In another example of the government using online video to educate Americans, The U.S. Department of the Treasury, in cooperation with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Federal Reserve Board, and the U.S. Secret Service, has released $100 Note Podcast, an informative six-part web series about the $100 bill found on the U.S. Currency’s YouTube Channel and on the NewMoney.gov website. The series, which launched back in July, was recently covered in MediaPost’s VidBlog.
The series of short infomercial-esque videos (you must listen to the music) covers topics such as how to detect a counterfeit note, the art of banknote design, and how new notes enter circulation. The $100 bill’s new design made its debut at a ceremony on April 21, 2010, the first step in a global multi-government agency public education program to educate those who use the $100 note about its changes before it begins circulating on February 10, 2011.
Episodes feature spokespeople from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Federal Reserve Board and the United States Secret Service. But the host, who wears a dark suit and tie with and a wedding ring, introduces himself as simply “David”—and that is all we learn about him.
I have to say I get a kick out this series. It is simultaneously slick and campy— for example, despite the bizarre set involving complicated graphics of the bills floating over curved semitransparent walls, all the guests (like Dawn Haley, Spokesperson for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing) know and greet “David” and exchange salutations like “thanks for coming by” and “thanks for having me” as if the show were taking place his own living room.
The mystery of the host is captivating, but the range of genre is the kicker. As each episode progresses, it goes from feeling like 60 Minutes to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to a Public Access interview to QVC to finally a game show (with soundtrack of children cheering). Dynamite!
This might be the closest thing to a spin-off of the long running and inarguably popular comedy web series The Guild. Aside from stars Felicia Day and Sandeep Parikh, we haven’t seen too much of the rest of the cast popping up in other web series, so this one caught our eye.
The Guild director Sean Becker has teamed up with comedian Jeff Lewis (aka Vork on The Guild) for a new web series, The Jeff Lewis 5-Minute Comedy Hour. Lewis stars along with a number of guest stars in distinct five-minute comedy sketch for each episode, with only Lewis being the common thread.
“The show came about using sketches that Jeff wrote during his time at the Acme Theater,” Becker told us. “He’s written dozens of sketches that were once performed on the stage but now we’ve adapted them into a web series. We’ve been shooting the show throughout the year in our Guild downtime.”
Some lucky Comic-Con attendees got an early look at the pilot episode this summer, and now with most all of the first season shot and in the can, we have a sneak peek at some stills from the series (below). Most notably it’s one of the first times we’ve seen Vince Caso (Bladez) in another web series, this time co-starring with his sister Tara Caso in an equally pitch perfect deadpan.
The comedy can get a little NSFW—some mild profanity and sexual references—and Becker notes that they will warn viewers at the top of those episodes.
Guest stars in the 10-episode first season:
Felicia Day (The Guild)
Vince Caso (The Guild)
Tara Caso (The Guild)
Brett Sheridan (The Guild)
Jamie Kaler (My Boys)
Kyle Bornheimer (Worst Week)
Tom Konkle (Safety Geeks SVI)
Kim Evey (Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show)
The series will premiere Tuesday October 12th with a new episode out every week. For now the series will just be released on YouTube, but Becker and Lewis are still shopping for additional distribution partners. Some video promos are expected to be online in the next week, though Becker is “still on TheGuild schedule at the moment but we’re about to wrap very soon.”
A little industry personnel news today as NY-based web studio Next New Networks announced that current CEO Lance Podell is swapping roles with NNN co-founder and Chairman Fred Seibert who will take on the CEO reigns. Podell is stepping out of the CEO role for personal reasons, but will be taking over the Chairman of the Board spot from Seibert.
Seibert was one of the original founders of the online studio in 2007, and its longrunning animated network Channel Frederartor still bears his name, along with his own animation house Frederator Studios. Seibert comes with some notable experience in taking a content network from fringe to mainstream. He was a very early hire at MTV as the network’s first-ever Creative Director, and later served as head of Hanna-Barbera.
