A couple of months ago, when TheCinemaSource started nabbing some exclusive video interviews, I set up our very own YouTube channel (at, predictably, youtube.com/TheCinemaSource). Sure, none of the actors were particularly A-list (or B-list), but over time I was happy to see that people were actually watching them - currently, our interview with Everwood's Gregory Smith has 1,139 views.

To breathe some life into the channel, last night I put up some movie clips that the studios had sent to us as promotional material, for Rambo and Penelope (and a much-lesser-known indie movie we're helping to promote called Military Intelligence and You!). In order to get our name out there, I wanted to watermark each video with "TheCinemaSource.com" in the lower right corner. Problem was, I have no editing software, and besides, all the clips were Windows-unfriendly .mov files.

What to do? I finally found a free online format converter (media-convert.com), switched all the videos to either .avi or .wmv, then imported them into Windows Movie Maker, a ridiculously limited video editing program, but the only one I had since it comes bundled with Vista. It doesn't even let you place text anywhere you want - I had to pretend "TheCinemaSource.com" was a "subtitle" in order to get it to the bottom of the screen, and then luckily I was able to right-justify it.

Victory! All the movie clips (except one screw-up) are now stamped with TheCinemaSource.com, and when somebody watches a clip, the URL will get burned into their brain without even realizing it. Will this give us any sizeable traffic boost? Probably not, but it puts our name out there, people actually watch them (it's been less than a day, and most of the new clips already have 50+ views) and at least I actually accomplished something tangible while messing around on my computer for once.

So anyway, if you're a big YouTube user, you should subscribe to TheCinemaSource's channel, because I'll be putting up movie clips regularly and video interviews whenever we do them. (It's a long shot, but it's conceivable we could get one with Rosario Dawson.) Because who doesn't love watching random movie clips out of context? See for yourself: