For those of you not familiar with Festivus, VidLit(Tilzy.TV Page), the production company that brings text to life with quirky, imaginative pieces of the same name (see What IS a VidLit?), brings a description of the un-holiday. This VidLit, inspired by a book and website on Festivus by Allen Salkin, is a nice starting point for the Festivus novice.
I am fortunate to have celebrated (observed?) Festivus with purists, and I’m proud to say that I pinned the head of the household during the “Feats of Strength.”
“Festivus is the perfect nothing that avoids excluding anyone,” and this piece captures its pointed absurdity.
Based out of Austin, Texas, a city well-known for its cinephiles (like the nerd-mavens of Aintitcool), Spill delivers weekly-updated movie reviews of the latest theatrical releases. The format is free-form discussion with on-the-cheap animated characters: Korey, Cyrus, Leon, Caryle and floating robot head Co-Host 3000.
The site was launched in May of 2007 on the Ning social networking platform by Miva Inc., a digital advertising and media company, in a naked attempt to reach the 18-34 male demographic.
The Spill style of movie review is a seemingly free-flowing discussion between two, three or four animated characters, tightly edited to no longer than six minutes. But make no mistake, the characters of the Spill Crew take their jobs seriously, even Co-Host 300, and give both gut reactions and cautioned analysis to each film. Semi-raunchy humor and good-natured ribbing occurs between crew members.
The rating system ranges from “Same Old Bullshit” to the highest honor of “Better Than Sex.” For a rogue’s gallery, The Spill Crew shows surprisingly good taste and delivers insights into the updated crop of movies.
I spent the day at WebVideoSummit, where I had the pleasure of sitting-in on a panel with Douglas Gayeton, the genius who spent six months in a room with just one other guy, and who exited having developed, produced and distributed a documentary entirely online, inside the virtual world Second Life.
My Second Life: The video diaries of Molotov Alta tells the story of a man who “disappeared from his California home” and began issuing video dispatches from Second Life. It was conceived as an online series with legs, and the strategy paid off. What began as a viral YouTube hit was acquired by HBO in September for a “six-figure sum.”
Here’s the pilot…
###It’s an impressive marketing and sales strategy, but the content itself is what deserves attention. This is an inspired, inventive application of an online universe with an ever-expanding texture, and Gayeton captures the power of its possibility with a foretelling and probable tale of an inexplicable yet eerily familiar pathos. His open references to “a Brave New World” reminds us how close we’ve become to the utopia that contradicts humanity… that lonely world beyond boundary.
Geyeton describes his new role with mainstream media as simply articulating the inherent advantages of animation production within virtual worlds. “You build visually rich, dense environments in an incredibly short amount of time, and you can work collaboratively using the tools of Second Life.”
Though I am quite impressed with Geyeton’s upcoming projects for traditional television, I am most excited to witness his influence on new media productions. This is a mind with a foresight and storytelling skill that is certain to reshape the field of animation with the tools enabled by new media production and distribution.
You’ve obviously seen that famous MTV logo. You know, the one with the massive classic “M” and the daring “tv. It’s simple and clean, shown its vitality and versatility through a number of promotionalcampaigns, been a staple of the network since it launched on August 1, 1981, and portended the first paradigm shift in television. Fred Seibert helped to create that. Remember the first thing to air on the Music Television Network? It was that clever promo of the Apollo 11 moon landing montage with the US flag replaced by a hypercolor “MTV?” Fred Seibert helped to create that, too.
He then went on to salvage a then-suffering Nickelodeon, come up with the idea for Nick-at-Nite, become president of Hanana-Barbera Cartoons, start his own cartoon production company Frederator Studios, and co-found the new media entertainment studio specializing in the creation of niche, episodic content, Next New Networks.
Unsurprisingly, the shows on Next New Networks have some kick ass promos. Here’s one:
Surprisingly, Next New Networks seems to be the only online content producer concerned with creating promos, let alone making them kick ass. ###
It obviously has everything to do with the extensive traditional television experience of its founders. Seibert’s MTV, and to an extent, fellow co-founder Herb Scannell’s Nickelodeon, were reared on imaginative branding. The success of MTV seemed to grow with every funky fresh application of its logo and each successive exclamation of how much someone wanted their music television, while Nick-at-Nite gained popularity through faux news reports revolving around clips from classic TV. Their executives saw firsthand that the development of a brand is as important, if not more so, than the content itself.
When Seibert, Scannell, and Co. went to the web to create a “new kind of media company,“ they brought with them the old practice of promos, and put Justin Johnson in charge. After being prematurely plucked from San Francisco by Seibert himself to join the Channel Frederator(Tilzy.TV page) team in New York City, the film and programming guru became Next New Networks first creative hire and has been producing roughly one promo a day ever since.
