Internet video has already given rise to a new, often more opinionated and edgier, broadcast journalism — Alive in Baghdad, Moblogic, Gnooze, VBS, to name just a very few– but, today, YouTube and the Pulitzer Center have institutionalized democratized journalism with Project: Report.
Perhaps Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will want to submit?
Like CNN’s iReport, Project: Report draws on the visibility of established brands to bring independent voices to the forefront.
If you ever once played with everyone’s American Hero, you must watch this web series now. YouTube.com/gijoeshow is currently hosting an epic saga created by Benny and Rafi Fine. The sexually charged, live-action film created completely to G.I. Joe scale has been out there for awhile. But since 2006, the venture has been plagued by angry Hasbro litigious action, whipping loyal fans into action. Hence the birth of the little YouTube site that could which opted to cut the saga up into 100 episodes managing to stay under the radar.
The G.I. Joe saga was the Fine Brothers first date in a long romance with web video. Staking our their home base at Ravenstake.com, the duo has racked up quite an arsenal of comedic spoofing. Commenting on the long journey to the end, the brothers said, “back four years ago, the web was quite a tough woman to handle. It was hard to get your work out there, but with that series we definitely did. Seeing its lasting power of getting millions and millions of views in the 2 years since it was removed which are ALL fan generated is amazing in itself.
One of the commenters on the final episode said it best in that they started watching the Saga THREE YEARS ago and finally this passed week got to see it end. That’s fan loyalty and devotion to our brand. ”
With all the hubbub around Joe you’d think the guys might steer clear from toy-based production, but fear not, they’ve already made a series starring action figures from Lost which is creeping towards 5 million views. Not only that, they’ve got plans for another series as soon as they have the budget. And according to the brothers, “no icon is safe.”
The brothers are still busy playing with toys of various kinds and on various levels They are currently in pre-production with a major TV network’s online division to release a new series. (More on this soon.) Additionally, they are finalizing a deal to bring fans more Lost action in a second series, and they’ve got a first-look deal with a new web studio they can’t yet name. Stay tuned, soldiers.
It looks promising, but even at an average of three to five minutes per episode, the web series 2009: A True Story contains a helluva lot of filler.
Conceived by Tony Valenzuela with and written by him and Jeffrey Hunt during the 2007-2008 writer’s strike, 2009 hops on the post-9/11 paranoia bandwagon by fashioning a plodding tale of an Orwellian America in which civil liberties are stripped from the people under the government’s vow to do whatever it can to protect the country after a devastating terrorist attack (that occurs on 4/11/09).
Over the course of thirteen webisodes, Valenzuela and Hunt explore the madness of an increasingly militaristic and totalitarian society by following two slowly interlocking plotlines: the saga of Sara Ford (Kate Maloney), a 19 year-old survivor who meets up with two AWOL soldiers, and her brother Adam (Cody Harnish), an army specialist part of a unit sent to find and capture the escaped personnel.
Sorority Forever Trailer – Series Premiere 9/8 on MySpaceTV 9AM
Sure, there’s been plenty of build-up and we certainly have been on that train, but finally the big debut is upon us with Sorority Forever premiering Monday at 9AM PST. Looks like the TheWB.com’s hottest fall original has officially hooked up with MySpaceTV, with a spiffy new MySpace page and exclusive first-run of new episodes. In a deal announced today between the two companies, new episodes of the show will air on TheWB.com and MySpaceTV exclusively for 24 hours before they are available through the other distribution partners (Dailymotion, Joost, Sling Media, TiVo and Veoh). With a hefty five new eps per week, that means unless you want to be one day behind you’ll have to watch on TheWB.com site or on MySpaceTV, where you’ll get the more social experience complete with character profile pages and fan interaction.
For those of you just hearing about Sorority check out a little backstory on the series and the launch of Warner Bros. new web-only television channel, TheWB.com. Quick recap:
Sure, SF has the talent, both in front and behind the camera, to stand out. But will its target teen and college age viewers actually invite the web girls into their Gossip Girl/90210 TV clique? This show will no doubt be a test for studio-driven web TV, applying what appears to be the smart-money mix of TV-glamor with serious web cred.
What do you think? Can this show break out of web obscurity and into the living room chatter?
