Sam King has a plan: use his position as a lowly runner for Universal Music to find the next big band, while landing the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, events, as they are wont to do, have other plans for our hero.
Produced by Globe Productions, a subsidiary of Universal Music’s West London branch, the series features 3-5 minute episodes filmed at the offices of Univeral Music’s West London Branch that capture the ups and downs of Sam’s daily struggles for professional advancement and eternal love.
This one could be good, really good. Check out The Bannen Way. The trailer was just posted this week while the show creators Mark Gantt and Jesse Warren lock up a distribution partner for the show. Shot with the new RED camera, which emulates the look and feel of film at a fraction of the cost, the visuals are stunning. The sexy action series stars Gantt as Neal Bannen, a debaucherous thief looking to go straight after years on the wrong side of the law. Co-starring the beautiful Stana Katic (The Spirit; Quantum of Solace) this one screams sexy and seductive. Fittingly, they’ve landed a hefty roster of premium sponsors – Jaguar, Ray-Ban, and Apple – all of whose products are flaunted throughout the series. It’s so slick looking in fact, there’s rumors that the show might bypass the web all together and head straight to cable TV. Gantt and Warren said however they are exploring their options and would love to find a premium web portal to partner up with. Here’s to hoping they find one, or really that one finds them. This seems like a no brainer pickup to me.
You’re treated to the best “the page you are looking for doesn’t exist” page on any site I’ve seen, and Hulu’s making advertising money via overlay ads from your mistake.
If there’s one segment of the online video world that’s completely saturated, it’s got to be how-to. And that’s great. No matter whatyou’relookingto learn how to do, there’s probably a video out there eager to enlighten you. And now betting at the track and shopping for sex toys are no exception.
That’s thanks to Vice101, a new series from LA-based Ecstatic Pictures that (has no affiliation with Vice Magazine’s VBS.TV and) promises to teach you “how to be a playa.” And it delivers. The show seeks to make foreign and often taboo experiences more approachable by being intimidated on our behalf.
Director/producer Haim Silberstein is fascinated by different vices and the subcultures and the economics that accompany them. Inspired by Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, Silberstein wanted to create a show that “actually takes you through the mud” and answers the practical questions that we’d never think to ask.
“At a whorehouse,” he mused, “how often do they change the sheets? Who does the laundry?”
IFC’s Pushing Twilight is about “a group of disenchanted twenty-somethings” who gather in odd meetings and are given missions designed as an “outlet for their unfulfilled urges.”
There’s absolutely no doubt that the internet has changed the world – whether it’s how we find information (Wikipedia), how we search for stuff (Google), or how we watch the latest ‘cute kitten’ videos (YouTube). This change has spawned a subculture of people who write ‘first’ and ‘lolz0rs’ wherever they can find a comment box, and say things like, “dang homie G? Dawg, gangster slice” on YouTube. It would follow, then, that this audience could be harnessed in the web tv world, and indeed they have. Here are the top five scripted narrative web shows that have parodied internet culture to knockout success:
5. Homestar Runner
Although Homestar Runner is the main character of the series, it’s Strong Bad who steals this show, especially with his ‘Strong Bad Email’ sketch. In the series (of which there are almost 200 episodes), Strong Bad logs on to his computer and writes humorous and sarcastic responses to emails he gets, often mocking the sender’s name, hometown, and spelling/grammar mistakes. The show is impressive as much for its humor as it is for its longevity – Homestar Runner has been around since 2000, and continues to go strong.
4. Internet Commenter Series
The first episode of the Internet Commenter Series debuted just over a year ago (August 17th, 2007), but its parody remains just as relevant today. As the internet has expanded from tech savvy households into the mainstream, combined with the anonymity that the internet provides, we have discovered just how dumb some people’s thoughts really are. In this series, the staff at CollegeHumor shows us what things would be like if people’s real world behavior mirrored their online etiquette.
3. The Website is Down
It’s no secret that we loveThe Website is Down. This first episode was brilliant – and enough people agreed to make the video go viral despite the handicap of a 10 minute run time. Tubefilter News recently got to take another look at the latest developments in the series, including some early footage of the next episode and other features that will be released on the site, and it has only made us impatient to see more.
2. Pure Pwnage
In Pure Pwnage, we explore a gaming underworld where video games and reality are intertwined so closely, at times it’s hard to figure out the distinction between the two. Ultimately, though, Pure Pwnage relies on its gamer-centric humor, which has catapulted it into a cult hit and allowed the series to continue for seventeen 10-30 minute episodes so far. As a warning, however, don’t expect to understand all the jokes in this series unless you know how to pronounce ‘pwnage’ and understand why ‘three-dozer build’ is an insult.
1. Red vs. Blue
The granddaddy of them all, Red vs. Blue, from Rooster Teeth Productions, is a machinima series based on Microsoft’s Halo games. Praised with bringing machinima to the mainstream, RvB follows two teams (the Red team and the Blue team, of course) as they half-heartedly (or perhaps incompetently) fight each other in a bloody civil war within the FPS game itself. The show is another testament to the longevity which series that cater to the online audience can have – this show has been on for over 5 years and well over 100 episodes, through three releases of Halo. Although popularity has waned somewhat in recent years, it continues to be one of the major shows on the web, having spawned multiple spinoffs of the original series. In a 2006 interview, Strange Company founder Hugh Hancock called the series probably “the most successful machinima productions” and estimated that RvB was pulling in nearly $200,000 a year.
