Props to Elon Musk for stepping up as guinea pig number one on the new season of The Valley Girl Show which premiered today. Ok, maybe it’s not so ballsy considering last season’s guests, but for the founder of both electric car darling Tesla and rocket maker SpaceX, you have to think he’s turned down interviews from considerably more credible outlets.

Officially, the pitch line they are sporting is, “imagine if Reese Witherspoon’s character in Legally Blonde had taken Silicon Valley instead of Harvard Law-and been brunette-and you have the Valley Girl.”

This smart girl playing dumb (or is it a smart girl playing a dumb-sounding smart girl?) has been tried before. There’s a earnest charm reminiscent of Kim Evey’s Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, though Draper’s Valley Girl character doesn’t commit as fully to the archetype. Nor does it play up the awkwardly comedic tension of Citizen Kate, which skillfully played the blonde girl interviewing top politicos on last year’s presidential campaign.

Instead, the interviews themselves turn out more useful and less of a gimmick. Draper poses the seemingly simple-minded questions to the over-qualified guests, but usually laughs along with them. This takes it closer to the Wallstrip and Mahalo Daily realm of lighthearted interviews, which are both also known for test drives of cool cars.

Interviews are divided up into two parts, and released as weekly episodes. For the launch, however, both parts of Elon Musk’s interview are posted. Upcoming guests include NFL star Ronnie Lott and billionaire VC Vinod Khosla.

For fun, we asked creator Jesse Draper for 4 words (and only 4) to describe the new season. Her answer: “Entertaining, Educational, Positive and PINK!” (There’s a lot of pink.)

Filed under: Articles, Educational, Hosted, News, Web Series, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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While we’re on the subject of promo videos for web series, we couldn’t pass up this latest one from the guys up at Diggnation. Sure, sitting down for a full episode of Kevin and Alex’s antics can run you about a full hour of your day, but a one-minute promo is sometimes all you need to remind you to check back in on the boys.

Host Kevin Rose performs a complete fail of a golf putter chip shot from the stage of their most recent episode, a live show from Phoenix. With co-host Alex Albrecht egging him on, Rose drills the oversize ball smack in the face of an innocent audience member, prompting a justified use of Keyboard Cat. (If you’re one of the three people on the internet that doesn’t get this ref, then study up over at another useful web series, Rocketboom’s spinoff series Know Your Meme.)

The promo is up on YouTube and points viewers to subscribe to the show’s new YouTube channel. Once limited to the Revision3 site (and downloads), this looks like a savvy move into conquering the YouTube-only hordes. It’s also made easier by YouTube’s recent decision to allow embedding of external video players, live Revision3’s and Sony’s Crackle. With Rev3’s in-video sponsor plugs (even an on-stage GoDaddy sign), it doesn’t really matter where the video lives.

Here’s the full episode for later:

Filed under: Articles, Comedy, Featured, Hosted, News, Revision3, Web Series, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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We were messing around on YouTube recently, cause that’s what we do, and stumbled across a curt little promo video of a flabby fellow running through a field lugging an old TV. Turns out this ‘TVs are heavy‘ lesson was a promo for an upcoming web series, though it might as well be our new Tubefilter mantra. Unabashed. Stalwart. Practical.

Promos are key to snatching attention in an ever-crowded sea of budding web series, and the guys behind MacAwesome only needed to 36 seconds to grab ours. Co-creator Graham Bowlin plays Shannon Abercrombie, the twentysomething bonehead 80’s TV jogger in the spot. As it turns out, the series isn’t just another clan of ironically-dressed acting class buddies riffing each other. It’s actually one of the few web series centered around an underage kid.

That becomes a little more obvious in the second promo (below), a longer form intro to homeschooled protagonist Josh Dove. The 17 year-old high school senior has to survive life at an actual school with an assortment of oddball characters. That, and he’s trying to land the lead role in the school play (Shakespeare’s Macbeth) to score his dream girl (Sydney Shepherd).

