly sticking around for the full 25 episodes -and isn’ it really cool that you can download and watch these on your phone? I think so….but I’m almost 40 so that’s like space age technology to me.

the Bottom Line:

This is an excellent use of online video for marketing, but even more so to tell a compelling story. 5 out of 5 stars.