Normally, I avoid these “year in review” type articles as I don’t really keep tabs on everything that happened over the year. However, 2008 turned out to be strange year for EyeCraveDVD.com as it migrated from a DVD information site into a full fledge entertainment site. November of 2008 saw EyeCraveDVD.com grow into Eye Crave Network.
I’ll get into why we moved to Eye Crave Network in a bit, but first let’s start off January where, at the very first Warner Home Video event of the year, we marked an extremely sad event in film. It was the same day as the death of Heath Ledger.
February saw the death of HD DVD in the Hi-Def battle making rival format Blu-ray the main contender to fight DVD (Good luck with that). In all honestly, once you go hi-def, you’ll never go back.
Later in the year, with the addition of Ed Goodsmith to the team, we were able to attend more conventions including the New York Comic-Con and Wonder-Con. We also offered up more interviews then any previous year, including another stellar red carpet event aboard the USS Midway in San Diego.
The San Diego Comic-Con also turned out to be one of the best times I had this year. Not only did I meet and chat with the Stan Lee, I also met Jim Lee, no relation, one of my favourite comic artists.
We had more interviews than I could shake a stick at, including many animated features, the cast of Stargate Continuum, Lost Boys 2, Starship Troopers 3, and even managed to bump into Dwayne Johnson while waiting for my next interview and Allison Mack while out to dinner. All-in-all, it was a wonderful time.
Of course, San Diego would have been an impossible venture had it not been for another successful Moviethon. With this years addition of Corporate sponsorship we were able to make our goal. A big congratulations goes to Warner Bros for securing a spot in our Moviethon. Hopefully the tradition of “making good people watch bad movies” will continue to be a success for us over the coming years.
Now, lets talk Network. Last year I hired a developer to produce a new backend for posting reviews to the site, while I worked on the sites new look and interface. Finally, in November I decided to move forward without the review portion for a few reasons. The old software could not accomodate the new direction, or stop the consistant hacking thanks to the numerous holes the old software had, and also, I still didn’t have anything from the developer… Go figure.
The idea of the Network blossomed in 2007 when we started receiving games for review, and added movie reviews to our system. While there is still a lot of work to be done to get the site to the levels I know it can reach, the Eye Crave Network is on track to have its best year ever in 2009.
Not everything was all sunshine and roses last year however. We still have a huge backlog of titles waiting to be reviewed. We need more writers. Reliable people with a flair for writing and a love of movies… (sound like you? Drop me a line in the ‘contact us’ section). The software development, as previously mentioned, has yet to flower, despite original projections of being finished for February of LAST YEAR. There are several other issues to deal with, but that story is for another time.
Thanks to everyone who visited EyeCraveDVD.com and Eye Crave Network last year and continue to support us over 2009 and beyond.
