This week Tubefilter was able to get great interviews with some of the top stars in entertainment—on and off the web. Social media expert Jennifer Van Grove offered her thoughts on a new series about her own life, Jenn 2.0. Amy Poehler gave us the dish on her new talk show Smart Girls at the Party, and internet sensations Jessica Rose (lonelygirl15) and Taryn Southern (Hot4Hill) teamed up to launch their new production company ‘Webutantes.’
The bizarro, uncopywritten counterparts of legendary food company mascots come out in full force in Vast Food Nation – an original animated web series on Aniboom.
The result is a riff on Entourageand TMZ trash celebrity television (changed to TMI) as the faux paparazzi channel covers such scandals and sensational stories as celebrity mascots getting out of limos exposing their all-beef-patties, Beefer King being kidnapped, or hackneyed Red Carpet scenes with the question “What are you wearing?”
Keep It Green’sjourney from web to television is one of those internet fairy tales you hear about but wonder if they ever really happen. Creators Sarah Norton, Shelly Pack, and Paul Vato had a concept. They went out and shot it, just the three of them. Then they started putting their low-fi eco-comedy on YouTube to so-so views, and Discovery Channel noticed. The show was picked up for a segment on G-Wordfor the Discovery off-shoot Planet Green.
The slogan of the show is, “healing the world with laughter,” and the girls have certainly embraced that. For them, everything is an adventure, whether it’s cleaning green, going to the Farmer’s Market, or even just riding public transportation. “Sarah has always been an environmentalist,” says producer of the show, Vato.
“She was head of her environmental society in high school and college, and she’s always been pro-active. With the show, we really wanted to do something to make environmental activism watchable. The revolution is being digitized!”
When you talk to Vato more about the group’s productions you realize the attention the group has received may not be as chance as at first glance. Vato and Norton both have roles in David Faustino’supcomingCrackle show Star-ving, and they’re actively producing content constantly under the production banner, BarrioSpeedwagon.tv.
One series produced under that banner is The House Sitter. Norton and Vato gathered all their famous friends who were game, and Norton visited each of their homes as a haphazard house sitter who only house sits to the celebrities (Mo Collins, and Wendi McClendon-Covey amongst them.) After setting up the premise, they pretty much just let the cameras roll allowing the celebs to pimp themselves in their own home. Notably, Faustino refers to himself in the third person, and works hard to impress Norton, even after she swings him easily in the air, embracing his tiny stature.
For the Barriospeedwagon and Keep it Green crew the answer to what’s next is simple–produce more content, and they’re doing just that. They’re currently working on Enemies Closer which they describe as a female Entourage meets Californication. They’re planning a thirteen episode series, with the first episode already up. Execs scanning YouTube take note.
If you stick a bangin’ pouty teen or college-aged girl in front of a webcam, people are going to compare her to Bre. If you make the show she stars in about unraveling a convoluted murder mystery and encourage viewers to play detective, people are going to say you’re a straight up ripoff of lonelygirl15.
In a conversation with Liz at NewTeeVee – and throughout his excellent blog that documents the process and aftermath of creating and distributing an independent web series – Park argues that lonelygirl pioneered a new format, “an overarching style of storytelling – you can call it a genre if you’d like, but the actual content can go in many directions.” Earlier this week, he told me, “we wanted to blend the interactive element of vlog-style fiction with traditional TV format in our series…we really wanted to create a television-esque series that had the tone of teen-oriented genre shows.”
How’d they do it? Simple: true talent. CEO Rob Barnett has a knack for discovering and supporting the best.
It comes, then, as no surprise then that MyDamnChannel would attract the likes of MTV.
Beginning today, a selection of MyDamnChannel original productions will appear on a new channel on Atom.com, MyDamnChannel.Atom.com. First to launch will be a selection of episodes from David Wain’s Wainy Days, a 2008 Webby Award winner for Best Comedy Series.
Stories like this one are what make me cynical. Moblogic.tv is thoughtful, passionate, opinionated journalism with humility and humor. It speaks with — not at — a generation sometimes too consumed with itself, and it seeks original stories with meaning and purpose.
New York-based web studio For Your Imagination is hosting its Spring 2009 Web Video Upfront tonight as it looks to lock up sponsorships and show off its latest slate of original web series. A number of new series have been announced as well as their current hits like do-it-yourself fave, DadLabs, eco-conscious The Green House and the recently-launched comedy web series portal Axis of Comedy which currently boasts Goodie Bag TV, Break A Leg, The Burg, Kyle Piccolo, Abigail’s Teen Diary, The Patrice O’Neal Show, Goodnight Burbank and The Retributioners.
