According to the Times Square Alliance, New Year’s Eve in New York City’s Times Square is a bonafide international phenomenon. According to me it’s a headache of unadulterated tourism best viewed from afar.
Last January, Allan Leinwand, Venture Partner at Panorama and occasional contributor to GigaOm, asked whether the WGA strike represented an inflection point for online video… whether it would “drive mainstream America off their couches and onto their computers for new video content…[that] Mom and Dad would want to sit on the couch and watch.”
My answer then was no, but this event might actually mark an inflection point for online video.
With that in mind, here are some Christmas-themed videos I’ve come across within the past couple weeks that are definitely worth mentioning before it becomes inappropriate to do so.
Talk about a WTF internet?!? Jeffrey Feldman at the Huffington Post calls the White House Christmas Video “painfully unwatachable,” but I’d say it’s a definite must-see.
When we meet Lost Angeles protagonist Will Carson, he’s in the bathroom leaving a voice mail for his New York ex while faux party revelers ring in the New Year. The festivities are being held at the LA apartment of a couple who are letting him sofa-crash, and as the woman confronts him on his desperate attempts to reunite, Jon Favreau‘s Mike Peters inevitably comes to mind.
Will doesn’t seem to have any problems getting dates with pretty women. He even sleeps with his new roommate just after she’s offered him the available room. All deals are off when they wake the following morning, of course, and she comes to terms with the realization that it’s time to hit up craigslist to find someone to live with who she hasn’t had sex with. Read On…
With over 30 years of experience in the feline training trade, Vladimir is the Creative Director for the Moscow Cats Theatre, a Russian-language mini-circus that showcases the stars’…err…cat-like reflexes through wondrous marvels of dexterity, all mixed with traces of classic Euro-clown comedy. It’s a festival of tricks, sights, and sounds to delight even the most passive reader of ICanHazCheesburger.
Their talk of audience networks is well-intentioned an appreciated, but the original scripted web content from CBS has yet to impress. Could this be the one?
The Rocketboom offshoot that highlights and deconstructs online phenomena is always accumulating new entries (in August, for instance, they looked at tinaemusic through an academic lens), but it’s during the Holiday Season and New Year that Know Your Meme takes the spotlight away from the regularly scheduled Joanne Colan-hosted episodes of Rocketboom’s daily newscastand shines it on the ragtag group of Rocketboom producers that discusss the WTF internet.
According to his appropriately humorous web bio, actor Keith Powell is an “unqualified genius” and “a rising star of American stage and screen.” In all likelihood, he’d probably attribute his being cast as a regular character on NBC’s 30 Rock—where he plays the writer, “Toofer”—to his spectacular performances in regional theatre, a Wendy’s commercial, and appearances in two out of the three Law & Order series.
Now, Keith Powell is making his name where it really counts: on the Internet.
PowelltothePeople.net is Keith’s website and it features the usual actors’ web necessities: personal news updates, photos and blog. As the man himself says, “I wanted to make a site that had original content, so everything you see here is made for the express purpose of entertaining you (i.e., showing you me).”
[This is directed at anyone who has made or has even thought about making their own original web series. If that’s you, then please listen up.]
Are you ready? 2009 is here and this is the year we get serious. The economy is in the crapper and that’s all that major media seem to write about. But in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a revolution going on in entertainment. And you are leading it.
One of my favorite things about what I do is meeting web series creators. Creative people doing creative things are everywhere and thankfully many of them have chosen to dive into creating episodic web television. Literally every single day I get to watch something new. I can’t tell you how much I love finding a new web series hidden under a rock somewhere that a group of talented people brought to life.
Step Up
There is an explosion in web series out there. This is game changing. Don’t let me belittle this fact – we have a revolution on our hands.
Here’s what I’m asking of you all: to step it up this year and think big. This isn’t about celebrity. This is about leadership. I’m asking all of you to be leaders of your creative visions.
First of all, before you actually go down this path, I need you to ask yourself if you are ready for this. I mean really ready for this. It is going to fundamentally change your life. Anyone can make something and throw it up on the web, but building a successful web series franchise takes a whole other level of commitment.
Your Audience is Out There – Go Find Them
I mean this, actively go out and find people who might be interested in your series. You have a series about the perils of dieting and dating in your thirties? Awesome. There are plenty of people who can relate to that. But they probably aren’t hanging out on YouTube every day watching Jessica Alba clips. Go find them. The word is niche.