For half of the team behind the series, Bowlin and director Andrew Mitchell, MacAwesome is actually their second web original, having made the zombie comedy series American Heart last year that also found a home on KoldCast. The two, along with their Waffle Feast Media partners Cameron Strittmatter and Daniel John Lerch, all teamed up in North Carolina while at UNCSA film school.

MacAwesome is due out this fall on KoldCast TV, and for now there are just a few promos and a Facebook fan page to check in on. And there’s also this coffeehouse video of star Sydney Shepherd who is also quite the singing prodigy.

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Comedy, News, Production Companies, Web Series by Marc Hustvedt
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Do you know what a Hedge Fund is? I don’t. And neither do the boys at the Claude S. Dutchy, LLC hedge fund. But, damnit, they’re determined to make it rich enough to race Lamborghinis, orbit earth in space, swim with their pet mako sharks and have orgies! Or so, Claude says in episode two of this uneven, yet satisfying web series, Hedge Fund.

Creator, writer and director Chris Murray conceived the idea a couple of years ago, ‘while the economy was strong and money was flowing’ about four slackers without a clue who decide for no good reason to start a hedge fund. The boys operate out of their one bedroom apartment in Manhattan concocting angles to success that include uber-skinny jeans, croissandwiches and one bogus ten million dollar promissory note.

The brains behind the operation, Claude Thornbush, played by Tyler Evans, gets the bright idea in the premise pilot after overhearing a couple of real hedge funders discussing space trips, orgies and Lamborghini’s in the bathroom at the restaurant where he waits tables. Evans, it should be noted is the bread, butter and the glue of this show. Without trying to be hyperbolic, I’ll liken him to Will Ferrell both in his portrayal of a character with unfounded, yet unbounded confidence, and his comedic delivery. This guy is hilarious and one of the main reasons to watch the show.

Murray’s writing is one of the other reasons. The asscrack revealing skinny jeans in episode five that are so tight you can sit without needing a chair is a thing of genius. Great sight gag, and a true comment on our culture’s youthism. There are a lot of priceless pieces of writing throughout. One of my faves is when Frenchy, Phillipe Rochambeau, played nicely by Evan Neumann, tells Claude that , “In France I was a homosexual, but here, no more, “ in ep 7, after lifting Claude out of despair with a poem. Every ep has its gems and they are pretty easy to come by.

Skip Murphy, played by Timmy Cassese, is a somewhat dull character, however, which I won’t fault Cassese for, it just seems like there isn’t a whole lot for him to do. Chris Murray plays Dutch Alison and has a few funny beats throughout and a little more to do, but frankly everyone seems to stand in the shadow of Evans’s Claude Thornbush. And that’s okay, because that character is so big, he kind of needs this mild ornamentation to play against.

The two best eps in the so far seven ep series are four and five. Claude’s fake meeting on a park bench with the no-show investor Larry Zatharian had me rolling in ep four. And five is the one with the Jackass and Johnson skinny jeans. This ep also has a couple of standout cameos from Jay Della Valle playing a ‘Bad Boy’ who represents to the boys what skinny jeans can do for a man’s sex life; and Violet Krumbein as ‘Fashion Girl’, the bi-sexual disaffected store clerk kept me smiling throughout.

As for the technical side of things, the production quality is okay, not great, but not distracting. The sound could use a little evening out sometimes, which can be a bit annoying. But overall there’s a heart to the whole enterprise, from the site itself, which is clean, simple and easy to navigate, to the charm of the characters, their camaraderie and subtly wacky stories.

The rollout of these very watchable five to seven minute eps is a little odd as far as I can tell. Starting with a couple in March, two in April, one in May, one in June and the last one in August, it’s all pretty uneven. A little regularity might help build a consistent fan base.

It’s definitely worth checking out. There is something to watch here for sure with some sharp writing and very funny performances, hopefully with time they can iron out the glitches and turn it into what it promises to be, a great, not just good, web series.

