The website, which also is a popular channel on YouTube and home to the gamer-favorite Arby ‘n The Chief, seeks to “elevate” the digital art form that appropriates existing or new video game characters as animation. “We thought it would be an interesting opportunity to take comedy writers and have them play around with the online video model using computer-generated imagery,” said Machinima.com chairman and CEO Allen DeBevoise.
Companies like Rooster Teeth have been entertaining web audiences with machinima for years. It’s about time Hollywood familiarized itself with the medium.
If the windy road from the web to Hollywood were paved with view counts, you’d be able to watch Fred‘s show tonight on The CW. If it were lined with awesome, you could see Tiki Bar TV Tuesday nights on FOX. But a clear trail to how the transition is made hasn’t yet been blazed…maybe it never will be.
The handful of shows that have managed to ink deals with a broadcast network have done it via consistent, quality content, excellent storytelling, and novel ideas, building audiences and acclaim over the course of several episodes. But the sample size isn’t large enough to say that’s the only way to make it.
Paul Gulyas (along with Patrick Beck and Jorge Gonzalez III) hopes to receive recognition and a ticket to network Hollywood by taking a decidedly different, even old-fashionedish approach.
The Fine Brothers—Benny and Rafi Fine—are well known in the web video scene these days, netting over 21 million views and counting on their growing library of videos. Their clever brand of offbeat humor has been in high demand lately, as the comedy duo recently signed on with Just For Laughs to produce a second season of Lost Parodies, their hit action-figure spoof of ABC’s Lost. Add another feather to their caps, as they have now signed a multi-sketch deal with video site iKlipz. The first sketch, “What is Eggnog?” is up today on the site (see above).
The videos will be exclusively on iKlipz.com for one week, then will be released to their super popular YouTube channel, which has been steadily climbing up YouTube’s most subscribed comedy list thanks in part to the success (over 1.2 million views) of their recent “100 Movie Spoilers in 5 Minutes” video.
The brothers (yes, they are in fact brothers) are classic web video multi-hat-wearing creators, serving as writers, directors, actors and producers in all of their works. “When we aren’t creating narrative web series or action figure content we are well known for our irreverent and sometimes dark sketch comedy that has been the backbone of our success online,” they told us this week.
The deal appears to be a move by iKlipz to lure some of the top web creators (and their viewer traffic) to the filmmaker community site founded by former Paramount Classics co-chief David Dinerstein, which relies on display advertising as its primary revenue stream. “The folks at IKlipz are all about allowing us to tap into that edgy, over the top content that many companies shy away from despite how popular and viral it becomes,” the brothers told us. “More sketches will follow into ’09 where the mix of irreverent characters and topical sketches will pour into the internet like the eggnog in this video.”
Suddenly TheWB is not just for teens anymore. TheWB.com has launched a much more adult slate of programming this winter, and so far the more adult-geared humor has delivered. Earlier this week the holiday treats came early with the all-at-once launch of Rob Coddry’s Childrens’ Hospital. But you might have missed Joni and Susanna, an equally delightful present with all six episodes dished out this week (see trailer above).
The semi-scripted web series was created by Joni Lefkowitz, and Susanna Fogel who met in a Second City LA sketch comedy class six years ago. After putting a number of low-fi videos up on Joni’s YouTube channel, it wasn’t long before they found themselves with a deal from Warner Bros. There’s no doubting there are few topics that are taboo for Joni and Susanna, which help makes their web series a joyous, uncensored romp. Kudos to TheWB for introducing a show with noticeable creative freedom in the midst of what originally smelled like a site geared to the younger CW set.
As if that wasn’t enough, the sassy girls are also head writers for the HBO pilot Washingtonienne produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, garnering buzz even before an official nod by HBO. The adaptation of the Jessica Cutler novel, based on a real-life DC sex scandal, the series will peruse the professional and personal lives of three smart, sophisticated twenty-something girls working on Capitol Hill.
Joni and Susanna focuses on the relationship two women with a touch of OCD who can’t resist a good sh*t talking session. For them, anyone is fair game–a hairdresser, a workout partner, a significant other, but when it comes to talking crap about each other, it’s subtle, and passive-aggressive. For the audience, it’s pure gossip-voyeur entertainment.
The two women are like a modern day version of Annie Hall, without the heterosexual relationship. They are more like hetero life-mates; Joni is gay, Susanna is straight. As Lefkowtiz put it in a recent interview with AfterEllen, “Lesbians and straight girls are the perfect marriage because the lesbian isn’t a threat to the straight girl’s game, and the straight girl gets validation from the thought that if she were gay, the lesbian would want to be with her.” Susanna’s character agrees in a episode where Joni’s attempt to come out to her mom goes fails miserably. Susanna says, “I’m here for you.. every day. I’m like your wife.”
That said, sexual orientation is irrelevant to the show’s dead-on irreverent humor. The two speak in a stream of consciousness style riddled with quips musing on the inane and asinine ins and outs of the people one meets. They’re merciless and brutal too, and every other rant seems to remind me of Woody Allen standing in line at the movie theater, bemoaning to the camera how people with loud opinions spoil everything.