Here’s the pitch: An A-list TV producer is blacklisted by her secretary and the only work she can get is via court order.
Crewing Up is a new web series about Addie Kemp, an A-list network TV producer of a nationally syndicated political talk show, “Frankly Speaking,” who is sentenced to 500 hours of community service, forced to crew up in the low-key offbeat world of public access. If the mood strikes, the show goes on. But no shows, forgotten shows and stupid shows may be enough to break her spirit long before the 500 hours are in the can.
The show is co-created, written, directed and edited by Melissa Cushman Banczak, a filmmaker (Lilah & the Alien) and editor from Minneapolis. Banczak said that the ideas for the show came to her organically, including an episode where the public access station employees report on a local politician who along with a college fraternity reenacts George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, half-naked.
Crewing Up also deals with the joys and nightmares of working as a crew member to get the job done, whatever it may be, which is part and parcel of the entertainment industry. For Addie Kemp, it’s the nightmare of a lifetime.
The cast seems to be a very talented and eccentric group that work well together (from the promos available online). Tuscon theater vet Dallas Thomas leads as the Addie, joined by fellow names from the Arizona theater scene, Jonathan Northover, Eric Schumacher, Todd Gaston and Stephanie Sikes. Not messing around about the action sequences, they even hired stunt coordinator Robert Linden, who instructs the actors how to safely jump and roll around amidst the shenanigans of everyday life at the station and in-the-field reporting.
“We have a great mix of actors.” Banczak said. “Everyone was cast separately but when we had our first table read, I realized they all knew each other. It took over three hours to get through one 30 minute script.”
Tubefilter News had the pleasure of catching up with Melissa earlier this week.
TF: Where are you shooting and how does location effect production?
MB: We shoot at a public access station where they give us the run of the place, although they did freak out a little when they found us shooting in the men’s room one evening. The scene involved one half-naked character trying to talk the other into a “quickie.” The sex and the nudity didn’t seem to bother anybody, just the idea of us being in the bathroom.
TF: What kind of backing does the show have in terms of budget?
MB: The budget is sort of made up as we go. The only real expense is food, which runs about 20 dollars per shoot day. I try to keep it easy and bring sandwich fixings but three months from now people may start to rebel against turkey and swiss on sourdough.
TF: The picture quality looks pretty decent, what kind of camera(s) are you using?
MB: I shoot with a DVX100A. In addition, we have a three-week story arc that is shot through security cameras and occasionally one of the characters, who stalks an sexy older woman, updates his friends via his webcam.
TF: How many episodes are underway? Is there more than one season planned?
MB: So far, I’ve written 12 episodes. Each episode is broken into three segments and will be uploaded on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Our first season will be 24 weeks or 72 individual episodes of approx 3-4 minutes. We’ve nearly finished shooting our first 9 weeks. Then starting in Oct, we’ll relax a little and only shoot three or four days a month till January. We’ll take a break for a couple months and then come back for a second season of 24 weeks. We have a third season outlined, but that will only go if the cast is still having fun. We have a great mix of actors. Everyone was cast separately but when we had our first table read, I realized they all knew each other. It took over three hours to get through one 30 minute script.
TF: What do you want us, the audience, feel as we tune-in?
MB: Well, we’d like people to laugh. Crewing Up is a comedy with hopefully a lot of laughs and some sex and violence thrown in for good measure.
Crewing Up premieres Monday, September 29, 2008 with new episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at www.crewingup.tv and also blip.tv.
Another TNT micro series-within-a-series debuts next week with Blank Slate hitting the web and TV waves September 9th. Hopefully this one will help us get over the network’s last mirco gamble, Lucky Chance. Dean Devlin (Independence Day, Who Killed the Electric Car?) Exec-Produced this series, which debuts on both TNT and TNT.tv with 2 minute episodes set to air during commercial breaks of Law and Order. Both Lisa Brenner (The Patriot) and Eric Stoltz (Mask, Pulp Fiction, The Triangle) add their charisma and acting chops to the effort, but the real star behind it all is…the Acura TSX.
That’s right, the car.