Filed under: Articles, Comedy, Featured, Reviews, Web Series by Jonathan Hludzinski
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So maybe you’re on summer vacay and skipped a few days of your Tubefilter fix this week. (Lucky you.) So it being Friday we’re once again recapping the top web series news of the week. Monday started off with the release of the highly anticipated Legend of Neil musical episode on Atom. It’s one of the only web series eps we’ve actually felt obliged to drop the NSFW warning on just to look out for our office-locked readers. The 9-minute episode (above) so far is coming in at over 138,000 views—not bad at all for week one of a mid-season.

There was also our unabridged roundtable discussion on just what the heck the oft-used ‘Branded Entertainment’ buzzword is all about. As brands dip more toes in the web video content pool, there’s no shortage of opinions about what this means. It’s a long one, but well worth bookmarking for some weekend reading.

And of course we can’t ignore the fact that The Guild launched season 3 on Xbox on Tuesday before its wider (MSN/Zune) launch next week on September 1. The popular series also quietly nabbed a retail DVD deal by the same company that put the Dr. Horrible DVD on the shelves earlier this year.

And finally, several examples of network TV turning to the web to find fans for their fall lineups, including a prequel web series for CW’s The Vampire Diaries and a web series/ARG for ABC’s FlashForward.

Top stories of the week:

• ‘Legend of Neil’ Raunchy Musical Episode Debuts
• Branded Entertainment Demystified – What’s In a Name?
• ‘The Guild’ Season 3 Begins on XBox, Inks Retail DVD Deal
• Henson Puts ‘S.U.D.S.’ Puppets Preview on YouTube
• ‘Vampire Diaries’ Prequel Web Series, CW Starts Biting Early

Filed under: Articles, Comedy, Friday Rewind, News, Production Companies, The Guild, The Legend of Neil, Web Series by Tubefilter News
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On October 6, 2009 at 2 PM Pacific Standard Time, everyone on the planet blacked out at exactly the same time (called the Global Blackout or GBO). During the 2 minutes and 17 seconds that passed, every person experienced a vision of where and what they were doing on April 29, over 6 months later. These visions are deemed by a government task force created to investigate the GBO as FlashForwards.

And thus begins the ABC series named after these visions: FlashForward. Co-created by Blade and The Dark Knight writer David S. Goyer and Star Trek writer/producer Brannon Braga, the series is slated to premiere on September 24th. But like a few other television and film projects, the series is integrating an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) to promote and build a community around the series. Using Internet videos, live events, original websites, and social networking sites, the FlashForward ARG strives to give players a truly immersive experience.

The game is currently two-pronged, having begun on July 23 with the launching of TruthHack.com, a video blog series reporting on the Global Blackout and run by Oscar Obregon, who according to his bio is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and author of the international bestsellers ‘Parties/Over’ and ‘Fire Sale’. He has worked as a print and broadcast journalist for CurrentTV and the Los Angeles Bulletin, where he won the George Orwell Courage in Journalism award twice, in 1999 and 2001. Obregon is your classic middle-aged film noir journalist with a modern-day twist: he vlogs from what looks like his home office, asking his viewers to help with his investigation. The character is likable and the videos are well-shot and well-written.

The launching of TruthHack.com coincided with the beginning of ComicCon 2009, a tactic has been used by several other ARGs including The Fringe ARG of 2008, The Dark Knight ARG of 2007, and The Lost Experience of 2006. Employees of The Mosaic Collective recruited attendees to enter booths with a camera where they could share their FlashForward experiences and explain how they wanted to learn more about them. The idea here is that the more FlashForwards recorded, the more connections can be draw between them, eventually forming a clearer picture (or “mosaic”) of what occurred on April 29, 2010. And Obregon was there to report everything he had seen, even interviewing those who had been asked to participate in mysterious “follow-up interviews”.

