Archive for February, 2012:

Highlights From The Latest YouTube Creator Playbook

YouTube released the updated version of its Creator Playbook, which includes specific instructions on how to implement a variety of techniques for becoming a successful online video producer.

YouTube released the original Creator Playbook last summer after Google acquired Next New Networks, which evolved into YouTube’s content and audience development initiative YouTube Next. The document contained 70 pages of “important tips, best practices, and strategies that helps creators build audiences on YouTube,” categorized into three sections: Programing and Producing, Publishing and Optimization, and Community and Social Media.

The new Creator Playbook is now over 90 pages, almost every one of which includes user feedback. One key addition is a new section on how to organize videos for different audience types and how to program channels to make the most of YouTube’s recently revamped homepage and new channel design developed under the codename Cosmic Panda.

Here are the highlights from Version 2:

  • New channels and homepage section
  • Go global section to help creators create, program, and optimize for audiences around the world
  • Updates to annotations, playlists, publishing, and video responses
  • Glossary  to help creators quickly learn all the site’s features, and the strategies, terms, and topics
With great power comes great responsibility. Now get to work.

NBC Cease and Desists ‘Inspector Spacetime’ Web Series

You know that clip of a Doctor Who spoof that aired on NBC’s Community called Inspector Spacetime that’s going to get its own web series if enough people contribute to its Kickstarter campaign and the show’s creator, Travis Richey meets or exceeds his $20,000 fundraising goal? Well, there’s still going to be a Doctor Who spoof created by Travis Richey that will get its own web series if enough people contribute to its Kickstarter campaign, except it won’t be called Inspector Spacetime.

Like major multi-million dollar entertainment companies are apt to do (and sometimes regret doing) when fans borrow their intellectual property to create fan made entertainment properties of their own, Sony and NBC both recently contacted Richey demanding he cease and desist production on Inspector Spacetime.

So, Richey is cease and desisting production on Inspector Spacetime and starting production on the exact same project with a new wardrobe and new title. It’s now called Untitled Webseries About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time. Here’s the update from Richey’s Kickstarter page:

Lawyers from Sony and NBC have contacted me demanding that I cease production on an Inspector Spacetime web series.

Though I firmly believe the law would be on my side in producing this parody, I have no wish or ability to fight a show that I love as much as Community. I had hoped that they would embrace what is essentially a fan film and appreciate the value it adds to the character, and the audience that we would bring who are finding Community for the first time through this character, but alas, that’s not the case. So, I will be removing all references to Inspector Spacetime from this series (it only happened in the title anyway), and altering the appearance of the Inspector so that he does not look like Inspector Spacetime. What remains is 100% the creation of myself, my writing partner, and you, the fans.

As Lauren Davis at io9 notes, it’s probably all for the best as Untitled Webseries About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time is a better web series title anyway. And if you haven’t already donated to see the show come to fruition, maybe watching an illustrated animatic of the proposed first episode will convince you to part with some cash.

CollegeHumor Gets Serious About Long-Form Content

CollegeHumor Media (the overarching online media and entertainment company comprised of CollegeHumor, Jest, Dorkly, SportsPickle) announced today it hired Sam Grossman away from his Director of Development position at Comedy Central to be CollegeHumor Media’s shiny new Senior Vice President of Development. Grossman will be responsible for CollegeHumor’s burgeoning original long-form content business, where he will be charged with growing the company’s library of properties in the category of longer-than-the-length-of-a-viral-video-or-average-web-series-episode for both online and TV.

Given Grossman’s work history, it’s a job at which he should perform well. At MTV, Grossman “oversaw the creation and production of series including Human Giant and Silent Library. He’s also worked on programming for The Onion and The Gregory Brothers.

Grossman’s hire is the latest in a set of developments indicating CollegeHumor’s express interest in developing more long-form content. The company recently announced its first foray into the theatrical film space with Brad Copeland’s Coffee Town. Jake and Amir also released a special 30-minute pay-to-view episode of their eponymous web series last October. CollegeHumor has a number of other long-form properties in heavy development, but none of which it’s making public just yet.

Leap Year, Branded Entertainment that Works

Leap Year is a branded entertainment web series with a sizable budget funded by Hiscox, a London Stock Exchange-listed insurance provider that specializes in niche areas of the insurance market (including art collections and kidnapping/ransoms) that last year extended its offerings to provide small business insurance to companies in the US.

