Big Screen Little Screen is a monthly screening and networking event for internet-video creators. Organized by Matt Semel and Chris Chang of 10Ton with Paul Kontonis of For Your Imagination, Big Screen Little Screen focuses on the creative side of internet video and the people behind it.  It’s a supreme forum for showcasing and promoting work, meeting collaborators and just hanging out while drinking cheap liquor with interesting people.

Why another internet video Meetup?  Matt Semel explains.

I started the BSLS because I was tired of going to other meetups that were just focused on technology with little consideration for creativity.  I figured it might be fun and informative for video content creators to get together and show their work to an audience.

The next Big Screen Little screen takes place on Monday, March 24 at 6:30PM at 22 West 27th Street 6th Floor.  (Next Monday is my birthday, so I expect a lot of cheap liquor.)

If you’ve got a project you’d like to show the world, let Matt and Chris know!  A few presenter spots are still available. 

Josh and I will be there, taking notes, as always!

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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2002 was a dark, dark year for liberals across America; President Bush made the case for war in Iraq, the GOP swept the midterm elections and the Homeland Security Act was signed into law. Full of despair, many Democrats yearned for a change of political climate (and not in a “Si Se Puede” sort of way).

Liberals dreamt of Canada.

In August 2002, Michael Moore’s, Bowling for Columbine hit the theatres and gave further fuel to the ex-pat bandwagon. From New York to Seattle, people talked about heading North to a land where health care was affordable and freedom meant “freedom for everyone.” In the eyes of many Americans, Canada was our really cool, really smart older sister, who didn’t let her natural beauty go to her head. America, in anthropomorphized terms, was the younger child, who had a serious weight problem and some trouble making friends.

Six years later, many liberals in America are dismayed to see our big sister suffer from the ageing process. In 2006, Canada’s political climate took a hard right turn and some unflattering signs of old age, say greed or belly fat, started to appear. As to be expected, the Bush Administration encouraged Canada’s new political discourse.

While sisterly love between the U.S. and Canada is far from new, the two countries have bonded over an emerging sweet tooth, i.e. the oil sands of Alberta.

The producers of VBS.TV (which was fashioned by the founders of VICE magazine and Spike Jonze) have created The Toxic Series, which seeks to shed led on “environmental injustice[s] that are often ignored including economic conditions, social impacts, and corporate politics…” The Series explores environmental disasters in Alberta, Brooklyn and West Virginia. The Toxic Alberta webisodes are by far and away, the best of the lot.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Julia Lipkins
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In 1994, Austin, Texas’ seven-year-old South by Southwest Music Festival added Film and Interactive conferences.  Budding auteurs screened low-budget, indy flicks, and pros talked process on panels.  Media geeks showed what cool eye candy they could store on tiny Digital Video Discs.

I’m sure there was some talk of convergence back then, the fact that one day the next El Mariachi would be shot on a budget that would make Robert Rodriquez look like Peter Jackson.  That it would be distributed on little bits of data traveling in through a publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks, or at least something not made of celluloid.  That people would consume it on-demand across a number of devices that included, but was not limited to, their home television sets.  But I’m guessing that’s all it was.  Talk. 

14 years later, we know it’s close to reality.  Although the product isn’t yet on par with Rodriguez’s charming actioneer, it’s clear the convergence of mediums new and old is imminent.  In fact, it’s such a given that at this year’s SXSW it wasn’t even a topic of conversation.  It’s just understood.  It’ll happen, the only question is when.   

One of the latest steps towards an answer came with SXSW and web distribution/production house, ON Networks‘ Greenlight Awards.  The two teamed up for an online video contest that collected submissions from hundreds of entrants who had hopes of receiving a cash prize, the opportunity for a distribution deal with ON, and some internet notoriety.  It’s interesting when you think about – what was originally a film festival spun an interactive arm and now that interactive arm has a film festival.

In any case, The Guild won.  It’s a sitdotcom created by former-gamer and Buffy the Vampire Slayer number Vi Felcia Day about "what happens when hardcore online gamers stop gazing into their laptops and cross into the messy territory of real life."  MMO freaks will appreciate the inside jokes, but the series doesn’t delve too far into the realm of gamer esoterica to make it unappealing to those who don’t know the name Leroy Jenkins.  It’s good.  Check it out:

The other four finalists are good too.