The second prong of the game began with the launching last week of www.jointhemosaic.com, which contains all the data that The Mosaic Collective has gathered thus far as well as the ability for users to create profiles and add their own FlashForwards to the site. It’s a beautifully designed site and very easy to navigate. The soothing music playing throughout can get grating but it adds to the feeling that things may not be as they seem…

…because as Obregon notes, for a government-run project, they sure are putting more focus on the positive FlashForwards for his liking. As of this writing, he’s looking for help decoding an encrypted message he has received from an unknown source. So if you’re ready to jump down the rabbit hole of this game that would be the place to begin.

All in all, this is a very well-designed ARG that has an easy enough entry point (at least so far) for novice players to get involved quickly but a rich enough storyline to challenge veteran players. Because the premise covers every person on the planet, it appeals to a wide player-base and there is a lot of opportunity for player involvement. I only question the inclusion of the Obregon character. Though I enjoy the character and he does function as a connection to the audience, this is the third time in a short period where a reporter character is serving that function (the other two being Harper’s Globe and The
Vampire Diaries – A Darker Truth).

Perhaps my thoughts can be summed up best by the words of Obregon himself: “Being optimistic and maintaining a healthy sense of skepticism are not mutually exclusive. And being snarky just for the sake of being snarky can distract you from the detail that might help you crack the case.”

Filed under: ABC, Alternate Reality Game (ARG), Articles, Drama, Featured, News, Thriller, YouTube by Jenni Powell
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Could the co-dependent relationship between Hollywood development execs and writers be any more dysfunctional? Like most Tinseltown marriages, it’s born from mutual desires and devolves quickly to a strained partnership. To get their projects produced, writers need the execs, and to find new projects, execs need the writers. They can endure long separations and even get all Brokeback, screaming “Why can’t I quit you!?” but divorce is never an option.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Anne Polsky
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This wasn’t initially intended as a Q&A interview, as we don’t usually do that about a web series that hasn’t even been fully shot yet and doesn’t even have any major distribution lined up. But sometimes you have to break the rules to get to the good stuff. Zack Finfrock makes a great case study of an indie web series creator starting where a whole host of other would-be web stars are too—with an idea, a teaser trailer, limited resources, oh and some unusually talented friends.

Finfrock’s series, Emerson Wild, centers around a young man (Emerson) who’s taken it upon himself to hunt monsters, trudging his way up the ranks of the monster hunting community. We’ve seen similar stabs at this casual, everyman play on superhero bureaucracy, most recently with Captain Alpha Male and The Junior League of Superheroes. As of now only a (long) trailer is out, which could even pass as episode 1. With just over 15,000 views on YouTube since its release last month, a few people have taken notice.

Tubefilter: So what’s the plan for the series – are you shopping it to distributors at this point?
Finfrock: At the moment, we’re looking for funding for the series. It’s funny, I decide to create a comedy web series about something I love, and turns out that it has to have a budget or it can’t be made. Well, unless we half-ass it, which is the last thing I’m going to do. We’re in talks with someone about distribution and funding at the moment, but without the budget, we’ll have no show to distribute.

Tubefilter: Has it been shot yet? How many episodes are you planning and how long?
Finfrock: Like I said, we’re looking to get the money for the show. At least the pilot, so we can really show what we’re capable of. The first season, at the moment, is set for 6 episodes going at about 7-10 minutes each. It’s a little long for your average web show, but with this much story to tell and a new world to see, we don’t want to limit ourselves to 3 minutes an episode. We’re also toying with the idea of making the first season a few more episodes longer. At this point, we’ve still got the chance to change things like that.

Tubefilter: What’s the general overview of the story? Is it a procedural series with a new monster case each episode?
Finfrock: The show is about it’s title character, Emerson Wild. He’s a standard, middle-of-the-road monster hunter who’s trying to push his name into the upper-levels of the monster hunting community. However, his life takes a sharp turn when he’s approached by a young woman who claims she’s in danger and feels Emerson is the only one who can help her. Now, he has to crawl into the depths of the monster world to discover who this woman is, why she’s being trailed and how he stop her from causing so much trouble in his otherwise comfortable life. Think Ghostbusters meets Men in Black, with a dash of both Hellboy and Buffy.