NNN co-founder Tim Shey praised Podell in a post on the company’s blog today:
I know I speak for everyone when I say that we’ll miss having Lance here every day, and are grateful he can continue with us in a key role — we’re in the best position we’ve ever been in, thanks in large part to his leadership and the initiatives he led: the launch of Next New Creators, the streamlining of our business that’s put us well on track to profitability, the deepening of our partnerships with companies like YouTube and MSN, and building awareness of Next New Networks as the leading force in original entertainment for the web, with over 1.5 billion views and counting.
As with all personnel moves amongst top execs, there’s probably something to be read between the lines here, though it doesn’t appear to be anything major. Growth numbers in terms of views have accelerated swiftly this year and several of the studios new web series like Key of Awesome and Auto-Tune the News have found mainstream success. While the venture-backed company still isn’t profitable, it does appear to be growing audience numbers to a point where major ad buyers are taking note.
Podell had good things to say about Seibert, adding that, “this company is the hands down winner in the web original programming space and will shine brighter than ever under Fred’s leadership.”
Seibert dropped some knowledge during a fireside chat with our own Josh Cohen at one of the Tubefilter New York Meetups last year, reminding creators in attendance, “there’s no one stopping you from realizing your aspirations aside from yourself.”
All online video amateurs and digital professionals are welcome to swing by the newly renovated SVA Theatre on Manhattan’s west side for a half-day of what should be enlightening and educating industry discussion. The entrance fee is free, but reserving your seat is encouraged.
Presented by MSN, Digital Day will feature a series of panels focusing on different aspects of the wide world of web video. They will highlight such industry components as writing for the web, producing transmedia projects, and case studies in branded entertainment. Founder and CEO of Electus, Ben Silverman, will keynote the event and share his viewpoints on the online entertainment industry at large. That will take place right before the Digital Happy Hour with free Stella, which itself will be held before the evening’s Channel101 Screening.
White label “viewing Party” provider SocialVision launched YouTubeSocial, a product that combines Facebook’s Social Graph with IM-like chat to create a live video experience in which viewers can watch and comment on YouTube videos simultaneously in real time.
To use YouTubeSocial, just type in the word “social” in the URL before the .com and you’ll be automatically redirected to the YouTubeSocial platform. You can invite your friends using the URL, or use the Facebook Connect integration that allows you to select friends from your dock, which then sends out chat messages with an invitation to watch.
Traditional methods of discovering and sharing videos—through email, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube itself—have their limitations, which govern the speed at which viewership grows. Even when videos go viral, online video watching is still a solitary act. This results in an organic sharing pace that is too slow and keeps a video from becoming an event. There is no water cooler effect—we’ve all received video links from mom that are years old.
YouTubeSocial may catalyze this sharing process, making video watching a micro-event that has the potential to build into Super Bowl simultaneity, especially with live events. This may provide an answer to the DVR and VOD problem keeping networks and advertisers up at night—by creating captive audiences that cannot fast-forward through commercials in the midst of a live social experience.
A recent question in the “Ask The Attorney” column of Tubefilter led us to launch this series of articles on NDAs. Perhaps it’s because we have a soft spot for misunderstood contracts, which is true—the misunderstood part not the soft spot—because many people believe that one size NDA can fit all (or most) circumstances. We can’t change that behavior (everyone insists on using standard forms), but we can explain a few of the critical elements of an agreement.
In this first article of the series, we’ll summarize the main issues and provide a few pointers on the first of the topics: the purpose for the disclosure of the confidential information. Subsequent pieces in the series will go into more detail on some of the issues. For purposes of simplicity, we’ll use NDA to cover just about all forms of confidentiality obligations, but keep I mind that they show up elsewhere—such as the nondisclosure or confidentiality provisions of other agreements (e.g., employment agreements). OK, now, stay awake!
The Main Points of NDAs
As with many other agreements, NDAs share some basic elements but, as with other agreements, the devil is in the details. And the details are where you tailor the agreement to the circumstances.
In this series we’ll cover several topics on NDAs–the first few on the provisions of just about any NDA and then some negotiating pointers. Obviously, there are many provisions that can be important but, hey, we’re not writing an academic treatise here. Go to the law library (actually, there isn’t much that is good on NDAs that is there).
