• by Shankar Gupta , February 26, 2007

While viewers were tuned into the Oscars last night, IFILM created a show of its own and provided the tools for bloggers to do so as well.

The site offered a host of video content surrounding the event, including trailers of nominated films along with past winners, interviews with stars, and brief documentaries on the history of the Oscars.

An Academy Awards Blogger Tool Kit gave convenient access to embed codes for bloggers to create their own Oscar-related content and packages.

The site included trailers and interviews from all the pictures nominated for the major awards--Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director--as well as trailers for films dating back to 1935.

The content was culled from IFILM's library of video clips by the site's editorial team.

"This is IFILM content that was packaged in a fresh way," said Lowell Goss*, IFILM's senior vice president of user experience. "We have a content and editorial staff that is trolling our database of videos, so unlike a YouTube or a Metacafe, we provide this extra layer of not just convenience, but also fun and packaging."

Much of the content hosted by IFILM focuses on the history of the Oscars--a conscious nod to the Academy Awards' promotion strategy this year, Goss said. The outdoor ads feature quotes from old Oscar winners that have become catch phrases, like "E.T. Phone Home" from "E.T." and "What we have here is a failure to communicate" from "Cool Hand Luke."

Sponsors on the Oscars page include Comedy Central's Laffapalooza '07 and the upcoming Warner Bros. historical epic "300." Other IFILM advertisers include AOL, AT&T, Budweiser, Red Stripe, Verizon, and NBC.

* The spelling of this name was changed after the story was posted.