After working in the cable television industry for years, founder and CEO Nicholas Psaltos began his own channel in 2001 with some of the most adored luminaries in the horror industry and geared it for broadband, high-definition TV, and Video On Demand services. Producing documentaries, full-length features, and other genre-related content, Horror Channel is the first of its kind, giving 24/7 access to original programming for fans of fright fests and gore.

The original content is free, including Shadow Falls, the channel’s first original series. These low-budget webisodes follow the story of a young girl training to be a demon and all the victims and monsters that become entangled in her gruesome, blood-friendly tale. The theater is the site’s most progressive feature. Every weekend, several films from the Video-on-Demand service are shown at allotted times in an embedded chat room player so that viewers can watch cheesy horror films for free and talk about them at the same time. Since most of the films available on the site are low-budget camp-fests best suited for Mystery Science Theater, you might as well take full advantage of laughing and cracking jokes at them with other B-movie fanatics.

The 37-minute Q&A with George A. Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and all the other films that made zombie cinema so fun and iconic, is worth watching. He retells the famous mishap behind Night of the Living Dead’s distribution rights on an auditorium stage and fields questions about his career, his future, and his resume of zombie films.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Zach Jones
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Startcooking is a video recipe site devoted to teaching people who have never spent a day in the kitchen in their entire lives how to cook the simplest dishes, rather than buy packaged and frozen foods. Kathy Maister, the founder, host and editorial director of the show, majored in home-ec at the University of Massachusetts, and went on to teach it at a public middle school in Boston. After budget cuts at school, Kathy decided to teach a larger audience online. Inspired by the business videos made by her husband, former Harvard Business School professor, author, and respected business and management thinker, David Maister, Kathy launched Startcooking in December 2006.  

Kathy really knows how to make you want to start cooking. These colorful and well-designed videos are fast-paced, fun and informative. Each one starts with the execution of the recipe, and ends with a supply list. They’re geared toward simple recipes for dishes everyone loves, like apple crisp, meatloaf, and roast chicken. Videos last between one and two minutes, and pack in a lot of information on how to select foods and cooking implements, how to cut or peel (Kathy is big on safety), and how to mix and cook. Kathy also has a huge amount of information on her blog, like how to make healthy French fries, guacamole, or how to properly handle red peppers. In addition, Kathy’s “tips and techniques” section includes useful information on practical cooking activities that some of us might be ashamed of not knowing like how to slice an onion or crack an egg. This is a good place not only for those who have never cooked before, but for anyone who feels a little uncomfortable with picking out apples or broccoli at the grocery store, or for those who don’t know what kind of knives they should have.

My favorite recipe of Kathy’s is for the vegetable/chef salad. Although it’s not something one would generally need instruction to make, I could see how those who have never cooked before might not know that making a salad was so easy. She tells you what you need to make the salad (a large bowl, a knife, etc.), but is not overly specific about all the ingredients necessary, encouraging you to be creative and use what you already have at home. I think what really scares people away from cooking is the idea that they have to go out and spend a ton of money on equipment and ingredients, which is not necessarily true.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Kate Dundon
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A younger sibling to the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet began in 1996 as a niche that, within less than six years, had 80 million subscribers. Today’s it’s still one of the fastest growing American cable networks in the global market.

Released with TLC Beyond in 2006 as the second phase of Discovery Communications’ broadband broadcasting initiative, Animal Planet Beyond joined the original multi-channel portals like Discovery Channel Beyond and Travel Channel Beyond, both of which launched several months earlier.

The release of Animal Planet Beyond marked the first of Discovery’s broadband supplements to include an impressive amount of original content, apart from its traditional television programming.b

Clips from the channel run from 1 to 10 minutes in length – though most tend to be around 2 – and are categorized by what’s new, what’s on TV, what’s popular, and a rotating line-up of various subjects.  Some categories of past and present include Pets, Wild Animals, Prehistoric Beasts and Legends, AKC/Eukanaba, and Bug Week. Each section has roughly 5 to 20 clips, with commercials running before every few videos.

