The Tubefilter Hollywood Meetup LIVE Now from theStream.tv Hollywood Studios:

WANT TO CHAT? Join other viewers right now in the Chill.com Lounge for the Tubefilter Meetup!

This year Tubefilter has been exploring how YouTube and its partner program have opened a clear path to online video monetization.

And as we’ve learned from our last panel Beyond YouTube, ad revenue share on YouTube is just the tip of the iceberg: producers are maximizing their online video business on platforms like blip.tv and with their own websites, smartphone apps, merchandising, licensing, and more.

It’s clear that being a successful online video producer is about being both a creator and a marketer. But how do you engage and drive audiences?

Join us at Social Media Week Los Angeles as we explore how to get social in online video—and discover what tools and techniques help market your online video business and help you measure your success.

Learn from the people behind Klout—which has developed an influencer metric that has expanded into online video, EQAL, whose Umbrella platform maximizes social engagement, and Attention Span Media‘s Fanatical which helps you turn down the fire hose and target your audiences with relevant communications.

Thanks to our Meetup Sponsor theStream.tv for hosting the panel and the networking mixer!

Panelists:

Amber Buhl
Director, Sales, Klout
Former sales and Marketing Solutions roles at Hulu, Yahoo!, and Comcast Networks

Garrett Law
Co-Founder and COO, Attention Span Media
Social media agency and Fanatical audience development platform

Greg Goodfried
Founder and President, EQAL
Influencer networks around celebrities and brands

Moderator: Drew Baldwin, Tubefilter

Sponsored by theStream.tv, the leader in live interacting streaming video content.

Community Sponsors: SAG New Media, PlaceVine, and blip.tv
Media Partner: PGA New Media Council

Filed under: Articles, Events, Hollywood Web Video Meetup, Industry, News by Drew Baldwin
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People watch a lot of music videos on YouTube. If you check out the most recent comScore numbers, you’ll learn why I italicized “lot” in that last sentence.

According to the latest release of the marketing research company’s Video Metrix product (which, since last month, measures and analyzes the audiences of YouTube’s top partners), the YouTube channels organized under the umbrellas of Vevo and Warner Music collectively accounted for 985 million video views in the US in August alone. Vevo makes up 80% of that almost-10-figure mark with 788 million video views, while Warner accounted for 197 million video views throughout the month.

If that number doesn’t seem impressive yet, it will after you read this next stat. Those almost-a-billion video views equal more than twice the amount of video views received by all the other channel groupings in comScore’s Top 10 YouTube Partner Channel Chart combined. Machinima, Maker Studios, Demand Media, Revision3, the Associated Press, ClevverTV, FullScreen (which is a new addition to the Top 10, bumping off Next New Networks) and IGN collectively accumulated roughly 486 million video views in the same 31-day period. Check out the numbers:

The popularity of the music video genre definitely has a a lot do with the fact American music has more or less a universal appeal and language barriers don’t prevent consumption nearly as much as they do for other types of online video programming. Plus, the videos are generally very well produced, individuals click play to hear the lyrics just as much as they click play to see the moving pictures, and consumers can easily tolerate, and even enjoy multiple viewings.

In the same month Vevo garnered 788 million video views, Vevo only attracted 60 million unique viewers. That means every unique viewer watched an average of 13 Vevo videos. The only other channel conglomerate on comScore’s YouTube Top 10 to have a higher videos viewed per unique viewere ratio was Machinima. Their 17.6 million unique viewers on YouTube watched a total of 289.2 million videos, for an average 16.4 videos per viewer. So, what does that mean? It means Vevo and Machinima.com fans really like them some Vevo and machinima.com!

Filed under: comScore, Featured, Industry, News by Joshua Cohen
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Wow that was fast. I saw Freddie Wong and Brandon Laatsch’s posting on Kickstarter yesterday for their Video Game High School project, asking fans to kick it $75,000 to help fund it. In less than 24 hours, the pair blew past their goal and have now raised over $77,000 with 1,736 backers and counting.

At first it seemed a little odd that two of YouTube’s hottest young creator-filmmakers would even need to resort to crowdsourced funding at all. But then I came to realize that they may have just pulled one of the smartest moves ever, getting the fans bought into the project before it even starts shooting. Skin in the game. Word is this is just a piece of the overall budget for the series, but still crucial to the production.