New this year will be a move towards content verticals for its web series slate, much like what fellow NY-based web studio NextNewNetworks has been building out. With comedy, green and parenting verticals already in place, FYI is rolling out two new ones — GEQ, a personal finance network, and Glampede, for style and fashion content.
We caught up with FYI CEO Paul Kontonis about the event which is slated to bring out a healthy set of New York ad execs and brand managers along with digital media folks and of course the show creators themselves. The night’s theme is “Who’s Watching?” and will take a close look at all those spiffy new metrics they’ve been tracking, showing off not only who makes up the shows’ audiences but also their specific viewing habits and methods.
Tubefilter: Are you actively looking for new series? Where do you look for them?
Paul Kontonis: We are always looking for new series for our verticals – comedy, parenting, green, personal finance and fashion – and that are advertiser friendly. We find our shows by working with various production companies and from hosting the Big Screen Little Screen meet up in NYC.
Tubefilter: What’s your take on the online video ad market for the short term?
Kontonis: From now until the end of this year, there is a general indecisiveness and insecurity in the ad marketplace. I think next year will be a great time for content providers that can show a brand how to reach their consumers through their online video. If you have content that is mass entertainment, expect a rough ride in 2009.
Tubefilter: Is it harder to find sponsors for content than last year?
Kontonis: I believe it is harder primarily because of the overall effectiveness of branded entertainment. We can develop, produce, market and distribute an original series for a brand and ensure that their messages are viewed by millions of people. It is a very powerful tool.
Tubefilter: Any other comments on the Upfront?
Kontonis: We are very excited to show that we are moving ahead and continuing to grow in this environment. when you present clear cut advertising solutions that are tied to audiences not just cool content, it is a value proposition that can not be overlooked.
The venture-backed studio, which recently landed its latest round of funding, announced year over year (YoY) revenue growth of 34% in sponsored and branded entertainment. Their total potential reach is now reported to be around 60 million views a month through its myriad of distribution partners — Blip, Hulu, Joost, DailyMotion, Howcast and Tremor Media amongst others.
Some of the new web series coming in 2009: Lurker (from Break A Leg creators Yuri and Vlad Baronovsky), A Day With the Hiltons, rightpedal and Spanish por la Mañana.
But how much of North Korea can we actually say we’ve seen? What do we really know about North Koreans? What are they like?
When famines, floods, catastrophes, or celebrations occur in most other countries, we are fed sounds and images of the events. News crews have access to take pictures and shoot video and bring it all back in living color for us to be shocked, horror struck, or happy. Obviously, this is not the case with isolationist North Korea. Like a haunted tomb in some horror flick (or Pauly Shore’s Bio-Dome) hardly anything gets in or out.
I’ve said this before, but Slate V‘s new weekly science news show is making me say it again: screencasting is online video’s new bicycle. The genre’s inherent to the web and one of the most innovative, interesting ways to tell a story or convey information. When the computer screen is your canvas, you can do virtually (pun intended!) anything.
Small Mammal principals John Pavlus and Christopher Mims (and on-screen talent Christie Nicholson) formerly produced shows for Scientific American, but have found a new partner for their excellent, screencast, science roundup. What was once The Monitor is now Slate’s Grand Unified Weekly, “a Batman Begins-esque reboot of the core concept…basically the same idea, just better.”
That “idea” is a “series that harvests the wheat grass of news from the lab and distills into a power-boost shot directly to your desktop.” Check out the premiere episode below:
In an effort to hold on to dwindling fans and make sense of convoluted plot lines that have even the writers mystified, the makers of TV’s Heroes have yet again launched another web series, Heroes: Destiny, a self-described “micro series” that has emerged from the “Create Your Hero” interactive campaign last year. The extent of the interactive element comprised of fans selecting the characteristics of the new hero, such as name, special powers, personality and physical features, which were voted on each week.
Columbian-born actor Roberto Urbina plays Santiago, a Peruvian soccer lover and devout Catholic who discovers his extraordinary gifts of accelerated probability and super speed.The show also stars Lina Esco (CBS’ Cane) and Andrea Thompson (24). and is directed by Eagle Egilsson (CSI: Miami, The Wire).
Heroes: Destiny launched this month with new episodes released every Monday. The new web series follows NBC’s last Heroes foray onto the web, Heroes: Going Postal, a well produced live action series that was abruptly cut short after only three episodes. Let’s hope a full series is in the cards for Destiny.
Hmm. A horror cartoon is a first for me. I’m not a huge horror fan, though one of the homages in this series so far is to The Shining, one of my favorite movies, so I think I’m at least marginally equipped to write about this. Snowy the Frostman, an original series from online animation hub aniBoom, is a well-crafted, well-paced, fun and sometimes sick little cartoon from the mind of Samuel T. Nelson.