Since most of the clips were originally produced to air on Animal Planet, it goes without saying that the quality of the content is superb. Animal Planet Beyond also usually offers at least one series of original web content – currently, it’s Pet Trends. Maggie Gallant, founder of Spotlight Communications and a trend expert on NY1 News, is the affable host, showing viewers the latest in pet food, clothing, toys, and other accessories.

Maggie Gallant’s Pet Trends is a fun show, if a little odd. There’s one 3-minute show devoted to Doggles, a company that creates designer canine sunglasses. But like all of Discovery’s online broadcasting supplements, the constant advertisements before each video can be off-putting, especially since the videos are not much longer than the commercials.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Zach Jones
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A younger sibling to the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet began in 1996 as a niche that, within less than six years, had 80 million subscribers. Today’s it’s still one of the fastest growing American cable networks in the global market.

Released with TLC Beyond in 2006 as the second phase of Discovery Communications’ broadband broadcasting initiative, Animal Planet Beyond joined the original multi-channel portals like Discovery Channel Beyond and Travel Channel Beyond, both of which launched several months earlier.

The release of Animal Planet Beyond marked the first of Discovery’s broadband supplements to include an impressive amount of original content, apart from its traditional television programming.

Clips from the channel run from 1 to 10 minutes in length – though most tend to be around 2 – and are categorized by what’s new, what’s on TV, what’s popular, and a rotating line-up of various subjects.  Some categories of past and present include Pets, Wild Animals, Prehistoric Beasts and Legends, AKC/Eukanaba, and Bug Week. Each section has roughly 5 to 20 clips, with commercials running before every few videos.

Since most of the clips were originally produced to air on Animal Planet, it goes without saying that the quality of the content is superb. Animal Planet Beyond also usually offers at least one series of original web content – currently, it’s Pet Trends. Maggie Gallant, founder of Spotlight Communications and a trend expert on NY1 News, is the affable host, showing viewers the latest in pet food, clothing, toys, and other accessories.

Maggie Gallant’s Pet Trends is a fun show, if a little odd. There’s one 3-minute show devoted to Doggles, a company that creates designer canine sunglasses. But like all of Discovery’s online broadcasting supplements, the constant advertisements before each video can be off-putting, especially since the videos are not much longer than the commercials.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Zach Jones
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Although it was only on the air for three seasons, Star Trek has spawned many spin-offs, many fans (who were the subject of not one but two feature-length documentaries), and many fan spin-offs. But until recent years Trekkie fan fiction has been limited to short stories and novellas. Unlike most companies, CBS has always shown grace to the show’s fanbase by both publishing fan-fic in subsidiary Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books Star Trek series and allowing fans to continue the series online in writing, so long as profits are not involved. But several years ago, CBS began to permit non-profit film fan-fic, which caused co-creators Jack Marshall and James Cawley (who finances the show with his day job as an Elvis impersonator) to jump into production with costumes and set pieces they have been waiting to use since 1997. They even convinced some of the show’s original actors like George Takei (Sulu) and Walter Koenig (Chekhov) to reappear on the Enterprise. Star Trek New Voyages was the first to record “new episodes” of the show where the series left off, broadcasting what they refer to as Star Trek’s fourth season on a regular basis since May 2006.

The New Voyages take the old characters and give them new life in star systems, new and old, (the FAQ explains that the old characters should be treated like Shakespeare’s Romeo or Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman or Tolkien’s Gandalf, preserved with integrity and not muddled with an abundance of new upstart characters). The episodes last for about 20 minutes each, each one giving off the feeling that you’re watching the original series in all its cheesy, mythic splendor. While it is a low-budget endeavor compared to corporate-sponsored fare, it’s still expensive and time-consuming to host, hire, and film full-length episodes using an enormous cast, so releases are sporadic and hotly anticipated. Everything is designed to duplicate the original series, from the storylines, which are often continuations of planets and plot points from the show, to the writing, which is slow, filled with imaginatively made-up words, and improbable in an enjoyable way. The site also tries to recreate the television atmosphere by releasing new episodes on a scheduled format, each new segment available for download starting at 9pm EDT on the chosen day.