All of us here would like to thank our generous backers, who have raised over $75k for VGHS in a single day!

Every dollar we raise here is going into making this project the biggest and best series it can possibly be. More money means we’ll be able to spend more on VFX shots, production design, hiring cast and crew, etc. – all of which will have a material impact on the quality of the final product.

So know this – your pledges and your support can only improve this project from this point forward. By pre-ordering the DVD now and pledging your support, you’re ensuring that the end product is better than it would have been.

We can’t thank our fans enough – you are redefining how online content is made and funded, so let’s make this one of the biggest Kickstarter projects of all time!

Filed under: Action, Articles, Featured, Freddie Wong, News, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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It’s Thursday and as we reported earlier, Fred’s new show Figgle Chat is up and officially live on YouTube today. The first episode of the weekly 3-minute talk show features our favorite Barack Obama impersonator Alphacat (Iman Crosson) as the first guest in the kitschy basement set with Fred (Lucas Cruikshank).

“We’re shooting the show in his basement which is kinda weird but Rob [the show’s producer] said that’s where all good talk shows start,” said Fred about the modest premiere. Upcoming guests are for whatever reason being held back from the public at this point. The series is a joint production by The Collective Digital Studio and Cruikshank.

Interesting to note, the last 30 seconds of the 3:21 show features a trailer for Fred’s Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred on Nickelodeon, which premieres in October on the network. So, anyone wondering what many in the comments are wondering (WHY?), that may be the answer. So far it’s tracking at about 70% “Like” and 30% “Dislike” on YouTube for the first ep.

Filed under: Articles, Comedy, Fred, Hosted, News, The Collective Digital Studio, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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With three seasons, 25 episodes, 11+ million views, a number of accolades (including a few Streamy Awards), and a helluva lot of ardent fans, Anyone But Me just may be the most successful (in terms of both audience and acclaim) independently funded and produced piece of online original dramatic programming. That’s why its creators want to make sure its sendoff is something special.

Susan Miller and Tina Cesa Ward are wrapping up the hit New York City and State -based web series about a girl who likes girls in a post-9/11 world, but they’re bringing back all the original cast for one last installment. The pair are securing funding for the series finale as we read, in hopes to raise enough cash to begin shooting in January or February.

It’s kinda bittersweet, right? It’ll be sad to see a seemingly perennial programming staple of the online video world cease production, but it’s exciting to think about what the finale may entail and what its creators will create next.

I got in touch with Miller and Ward to ask them about making tough decisions, the final episode, and the future.

Tubefilter: Deciding to end Anyone But Me must’ve been a hard decision to make. How’d you do it?
Susan Miller: After launching Season Three, we agreed to take a break from the show and table all of our decisions regarding its future until we could clear our heads and assess the options. Three of our cast members had moved to Los Angeles, and despite the well meaning intentions of people who wanted to help us get sponsorship, it never materialized. So we had to face certain realities.

Tina Cesa Ward: Obviously there were circumstances that led to the decision but we’re very lucky to have had the run we had. I don’t know how many times in anyone’s career you’re given money to go make what you want without interference. Especially in a medium that has not yet proven itself. I’m pretty damn thankful for that.

TF: Will the finale be a single episode? Or what’s the planned format?
TCW: It is one episode, but it will be a longer episode. The fans will finally get their wish and get a longer episode.

TF: Have you known since you started the show what would happen to the characters at the end? 
SM: I think what kept us on our toes was not knowing. We weren’t preparing for the end, we were growing a show. Which meant pushing the characters towards complication. It’s actually been thrilling to see the potential for opening up the series to stories we hadn’t anticipated. I mean, we’ve always been guided by a connection to the heart of the show, so there’s a kind of elegant and exciting inevitability to where we are right now in crafting the last episode.

TCW: One of the great things of having the freedom creatively to run your own show, I think, is letting the show take you to where it wants to go. An ending was really never in the thought process we were just moving forward with the story. Of course now we’re thinking about the ending, and I’m very happy the direction we’re headed with it. And excited to work on it.

TF: How are you planning to secure funding for the finale?
TCW: We’re looking at multiple sources right now. There’s not going to be just one way to fund the finale.  But it will happen.