To all the actors and writers out there, you have to get over the idea that someone else is going to promote you. This is an old school Hollywood relic of an idea that has to go. It’s time to find your own audience and connect with them directly. Having an actual personal connection with your audience means you have to be the one that responds to comments, emails, tweets, phone calls.
You are the only one who owns your brand and you are the only one who can make real connections with it. This isn’t an easy idea to fully embrace. We are ingrained with the arcane and stupid idea that we just need to be discovered or seen by the right people and our careers will suddenly be awakened. Get that load of crap out of your heads right now.
Look at Greg Benson and Kim Evey (producer of the web hits The GuildandGorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show) and co-owners of Mediocre Films – these guys work their asses off connecting with their thousands of YouTube subscribers and other fans. Send them an email, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Or Felicia Day, who has become one of the heroes of the independent web series community, she listens to her fans and connects with them. Even better, she allows them to connect with each other and champion the series as insiders—ambassadors—not distant fans.
Think Startups Not Pilots
Web series are startups. Creators are entrepreneurs and need to think that way. Seriously, ditch the old Hollywood mindset right now. Stop waiting for someone to pick you, find you, groom you or pitch you. You have everything you need right now to grow your audience. So get off your asses.
Put every bit as much of the attention you put into your creations into your press outreach, your social media connections, your fan correspondence, your business development. A lot of you know every frame of the final cuts of your series. I need you to take that obsession into knowing every pixel of your web sites. I can’t tell you how many web series I’ve seen with the most garish pieces of junk web sites. What gives? It’s like trying to sell people on a car with two shot tires and no paint. Doesn’t matter how fancy your engine is if they aren’t even going to open the hood.
Streaming video will go down as the single greatest advancement in entertainment since the television set. We owe Chad Hurley (founder of YouTube) and dozens of others for getting us where we are today. They have literally handed over the keys to a new entertainment medium, for free. There used to be only three channels that controlled all the moving images in you living room and now every single one of us can have their own channel. That’s a big deal.
It’s time for all of us to start making a living doing this. It comes down to this: attention is moving online in leaps and bounds. That’s happening no matter what the economy does. And no matter which numbers you look at, the trend is this: online video advertising dollars are heading into the billions this year.
At Tubefilter we have made it our mission to champion you all – to tirelessly help bring attention to your work and the story behind it. We are serious about growing the audience for web television (your shows) and we need your help. I am asking you to help. Start watching each others shows and meeting each other, even if it’s just online. If you’re in the LA area, come to one of our monthly Hollywood Web Television Meetups. (The next one is Januray 15th.)
This winter we got together with some of the leading companies in the web series space to create the first-ever awards show just for web series. We’re shining our collective spotlights on you guys – the people that are making this happen. So if you haven’t already nominated your series and your talent for The Streamy Awards, make sure you do. And spread the word.
Fight Like Hell
I’m asking you to be renegades. To fight like hell every day (and night) to grow your audience. Your second cousin and her friends in Iowa have no idea what the hell a web series is? Change that.
About a month ago, I ran into Felicia Day in the local Coffee Bean and here she was, fresh off her groundbreaking deal for The Guild season 2 with Microsoft and Sprint, asking the guy behind the counter if it was okay to pin up one of her promotional bookmarks for the show. The guy said yes, and she pinned it up there and went on her way. You see, for all the millions of fans of her show out there, she knows that there are still plenty of people who have never heard of it or maybe never even watched a web series before. Do you get what I’m talking about here? There’s a reason you should be listening to her.
So who else do you need to be listening to? Well, for starters, how about Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo (along with Weblogs Inc, and Silicon Alley Reporter) who literally hands over his playbook (in the middle of the game) on how he builds rockstar businesses. And then there’s Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, two of the founders of Digg and co-creator of the hit web series Diggnation. Also: Brian Solis who will shatter everything you thought you knew about PR. These guys aren’t celebrities, at least not in the traditional sense, but people listen to them. And they listen back.
I’m asking you guys to start doing that.
We all know who Britney is, but do we listen to her? (Ok, too easy.) We all know who Lauren Conrad is, but do we listen to her? I mean really listen to her. You’d be hard pressed to find a teenager in this country who doesn’t know who she is and what show she’s on (The Hills). But what else? I think she has a clothing line.
And then there’s Joss Whedon. His bio is legit, sure – creator of hit TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Impressive, no less, but hit TV shows come and go all the time. Why is he different? In fact, right now he doesn’t even have an active show on TV at all.
