The first feature-length film has been launched on YouTube. No, it isn’t a big-budget Hollywood film, but it is interesting nonetheless.

The film, made by the duo behind the Four Eyed Monsters video blog is 71 minutes long (yeah, it’s a pretty short feature length), so they recommend at the beginning that you let it load for a bit first so there are no hiccups during playback.

I see something like this as being absolutely perfect for the new Apple TV/YouTube relationship. It just doesn’t feel quite right watching a feature length movie in a few hundred pixel wide window (though it is very cool being able to embed a full movie on any site you want), but you absolutely cannot beat the distribution method in terms of speed of delivery to a potentially huge audience.

The quality of this film is pretty decent, but I wonder how it would look on a big screen HD TV via streaming to the Apple TV? If Apple in the process of converting of all YouTube videos to h.264 could improve the quality for a big screen even slightly, I’d say than the move would be well worth it.

I certainly hope this new distribution method for indie films takes off on YouTube. Perhaps if it does, Google could even start including the filmmakers in their advertising kickback partner programs – in effect making YouTube the de facto ‘mini-indie’ movie studio.

[via TechCrunch]