The show was created and executive produced by Wilson Cleveland and CJP Digital (the individual and company behind other online branded programs including The Temp LIfe, The Webventures of Justin and Alden, Suite 7, and Bestsellers) and written and directed by the Baranovsky brothers under the banner of Happy Little Guillotine Films (the digital production shop behind titles like 7-Eleven’s Road Trip Rally and Break a Leg). It’s comprised of a cast that fans of CJP Digital and Happy Little Guillotine productions will find very familiar (including Yuri Baranovsky, Alexis Boozer, Cleveland, Daniela DiIorio, Drew Lanning, Rachel Risen, and Mark Gantt) and contains a laundry list of cameos from Hollywood vets and tech industry celebs (like Craig Beirko, Julie Warner, Guy Kawasaki,Gary Vaynerchuk and Mashable’s Adam Ostrow).

The 10-episode first season debuted on Hulu in June of last year. The comedy follows the out-of-work and entrepreneurial escapades of five recently fired co-workers who invest in a shared office space and pursue their daydreams of starting their own successful businesses by competing for $500,000 in startup capital from a mystery investor.

You should watch it. It’s good. If you don’t believe me, the following number and accolade should convince you otherwise. Those 10-episodes garnered 3.7 million organic episodes across all of Leap Year’s distribution outlets and earned the program a Digital Luminary Award from NATPE for the excellence in branded entertainment.

But more than viewership and acclaim, Leap Year is good because – like  other great branded entertainment programs – it worked. I caught up with Hunter Hoffmann, Head of U.S. Communications for Hiscox over e-mail, who explained to me how Leap Year was nothing short of a success for his company.

Leap Year as a marketing vehicle gave Hiscox great value. The series helped drive aided awareness of Hiscox in the US market from 0 to 10% in less than a year and the related spend was only 3% of our 2011 marketing budget. We increased our social media followers by 1,300% to over 40,000 active followers and Hiscox mentions on social media have increased by 2,300% since the series started. The second season will give us an opportunity to continue engaging with these followers and reach new audiences to further increase awareness and affinity for Hiscox.

And that’s the reason why Leap Year is coming back for a second season.

CJP Digital Media and Happy Little Guillotine Films are scheduled to start production on March 5 for a Hulu premiere this summer. In this sophomore season you can expect the same cast of characters with some additional notables (including Joshua Malina, Steven Weber, Emma Caulfield, Randi Zuckerberg, Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian, What’s Trending host Shira Lazar, and TechStars Founder and CEO, David Cohen and Managing Director, David Tisch.

You can also expect longer episodes. Cleveland tells me this upcoming season of Leap Year will contain 10 22-minute installments. Here’s one of the reasons why:

Yuri and I have been championing the idea of longer-form, TV-length programming on the web for a long time and it would seem both the industry and the audience are finally ready to oblige. Hulu is among those at the forefront of this new format and we’re excited and proud to be working with them again this season.

Get caught up on all things Leap Year and C3D holographic web conferencing devices (which, if you don’t know what those are, means you need to get caught up on Leap Year) before the second season hits a computer screen near you. Watch the first season at Hulu.com/Leap-Year.

Ze Frank and ‘A Show’ Return to the Web

If Phil DeFrancoRay William JohnsonJenna Marbles, and/or any one or many of a number of other top online video personalities wanted to paraphrase Newton and say they attained their online video success by standing on the shoulders of the online video personalities that came before them, they’d all be standing on top of Ze Frank.

Frank’s interactive, year-long, online video experiment known to the online masses and Sports Racers as The Show debuted on March 17, 2006 and ended 365 days later on March 17, 2007. Within that time frame, Frank released viewer-and-Dewars-supported episodes every weekday incorporating a thoughtful mix of politics, pop culture, original music, and audience participation, all shot and edited in the now ubiquitous close-up, frenetic jump-cut style.

The Show was popular. So much so, that in the age before the emergence of the YouTube star, you couldn’t write a story about online video entertainment without mentioning Ze Frank’s name. And those of us who remember watching episodes of The Show as they were released have been waiting for Frank’s return (hailed by trumpets and angels).

Since he released the series finale, Frank’s only brought back an iteration of The Show for a limited engagement during the Writers Guild Strike in 2007 and as a short series for Buzzfeed and Time.com in 2009. That is, until now.