Justin talks in a voice that echoes the experience of his superiors, who are also clearly his mentors – he uses the metaphor, “it’s like being Moses on the mountain when Fred throws down his branding brilliance,” to relate his relationship with Seibert.
Similar to traditional television, Justin tells me that the best spots “remind the folks they’re not just watching another generi-cast, that they’re watching something that is more than just the sum of the programming itself.” Contrary to traditional television, Justin does his best to involve viewer voices in the final product:
“Some of the best promos are ones starring the viewers themselves…[like this one]…TV talks AT the audience. We want the audience to be a vocal, tangible part of the programming, steering us and proving it’s not a top-down kind of organization. The people need power! and if we’re not giving it to them, we’ve failed.”
I recently caught up with Justin at Next New Networks HQ to find out more about his company’s passion for promotion and learn a little bit about the creative process:
You can see Justin’s promos sporadically aggregated on Spot Crunch and sprinkled throughout Next New Networks’ networks. Threadbanger promotes IndyMogul, IndyMogul promotes Epic-Fu, Epic-Fu promotes Viropop, etcetera, etcetera. Viewers find out about new shows, ratings increase, and everybody wins.
If you’ve spent more than five minutes around the internet’s Senior Television Disruptor Analyst, Shelly Palmer you know that the main advertiser on media is….wait for it….media. There’s a reason cross-promotion abounds. It works. The same can clearly be applied to the web.
Other web production houses like Revision3, For Your Imagination, 60Frames and Vuguru can benefit from advertising across their series, and although independent content producers might not have the same access to real estate across a wide array of programming, creating promos to live within their own shows and to travel the web will help to define their messages and get others interested in their content.
In a nascent industry that’s focused nearly as much on evangelizing the medium and attracting new viewers as it is on producing quality entertainment, more people should be creating promos.
Kenyatta Cheese, who’s been involved in the world of democratized video since before most of us had even considered it, has also contributed heavily to the development and ongoing production of Rocketboom(Tilzy.TV Page), which is credited by so many as an inspiration for distributing video on the open internet. I had the pleasure of catching up with Kenyatta at the Rocketboom office.
Prior to his full-time gig at Rocketboom, Kenyatta worked at Eyebeam, an organization that provides tools for digital research and experimentation. He also started a site called Unmediated, which covered developments in online media but was apparently ahead of its time. Kenyatta’s experience in this space is obvious, not only through his influence on Rocketboom, but in his insights on the process of creation. His apparent fascination with empowerment through “the means of production and distribution” is, itself, inspiring.
This is a powerful transformation that’s just barely emerged, and I get the sense that Kenyatta’s just happy to witness it.
Slate Magazine’s Chad Lorenz narrates a brief video journey of the nascent trend of product placement in internet TV. He highlights a few cases and questions whether they’re smart or offensive, but he’s actually already made up his mind. To Lorenz, “offensive” is the more appropriate adjective.
When product placement takes up too much of the storyline or forces the characters to become out-of-character, the method becomes annoying. That’s what Lorenz focuses on. The bikini-clad car ad in Roommates, and Bre breaking out a pack of Ice Breakers Sours Gum are blatant, forced, and out of place.
But internet TV has to make money some way, and when it’s done well, I’m more or less fine with the shilling. ###
While producers of web video and creators of advertising technologies figure out how to make financial statements with more black and less red, the experience for web audiences has gotten better. We started out with the ubiquitous, repurposed 30-second TV spot rolling before, after, and between clips. Now we have shorter pre-rolls, mid-rolls, and post-rolls in addition to pop-ups and overlays. Advertising against videos has become less obtrusive, but it still gets in the way of the content.
I’d much rather watch characters interact with a product t than endure a barrage of cumbersome ads that force me to click away or wait for content. Case in point: If instead of having to watch a 15-second Zenga-inspired car ad every time I clicked play on Lorenz’s video above, I could watch the narrator deliver his showcase of web video marketing efforts while driving a slick Infiniti M, I wouldn’t mind clicking play a few more times.
The innovative (and sometimes unabashed) tools employed by content producers to incorporate advertising and product placement into their shows is something we’ve talked a lot about here at Tilzy.TV, and we’re generally intrigued by the trend of advertisements actually becomingentertainment products.
Some arguably more subtle and better-integrated initiatives that Lorenz missed are Lonelygirls15’s clear-skinned scientist character bought and paid for by Neutrogena, The Burg’s hip integration of Motorola mobile devices, and Mr. Robinson’s Driving School’s use of Volvos in an battle of succession where one teacher’s vehicular training prowess gets pitted against another’s. Yes, the placements often don’t blend seamlessly with the content, but in these instances the products feel more like they’re a natural part of the scene than paying for its production.