Acura commissioned the series as part of its Acura TSX advertising efforts. Both Devlin and Director John Harrison (Children of Dune) are betting viewers will be so engrossed by the story of an amnesiac (Brenner) coerced into solving crimes by having the memories of dead people implanted in her brain that we won’t mind all the help she gets from her classy Acura TSX. Besides, anything the car can’t handle will be handled by her FBI, um, Handler (Stoltz).
The end goal is to get the assembled series released as a film. Take that, 4 Eyed Monsters! With such a strong track record behind the production team, plus Director Harrison is just finishing work on Clive Barker’s Books of Blood series, the ‘micro-series’ should offer exactly what TV viewers can’t take – zero downtime to run off to the bathroom.
Black Slate airs:
Tues – September 9 during
LAW & ORDER @ 8p & 9p
2 Blank Slate episodes will run in 8p L&O (breaks 3 & 4); 3 will run in 9p L&O (breaks 2, 3 & 4)
Wednesday – September 10
LAW & ORDER @ 8p & 9p
2 Blank Slate episodes will run in 8p L&O (breaks 3 & 4); 3 will run in 9p L&O (breaks 2, 3 & 4)
Week of 9/15
Tuesday, September 16
LAW & ORDER @ 8p & 9p
2 Blank Slate episodes will run in 8p L&O (breaks 3 & 4); 3 will run in 9p L&O (breaks 2, 3 & 4)
Wednesday, September 17
LAW & ORDER @ 8p & 9p
2 Blank Slate episodes will run in 8p L&O (breaks 3 & 4); 3 will run in 9p L&O (breaks 2, 3 & 4)
[Ed. Note: This is different than the blankslate series from ItsAllinYourHands.tv.]
The only time I regret my lack of familiarity with soap operas is when I watch Horrible People, but A.D. Miles’ delightful interpretation of daytime television is so over the top that I don’t need to know my way around Port Charles, New York to be in on the jokes.
Watching 3Way is a different story. Several hours worth of SOAPnet or CliffNotes from a stay-at-home parent with an affinity for Susan Lucci would’ve probably helped provide some context to this soap opera comedy.
Siobhan – played by Maeve Quinlan, a regular on Bold and The Beautiful for a decade – is a soap opera star recently divorced from an action movie star (hmmm…considering Quinlan was married to Tom Sizemore from 1996 – 1999, maybe the series is as much catharsis as it is passion project?). After divorcing her husband, Siobhan moves in with Roxie – played by Cathy Shim of Reno 911! and Mad TV – her best friend and a lesbian.
This week truly proves there’s a web show out there for the geek, nerd, and ninja in all of us. No matter what your passion, be it a throw-back to our video-game-ruled youth (Street Fighter : The Later Years), a love for assembling Ikea furniture (Easy to Assemble), or maybe just a penchant for some suave ninja moves (Ask a Ninja), join us, there’s a place for you here.
New Zealand stuntwoman-turned-actress, Zoë Bell, best known as the hood-straddling heroine in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, has been cast as the lead in Eisner Award-winning writer Ed Brubaker’s new web series, Angel of Death. Brubaker and White Rock Lake Productions will release the series on Crackle, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s online television network.
Angel of Death, which won’t be out till sometime in early 2009, centers around the fearless Bell who plays a “remorseless assassin in the employ of a ruthless crime family.” Each 8-10 minute installment will be released over the course of 10 weeks. Bell’s character apparently has some traumatic head injury, casuing her to think she is haunted by the victims she’s racked up in her day job. So as some sort of exorcism of these demons, she goes after her former clients, the ones who ordered the hits in the first place and takes them out.
Creator/writer Ed Brubaker is best known as a prominent comic book writer whose work includes such titles as The Death of Captain America, Batman, Criminal, and Daredevil. “Besides the elation I feel about having a project I wrote actually being filmed, which is huge for any writer, I’m just as thrilled about having Zoë Bell signed on to star in Angel of Death,” said Brubaker. “And working with Crackle and Sony Pictures to give viewers instant access to the series online is completely overwhelming.”
