First Full Length Film on YouTube
Four Eyed Monsters, a movie developed out of a video blog, has debuted on YouTube in what is believed to be the first full length feature film on the Google owned mega-site. — According to Marshall Kirkpatrick at Splashcast, the film is a …
Context & Ripple Effects
Four Eyed Monsters began life as a video blog, and its creators are now using the format they built it in as the release mechanism — putting the finished feature up free on [[a:none|YouTube]], the Google-owned site built around short clips. TechCrunch credits Marshall Kirkpatrick at Splashcast with flagging the significance: this is believed to be the first full-length feature film ever posted on the service.
The milestone matters because YouTube's entire model in mid-2007 is short-form user uploads under Google's ownership; a single feature-length work tests whether the platform can carry cinema-scale content, and gives an independent production a worldwide premiere without a distributor.
First-order effects
- Four Eyed Monsters' creators get a free, global distribution channel that skips theatrical exhibitors and DVD gatekeepers entirely, premiering directly to YouTube's audience.
- YouTube, owned by Google, hosts its first known full-length feature, pushing the site past its short-clip format for the first time.
Second-order effects
- Other independent filmmakers now have a visible template — build an audience through a video blog, then release the finished film on the same platform — pressuring traditional distributors to justify their role in small releases.
- Hollywood rights-holders and advertisers will be watching whether feature-length viewing on YouTube proves out, since it determines whether long-form content belongs in the ad-supported clip economy.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, YouTube drifts from clip-sharing site toward general-purpose video distributor, and the industry's release-window structure has to make room for web-first independent premieres alongside theatrical and home-video launches.
The trend: Film distribution is beginning to migrate toward free web video platforms, with YouTube probing how far a short-form clip site can stretch to carry feature-length content.