###Wingmen

A mockumentary about a group of University of Texas students whose popular campus radio show got 86ed after an on-air break-up incited a barrage of expletives that even Sirius would censor.  The FCC elicits fines and the kids solicit customers to their newfound, crafty dating service.

The Bobble Show

An interview show featuring animated celebrity bobble heads, that recycles hackneyed jokes into funny again.  It’s part excellent delivery, and part anyone-in-bobble-head-form-looks-ridiculous, but any show that can still elicit laughs from a Barbara Walters impersonation is worth a watch. 

Small Bits of Happiness

(The above is just an excerpt from the full 30-minute long first episode)
A dark comedy  about a suicide prevention company that coaches the morbidly helpless to happiness, 30 seconds at a time.  The anti-Kevorkian Ned Reynold thinks that, "if he can make you feel happy for 30 seconds, proving that you can feel happy, he can build on this moment, and eventually you can be happy for a minute, an hour, and maybe even the rest of your life," all the while dealing with his own loss issues.

You Can Awesome!

I used to like the intro only, but after giving this 80’s-variety-childrens’-program-gone-bad a second and third chance, it’s growing on me.  Its attention to the minutia of kids’ shows (like chalkboards, children noises, and actual kids) confines the insanity of the characters to a familiar place.  I still prefer the more palatable For Kids! by Dan Meth, but give this one a couple views and see if the escalating absurdity doesn’t make you click for more. 

To view all the ON Networks Greenlight Awards Finalists, click here.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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When I first started watching digital shopping network HoneyShed, I was resistant: I told myself I was just going to review its originally-produced commercials; I wasn’t going to get sucked into buying the products they promoted. Hours later, I was taking twice as long to write this review due to hopeless distraction over items like the Magic Microphones in “HoneyShed’s Daily Hookup,” and I realized I had been unwittingly devoured by an advertising machine that is creating a new genre of branded entertainment.

HoneyShed creeps up on you.  Just when you think you’re not going to sit through another commercial’s lame attempt at comedy, some product comes along that catches your eye. Suddenly, you’re involuntarily staring, wondering, drooling, and maybe even buying.

This is just a screenshot because HoneyShed embeds are really #$%ing annoying run on autoplay.

In beta since 2007 (with an official launch planned for summer 2008), HoneyShed is the brainchild of David Droga, owner of Droga5, an indie ad shop that, like HoneyShed, is funded by advertising industry heavyweight, France’s Publicis Groupe. The site developed as CEO Maurice Levy recognized that commercials and branding were shifting significantly into the digital realm. According to Fast Company magazine, Levy’s “goal was to make his company the industry’s premier digital-marketing outfit.”

The site spews nonstop, daily, in-studio commercials (made in L.A.) hocking trendy clothing, gadgets, cosmetics, DVDs, music, and other merchandise with an “MTV meets QVC” vibe.  The long-term goal is to build the site’s reputation as a tastemaker, so young, attractive, hip, and diverse hosts populate the channel and pimp products through skits, infomercials, “interviews,” spoofs, and improv.

###In place of imaginative concepts, many of these commercials resort to leggy women in small clothing, corny jokes, and unscripted sketches to “make the sell."   But for the young target audience that grew up in an era of loosely-structured reality TV, HoneyShed’s casual vibe will feel right on the money.  

HoneyShed breaks into smaller channels: Beauty, Tech Toys, Girl Fashion, Kicks and Lids, DVDs, Fun Shit, Daily Hookup, New This Week.  And if you really like something, you can either “Stash it” (to view, share, embed, or purchase later) or click the prominent “I Want It” button (which will link you directly to the vendor).  What could be most annoying about the first-time experience on HoneyShed is the inability to fast-forward or rewind any of the videos, which stream live one at a time on the site.

