Studio Ties Bolster Web's Content Sites.

When it comes to the Great Tech Wreck of 2000, Hollywood will long be remembered for the incredible carnage caused when it tried to take its content online. Amid the flop of Pop and the end of DEN, some content-oriented startups like Hypnotic.com and Mediatrip.com are still running strong. Their secret: keep one foot firmly planted offline, preferably on a studio lot.

Hypnotic was conceived in 1999 as a showcase for short films on the Web. Like Atom Films and iFilm.com, the early incarnation of Hypnotic -- then known as Reelshort.com -- confined itself mainly to Internet distribution of independent films and to an advertising-based revenue model.

Then came the handshake with Vivendi Universal's Universal Pictures last March. That transformed Hypnotic into a kind of studio-within-a-studio, with a mission to discover talent, distribute films online and offline and to promote ongoing projects for Universal. As part of the deal, Universal gets a first look at all the material collected by Hypnotic.

"Our decision from the very beginning was to not compete with traditional Hollywood and to figure out ways to work with traditional media companies," said Hypnotic CEO Jeremy Bernard. "That set us apart from many others. Of course, we did it in a much bigger way than we ever imagined by partnering with Universal."

Bernard, a former television and film producer, declined to discuss the financial arrangement with Universal. The studio, he said, holds "a large minority stake."

Universal is hoping that Hypnotic's content library will hold the next big thing -- or, as Bernard says, "the next Tarantino." Unlike iFilm and Atom Films, Hypnotic acquires the rights to all films shown at the site, paying the aspiring filmmakers between $500 and $1,000 for each film -- a modest sum for a "Pulp Fiction."

"Universal executives typically don't have time to check out or develop the kind of work we acquire," Bernard said. "These films are always below their radar."

Not for long.

Film festival

One of the first collaborations with Universal, and one that Bernard said will be repeated annually, kicked off in December with a short-film contest called "The Hypnotic Million Dollar Film Festival." A winner landed a $1 million production deal at Universal. The Hypnotic-Universal contest asked aspiring filmmakers to send in short films. Of the several hundred received, organizers culled 25 finalists. Five of the films were available each week at the Hypnotic site. Visitors to the site rated the films, with the top five passing into the next round. The final five were asked to submit a pitch or script for the feature film they hope to make. A five-member panel, including director Jay Roach and a Universal executive, judged the finals. The finalists' five short films were shown during the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in January.

"Universal's production and distribution resources allow Hypnotic to attract a new generation of filmmakers, while Hypnotic provides us consistent access to those emerging artists," said Stacey Snider, chairman of Universal Pictures, in a statement.

Advertising deals

Hypnotic, which has offices on the Universal lot and in New York City, sold lucrative ad packages around the Million Dollar festival to Sun Microsystems and to Discover Card, according to Bernard.

In addition to getting its hands on a potentially hot script, Universal will also use the Hypnotic site to promote upcoming films by holding online casting calls. Two people were recently selected in an online contest to be extras in Universal's "American Pie 2."

Another offline giant got hypnotized last week when Hypnotic partnered with the Coca Cola Co. to promote "The Coca Cola Refreshing Filmmaker's Award." The program awards $10,000 to the winner of a short-film contest for students from eight film schools, including USC and UCLA. Hypnotic handles the recruiting of the filmmakers and distribution. Coke gets to place ads on the Web site and at the screenings, which will hit 12,000 movie screens nationwide.

Another content-oriented startup that has not only survived the shakeout but seems to be thriving is Santa Monica-based MediaTrip. It has hooked up with Revolution Studios, the company formed last June by former Walt Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth.

Just a day after announcing the formation of Revolution, Roth inked the deal with MediaTrip, making the site Revolution's exclusive in-house venue and testing ground for original Web programming, as well as a major part of its $200 million annual marketing plan to push the studio's movies.

Financial details of the partnership deal were not disclosed.

MediaTrip launched with a splash in November 1999 when it screened the popular short-film "George Lucas in Love." That film broke records when it became the most watched short-film on the Internet, with 150,000 streams in the first three weeks. When the video became available on Amazon.com. it became the first short to occupy the No. 1 sales position at Amazon.com for a brief time, outselling "Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace."

The idea behind the partnership, Roth said at the time, is to encourage producers, directors and talent attached to a project to think about online offerings (online casting calls, behind-the-scenes footage) and original content possibilities (short films, Web-based programming) at the same time.

MediaTrip is headed by President Robert Faust, founder and former executive director of the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, and CEO Austin Harrison, former executive producer at Hollywood.com.