Zoë Bell began doing stunt work for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess (both
productions where filmed in New Zealand). She then went on to double for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill: Volumes 1 and 2 where she caught the eye of Quentin Tarantino, who was so impressed with her work that he cast her in a major role in his Grindhouse feature, Death Proof. The climactic scene where she clings to the hood of a 1970 Dodge Challenger while being pursued by Kurt Russell’s maniacal Stuntman Mike was truly a car chase for the time-capsule, and solidified Bell’s standing as a legitimate action star. Her lead role in Angel of Death should only further cement that reputation.
Star Trek fans to Star Wars fans; “Anything you can dork, I can dork better.”
For years, Star Wars fans have enjoyed an almost Open Source environment for their rabid fan fiction creations, whilst erstwhile Trekkers have been forced to make sure their basement creations adhere to small things like, oh, continuity and overall plot lines. (Star Wars Holiday Special, I’m looking at you) But Paramount is a very watchful mother over all things Trek.
Quick sidebar – If you want to make your own unlicensed Star Trek series, Paramount is cool with it as long as you do it Not For Profit. That means no DVD sales at Comic-Con. Natch.
So now a few enterprising Shatner fans have set off on their own journey and it’s called STAR TREK: OSIRIS. Set to debut this Fall, there’s already a “trailer” out there. I hesitate, however, to call anything a trailer that doesn’t show actual footage from the series. Check out the production stills here for a glimpse at how wunderbar we think it (might) will look.
It’s a whole new Star trek story line created by fans. Osiris is set right after the end of Star Trek: Nemesis when peace has broken out all over the galaxy. This begs the almost unanswerable question of, “What happens now that nothing is happening?” Previous efforts like Hidden Frontier (2000) were able to make similar use of the space to good effect. In fact, for anybody who is a fan of Hidden Frontier this show is a no-brainer. You must watch.
The first-time series creators behind Osiris were able to draw on their experiences writing for Internet Star Trek games. They cast friends, family and even a Swede. Here’s to hoping this maiden voyage will chart out new territories, but next time they better pack some video. If you must absolutely know what Sans Serif font will look like in the 25th Century, please check the trailer out.
One thought before I go: In greenscreening these fan-fiction Star Trek shows, aren’t people simply creating the Holodeck as imagined in TNG? We have Holodecks!!
Michael Buckley just got a development deal with HBO. Lisa Nova was on four episodes of Mad TV. Jessica Lee Rose appeared in a terrible Lindsay Lohan movie (was that redundant? Ha!) and in the ABC Family series, Greek. The Ask a Ninja guys are writing and directing the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes redux.
There are the above plus a handful of other instances where cewebrities have crossed over (or have a good opportunity to cross over) to the small screen from the smaller one. But none have been able to make it big on TV. Bre Pettis could be the first.
His pilot – History Hacker – will air on the History Channel on Friday, September 26 at 9PM. Here’s Bre on what the show’s all about:
If you like web video, you undoubtedly have had Ask a Ninja answer some of your burning questions, like, “how to land a job,” “who would win a fight, a ninja, or a crazy person?” and, “the proper use of commas.” The Ninja has now been answering questions since 2005. He’s also been featured on NPR, in the New York Times magazine, and been quoted on the floor of the US House of Representatives. Seriously, he has.
Now the Ninja has written a book, and Tubefilter News recently caught up with him at an undisclosed and very exact time to bring you this interview to learn more. The Ninja Handbook will drop on September 9th… read and destroy.
Tubefilter News: How did the Ask A Ninja book come about?
Ninja: Well, my Ask A Ninja podcast peaked a lot of folk’s interest in ninjaing, which is a pretty darn dangerous endeavor. So, The International Order of Ninjas decided it would be better if most people died while trying to become ninjas under our guidance rather than by acting out scenarios from Ninja Gaiden 2 or Michael Dudikoff movies.
TF: What was the writing process like?
Ninja: It was kind of like climbing a mountain made of melting mozzarella cheese while being chased by a dragon made of a plausible deniability. Of course, I did the hardest parts of retrieving the ancient scrolls from the Temple of Sharp Flying Objects and devising the most painful way to make Kent and Douglas transcribe them.
TF: Do you think the Ninja will have multiple book deals?
Ninja: That kind of depends on how many people are left after this one.
TF: Can you give us a teaser on the book?
Ninja: Sure, this is a teaser that I call ‘a very serious threat’: “Carefully consider the joy of your soft-headed Read On…
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