Internet advertising is on the rise (with $10 billion earned in the first half of 2007 alone), but a 24-7 shopping network still presents a risk. Firebrand, a joint venture shopping network from Microsoft, NBC Universal and GE, went under in March 2008.  In response, HoneyShed Chief Operating Officer Jeff Davidson said, “They spent too much money too quickly.  Wide spread adoption of video consumption via the Internet is still in its nascent stage and only companies with a solid business plan, sufficient start-up capital and a metered burn rate will survive.”

And Honeyshed just might.  The commercials may never reach SuperBowl quality, but even so, serious shoppers (and even the reluctant window-surfer) might find a thing or two they’d like to snatch up at HoneyShed.

Man, those Magic Microphones are looking good.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Pearl Chen
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The joke is told with a half-smile, from a telltale Beacon’s Closet wardrobe, to the ever-present boom mic and bad lighting, to the skilled camerawork and split-screen over-emotion.  There’s the narcissistic prima donna for a band-leader, a contract-lawyer engaged to a girl who could have “fallen in love with any lawyer,” a so-far-mute female drummer, a nerdy manager, and a dreamy bassist banging the groupie-cum-singer.

I smell Pabst Blue Ribbon and drama.

###The All-For-Nots is ironic, if obviously so, and it is serious, respectable storytelling…if a bit overplayed.  With financial backing and expertise from Michael Eisner’s Vuguru, the show rests on the staggering talents of Dinosaur Diorama‘s founders and series co-creators Kathleen Grace and Thom Woodley.  The duo knows a thing or two about internet video and the hipster lifestyle. After creating The Burg, a popular web series based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a web series about an indie band seemed like a logical progression. Grace wrote and directed the new show.  Woodley wrote and acted and created all the music.

Its characters are highly stylized, which I dislike in comedy. I want to believe it, like I do in The Office, and I’m not sure I do.  Maybe I will; maybe it’s too soon to say.  Maybe I’m just too familiar with hipster stereotypes to fully appreciate the style; after all, I work with a Williamsburg hipster (though he won’t admit it).  I mysef am a Blackberry-wielding frustrated artist.  Either way, it felt a touch too close to the mark.  Some lines are better left unsaid — I’m left hungry for a bit more subtext.  That’s the extent of my criticism.

Overall, I’m really impressed with this work.  It’s filmmaking on the web!  It’s interesting camerawork.  It’s polished editing.  It’s a funny, character-driven story with the beginnings of an interesting arc. It isn’t I-just-finished-film-school-and-I’m-on-the-web-cuz-I’m-not-ready-for-TV-or-film, even if it actually is. This is respectable and interesting work for any distribution outlet.

The All-For-Notscast and crew, whom Josh recently interviewed – and the business team behind it – are breaking creative ground.

The whole concept uses new tools and services to engage on every imaginable medium.   You can watch online, on mobile (Verizon V CAST) and cable/satellite (HDNet). And you can interact with the band on Bebo.  It’s a 3-part weekly episode – the later two feel like DVD-extras, which works well. I recently had the pleasure of catching these catchy tunes at The All-For-Nots launch party at SXSW.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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Let’s say your stereotypical, white-collar conference is straight out of Office Space – an extension of the monotony of cubicle life, interrupted by staid speakers waxing boring on industry topics, where a team-building exercise or trust fall would be the only non-alcoholic activity to provide a needed, if unpleasant, recess. 

SXSW is the exact opposite. It’s a (spring) break from office/production/whatever life. It’s a serious conference that doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s replete with amusing panels that are there for no other reason than to amuse.

Exhibit A: Worst Website Ever: That’s So Crazy, It Just Might Work – Nine internet-renowned writers, designers, and engineers pitched their best most terrible ideas for an internet-start-up to a real-life investor for a shot at a fake $1 million. Bonus points went to presentors who were able to pull off a semblance of knowing wtf they’re taking about while making the least amount of sense.

Exhibit B: Battledecks II – Powerpoint meets Karaoke meets improv comedy.  A game-show competition where internet cool kids took their turns at 3-minute, impromptu presentations in front of slides they had never seen before. To add to the difficulty/hilarity, the slides had nothing in common except they were all swimming in the web’s meme pool.