I prefer the legroom of a Buick’s backseat to my knees kicking up against retro-futuristic, hard-plastic magazine holders, and most of the cool digital hook-ups are either currently inoperable, or no one was using them. Ethernet access at your seat and other goodies are supposedly coming in 2008, but the in-flight chat room that’s already up-and-running had one person in it during the entire four-hour 45-minute flight. That passenger’s handle was “milehigh josh” (Hint: it was me).
However, their on-board entertainment was expansive. Among their varied moving picture offerings was Boing Boing TV. Check out my tour:
In the living room, television most likely plays a more dominant role in delivering entertainment than the web. At 35,435 ft., it’s an equal playing field, on which there should be more players. ###
Seated on a flight across the continent, two feet from a video monitor is the perfect mix between a “lean back” and “lean forward” experience that so many technology evangelists and manufacturers have been preaching and trying to produce. Everything is on the same screen, making it just as easy to watch Xeni Jardin as it is Billy Nye. In fact, it’s even easier to watch Jardin, because she’s on-demand – to catch Bill Nye you have to be flying at the right time.
When it first launched, we weren’t impressed with the video effort from “a directory of wonderful things,” but by focusing more on on-location interviews as opposed to apparent in-studio repetitions of their text blog, the talkie side of Boing Boing has become another entertaining source for internet awesome and interesting.
I know all this because I watch way too much programming on the web, but your average passenger on Virgin America doesn’t and hasn’t had any exposure to Boing Boing, nor its video counterpart. This is a fantastic way to give them some.
Launched by the Richard Branson-owned airline last October, the initiative to showcase web shows in the air has grown to include shorts from Campus MovieFest and a recent deal with Kate Modern for Virgin’s Atlantic wing, but it’s not without faults. The episode choices are limited – only four installments of BBTV were available – the interface is cumbersome, and the branding needs work – I’d create a totally separate category called something like “Hit Web Shows.” But the videos play, and in terms of promoting the medium, I think it will do a lot.
A daily audience of several thousand jet-setting individuals that’s captive for five hours in front of a screen where your shows are as easy to watch as traditional television is exactly what we’ve all been waiting for. Use it. The sky’s the limit.
In an effort designed to bring fans “closer to the on-campus experience” as well as to save a few bucks, ESPNU yesterday announced an initiative to include student-generated content across a number of ESPN platforms. This is a very smart move
Students enrolled at schools with some of the premier athletic programs in the country will take part in everything from live play by play to sideline reporting to producing video and writing articles for ESPN.com (see an example here.) The initial slate of schools consists of FSU, UNC, OSU, UGA, Georgetown, Missouri, Pepperdine, Syracuse, Tennessee, University of Texas (Austin) and Texas Southern University. ESPN plans to bring on at least 20 schools this year.
While ESPN didn’t go into the specifics of compensation, they should have no trouble finding students to take part. An ESPN credit on your resume carries some cache regardless of context. If successful, the network will likely expand the program to other campuses. ###
The logistics of managing and integrating content from so many inexperienced producers sound daunting, so this may prove to be an ambitious undertaking. It’s also an educated gamble. While ESPN is a national network, covering college sports is a very local business, and a market from which ESPN could certainly benefit.
Similar to how High School Playbook taps local high schoolers for production because of their knowledge of local sports, ESPN will attract those college students who are most in tune with the storylines and events surrounding their teams. By giving them a stake in production, ESPN takes some of the pressure off their day-to-day production talent – folks who fly in the night before and are gone after the game – while adding valuable content and building an infrastructure that can scale.
It also enables ESPN to react more quickly to breaking news and will enable stronger relationships with college athletic departments. If ESPN can build a self-sustaining base of quality content they don’t have to pay for, they will build a stronger network across all platforms at nearly no cost.
In a world with limitless choices, curated content becomes very important. We’ve started to see a few verticalized video curators emerge, but most curators, like the home-pages of almost every video publishing service, program video content in a way that aims to appeal to video-watchers in general. returning to PrezVid. This makes me think: if I were able to subscribe to similarly curated content for each of my various, specific video interests, I’d be able to personalize my TV guide experience. I wouldn’t have to sift through commentary on daytime drama to get to the good stuff on sitcoms.
This post might seem inherently contradictory on a site that claims to be a “guide to television on the web,” but the medium is in its infancy, and I think it’s a notion that will inform the way we evolve with it. Plus, where are you going to learn about all the good curators?
There’s a growing opportunity in more narrowly defined guides. Magnify.net enables one very scalable model. Travelistic(Tilzy.TV Page) shows another, but I have a personal favorite.###
Jeff Jarvis, former television critic for TV Guide and People, and creator of Entertainment Weekly, has created a model for what I think will be a common commodity in an evolving Internet-television market with PrezVid(Tilzy.TV Page). He chose a very specific and timely topic with a lot of interesting content, separates the wheat from the chaff, points out interesting developments, then adds some commentary. Voila — it’s a micro guide.