Hard chargers be damned, Ze Frank is returning to the web series world by way of a successful Kickstarter campaign. Ze raised more than $80,000 (well above his $50,000 goal) from over 2,000 backers in just one day after posting his project. That cash will go towards the production of A Show, which will be a lot like The Show, or as Frank describes it, “Same same, but different.” Here’s more from the host/creator/star:

To start, I want to produce around three episodes a week for a year and take it from there. I want this to be fun and to last for a while. I figure that I will launch sometime at the end of March, near to the 6th anniversary of the original show. All of the funds raised here will go towards the production of the show – equipment, salaries for people that will help me, rent. I will find other ways to pay myself.

And if you’re wondering why someone who, less than two years ago raised over half a million dollars in venture funding needs to go on Kickstarter to get enough cash for an online video project, sometimes these things have little do with capital. Kickstarter’s also an extremely effective marketing tool and early system for interactive audience development.

If you ever bought a virtual rubber ducky to support The Show (or you wish you had), you should definitely consider backing the Kickstater campaign for A Show. Ze’s putting the money to good use! And if he raises $1,000,000,000, he promises to buy Greece.

LIVE Now: Pirates Of The Internet

Tubefilter is proud to partner once again with The Caucus for Producers, Writers, & Directors—an alliance of television and new media content creators—to present Pirates of the Internet: Protecting the Rights of Content Creators at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Tuesday, February 28, 2011.

With the recent internet backlash from the Stop Online Piracy Act, a Congressional bill designed to curtail copyright infringement but that also threatens to disrupt the function of the internet, piracy has become a hot button issue as Hollywood tries to make sense of intellectual property rights.

The panel will discuss issues surrounding SOPA (and Senate bill PIPA), and explore “the need for further legislation to protect intellecutal property rights of content creators, as well as other collateral matters in the piracy lair.”

  • Melinda Demsky – Senior Vice President, Content Protection, FOX
  • Vin Di Bona Chairman FishBowl Worldwide Media & Vin Di Bona Productions
  • Jim Gladstone – Executive Vice President Legal & Business Affairs, Lionsgate
  • Kent Raygor – Partner, Sheppard Mullin
  • Michael D. Robinson – Executive Vice President, Content Protection & Chief of Operations, Motion Picture Association of America
  • Moderator: Ted Johnson – Deputy Editor, Variety

Last September Tubefilter and The Caucus brought you the Ninth Annual Caucus Television Preview, which handicapped 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. Other events from Tubefilter and the Caucus include Social Media for Content Creators and The Creative Independent and the Web live from the Beverly Hills Hotel.

‘Epic Meal Time’ Picked up by Japan

You would think a country that maintained a foreign policy of isolationalism until the 1850s, which most likely played no small part in that country’s seemingly less-than-conventional (at least by Western standards) dietary habits and entertainment programming would be the birth place of an entertainment series about gonzo food pornographers who create meat-based gastronomic abominations and then devour them on camera. You would think some former substitute high school teacher in Japan and his friends would’ve created Epic Meal Time and then imported the property to American audiences. You would think that, but you’d be wrong. In fact, it’s the exact opposite.

Marc Graser at Variety reports Japanese media conglomerate Yoshimoto Kogyo has partnered with Next Time Productions to bring its uber-popular YouTube cooking show Epic meal Time to Asian audiences. Epic Meal Time Japan will begin production in April and be distributed on digital platforms, while Epic Meal Time host Harley Morenstein and company at Next Time Productions will work with Yoshimoto Kogyo on developing other original properties (to be distributed on the web and TV) for international audiences.

The deal could add some serious revenue streams to Next Time Productions’ accounting books. Currently, the company makes most of its cash by way of its massive YouTube audience (which has accounted for more than 330 million views since Epic Meal Time debuted in September 2010) and partnership with new media studio Revision3 (which is responsible for orchestrating many Epic Meal Time sponsorship deals, including developing the show’s own line of bacon-flavored food products).

This also isn’t the first American and/or Canadian property Yoshimoto Kogyo has brought to Japanese audiences. Graser notes the media company’s partners include IAC’s Notional and Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video, from which Yoshimoto Kogyo recently imported a Japanese version of Saturday Night Live.

‘Dating Rules from My Future Self’ Stars Land TV Gigs

For the past several weeks, there’s been buzz about the news series Dating Rules from My Future Self. In case you somehow missed the trailer and advertisements for the show, the producers of Gossip Girl and alumni from Life Unexpected teamed up with Alloy Entertainment to create a high-quality, high-concept web series about a girl finding love one text at a time.