TF: So, what’s next?
SM: Some very cool things. We’re in talks with a major literary agent to do a Young Adult book based on the series. And, we’ll be releasing DVD’s of Seasons 2 & 3 after the finale airs. I’m also awaiting word on whether my other web series, Bestsellers will be picked up for a second season. Then there are those pages I was in the middle of writing when I set off to discover the new world of new media. I just may be compelled to finish what I started.

TCW: More ABM of course, as Susan mentioned. But I’m also working on a couple of projects of my own.  Being someone that loves drama as I do, especially stark drama; I just finished shooting my dramatic mini series for the web called “Good People in Love” about two opposing views on love and marriage set on the night New York passed the Equal Marriage Bill. And soon I’ll continue my work on my new sci-fi adventure series “Guards of Dagmar”, which is a project that allows me to play in a setting and with characters that have next to no visibility in forms of storytelling. So in that regard, not too far off from Anyone But Me.

Stay tuned to Tubefilter and AnyoneButMeSeries.com for more news the series finale comes together.

Filed under: Anyone But Me, Drama, Featured, News, YouTube by Joshua Cohen
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Fits and starts, that’s where much of the past five-plus years of online dramas and sci-fi series have been stuck. Some notable and pushing things forward, while many dragged the medium sideways with only comedy getting mainstream praise. But it’s fall of 2011, and there are signs the good stuff is finally here. RCVR debuted today from Machinima, as one of its largest and most ambitious new original series to date.

Not only is it a sci-fi drama, a genre well underserved on YouTube, it’s a period piece set in 1973 rural Arkansas. There’s a definite X-Files vibe here, with the story centering around a covert organization, led by Luke Weber (Daniel Bonjour), investigating extraterrestrial encounters, or, specifically a set of RCVRs who’s bodies are vessels of alien communications.

David Van Eyssen created and directed the series, someone online viewers may remember as the producer of Paramount’s thriller series Circle of Eight back in 2009. Van Eyssen’s plans extend well beyond the six episodes slated for weekly release every Wednesday, with some transmedia elements on various semi-secret websites, starting with its own: projectrcvr.com.

“Our goal was to rethink storytelling as a narrative one-way street, inviting users to explore, discover and share much as they would in a game – or social network,” said Van Eyssen. “We’re grateful to have found like-minded partners in both Machinima and Motorola, companies that understand how deeply technology affects our lives.”

The production value is visually noticeable right off the bat, and it’s clear there was some significant backing put into this one. Motorla Mobility, now owned by Google, is the show’s sole sponsor. Heck even Variety liked it—hint, that’s a rarity for them with online original series.

While Machinima is rpadily emerging as a premium content netowrk after stunning (and popular with its viewers) serials like Mortal Kombat: Legacy and Bite Me What this signals is a shift in perception by mainstream audiences that the web is nothing but awash in entertaining amateurism. And we haven’t even seen the fruits of YouTube’s Robert Kyncl and his team’s $100 million in checks to fund original content yet.

My friends, we’re in for a feast of new programming this next 12 months, and all signs point to it getting very watchable.

Filed under: Articles, Branded Entertainment, Drama, Featured, Machinima.com, Mortal Kombat: Legacy, News, Sci-Fi, Web Series, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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Premiering this week exclusively on Dailymotion is Ben and Burman, a new web series from actor/producer Ben Giroux (Bones, Psych) and his longtime frenemy and Second City’s Scott Burman. The story highlights the pair’s height deficiencies and their Odd Couple cohabitation, which, I’m told, kinda sorta emulates their real life friendship.

“We became known as best friends who also hated each other,” said Giroux. “I’m a neat-freak who appreciates order and hygiene. Burman is a slob who appreciates chaos at all times. Together, people started referring to us as a modern-day Odd Couple.

Striking up a unique friendship and creating a style of comedy Giroux describes as “if The Three Stooges had sex with South Park,” Giroux and Burman produced the twelve episode series. Then they teamed up with Gary Randall’s Grand Productions (Saving Grace, The Glades). The partnership had definite benefits, as the duo quickly got WME representation and began pitching a live-action and animated version of Ben and Burman around Hollywood. After almost selling the show to a cable network last year, they decided to release the web series while continuing to pitch a TV version.