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Why not have an agreement that essentially says:
Anything I give or tell you or that you otherwise receive about my company or my project will be confidential forever and I will hunt you down and force you to watch weeks of CSPAN re-runs while dressed as a giraffe if any of that information gets out.
Well, putting aside the constitutional issue of cruel and unusual (or at least silly) punishment, you could write such an agreement, but who would sign it? Not a good thing.
To the topics:
Purpose:Be specific.
Confidential Information: Tailor the definition to the purpose. Include the usual “carve-outs” carved to your purpose and your CI.
Third Party Access: Those to whom the receiving party provides the CI to accomplish the purpose. Make them subject to NDAs (or other confidentiality obligations) covering this CI with provisions at least as stringent as those in the NDA in question.
Return of CI: Include destructin as an option and specify destruction of all information derived from the CI. Please note that some companies (e.g., banks) must keep an archival copy for regulatory purposes, so take that into account.
Term: From the Effective Date and for a reasonable period (longer for material financial terms). “Forever” can make an agreement vulnerable.
Disclaimers: The receiving party gets no rights in the CI simply because of disclosure and no obligations of a relationship is to be inferred from the existence of the NDA.
Remedies: Equitable remedies should be specified (i.e., you can get a TRO).
Negotiations/Drafting: If the document will be superseded by another agreement (e.g., a license, merger, etc.) then make certain that the two are “synchronized” (if the earlier one terminates with the new agreement, then make sure previous material disclosed is now covered).
Let’s turn to the first of these points.
Purpose: Be Specific
The defined purpose of the NDA will determine the substance of most of the other terms–the type of information that will be confidential, the other people who will have access to the information and the term. It is also one of the provisions challenged in (the few) cases on NDAs.
Yet, the standard forms often include broad language, along the lines of
[. . .]to consider a business relationship between the Parties.
In principle, this could mean that the receiving party could use the information in its internal models because it wants to compare the relative benefits of a deal with you against the proposed deal with someone else.
Besides, circumstances differ. Employment decisions have consequences different from, say, acquiring a script. Specify a purpose that says what you intend.
So, specify what the purpose of sharing the information is supposed to be. It’s not always easy, as you will see in the examples below. (We invite any readers to suggest ways to improve them or to point out their inherent weaknesses.) But just why are you doing it and what do you expect to get out of it? Here are the examples:
For both parties to consider the engagement of M. Asterix as a director of the TV Series.
This one (above) works for us, because it is pretty specific (assuming that “TV Series” is a defined term).
For the parties to negotiate for the possible engagement of Obelix LLC as the South American distributor of a certain line of products of TinTin Inc.
That works, again due to the specificity. We don’t like the phrase “to negotiate” because it implies that TinTin will retain Obelix as the distributor, but that’s another issue.
For the parties to discuss the possible sale to and acquisition by Paperinik LLC of the inflatable dartboard line of products of Hewey, Dewey and Louie Inc., such discussions to end not later than thirty days after the Effective Date.
Apart from the nepotism issues, this one works, too. Putting in the time limit for the discussions here might not be a great idea, but it would depend upon the full agreement.
OK, next time: The Definition of Confidential Information
Have a legal question?
James C. Roberts III is the Managing Principal of Global Capital Law Group and CEO of the strategic consulting firm, Global Capital Strategic Group. Between the two groups there are offices in California, Colorado, the East Coast, Shanghai and Milan. He heads the international, mergers & acquisitions and transactional practices and the industry practices concentrating on digital, media, mobile and cleantech technologies. Mr. Roberts speaks English and French and, with any luck, Italian in the distant future. He received his JD from the University of Chicago Law School, his MA from Stanford University and his BS from the University of California Berkeley. Have a question? Email James
This ‘Ask the New Media Attorney’ post discusses general legal issues, but it does not constitute legal advice in any respect. No reader should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information presented without seeking the advice of counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. Tubefilter, the author and the author’s firm expressly disclaim all liability in respect of any actions taken or not taken based on any contents of this post.