Last weekend, at The Winnies in LA, there were some telltale signs of an online video-oriented event. For one, nearly all those who attended the Irina Slutsky-organized, Secret Santa-inspired awards show had cameras, so by the time you walked in and said your first hellos, you’d been there for 5 minutes but there was already an aggregate 45 minutes of you on video.
Second, everyone you didn’t already know or immediately recognize looked vaguely familiar, like you’d seen them somewhere before, probably because, through myriad venues of social interaction now available to your connected online video connoisseur, you had.
But that’s about where the resemblance to an average online video event ended. The fancy dress, faux red carpet, and seven hours of open bar, made it feel like a casual, semi-swank industry party. And that’s what was so cool.
I caught up with Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodston — two videobloggers who’ve been intimately involved in the space from the start — on the windy streets of Hollywood to ask what they thought about the scene:
While its progenitor, The Vloggies signified that online video had arrived, The Winnies hinted a little bit at how it might evolve. The list of attendees ran the gamut of online video, from hardcore personal videobloggers like Clints McGintus’ I Do IT Digital (full disclosure: I love that name), to popular online show producers like Jeff Macpherson of Tiki Bar TV (Tilzy.TV Page) and Kent Nichols of Ask a Ninja(Tilzy.TV page), to the creators of more mainstream fare, like Big Fantastic and even some actors from their series Prom Queen(Tilzy.TV page). No, bigger Hollywood names like Marshall Herskovitz weren’t there, but it still felt like a big happy family of creators, fans, and friends coming from all areas of online video.
Is such a pretty picture sustainable? As the industry grows, and as old media networks and new media studios start producing more content, can a community with individuals shooting with such a diverse range of camera qualities survive? Or will it grow to encompass the big budget mainstream?
For better or worse, the side of the industry with money and the side of the industry with community will continue on the same trajectory, but likely on different planes, with different awards shows, and different semi-swank parties. There might be a little bit of crossover, but those will be the exceptions that further expose the stratification.
Of course people are still using the “Wild West” as a metaphor for the space, so it could turn out to be one big gray mess. But if the above does happen, it’s still okay. With open distribution, independent content producers seeking fame and fortune will still have an easier time in new media than old to break into the entertainment industry’s upper crust, and those that just crave community have already fostered and maintained a powerful network of relationships that will continue to grow.
There’s money in the latter, too. If there were enough funds for Slutsky to be put together an “excuse to throw a $20,000 party,” just wait until this whole monetization thing gets figured out.
Photo courtesy of Luis Muna, who was the official photog at the party. Considering he managed to make Jamison look almost halfway decent, he’s good. Real good.
Over five million views and 33 installments into its 45-episode first season, MySpace wants to see more of the eight terribly attractive, post-college female friends that have very few qualms exposing skin on camera. Thanks to sponsorships and product integration from Ford and other marketers, Roommates will have a second season.
The news really comes as no surprise. If you’re male, post-pubescent, have some semblance of a libido, and rank yourself as a “4” or lower on the Kinsey scale, the show has an obvious appeal. But beyond the women, I actually think it’s kinda good. ###
Taking place inside a Los Angeles that’s sweetening up to them thanks to their show within a show, the domestic harmonies and disputes of Violet, Siggy, Petyon, and Heather are pretty fun to watch. It’s like eating at McDonalds or reading US Weekly. Sometimes you want to consume something you know is bad and probably not good for you. Oh, and Pauly Shore made a cameo.
After 12 years of refining his methods, it’s about time Zakarin’s made another show with some sticking power. More likely, maybe it just took that long for the web to be ready for something that sticks.
Hayden Black is the creator of Goodnight Burbank(Tilzy.TV Page) — a comedy about the people who bring us the news while they’re bringing it — and Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary — the online video diary of an adolescent girl suffering from 8th grade, her parent’s recent divorce and a genetic condition that makes her look a lot like…well, Hayden Black. Abigail’s viewership has gone through the roof, and it’s gotten major media attention, since it launched in October.
I sat down to talk to Hayden, who had worked previously on traditional television, about his internet-TV aha moment, and how he’ll use this and other media to spread his creativity in a world of converging media.
I also had the pleasure of talking to the lovely Abigail Hannon while watching the production of her teen diary.###
This was an interesting experiment for me, and a reminder of Hayden’s talent. Truth is comedy. The development that has gone into creating a complete and truthful character, who responds naturally and honestly, is what makes this concept really stick. Hayden notes that his process is not just about a quick laugh. Abigail is the ultimate outsider, and all of us can relate in some way to her rather piteous, and yet totally absurd, existence.
We’ll keep our eyes on Hayden for more unique and entertaining applications of converging media.
Launched by the Richard Branson-owned airline 
In an effort designed to bring fans “closer to the on-campus experience” as well as to save a few bucks, 