A self-professed Ally McBeal, Ylse gives an inside look into the world of a Spanish-language talk show. Its title character is herself bilingual, jumping between English and Spanish with an ease so well-written, English-only audience members won’t even notice.
Ylse is a host of gossip-style entertainment show. But an Oprah-worshiper, she yearns for more…more out of work, and out of relationships, as her vapid co-host shamelessly tries to get in her pants.
Ylse is the brain child of actress Ruth Livier (Resurrection Blvd.), who first wrote the project as a half-hour pilot, but resurrected it on the web. Now producing it mostly from her own pocket, Livier is proud to, “tell stories of this multi-cultural American experience from our POV…this is a reflection of my life.”
Ylse’s dilemmas will strike a chord, with most young, cute, smart single girls. She’s already set-up a possibly steamy love-triangle between her annoying co-host, and her very cute show producer. Ylse’s other problems are somewhat unique. No one can pronounce her name, and they’d like her to trade it in for something more showbiz… and, easier to pronounce. That, and Ylse puts pressure on herself to meet some unrealistic standards set forth by the talk show queen supreme, the one and only Oprah. Ylse wears a picture of Oprah inside her locket, and is constantly asking herself, what would Oprah do?
As far as what Ylse will do, Livier promises, “more romantic misfires and misfits, and more of Ylse’s inner dialogue.” Episode one is now up on Ylse.net, with new episodes every Friday.
A writer with a great idea for an uber-short-form web series who wants to forgo actors, sets, and crew in favor of serifs, color tones, and an audience using its imagination should find someone with a degree or equivalent experience in Broadcast Design and Motion Graphics to create the blogeratti’s next favorite show.
Here’s some inspiration/free research/two of my favorite typography videos I found on YouTube to make sure you realize the potential:
In The Devil’s Advocate, Al Pacino’s character wins the medal for “best unintentionally funny lawyer spoof of all time.” He plays John Milton (which makes me think that both director Taylor Hackford and Spike Lee took the same “How to Name Your Character” class in film school), who’s a big shot partner at a big time New York City firm, who also happens to be Satan.
Pretty funny, right? Except that this movie with this premise that’s spawned hundreds of bad lawyer-soul-selling jokes isn’t a comedy. It’s a thriller. And Keanu Reeves is in it, too. Even funnier, right?
Anyway, Al Pacino as a lawyer who’s also Satan (wait, is that redundant? Ha!) is tough entertainment to beat in the world of jurisprudence, but Rick Eid may have topped it with Living the Dream.
Each week, the staff at Tubefilter News gets together and picks shows that we think you should check out.
This week’s picks:
Roommating
Roommating follows the story of Joel and Erin, two roommates who met on Craigslist and have a common appreciation of judging people and Vietnamese food. We got a chance to talk to Joel a few days ago, and he was able to give us a little insight on just where he and Erin get their ideas.
Wainy Days
Now on its third season, sporting a 2008 Webby Award for best comedy series, MyDamnChannel’s Wainy Days is showing no signs of falling off. The NY-based series starring comedy vet David Wain (The State) on his quest to find love in the city wraps up the season on August 25th.
Putting striking individuals with Ford contracts on camera and online gives the models a new platform for visibility and pushes the agency’s brand in front of an audience that might not be watching Tyra Banks yell at underprivileged girls who need to eat more.
Now, other staple brands of the fashion industry are starting to follow suit. Albeit, the the designs for their online extensions are a lot more expensive.
Sony’s Crackle will launch their latest project tomorrow, a new thriller entitled Coma starring Michael Madsen (Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs) and George Hamilton. Check out the trailer (one of the coolest trailers for an online series I’ve seen):
Crackle describes the show as, “a stylish new thriller… Lennox (Madsen) [is] a cop on the trail of a corrupt mayor (Hamilton)—at least until a bullet sends Lennox to the hospital. Filmed in the style of a graphic novel, Coma is a gritty and addictive series with plenty of surprises in store.”
‘Stylish’? Sure, although it’s not exactly their own style. From the trailer, the series looks like a combination of Sin City visual effects and Kill Bill sound effects (not surprisingly, Madsen was involved in both projects). ‘Filmed in the style of a graphic novel’? Absolutely; the graphic novel influences are clear throughout the entire trailer. The story? We’ll have to take their word for it; the trailer sets up the characters, but doesn’t give away many hints about the storyline. Either way, we’re happy to see a star like Michael Madsen jump into the online realm; between Rosario Dawson’s web debut yesterday, David Spade and Tim Meadows’ hilarious 60Frames show Carpet Bros. earlier this summer, and Joss Whedon’s sitebusting series Dr. Horrible, we’ve seen a lot of traditional stars venturing online, and Coma continues the trend.
This one could be good, really good. Check out 
A self-professed Ally McBeal, 