Roku announced a complete refresh today of its lineup of popular streaming players, swapping the three models with three new ones, all of which offer 720p or better HD video. The headliner here is the $99 Roku XDS which brings full 1080p, dual-band Wireless-N technology, optical audio output, and an added USB port for quick plug and play of media from your other devices.
We’ve been fans of the Roku box for a while now, with its more than ample selection of online video and web series from the likes of networks Revision3, Blip.tv and Break. But for more mainstream consumers it seems to be Roku’s simplicity, modest price and let’s face it, access to Netflix’s instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows that struck a chord.
The new entry-level option is the Roku HD at $59.99 with the midrange now the Roku XD at $79.99 complete with Wireless-N and 1080p streaming. The top two model (XD and XDS) also both now fix something that irked us a little in the viewing experience with the addition of an ‘Instant Replay’ button on the remote, which allows for instant skipping back in 10
second increments without that disruptive rebuffering delay.
With the Boxee Box coming out from D-Link in November, an updated version of the pricey Tivo Premiere, not to mention the TV makers themselves who are all beefing up the content channels on their internet-enabled TVs, the battle for living room is in full force.
But dollar for dollar, a Roku box is solid buy, especially for viewers looking to finally cut the cord from their pricey cable bills. While it isn’t an open platform like Boxee, the content lineup is now up to over 85 channels from 50 unique providers—a lot more than the six that it launched with back in 2008. Our pick? The Roku XDS of course.
Ever just get fed up with your desk job? You ask yourself, after 2.4 million years of evolution, this is where human beings have arrived? To sit in front of a computer all day? Don’t you just want to say f-it, I’m claiming back my inner animal. Then you renew your gym membership, rent Fight Club, pass out on the couch right around the soap-making scene, and then wake up to reality and go back to work.
Well the folks at San Francisco-based new media production company Portal A Interactive can relate. Yesterday they launched White Collar Brawler, a documentary web series about two office workers who decide to quit their jobs and train to become amateur boxers.
White Collar Brawler is part of the recently expanded Next New Networks Creators Program and is being distributed by Blip.tv and YouTube. The show has attracted sponsorship from a range of sports and wellness brands, including Gu Energy Gel, Lombardi Sports, Vibram Five Fingers, No Mas Apparel and Fairtex Boxing. White Collar Brawler received initial funding from an unnamed Silicon Valley angel investor.
The series stars Nate Houghteling and Kai Hasson, who tell us “the blood, sweat, tears you’ll see are real. The punches to the jaw are real. This is really happening.” The two twenty-something ivy-league graduates (one form Harvard, one from Yale) held jobs at News Corp and Current TV before founding Portal A Interactive. The series is “completely current,” meaning “we shoot, edit, and release within a few days, so all of the episodes are fresh out the oven. After all, instant gratification is the currency of the internet. New episodes are released every Tuesday and Friday.”
At the culmination of the series, the pair will step into the ring for a live, fully-sanctioned fight against local amateur boxers in December. In fact, viewers will have the opportunity to attend a series of local events surrounding the show, including the final fight night in San Francisco. The online and offline experience is enhanced with full social media integration on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and an invitation to join the brawlers in person for boxing and conditioning training and diet.
Created by Kirby Ferguson (who you should remember from his engaging output of video art and observations under the banner of Goodiebag, and you may remember from his earlier, sexier productions), the four-part series is an examination of how our world is the way it is because of an innate cut and paste culture. Stealing, borrowing, remixing, or whatever verb you prefer isn’t just how a handful of things come to fruition. It’s how everything gets made.
In the first installment, Ferguson chooses to look at remixing through music and lyrics of Led Zeppelin. “I want people to watch it,” Ferguson said over the phone. “I could’ve started with Shakespeare or Michelangelo or Homer, but I thought Zeppelin had an opportunity to pique the interest of more people. They’re also a particularly bad case of remixing without attribution.”