Dating Rules from My Future Self follows Lucy Lambert (Shiri Appleby, Life Unexpected), a 20-something living with her quirky female roommates in Silverlake, California, designing apps for the hip tech company Finger Games, and working with her boyfriend-maybe-fiancé Brendon (Bryce Johnson). Lucy’s life seems to follow the standard romcom formula until one of her app ideas (Texts from your Future Self) becomes a reality and “future Lucy” starts to text love advice to “present Lucy.” However, the sci-fi storyline isn’t the only thing that makes this series stand out from pack.

Not only did Dating Rules execute a strong brand marketing strategy (with series sponsors Ford Focus, Revlon, Schick Quattro for Women, and Biore Skincare), but the series aired at the perfect time for its cast to get the attention of networks and cable channels.

Premiering in early January, Dating Rules debuted during the tail end of television’s mid-season break. That could’ve given showrunners, executives, agents, and other powers that be a window to watch the web series while they were waiting for their regularly scheduled programming to return to broadcast. And that could’ve contributed to the reasons why Dating Rules stars have been making headlines for landing TV roles. It was recently announced that Appleby will be getting a multi-episode arc on TNT’s Franklin & Bash and Zach McGowan (Dating Rules’ shirtless hunk Jagger) has been promoted a series regular for the next season of Showtime’s Shameless.

The aforementioned actors aren’t exactly new to television screens and their roles in Dating Rules can’t get all the credit for their latest gigs (McGowan, for instance, already had a guest spot on Shameless), but appearing in a high-profile web series at a time when television programming was coming back from its holiday vacation certainly didn’t hurt their careers. Plus, it’s not like this web series to television thing hasn’t happened before.

The final episode of Dating Rules from My Future Self aired this week on Hulu, but you can also watch it on Facebook and Youtube, too.

‘Doctor Who’ Parody on NBC’s ‘Community’ Gets a Web Series

Good news for Community fans this month! Not only did Community announce that it’s coming back  on March 15th, but the show’s Doctor Who-inspired parody, Inspector Spacetime, is being turned into a web series.

In case you’re not a Community connoisseur,  this season’s first episode followed a story line of  Britta (Gillian Jacobs) trying to cheer up Abed (Danny Pudi) by introducing him to new television shows. In a last desperate attempt, Britta shows him “a long-running British Scif-Fi show that’s been on the air  since 1962.” Like a true geek, Abed declares the show as the best thing he’s seen in his life and becomes obsessed. Later in the season, Community closed an episode with Abed and Troy (Donald Glover) debating over the show’s “science” and dressing up like Inspector Spacetime and the Constable. Like many of Troy and Abed’s skits and pranks, Inspector Spacetime quickly became a favorite with fans.

Before the community of Community fans goes crazy (and starts flooding Dan Harmon’s twitter account with questions), there are a few points to clarify about the series. First, Dan Harmon, NBC, and Sony currently have no involvement with the web series. Second, Donald Glover and Danny Pudi will not be playing the roles of Inspector and Constable Reginald Wigglesworth. The series will focus on the show within the show. Travis Richey (the spoof Inspector) is producing Inspector Spacetime and has launched a Kickstarter campaign for the web series.

Now that the facts are clear, let’s go back to celebrating! As a fan of both Community and Doctor Who, I am very excited to see how this parody-homage will expand into a full series. While the series had a panel at Gallifrey One (that’s the name of the big Doctor Who convention for all those in the room that don’t know what the TARDIS is), there are still several questions Community viewers want to know. To paraphrase the Inspector, the important question isn’t where but when will the series air? Fans will have to wait and see!

Hulu Picks Up New Canadian ARG Thriller ‘Guidestones’

Last week a new interactive fictional thriller web series Guidestones launched on YouTube, inspired by the real mystery of the Georgia Guidestones, large granite slabs inscribed with directions on how to rebuild society after the apocalypse.

Now the series is set to run on Hulu in a slightly altered form by spring, C21 Media reports.

The interactive 50 episode series contains embedded clues that viewers can uncover and explore hidden story lines. The series was created by iThentic and 3 o’clock TV, and centers around the mysterious Guidestones monument, the so-called “American Stonehenge” outside Atlanta in Elbert County, Georgia.