But Joss’s following is legendary: at least half a dozenfansites, hordes of Comic-Con diehards, and countless fans who totally dig his offbeat wit and brilliantly bizarre creations.
Still, I can’t tell you how many times at digital media conferences this year I heard various ‘professionals’ who would acknowledge Dr. Horrible as a remarkable success only to immediately qualify that with something like “Yeah, but that was Joss Whedon.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? Does he have superpowers of mind control that we’re all sheepish victims of?
Look, he literally walked into the offices of ABC Family and asked for about 150k for Dr. Horrible and they passed. They passed on what has become the most financially successful web series project to date. He rallied together his brothers and friends and said let’s do this on our own. We know how that turned out.
This goes for all the old-guard studios and new school web studios too. You want to know why Coma was a dud? It wasn’t for lack of exposure. There was a million dollar media buy in Wired magazine complete with a Blu-Ray copy of the series in every single copy of the October issue. But can you name even one person associated with it other than Michael Madsen? And do you think he honestly gave a hoot whether or not anyone watched it?
And Strike.TV, I’m talking to you too – Mary Feuer might be the only show creator on the lineup that’s not content with just handing over publicity and marketing to someone else. And it’s been paying off. Her series With The Angels has stood out. I can interact with Mary and her team in at least half a dozen places on the web and that’s kept me watching the series.
This revolution in entertainment means we’re all on equal footing here. Don’t talk yourself out of doing something great just because the ‘big guys’ have more money or a bigger name than you. Get that out of your heads for good.
The next Felicia Day or Joss Whedon is out there. This is the year to get serious. Trust me, the ones who do we’ll be talking about in the same sentence as those two this time next year.
Word out from CBS Interactive today that they are launching a new 10-episode web series set to debut in February, just in time for the ramp up to the network’s coverage of the 2009 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Heckle-U will star web series vet Owen Benjamin (Gaytown, Owen Benjamin Presents) as an underachiever who has found his calling heckling at men’s college hoops games. He is egged on by his bartending uncle played by Tom Arnold, who by the way has been making the rounds in web series lately—see Overkill and Easy to Assemble.
Procter & Gamble products will be integrated into the series as part of the deal and will be rolled out through the CBS Audience Network. That means CBS.com and its distrubtion partners including AOL, Fancast, MSN, Veoh, Yahoo!, YouTube and others. According to Nielsen NetView, (April 2008) their network reaches 92% of US online users.
This is the latest out of CBS Interactive, who has been steadily producing a broad range of web series from Stephen King’s N earlier this summer to this fall’s Saturn-integrated Novel Adventures series.
A while back I wondered which of the inaugural lineup of Strike.TV web series will be the standout, and I think we have our answer. With the Angels, the dramatic web series from creator (and former lonelygirl15 writer) Mary Feuer, released its season finale today, wrapping up an ambitious 36-episode first season. And in that time, the series has picked up a healthy following known to debate some hefty issues, everything from faith to existentialism and Kierkegaard.
Starring Jamie Tisdale as the young small town Arkansas ingenue Taffy, the With the Angels charts her arrival in Venice, California, thrusting her into an unfamiliar world surrounded by unfamiliar people. But through her vlogging we come to watch those strangers become friends—friends of our own even—closer and realer than what we’ve come to expect out in scripted entertainment. The unfamiliar becomes the familiar.
With an ensemble cast including Carly Jones (Mallory in lonelygirl15), René Alvarado, Timothy Lee DePriest, Sean Vincent Biggins (Dr. Calvin Hart on lonelygirl15) and Kay Ostrenko, With the Angels ventures into waters that few web series have been able to pull of – character driven drama. We had the chance to chat with Feuer who was literally dealing hands-on with YouTube uploading issues before we spoke, speaking to how intimately involved her project has been for the writer turned full-on new media maven. One of the things that sets her apart from other Strike.TV writers is her unwavering commitment to sharing the series with new people, wherever they may be.
Tubefilter: What drove you to personally take so much into your own hands rather than relying on the Strike.TV publicity push?
Mary Feuer: I just don’t know how to do it any other way. I’m a hands on person. It never occurred to me not to do it that way. Also, some of the other creators are not as comfortable to make that push on their own, whereas because of my background on the web I feel I am.
Tubefilter: One thing I noticed is that the show’s main site (withtheangels.com) redirects to your fairly active YouTube channel. What was the thinking behind this choice?
MF: I bought the domain before I started working on the show, but it seemed like more of a community was building around YouTube page. It’s been hard driving people over to the forums on StrikeTV, you can only push so hard and then have you go with it. I think the basic core of the fans are people that are YouTube centric and like to comment there.