The show will have an overall story arch over the first season. You will get to see Emerson doing his job though-out the show, but it will all involve and deal with the main story. A lot like Ghostbusters. They have there normal job busting ghosts, but we see them deal with one big story arch.

Tubefilter Who did you cast for the series? I noticed the ubiquitous Craig Frank in there.
Finfrock: Hahah, yeah, Craig Frank. Well, we have a great cast and crew list available on our website, www.emersonwild.com. I’ve actually recruited Tim Reise, Brett Register and Craig Frank thanks to my time as Crewman Anderson on The Crew. I met Brett while we were extras on The Guild in season 2. I ended up redoing the backgrounds for Brett for The Crew, and a friendship grew from there.

I’ve also been very fortunate to meet and work with Vincent Guastini, our creature effects creator. He’s a very talented, very professional guy. He’s been in the monster effects business for over 20 years, and his enthusiasm for Emerson Wild has been amazing. If it wasn’t for the fact he also sees big things in Monster Hunter, we wouldn’t have our “lobster” in that preview.

As for a cast, I’m going to play Emerson Wild (as seen in the preview). I moved out here to make movies with my friends and act. I just didn’t expect to be acting in my own creation so soon. Then you’ve got Craig Frank as Eric, Emerson’s somber and sarcastic roommate/best friend. After seeing what Craig could do on set of The Crew, I knew I had to work with him on this. Then we have Katy Stoll as our lead female character thanks to Brett’s suggestion. Brett will also be in this as well, but I’m not going to give too much away on that. I’ve got a bunch more characters, both big and small.

Tubefilter: Do you have your own production company at this point?
Finfrock: I’m under Wayside Creations. We’re new, and we’re hoping Emerson Wild will be our great debut into the web world. Wayside consists of myself, both an actor and artist; Julian Higgins, a very talented director and editor; Kevin Brooks, who I’m sure will be the next Shia LaBeouf; and Vince Talenti, another amazing director/editor combo.

Haha, now that I think about it, I’m only one person short of using the entire Absolute Disaster team as well.

Filed under: Articles, Comedy, News, Sci-Fi, Web Series, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know the first season of BFF had ended already, but apparently it did. It’s one of the few online game shows (why aren’t there more?) and it returns this week with new host Jake Hurwitz. Hurwitz is a familiar face to web series fans, as half of the Streamy-nominated comedy duo Jake & Amir from CollegeHumor.com, which was picked up by MTV and developed as The CollegeHumor Show.

It’s a bit of a shame to see the typically absurd Hurwitz stripped of any real comedy purpose and thrown into what is pretty squarely a young, fashion-loving women’s chit-chat. Really, they make no qualms about who this show is going after and lead sponsors Always and Ortho Women’s Health & Urology probably want them to play it safe.

MySpace Video’s head of Original Content, Cristian Cussen noted that the show received 6 million views in its first season and about 1 million quiz questions generated by the show’s downloadable quiz app. “Users were very vocal about wanting more and thanks to the nimble world of new media we were able to move quickly to develop a second season,”  wrote Cussen. “Ortho was eager to extend their sponsorship and we also had interest from Proctor & Gamble for their Always brand.”

The creative team behind the series is a blend of film and fashion execs, with producer former Mirmax exec Meryl Poster and former fashion exec David Rubin co-producing. There’s also word that Hurwitz’s comedy partner Amir Blumenfeld will be coming on an upcoming episode as a guest star, but I have a feeling it won’t be what we’re used to.

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Featured, Hosted, News, Web Series by Marc Hustvedt
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New updates on the existentialist comedy web series Coma, Period from Lead Balloon, the web studio arm of LA-based production outfit Psychic Bunny. The series has signed a distribution deal with Strike.TV and has announced a September 2nd launch date.