With the archival footage and informative voice over of a Ken Burns documentary and the fast-paced editing of an MTV News segment, Ferguson takes you on a historical tour of sampling in late ’60s rock ‘n roll. Further installments will touch on movies, low culture, and high art. They’ll be released whenever Ferguson receives enough donations to cover production costs.
Ferguson knows he isn’t covering entirely new territory. He’s borrowing from predecessors like Copyright Criminals and Walking on Eggshells to give the topic a new spin. “Other people have done the legal side,” said Ferguson. ” I wanted to do something that’s more about the creative side. It’s just something everybody does. Remixing is how the creative process works. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. You’re either doing it in a crude way or an ultra-sophisticated way, but it’s all the same thing.”
After receiving more than 6,500 submissions across nine categories, the Vimeo Festival and Awards finally made public its finalists. Let me break down how it all works.
The good people at Vimeo pared those 6,500 submissions down to a shortlist of 20 entries per category. Then they handed the paring responsibilities over to a panel of 27-esteemed judges (which includes names like David Lynch, Ze Frank, Ricky Van Veen, Fred Seibert, M.I.A., Roman Coppola, DJ Spooky, and more). Those judges voted to select the five finalists and winner in each category. You can watch the finalists’ work now, but the winners will be announced at a ceremony hosted by the internet’s golden child, Ze Frank, at IAC headquarters (IAC owns Vimeo) in New York on October 9. One grand-prize festival winner will take home a $25,000 grant to create something spectacular.
In the Original Series category, finalists include: The Specials (a “docu-soap series which follows the lives of 5 friends with learning disabilities”) Coolhunting (a video offshoot of the popular arts, culture, and design blog), Break-Ups (a series of one-shot, improvised break-up scenes), Take-Away Shows (live and uncut recordings of bands playing impromptu concerts in unconventional venues) and One-Square Mile (a documentary series that “examines life in individual square miles around the United States and beyond”).
If you haven’t seen them before, all are definitely worth checking out, but don’t limit your viewing time to the episodics. You can click play on any of the 45 finalists and not be disappointed. If you’d prefer to see them with a live viewing audience or attend any of the related festival workshops, pick up your tickets at Vimeoawards.com.
Lionsgate has become such a staple of the entertainment landscape that it’s hard to believe the studio only dates back to 1995. TV and film have been its bread and butter, churning out hits like the Saw franchise, The Expendables and Kick-Ass along with Emmy-winning TV standouts like Weeds and Mad Men. For the most part, however, the studio has remained on the digital sidelines, aside from a few toe-dipping exploits like the companion web series to Weeds.
But now Lionsgate is ready to dive head first, committing real production dollars into crafting its own web original content.
Today the studio announced that 24-episode animated web series Trailer Trash will be their first entrant into the online-only arena. In the wispy, 2D animation style of South Park and Katalyst’s 2008 web series Blah Girls, Trash follows “the misadventures of four hillbillies” at a trailer park. If it sounds like a redneck version of Blah Girls, that would probably be Blah Girls creator Todd Harris Goldman’s doing, who created Trash along with hud:sun Media’s Max Benator.
A number of writers have been tapped to pen the comedy, with Pop-Up Video’s Amy Jackson and Skunk Fu!’s Andy Rheingold on as head writers. Goldman, who also illustrates the series, has a pretty hefty apparel company (David and Goliath) on the side and much like with Blah Girls, it’s likely we could see some Trailer Trash t-shirts popping up.
Even though hud:sun Media’s parent MDC is one of the largest players in the advertising world, this won’t be a branded entertainment project in the traditional sense at least. “The distinction is that other branded entertainment projects require the brand to come on board to get it financed,” Benator told us. “The show is not beholden to the brands or reliant on the brands,” he added, “but brands will still be involved.” He hinted at crafting special promos for brands akin to what The Simpsons created with Butterfinger.
Curt Marvis is Lionsgate’s president of digital, and despite coming over to the studio from CinemaNow in 2008, is finally pulling the trigger on ample budgeted web series. Some have suggested that Lionsgate is late to the web content game, Marvis however feels that everyone else was in fact too early. Now he feels there’s actually a business in releasing premium content on the major online networks like Hulu and YouTube.