Dramatic and documentary filmmaker Jay Ferguson directs the vérité style series which features locations in Canada, the US, and India:

“Sandy Rai, an exchange student from India studying journalism in Canada, stumbles upon an unsolved murder while working on assignment with fellow student Trevor Shale. She learns that the murdered man, a scientist named Harold Glenndenning, may have a connection to the builders of The Georgia Guidestones. Following clues hidden within The Guidestones she discovers that Harold’s death was no random act, and is instead part of a cover-up hiding a global conspiracy of apocalyptic proportions.”

The series is supported through Canada’s Independent Production Fund (which committed $1.4MM in web series funding last year) and sponsors including Coca-Cola, Canadian fast-food chain Pizza Pizza, and the Toronto Blue Jays.

Like mysterious monuments with sinister auras? Check out out coverage of Stephen King’s ‘N’.

Sweden’s Democratic Social Media and Online Video Revolution

Thanks to the IKEA-sponsored series Easy to Assemble, Sweden has gotten its fair share of attention in the online video world.  But, because of a new social media strategy, the Scandinavian nation is poised to move from being the butt of meatball-related jokes.

Last year, the country turned its official twitter feed (@Sweden) over to the people, choosing a different ‘curator’ each week who was told tweet whatever they wanted on behalf of the whole country. Adam, an organic sheep farmer, threatened to spam the world with pictures of cute baby sheep, while Hanna, a self-described “average lesbian truck driver” commented on topics as varied as Sigourney Weaver’s panties and gender identity laws. Recently, a librarian named Par is at the helm, relaying his snowboarding and parenting adventures.

Sweden’s YouTube channel is similarly democratic. In addition to the bland tourist come-ons most countries post on their official pages, Sweden has created playlists of videos uploaded by Swedes that are funny, controversial and downright bizarre.

One, called “Funny Sweden” is almost entirely devoted to the Muppet character Swedish Chef. Another features an uncensored series of person-on-the-street interviews with regular Swedes, who are just as likely to take their country to task as praise it. Presented without commentary is the bizzaro video diary of a moose on vacation in the Netherlands, where he rides in a giant wooden shoe. My favorite series is What is Love? which features “average Swedes” discussing their love lives. Trust me, these videos are the perfect cure for a long, lonely winter.

So, is that a meatball in your pocket, or are you just really excited about web democracy?

Bill Maher, Yahoo’s ‘CrazyStupidPolitics’ Streams Live Tonight

Bill Maher’s CrazyStupidPolitics: Live from Silicon Valley is streaming live on Yahoo! Thursday night at 7:30 PM PST / 10:30 PM EST from the San Performing Arts Center. The online exclusive comedy special kicks off the Yahoo! Screen Comedy Channel and marks Maher’s first live new media broadcast.

Best known for his HBO show Real Time, Maher’s comedy and political insight have gotten him 27 Emmy nominations, granting him the  honor of receiving the most Emmy nominations without a single win. (For those keeping score at home, that means Bill Maher’s been able to out Susan Lucci Susan Lucci, who finally won after 19 Emmy nods.) While that may seem harsh, Maher isn’t taking the constant snubbing too hard.

I’ve been nominated for my shows every year they’ve been eligible since 1995. That’s like 15 straight times Real Time and, before that, Politically Incorrect beat out dozens and dozens of other shows for that recognition,” Maher said during an interview with Deadline Hollywood last year (before his 27th nomination). “So that in itself is an annual victory.”

Snagging Maher as the kickoff of the Yahoo! Comedy Channel is a huge win for Yahoo!

“Bill Maher’s special is a groundbreaking event, not only for Yahoo and Bill but for the Internet as the first-ever, live, free broadcast online,” said Erin McPherson, VP & Head of Video Programming and Originals at Yahoo last December. “We are focusing on fresh, original voices like Bill and our other original programs with the Yahoo! Comedy Channel to continue to provide our consumers and advertisers with the best premium content on the Web.”

Other content appearing on the Yahoo! Comedy Channel includes First Dates with Toby Harris from Funny or Die, 7 Minutes in Heaven from Broadway Video, Sketchy from Principato-Young & Electus, and HACKERAZZI from director David Morgasen (you probably know him from the Obama and McCain – Dance Off viral video).

It’ll be interesting to see how the Yahoo! Comedy Channel plays out, but it will definitely start with an entertaining, insightful event. If you’re free at 7:30 PM PST / 10:30 PM EST, check out CrazyStupidPolitics: Live from Silicon Valley here.