The ten episodes planned for release are short, coming at just over 3 minutes each. Each one stars Rob Delaney as the show’s main character Dan Humford (who you might recognize from Comedy.com’s Warner Bros. Responds to Christian Bale Tirade video) narrating his inner thoughts while stuck in a coma.

We had intitially reviewed the series back in April, and our reviewer was impressed by what he saw despite the sparse white backdrops.

At first glance, this spare foray into web television may seem a bit of a tepid choice for a big splash. Dan, played by Rob Delaney, is literally standing in a white void, narrating his inner thoughts through voiceover, with the occasional surreal visits from buxom blond fantasies, to haunting doorways to unknown inner hells, to Dan’s alter-ego female self: Dan in drag. As Rick puts it, “I was trying to think of something that could be done as cheaply as possible [and yet] prove that we can do something professional.” And therein lies the true genius behind, Coma, Period.

“We feel that Coma Period is one of the most imaginative and visually unique comedy series yet created,” said Strike.TV’s CEO Peter Hyoguchi. “It has an addictive quality and a brilliant wit that I’m sure our audience will love.”

We hadn’t heard too much out of Strike.TV this year, after rolling out an ambitious set of online shows and pilots last year including Faux Baby, With The Angels and Speedie Date. But the company, which was born out of the WGA Writer’s strike last year, has been shifting from a pure-play destination portal for content, to a broader distribution partner with deals in place to send shows to set-top TiVo DVR boxes and even hotel rooms via The Hotel Networks.

Looking at their coming soon list, it’s clear they are working with web series with more than just a small handful of episodes as many of their early celebrity-driven shows had. Also spotted on the list were Dirty Bomb Diaries and CG-animated series The Goob.

Filed under: Articles, Comedy, News, Production Companies, Strike.TV, Web Series by Marc Hustvedt
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AHHH, HELP ME! I think my brain is being controlled! Seriously. Watching Channel101’s The Curious Happenings About George Warrior is freaking me out. It’s incredibly stupid, but I can’t stop laughing at it. Maybe I’m laughing with it. Maybe it is laughing at…me!

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Alex Crowley
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Vampires, they’re so hot right now.

As fall TV season approaches and the networks start the media buying blitzkrieg to promote their new wares, a few networks have turned to web series to stoke the fanbase fires. The CW opted for a prequel to its teenage vampire drama, The Vampire Diaries, with a 4-episode web series A Darker Truth, which leads into the series premiere of the hour-long drama on September 10.

For the production of the A Darker Truth, they tapped Retrofit Films, the same shop that created four of the Heroes spinoff web series for NBC last year. Retrofit’s Tanner Kling and Chris Hanada directed the series. Cast members for the TV series, like stars Ian Somerhalder and  Nina Dobrev, are only used via clips and stills, with new web-only actors used for most of the show. Showrunner for the TV series Kevin Williamson (Scream, Dawson’s Creek) did not write the web version, instead staff co-producer Sean Raycraft did the honors.

Incidentally, the creative studio behind The Vampire Diaries, Alloy Entertainment, didn’t plug the project into its booming young adult online network, headed up by its Teen.com property. Clearly, unlike its latest novels turned online-only series, Private, Alloy wasn’t handling the distribution of this one, with Warner Bros. Television Group taking the reigns. Thus, it meant the CW placing it both on its own site and YouTube instead. They did however use Teen.com to push the official trailer out.

Overall, from the brief first episode (above) it feels oddly reminiscent of CBS’ Harper’s Island web supplement series Harper Globe. It too featured a young newcomer to a small town investigating through generous use of amateur web cams, the central mysteries of its TV counterpart. Both seem to act as web series on the periphery of the actual narrative, without being essential to the primary storyline.

While there is no direct sponsor for the series, there is a look integration of the anti-tobacco “Truth” campaign with the characters sporting “Truth” t-shirts as part of a larger deal with the CW. New episodes are slated to come out on Tuesdays.

Filed under: Alloy Entertainment, Articles, Drama, News, Production Companies, The CW, Warner Bros., Web Series, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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