“We see an opportunity for shows that are produced intelligently that are done with top quality creative talent,” Marvis told us. “There’s no question in our mind that you can create a business with that.” Now that the penetration of online video networks has moved from niche to mainstream, the ad dollars appear to be at the point where studios are willing to fund more elaborate content. Recent Comscore data showed that US viewers viewed nearly 3.6 billion online video ads in July, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 783 million.
“It’s no secret that video pre-roll has increasingly become an accepted medium on the web,” Marvis told us. “The kinds of CPMs that can commanded with the kind of content we are creating are starting to generate real dollars. And it doesn’t have to get 100 million views for it to be successful.”
Distribution partners for Trailer Trash, which is set to debut online later this year, have not yet been disclosed, though Marvis did note that they are talking to the “usual suspects” in terms of distributors. The studio already distributes most of its library to Hulu, and it’s a safe bet to assume that will be one of the primary homes for their web series along with YouTube. There’s also Epix, the pay TV movie channel akin to HBO and Showtime in which Lionsgate is a co-owner. While web original content probably won’t be a top priority at Epix, it’s worth keeping an eye on especially as it just inked a billion dollar streaming content deal with Netflix.
This is one of many web series projects that the studio plans to do in the next year. We’re also hearing word of a major scripted web series project that could get the go-ahead from Lionsgate involving some web creators we’ve written about quite often here on Tubefilter. More on that as it develops. Either way, another place to pitch web projects is added today to the growing lineup of must-meets for web creators.
“You have to find projects that are appropriate for the medium not just in terms of length but for their cost,” added Marvis. “It’s shows like The LXD that start showing what can happen you have the right material.”
No major pop culture phenomenon is safe from The Fine Brothers. Their LOST action figure parodies were so popular that it’s all but certain that they were ripped off by none other than ABC itself last year. With FOX’s megahit American Idol set to announce their newest judge tomorrow now that Ellen decided to part ways, it’s about as topical as you can get this week.
With the big announcement of the new American Idol judges coming tomorrow, we’re proud to release yet another step towards innovation in interactive experiences online (past ones include 8-Bit Twilight Interactive & Lindsay Lohan In Court Interactive). This time, we put you in control of creating your own Idol judging panel and watching them judge a singer’s performance in the……. American Idol Interactive Experience
You get to choose between 6 different judges including Barack Obama, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Quentin Tarantino, Sarah Silverman, and Batman. Pick any 3 you want and get your very own custom video! There are 20 possible videos in total….feel free to watch them all!
In all some 57 distinct videos were needed to thread this all together, with 21 primary videos to choose from. The project took over took over 13 hours to just upload and link together, according to the Brothers. Benny Fine plays host Ryan Seacrest while brother Rafi plays Tarantino. They even tapped arguably the best Obama impersonator around with Alphacat playing the smooth talking President.
Not to rest on their laurels, the Brothers say they are taking this one a little further than their previous interactives, where “the most popular judges as decided by user comments will come back in a new video series to judge user generated videos.”
This might be the closest thing to a spin-off of the long running and inarguably popular comedy web series 
A little industry personnel news today as NY-based web studio Next New Networks 
Digital Day at 
White label “viewing Party” provider 
James C. Roberts III is the Managing Principal of 
Ever just get fed up with your desk job? You ask yourself, after 2.4 million years of evolution, this is where human beings have arrived? To sit in front of a computer all day? Don’t you just want to say f-it, I’m claiming back my inner animal. Then you renew your gym membership, rent Fight Club, pass out on the couch right around the soap-making scene, and then wake up to reality and go back to work.
In the first installment, Ferguson chooses to look at remixing through music and lyrics of Led Zeppelin. “I want people to watch it,” Ferguson said over the phone. “I could’ve started with Shakespeare or Michelangelo or Homer, but I thought Zeppelin had an opportunity to pique the interest of more people. They’re also a particularly bad case of remixing without attribution.”
The good people at Vimeo pared those 6,500 submissions down to a 