If you’re looking for an extension of the original series, you’ll find this to be pretty great for the low-budget fanfic that it is. But if you look at it as a parody, you’ll probably enjoy it a lot more. Take the first scene of the first episode, “Come What May,” where a lone piano twinkles as Captain Kirk likens the Voyager’s mission to the American dream; it can be classic Star Trek entertainment to some but unintended hilarity to others. The first episode embodies all the show’s problems and successes. There’s just enough that’s similar to the original to make it fun… and just enough that’s horrible to make it funny.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Zach Jones
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Hope is a sensitive, angst-ridden teen who is always in an emotional crisis and desperately seeks advice from her viewers in this farcical video blog. Created by Crista Flanagan of MAD TV and Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine of Ask a Ninja fame, Beatbox Giant Productions began production of Hope is Emo in March 2006.  Unfortunately, dealing with such a depressive character must have had an impact on the producers.  They presumably moved onto lighter and happier fare when new episodes of the series stopped appearing in January 2007. 

Hope, played by Flanagan, is emo (short for emotional), a term that has been resurrected from the ‘80s to describe the sensitive goth-like musicians and teenagers that have sprung up in the last few years. She is whiny, angsty, and cries at the thought of chalk dust. She considers herself introspective (self-indulgent) and waxes poetic on deep topics like gym class with the kind of disturbed language used by last decade’s Goth kids to describe death and misery. The episodes, which are all about four minutes long, feature great writing, some fantastic editing, and an original theme song by Very Tasteful Productions (which you can download here). Hope stays put in her room in her parent’s house or settles into a secluded area outside the house for the entirety of each chapter, but moves around to give different camera angles, usually shifting from a forlornly cocked head to distressed shrug. What’s brilliant is that the series has inspired a host of video responses. Some parody the site while playing along with its disingenuous plea for advice and, in a true redux of Lonelygirl15, some offer genuine advice without realizing that the site is fictional.

Crista Flanagan and the Ask a Ninja team have made something great with Hope is Emo. One scene that’s typical of the series’ hilarity involves her father interrupting her podcast to ask her which yogurt to get from the supermarket, sparking even more waterworks and frustration from Hope.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Rebecca Halpin
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In early 2004, with the intention of fleshing out her portfolio, Jennifer Shiman created a 30-second flash-animated reenactment of The Exorcist, and used bunnies as the actors – and your average internet-viral-phenomnen-scenario ensued. Two days after she posted the short to her website, her hosting server crashed from all the traffic and The 30-second Bunnies Theatre was born. Since then, Shiman’s been commissioned by Starz to create some Hare-Raising shorts for the network and the number of visitors to her site continues to climb. Take a look at her creations in action, and it’s easy to see the appeal.

It’s hard to cram all the action and must-see shots of a two-hour feature film into 30-seconds, but somehow Shiman pulls it off. Her bunnies rifle through classic scenes and unforgettable dialogue without losing a step, highlighting the most memorable parts of Pulp Fiction, Jaws, It’s a Wonderful Life, Star Wars, and other popular movies of past and present. A one-woman production crew, Shiman is currently commissioned by the Starz network and writes, storyboards, voices, and animates each of the 30-second shorts from her home studio. The bunny shorts appear on Starz on Demand first, and then later find a home on her site.   In addition to The 30-second Bunnies Theatre, Shiman has a few other flash projects on the site. After a friend uncovered her third grade diary, Shiman added some flash animations to illustrate a few passages. She’s also got an interpretation of what the world is like through the eyes of a pigeon, a quirky dance scene, and a quaint look at how she creates her characters.

The 30-second Bunnies Theatre is an absolute pleasure to watch. The fast format makes sure that there are no lulls yet, Shiman still has enough time to add her own clever nuances to the shorts – like the ridiculous bunny ears on Jaws. But my favorite of the bunch is the censored version of Resevoir Dogs, where the bunnies make it PG by providing their own bleeps.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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SquiggleBooth was created in May 2006 by the good people who brought us sibling site Ticklebooth in February of the same year. Squigglebooth is a means of expression for Ajit Anthony Prem, Marc Miller, and Josh Oakhurst, a tiny community of likeminded filmmakers looking to express themselves, create a small, easygoing venue for their work, and decrease the rate of boredom in their own lives as well as the lives of others. The original site, Ticklebooth, was conceived as an evaluative guide to the recent flood of creative online videos, prompting three of its editors to make Squigglebooth as a way to showcase their own creative online work.