There are two kinds of viewers, passive and active. Even the passive people want to talk to each other. A lot of the comments are people talking to each other.
Tubefilter: You’ve done an excellent job bringing out the supporting characters through Taffy’s video blogging. What the secret?
MF: Taffy’s the portal. Her story is reflected in what is happening to the people around her. She spends a lot of time watching the story unfold. Her story is interesting, but it’s really a story about the other characters. The viewers see themselves in her—she’s them in a way.
Tubefilter: Did you ever consider of presenting WtA as a rouse, as if it were real?
MF: Becuase of my past association with lonelygirl15, it was really important for me not to do that. I just don’t think you can get away with that anymore. Any sign that you are trying to get away with it now creates a lack of trust. It’s about trust. You have to trust this character.
The concept can really be tracked all the way back through history: War of the Worlds, Blair Witch. LG15 was not the first to do it. They were just the first to it in the context of vlogging.
TF: Did it spawn a negative reaction when people feel they’ve been duped?
Some people were surprised some were turned off, but people stayed because the story continued to be interesting. It’s a fiercely loyal bunch those LG15 viewers.
TF: Did you reach out and court that fiercely loyal bunch to watch WtA?
Yes, I did. There’s been a good amount of support coming out of the community. Blogs like lg15today which seems to find anything even remotely related to lonelygirl15. So I reached out to them and others.
Even within the LG15 community, there’s different factions—some who love the characters and others who love the darker mystery side of it all. So I think people on the character side really could get into [With the Angels] more.
Tubefilter: In other interviews, you’ve been asked about a second season, and it sounds like that’s going to be a group decision sometime early next year. What would be the clincher for you guys that gets another season going?
MF: It’s a huge endeavor. You have to make sure everyone is in it. The whole thing has to be pretty tightly orchestrated.
Tubefilter: Who’s the core team you rely on to make the series?
Well of course there’s Jamie Tisdale who plays Taffy and all the other actors as well. Behind the camera, there’s Neil De La Pena, the DP, and someone I’ve worked with a lot in the past.
Since a lot fo the series is told from Taffy’s camera, we like to joke that everyone has played Taffy at some point. But Neal plays Taffy more than anyone else since he’s the one that’s actually shooting Taffy’s video. He’s one of the few DP’s I know that are more concerned with the story than just making pretty pictures, which is vital to the show since this isn’t a pretty pictures kind of show.
And there’s Albert Cantu, the editor. What’s great abot workign with him, he really understands how to use music which is very important to me. And he’s very talented. It’s been a bit of an adjustment for him since Taffy’s character is the editor. Taffy’s actually a much better editor now than she was at the beginning of the season. Certain editing tricks that I didn’t want her to use at the beginning of the season we now use. [see Episode 2 below for comparison.]
Tubefilter: What other web series have you liked this past year?
MF: I love to find obscure web series, like Where are the Jonses?, an obscure British show that no one is watching. I think it gets like 700 views per episode. And being a drama writer, I like watching other web dramas like After Judgment andAnyone But Me. Also the Lexus [L Studio] web series like Web Therapy. And of course the Strike.TV series like Speedie Date, Faux Babyand Life in General—I grew up in a household of soap watchers.
UPDATE: It wasn’t initially in the article above, but as we noted earlier, With The Angels is also distributed by KoldCast TV, who has a terrific video player btw, and will be part of their partnership with TiVo.
Created by actor Doug Hutchison and produced by Dark Water, Vampire Killers is tailored to build a following, and keep that following sated with bite-sized bits of lingerie, latex, and lipstick lesbian-laden entertainment. The six roughly 2-minute webisodes proffered on the show’s high-concept website amount to a season pilot, and establish the 4 Killers who will commence their crusade in the coming season.
According to the Times Square Alliance, New Year’s Eve in New York City’s Times Square is a bonafide international phenomenon. According to me it’s a headache of unadulterated tourism best viewed from afar.
One of my favorite things about what I do is meeting web series creators. Creative people doing creative things are everywhere and thankfully many of them have chosen to dive into creating episodic web television. Literally every single day I get to watch something new. I can’t tell you how much I love finding a new web series hidden under a rock somewhere that a group of talented people brought to life.
And then there’s 
Word out from CBS Interactive today that they are 
Starring 
Tubefilter: One thing I noticed is that the show’s main site (
TF: Did it spawn a negative reaction when people feel they’ve been duped? 