Featuring cameos from recognizable actors such as Josh Sussman (Glee), Whit Hertford (Full House) and Will Harris (Friday Night Lights), the series is a fast-paced comedy that ventures into the  absurd and risque (the duo pokes fun at Nazis, child trafficking, and drag quens), while still maintaining at least some semblance of cartoonish reality.

When reflecting on the amount of effort that went into the series, Giroux said “we’ve poured four years of blood, sweat, and ulcers into this project — and we believe it shows.  This ain’t your momma’s web series.” If you want a Laurel & Hardy or Oscar and Felix for Gen Xers, or are just looking for a good laugh, Ben and Burman is the show for you. Check it out at Dailymotion.

Filed under: Channels, Comedy, Featured, News, Production Companies, Reviews, Web Series by Chris Landa
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Tubefilter has again teamed up with The Caucus for Producers, Writers, & Directors—an alliance of television and new media content creators—to present “Television: A Preview of 2011/2012 Season” at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Wednesday, September 21, 2011.

The panel will handicap the 2011-2012 schedule in the context of program development and pilot production for this season, and will cover the increase in reality programs and their effect on the industry.

Also on the agenda are digital cross-platform issues such as social networking and webisode production and distribution.

The panelists for today’s event include:

• Paul Buccieri, President & CEO, ITV Studios America
• Joel Gallen, The Sing Off, America’s Best Dance Crew
• Michael Lombardo, President of Programming, HBO
• Lizzy Weiss, Creator and EP, Switched at Birth
• Greg Yaitanes, Executive Producer, House M
Moderator: Brian Lowry, Variety

Last May Tubefilter and The Caucus brought you Social Media for Content Creators, and The Creative Independent and the Web live from the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Industry, News by Drew Baldwin
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Remember AtomFilms? An icon ahead of its time. At this point it would have been pushing north of 80 in internet years, but the scrappy video startup from 1998 was one of the first to introduce a platform for uploading and sharing short films and funny videos, well before YouTube’s grand ascendancy. It spawned a whole company of sister sites like Addicting Games and Shockwave.com, that all fell under the Atom Entertainment banner.

Then YouTube got big in a hurry, and when Google ponied up $1.65 billion in 2006 to acquire the booming video site, media giant Viacom went shopping for its own rival to fend off the rise of its rampant copyright nemesis. $200 million later, it had snatched up the seven-year-old upstart Atom Entertainment, and relaunched AtomFilms as Atom.com—Viacom’s answer to YouTube.

Now it appears after years of the cold (and hot) war between parent companies Viacom and Google—which Google effectively won both in and out of court—that the Atom banner will no longer be Viacom’s flag in the online comedy game.

We are hearing from multiple sources that the company is folding its Atom team into the stronger Comedy Central Digital unit, with comedycentral.com moving into the flagship position.

Atom.com struggled to break through into the mutli-million unique visitors a month that newer comedy rivals like Break.com and Funny or Die achieved. Its regular slates of original comedy series like Streamy-winner The Legend of Neil and the recent standout Video Game Reunion were able to draw millions of views each, but many floundered and failed to recoup production costs from ad share revenue. It was also held back by the lack of a large base of highly viral user-generated content, that its comedy rivals have counted on.

We reached out to Atom and Comedy Central for more information, and as of this posting they have not commented. We are hearing that several video creators with series on the site were given the full rights to their series back earlier this summer, including some of Atom’s most popular originals. Now today some more creators were notified via email that Atom will no longer be hosting their series and that all ad revenue sharing will cease.

It’s not clear about the fate of the Atom.com site itself, which has updated its logo to read “Comedy Central Originals.” Staff positions are also up in the air, but no layoffs that we are hearing at this point.

More updates on this story as we get them.