Some highlights of their casual rants include: Joni observing that a friend’s laugh reminds her of “a crying baby combined with a really intense orgasm.” When Susanna’s crush finally asks her to walk him to his car she cluelessly asks “Did you park really far?” In another episode, Joni states that a work-out friend gives her the “retard tingles” every time she lets out a deep sigh.
But recounting much more here would spoil the fun. The series is filled with observational humor that while familiar is devilishly catching with the fresh voices of the show’s stars. To top it all off, there’s no waiting weeks on show release dates, so giving in to the instant gratification of Joni and Susanna is shamelessly easy.
The event marks one of the first ostensible instances of collaboration between the two companies since HBO invested in Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s online venture last June. I expect to see more early premieres of HBO content on the site in the near future, especially as production starts on the 10 half-hours of Funny or Die pilot material Jon Lajoie told me about when I spoke to him in October.
Through a mix of live-action and animation, the series will chronicle Soulja Boy’s fictional return to highschool after he “became a superstar and got famous or whatever.” Once he’s matriculating, he’ll use his celebrity status to get him (and BFFs Arab and Jabbar) in and out of the kinds of trouble that’s beyond the scope of your average, non-Grammy-nominated teenager. No word yet on if Ice-T makes an appearance.
Who said December slows down for Hollywood? The deals just keep on coming, especially in the digital scene. MTV announced today that web video stars Jake and Amir (Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld) and team at NY-based CollegeHumor are getting their own cable TV show: The CollegeHumor Show, a scripted comedy set inside the “offbeat workplace of the twentysomething-run web site CollegeHumor.com”, according to the release. It does in fact sound a bit like a longer form version of their original office comedy web series Hardly Working, which (hat tip to Tilzy.)
CollegeHumor co-founders Ricky Van Veen and Josh Abramson will executive produce the series along with Sam Reich and Scott Tomlinson. There had been rumors of the series in the works when we caught up with Amir and fellow senior writer Dan Gurewitch earlier this summer. The CollegeHumor Show will premiere sometime in early-mid 2009, along with a number of new MTV original series including Nitro Circus, Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory, College Life, How’s Your News?, Daddy’s Girls and The Girls of Hedsor Hall.
We’ve heard rumblings for a while, but today it’s official. As part of an effort to ramp up the network’s original programming, MTV will give CollegeHumor.com its own network comedy series.
Forget about the power shifting on the late night talk circuit and the not-really-a-web-series teasers for Jimmy Fallon’s new NBC gig. The web is about to get its own celeb-powered talk show Anytime With Bob Kushell when it premieres this Thursday on Crackle. Part of Sony Pictures Television’s recently announced slate of original web series programming that kicked off earlier this month, the weekly series is hosted by writer-comedian Bob Kushell (Samantha Who) and boasts some clickable talent including John Stamos (ER, Full House), who (rumor has it) will be ‘undressing’ on the show, though there is no information on how far he will go. Other stars making the trip to Bob’s garage set: Jennifer Esposito (on Christmas Day), Neil Patrick Harris (on New Year’s Day), Zach Levi, and Christina Applegate to name a few.
Emmy-nominated Kushell is executive producing with Russell Arch under the production company Killer Custard. The series promises to deliver everything you expect from a network late-night talk show: short monologue, comedy bits, full in-studio band, and celebrity interviews—only its on the web, all in a “comically compact five minute package” filmed in (Bob’s) garage in Van Nuys, CA.
Other series premieres in Crackle’s lineup this week include yesterday’s kickoff of The Groundlings‘ second 13-week season with “The Groundlings Interview,” and today the second season of Owen Benjamin Presents with “Owen Benjamin Music Video: Boobs.” For a full listing of the Crackle’s full week of upcoming web programming check here.
How much drama, comedy and self-mocking melodrama can you fit into a 3-minute sketch comedy? The Independent Comedy Networks’ Best of Friends, aka BŌF (which sounds like ‘oaf’ and could be the web serial answer to the Metal umlaut), attempts to find out.
Best friends and and Mamrie Hart and Stephen Soroka (both improv comics who also created and produced the series) occupy a play-world bubble within New York City, one in which the Big Apple is both their oyster and sandbox, and they get to be buddies-in-crime.
As I’ve said before, The Webbys may not be the most exclusive awards (just ask Rob Corddry), but their teeming amount of winners and honorees doesn’t signify any lack in quality.
The brothers (yes, they are in fact brothers) are classic web video multi-hat-wearing creators, serving as writers, directors, actors and producers in all of their works. “When we aren’t creating narrative web series or action figure content we are well known for our irreverent and sometimes dark sketch comedy that has been the backbone of our success online,” they told us this week.
, based on a real-life DC sex scandal, the series will peruse the professional and personal lives of three smart, sophisticated twenty-something girls working on Capitol Hill.
Who said December slows down for Hollywood? The deals just keep on coming, especially in the digital scene. MTV 
Forget about the 