SquiggleBooth’s weekly videos cover everything from extreme athletic skipping and anniversary montages to a visual representation of what has happened to society as a result of too much directorial fast cutting. Length varies, but most vids tend to be around two to four minutes long It’s three people who make videos about their personal and professional lives with the added bonus of being filmmakers, ensuring that each entry is interesting, well produced, and visually stimulating to a wider audience. This standard video of some guy doing stand-up comedy, for example, is made infinitely more interesting by the added footage of him actually doing the things that he’s cracking jokes about (which is going to the park and “angering ducks,” by the way).

One example of Ajit, Marc, and Josh showing their wares as filmmakers is this scene from “Dear Stranger,” a short-form film that Ajit had created for the festival circuit and posted clips on Squigglebooth. It even has its own blog. While the freeform entries are entertaining, staged, planned, and well-written videos like this make the site even more enjoyable.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Rebecca Halpin
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Venture capital junkies need look no further than “American Venture TV,” to keep up with the most fashionable trends in the financial world. Site presenter, Brian Byrnes, delivers newscasts three times a week highlighting the latest market mishaps and windfalls. Byrnes, a journalist, has published work in Newsweek and the Washington Post, and appeared as a broadcaster on CBS News , National Public Radio, and APM’s “Marketplace,” to name a few. The site is an initiative of American Venture Network, an omni-media company which caters to budding entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, who want the most up-to-date industry information. Other members of the network family include:American Venture Magazine, American Capital Venture Exchange,Venture Capital Conferences, Business Plan Posting, and Venture Northeast.

The roughly ten minute broadcast segments feature an eloquent Byrnes as the lead correspondent. While modern graphics and muted funky background beats do give the prorgam an edge, it is generally delivered in traditional news show format. Much of the information provided is geared towards the economically savvy so if you’re schooled in investment jargon the site can provide some valuable investment tips and insight into industry trends (If finance talk makes your head spin  but you’re still interested in the markets, look for a more appropriate site.) Each report includes a segment called “Who Got Money,” in which Byrnes discusses recent funding initiatives, launched by companies such as Xponent Photonics, Webjam, and Inertia Beverage Group . Other regular segments are, “Movers & Shakers,” which focuses on new principal appointments and staffing shifts, like the resignation of renowned venture capitalist Michael Mortiz from Google, as well as “Conferences,” which alerts users to notable upcoming industry events, such as the National Venture Capital Association’s Annual Meeting. The videos also provide a “Connect Now” option that allows viewers instant access to relevant hyperlinks and other interactive features. In addition, there is a TV feed option for those interested in receiving content updates to blogs or their personal online news providers.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Anusha Alikhan
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Produced by Rainbow Media, a subsidiary of Cablevision that also boasts having IFC, AMC, and fuse in its porfolio Sport Skool is a television network that gives insight on sports from world famous athletes and coaches. The network is available on a number of major digital cable systems in addition to the website, which was launched in 2004. 

Sport Skool offers bits of advice on major sports like baseball, soccer, and tennis, as well as extreme sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, and BMX biking. Learn how to curve a soccer ball with Mia Hamm, who is widely accepted as the best female soccer player in history; get tips on how decrease the chance of wrist and forearm injury in golf from award winning professional Chez Reavie; learn to penetrate a screen with basketball icon Bill Walton; or do a pop-shove-it with professional skateboarder Mike Valley, who helped found the influential World Industries Skateboards. Each video is extremely short, usually about one minute, and gives a basic explanation of the logistics of whatever procedure is covered and a short demonstration by the “coach.” Don’t expect a full tutorial on how to ski or play hockey, but if you are already familiar with a given sport, these videos will definitely help you with your game. 