Until then, a look back at Atom.com’s Top 5 most popular original videos:

Possum Death Spree – The Game
(embedding not available for this one)
Created by: Atom
Date: 10-16-2007
Views: 2,240,550

Legend of Neil, Season 1, Ep. 1 — The Beginning
Created by: effinfunny
Date: 07-24-2008
Views: 1,148,970

Hot Sluts, Ep 1
Created by: AD Miles
Date: 05-26-2009
Views: 1,039,946

Star Wars Gangsta Rap: Chronicles
Created by: Bent TV
Date: 11-10-2009
Views: 967,836

HellHoles, Episode 2
Created by: Efram Potelle and Kyle Rankin
Date: 01-09-2007
Views: 874,375

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Comedy, Comedy Central, Featured, Industry, News, The Legend of Neil, Web Series by Marc Hustvedt
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Video game friendly network G4 launched G4 University Week, a video series designed to help job seekers crack into the video game industry.

G4U features a “Complete Guide to Landing a Video Game Job,” which includes school guides or programs like Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab in Boston, The Gnomon Workshop, and The Guildhall at SMU, and a How-To section on becoming a professional in the video game industry, such as a producer, journalist, community manager, game artist, game tester, and eSports commentator.

The comprehensive course also features job advice from Irrational Games’ Ken Levine, Adam Sessler from G4tv and X-Play, and Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk from BioWare, among others, and also informative testimonies from working professionals from Bethesda Softworks, Blizzard Entertainment, and Guerilla Games, as well as composers, level designers and game testers from top games.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a career resource guide to help the aspiring video game pro get started, included what blogs to read, basic software and other resources, networking opportunities, and career counseling.

Filed under: Articles, Industry, News, Web Series by Drew Baldwin
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Oh Fred, he’s like our little brother who went off to boarding school. A TV movie for Nickeldeon—which ended up being the most watched movie on cable TV in 2010—then a yet-to-be-released sequel flick. But the creator of the former #1 Most Subscribed channel had been noticeably absent from YouTube, slipping down to #6 spot and about to be passed up by the surging Freddie Wong.

Ad yes, it’s Monday, so today in our weekly video blog of online video news worth knowing this week, we have the latest on the Fred Figglehorn chat show, a look at Crackle’s latest series Effin with Tonight, Kmart’s renewal of First Day from Alloy, The Haunting of Sunshine Girl, Scarlett Johansson’s backside bonanza, and the biggest American video star in China—Jessica Beinecke.

Here it, please watch it, like it, share it around:

Worth noting is that the new Fred show isn’t the same as the animated Lucas Cruikshank series announced back in June with writers Kate Boutilier and Eryk Casemiro. Teaser for Fred’s new show:

Crackle’s Effin with Tonight starring Patrick Warburton:

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl trailer:

Filed under: Alloy Entertainment, Articles, Branded Entertainment, Crackle, Crackle (Sony Pictures Television), Featured, Fred, News, News-Current Events, Teen.com, The Collective Digital Studio, Vlog, Web Series, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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The ninth iteration of Bravo’s Emmy Award-winning reality culinary competition Top Chef will make its debut Wednesday, November 2. A new Top Chef online companion series that offers contestants who have packed their knives and gone an opportunity to still claim the coveted title of Top Chef and its associated prize money will premiere shortly thereafter.

D.M. Levine at Adweek reports Top Chef: The Last Kitchen features an “alternate round of cook-offs” for all the Top Chef Season 9 wannabes who will hear this tune. But the show won’t be any kind of low-budget online spin-off. The competition in the loser’s bracket will be shot in the same locations by the same production teams and hosted by the same soul patch-sporting, Diet Coke-consuming, celebrity chef Tom Colicchio as its television counterpart.

As online viewers watch to see which eliminated contestant will battle back to earn a place at the final Judges Table on TV, those viewers will be incentivized to stay tuned by way of prizes for participating in polls and other interactive programming components. Levine also notes long standing Top Chef sponsor Toyota will be along for the ride on the web.

We’ve seen a number of companion web series to dramatic television programs that further extend the storylines and give hardcore fans an opportunity to delve deeper into fictional worlds. In regards to reality programming, YouTube annualy parnters with America’s Got Talent for a special episode bringing basement-born online video stars into the competition. But Top Chef: The Last Kitchen looks to be the most serious and integrated effort from a television network to incorporate a companion series of any kind into its programming. Because of that, and because I love me some Top Chef contestant, I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Bravo and The Last Kitchen have cookin’.

Filed under: Bravo, Featured, News, Web Series by Joshua Cohen
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