Ever wanted to see a particular moment from a particular movie, but didn’t know where to find either? Maybe you just wanted to win a bet, show your friends, or simply wanted to satisfy your own curiosity, that yes; Steven Seagal did say “I like my tea and biscuits” as Jonathan Cold in The Foreigner.
Well, now you may have a way of doing just that. Simply log on to www.anyclip.com, and experience what the combination of a great idea and modern technology can do for you. By searching metadata using their proprietary SceneSearch algorithm (a sort of contextual search engine) and indexing technology, AnyClip.com is here to help you find “any moment, from any film, ever made, instantly”. Trailers are provided by the Internet Video Archive. Apart from “an internal team working on expanding [their] dataset”, AnyClip has a developed a platform for “movie lovers to contribute AnyClip via the AnyClip Data Project”, by invitation only.
The site was co-founded by Aaron Cohen and Nate Westheimer, who sharing a love for movies joined up with a team of Israeli developers who had similar interests, and set about creating a site that allows “everybody to relive scenes” from their favourite movies in high-quality, while ensuring that “content owners…benefit from [the] Internet distribution”. This was a “formidable challenge”, to be able to find the correct scene from a range of queries that will differ from person to person, even if the moment being searched for is the same. So, how does AnyClip.com intend to give content owners their due? According to Aaron Cohen, every clip (which is limited to a maximum of 4 minutes to avoid copyright issues and maintain site efficiency) will have its own links leading to iTunes or Netflix, allowing the user to purchase these movies if interested. The legality of the entire site is questioned by experts and film industry veterans, who know how “byzantine” the “digital rights marketplace” is, as does Cohen. His says that “for the sake of the movie industry’s wonderful and talented people, and the billions of fans around the world, we certainly hope we can find a way to work within the law to create great opportunities for all”. The company has two other co-founders, investor Erel Margalit, and former Sony America CEO, Mickey Schulhof. It is in Mickey’s hands that the legal responsibility for the site is held, and his presence is a great boon to all at AnyClip.com, as he knows first hand the “upsides and pitfalls of media innovation”. He will also be the “ambassador” of the company to the content folk out there.
So while the site launched on the 15th of March, 2010, six months after its September 15th, 2009 premiere at TechCrunch 50 (where it won the Audience Choice Award), it is still in its beta stages. And though AnyClip.com’s database/archive is growing daily, it has not much over 2000 films to-date, and can by no means be considered an exhaustive collection. So, despite the fact that you will probably not be able to find what you are looking for right now, you will be able to soon enough (we hope).
We’d suggest you sign up anyways, and keep checking on the site’s progress and using its flexible search engine, and who knows, you might just find EXACTLY the right moment, the moment you were looking for. AnyClip.com gives the below easy search options, and also allows for searching and filtering by quotes, actions/situations, objects/things, characters, actors, movies, directors, moment themes, settings/locations, and even motion picture soundtrack. Once you find the video you are looking for, you can watch it, share it (via Facebook, Twitter, mail, and URL) and comment on it. Its auto-complete feature in the top search bar works quite well, letting you see almost everything the site can offer (from quotes to soundtracks) when you type a few words.
AnyClip.com has also released a public API for its data (“and eventually for legally licensed content”) and SceneSearch that will allow developers and internet companies to supplement their own content and data with AnyClip.com’s SceneSearch[ed], metadata parsed, and indexed content.
Given the innumerable options available and the great potential of the platform, AnyClip.com is sure to have a great future, perhaps a bit further down the line then its creators envisioned; that’s if it doesn’t run into any legal blockades or run short of clips. As the technology and platform are still in their beta stages (read infancy), we’ve decided to withhold a complete review as of now, until this service grows. We’ll also do a head-to-head between AnyClip.com and MovieClips.com. Stay tuned.