I liked Misty May-Treanor’s beautifully demonstrated tip on performing a jump serve in volleyball. May-Treanor is one of the most famous women’s beach players, having won Olympic gold in 2004, and winning a record-breaking streak of 89 games with her partner Kerri Walsh in 2003-2004.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Kate Dundon
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Honor Student are a Los Angeles based comedy group primarily comprised of the trio David Neher, Matt Villines, and Oz, with half a dozen or more young performers orbiting around them. Since at least February 2006, the group has showcased its short films, music videos, a handful of advertisements, and regular updates, while the beginning of 2007 has seen the group’s work featured and promoted on Super Deluxe.

Even from the group’s relatively small output, one can gauge itscomedic growth. The films have gradually mutated from longish shorts like Fishbowl and Elton and Jack, possessing quirky Wes Anderson-esque narratives and characters, to briefer, more absurdist and sexual sketches, like Boobs and Double Date. The latter demonstrate Honor Student’s strengths: starting with a seemingly pedestrian concept (a man grows breasts, a friendly dinner turns suggestive) and running with it to the furthest extremes of irrational silliness. Music videos for experimental punk band The Mae Shi get by on breezy charm, while a couple of witty, innovative advertisements (one for Super Deluxe that mocks Girls Gone Wild, another for Geico featuring a man with a briefcase for a head) compact the Honor Student style into even punchier packages.

Second installments of Honor Student’s presumably ongoing Ulysses S. Grant and Chasing Donovan series are simply hilarious, jam-packed with the sort of non sequiturs and exaggerated performances that would make the State and Upright Citizens Brigade proud. “Chasing Donovan” stars Neher as a dorky college student whose poetry teacher comes on to him, a premise that somehow allows for practicing sword fighting on watermelons, classroom riots, and a car bombing. In “Ulysses” the 18^th President is a motorcycle-riding sociopath expressing his desire for anonymity in the modern world by belting a power ballad, “Don’t Recognize Me,” replete with an endless drum solo and lyrics about tormenting “demon babies.” See it to believe it.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Michael Joshua Rowin
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Journalist Robert Millis produces and hosts a weekly political online program in which he interviews a combination of politicians, veterans, and other politically minded people. Millis is no stranger to politics; he credits his obsession with the subject to being born just in time for Nixon’s resignation. Ever since making his first independent film project, he has sought to combine his two major interests documentaries and interviews. Research and production assistant Ted Walter, an NYU Tisch School for the Arts grad, assists in the filming and directing. The first episode of American Microphone appropriately debuted on July 4, 2006, with installments posted semi-regularly thereafter, most of which deal with the War in Iraq.

Guests range from former combat medic Patrick Campbell to John Edelman of Stand for Children to Brian Conley from Alive in Baghdad. Episodes run as short as fifteen minutes, with some clocking in at over thirty. All are set against a black backdrop with the camera angle switching from Millis to interviewee, Charlie Rose-style. While the subject matter is often quite intriguing and the audio quality is excellent, the format does leave a little to be desired – perhaps some photos of the soldiers in action or clips of the politicians giving speeches would make the site more dynamic. At the end of the videos, Millis presents some relevant statistics, which can also be found in the Data Dump section of the blog, where posts are made every few days with news updates and polls. Viewers are also given the opportunity to discuss the episodes. Additionally, the site contains an e-store and links to guest bios and other important sites, like Millis’ MySpace page. While the more tongue-in-cheek political shows like Real Time and The Colbert Report are certainly more entertaining to watch, it is refreshing to see a serious take on political subjects with such a competent host.

I naturally gravitated toward the interview with singer-songwriter Catie Curtis, a socially conscious performer with an eye toward changing the world through music. Millis asks her a very pointed and important question about whether she feels that she is preaching to the choir, and her answer – that in red states, she feels more like she is nurturing the choir – is just as pointed. The pride of Millis’ career so far is his interview with former senator and Nebraska governor and 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey, who discusses Iraq and the white house’s inability to cooperate with the Commission.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Rebecca Halpin
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