Nelson is the writer, animator, and does most of the voices for the series. He is also the designer and developer of the cartoon website, Ebolaworld. Now, if that site doesn’t give you an indication of the kind of humor that Nelson seems to gravitate toward, I don’t know what will.
Snowy the Frostman is the bizarro version of Frosty the Snowman. Snowy is a coldblooded killer (no pun intended), eating his way through main character Laurie’s friends in episode one, then stabbing her mom in the face in episode two and so on, until just about everyone in Laurie’s life is either maimed or dead.
I have to say that after the first episode, I was not in love with this show. It just felt dark and uncomfortable for me, Snowy is an anti-semite, he eats kids, and Laurie it seems at the end is kidnapped by a possible pedophile, Snowy’s version of the Jimmy Durante character from the Frosty the Snowman of yore. Okay, it sounds funny here, I admit, but watching it, it doesn’t work. What’s interesting is that originally Nelson saw episode one as a one-off on Christmas 2004. But the following year, as a lark, he did a second episode and basically began, according to him, one of his “most successful, awarding and profitable cartoons ever.”
So episode 2 “Snowy is Back” comes along and we meet Laurie’s disbelieving parents, then Dr. Lupus, a mysterious doctor who seems to know more than he should, and then, finally, the sheriff. And things somehow get funnier. The sheriff is just a complete retard with three teeth whose vocabulary consists of, ‘Dahhhh’, Laurie’s parents are blissfully ignorant and Dr. Lupus carries a nine-millimeter like it’s a stethoscope.
The other thing that happens here is that the premise of the show becomes clearer. And Nelson’s explanation that the first episode was at first a one-off now makes sense. Where in the first episode Snowy is eating people somewhat willy-nilly, the second episode gives us the doctor, that horror staple, the character who has inside info on the killer. And then the dumb sheriff shows up and I realize, “Oh, I’m in a horror movie here.” And finally the doc’s self-referential lines, “We should all discuss this matter…and leave your daughter all by herself and unattended,” nails it. This is a horror parody and at this point, though I haven’t noticed any references to any other movies, Nelson tells me he based the original premise on the Halloween movies.
And then by episode 5 “The Revenge of Snowy,” there are full-blown tips to The Empire Strikes Back (okay, not horror, but makes it parody nonetheless) and at least, Nightmare on Elm Street, right down to Freddy’s sweater on Snowy’s back. In fact, episode 6 and episode 7 “Blood Bath Parts 1 & 2” are so totally The Shining that Laurie’s new caretakers are named Aunt Shelley and Uncle Jack (Duvall and Nicholson for those of you not in-the-know).
The other interesting thing that happens here is that because of the nature of the premise, each episode leads into the next one and I found myself wanting to know what the hell was going to happen to these poor people. Even though it’s a parody, and as one character puts it in episode five, “There are like way too many plot holes here,” you can’t help but wonder will Laurie eventually destroy Snowy or vice versa? And you actually worry about her.
The animation is simple and clean, totally reminiscent of Frosty, the voices are spot-on and the writing is exactly what it should be, funny, well-structured and a good parody. I also have to say, the pacing is good and at about three and a half minutes an episode, there are no lulls. As an FYI, Nelson has a plan for just three more episodes. The next one comes out this Christmas. I am so scared.
If you’re a horror fan with a sick sense of humor, run don’t walk to this one. And if you’re an admirer of quality web work, animated or not, check it out, it’s well done. But if you’re like me, it may not be your cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean it sucks. It just means maybe we’re too stupid to know what’s good for us. I say that so Snowy doesn’t butcher me in my sleep tonight.
Next New Networks has commissioned one of America’s leading graphic designers and illustrators to create limited edition posters for their various micro-networks.
Frank Olinsky designed the MTV logo and album covers for everyone from Sonic Youth to Smashing Pumpkins to the Kronos Quartet. Now, he’s also the designer of the first edition Barely Political poster (of which there are only 1K) that now hangs proudly in our office.
This week Tubefilter was able to get great interviews with some of the top stars in entertainment—on and off the web. Social media expert Jennifer Van Grove offered her thoughts on a new series about her own life, Jenn 2.0. Amy Poehler gave us the dish on her new talk show Smart Girls at the Party, and internet sensations Jessica Rose (lonelygirl15) and Taryn Southern (Hot4Hill) teamed up to launch their new production company ‘Webutantes.’
New York-based web studio 
We caught up with FYI CEO Paul Kontonis about the event which is slated to bring out a healthy set of New York ad execs and brand managers along with digital media folks and of course the show creators themselves. The night’s theme is “Who’s Watching?” and will take a close look at all those spiffy new metrics they’ve been tracking, showing off not only who makes up the shows’ audiences but also their specific viewing habits and methods.
The venture-backed studio, which 