Rocketboom has a look:

If you need some help with understanding the inside jokes, click here. Just kidding, start here and then click here.

In any case, geeks at conferences know how to have a good time.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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It was just after 9:00AM, and I had barely opened both eyes, never mind done anything productive. And yet, the ever-manic Michael “Buck” Buckley, host of YouTube’s wildly popular “What the Buck?” had already shot and posted a video entry, tended to his four – yes, four – dogs and wrangled his recyclables (an excessive quantity of Diet Coke empties) to his Connecticut curbside when I called him.

I was at once refreshed and alarmed that Buck spoke with as much enthusiasm (translation: speed) off-camera as he does in his videos. With irrepressible energy and a gift for long-windedness, Michael Buckley is one of the hardest-working motor-mouths in the vlogosphere, regularly serving up his punchy, schticky, commentaries on celebrity gossip and reality show highlights.

In terms of his career as a personality, Buck said that it has “totally just evolved. I have a degree in psychology! As an adult, I knew I wanted to do something different and I saw TV hosts and thought, ‘I could do that.’”

Starting with a small, local cable access show in CT with a female co-host, Buck tested the net’s self-broadcasting waters with his cousin, who posted some of his video clips on YouTube. Eventually, the few times a week What the Buck? blew up to be one of the biggest shows on the site. With 113,920 (or so) subscribers, Buck’s channel is ranked the 7th most subscribed-to page on YouTube and is the site’s most popular entertainment channel.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Sarah Ricard
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Next New Networks, which has some good stuff and some bad stuff (mostly good), just raised $15 million from Goldman Sachs and Velocity Interactive Group.  They’re leading the development of the next generation entertainment studio.  I say this with due respect to the other visionaries who invest in and create web entertainment.

Rafit Ali at PaidContent is skeptical of NNN’s "hits driven model" but is this model really hits driven?  I don’t see it that way. NNN is driven by discovering and serving modest sized communities with common interests – amateur filmmakers (IndyMogul), amateur fashionistas (Threadbanger), car freaks (VOD Cars, Fast Lane Daily), etc.

We all know how it works: Hollywood products are so often stale because quality media creation requires experimentation, and experimenting with Hollywood budgets is too risky for most studios to stomach.  It’s a shitty business. 

On the web, however – where low barriers to entry allow a successful show to sustain a budget of about one-half of one percent of the lowest imaginable studio budget (i.e. Ze Frank, Ask a Ninja, Rocketboom) – experimentation is key.

###The risk that so scares Hollywood executives is amortized: new media studios like NNN will thrive by finding and serving modest sized audiences, not by pandering to the lowest common denominator (aka creating hits), but by creating and experimenting.

I expect a more predictive development model to emerge from within internet studios as they continue to experiment, but so far, I’m pretty impressed. I applaud Next New Networks for paving the way towards a fair and efficient professional production model that looks like a winning business.

Congratulations to Next New Networks for their recent successful fundraising effort, and for being a driving force behind this growing industry.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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Slate dubs it The Most Meta Internet Video Ever. That’s accurate.

That title most likely formerly belonged to Dan Meth’s ode to Internet People. But the animator’s viral video about viral video stars doesn’t even come close to being as self-referential as Scott Blaszak’s streaming tribute to streaming media. Just wait….and see.

Blaszak is a self-described “media producer and screenwriter in New York City,” whose writings have appeared on McSweeny’s and whose video parodies – including a LonelyGirl–Ask a Ninja mash-up – have quietly circled the web.

One question: Why end with a cheap shot at web video? Hey Scott, don’t get all David Lynch. The internet’s a perfectly good medium that’s capable of producing products that are more than "kind of a lame joke," and has helped a number of artists, including yourself, gain some deserved notoriety.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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You know how it is when you spend long periods of time with one person. Maybe you work in the same cubicle. Or maybe you get stuck in a mineshaft together for a week. Or maybe you’re like, ya know, married.  After enough one-on-one time, you’ll either never want to see each other again or will develop a bond so deep that eventually you’re speaking your own language.

For LA-based boyfriend-and-girlfriend duo Will Watkins and Ryan Templeton (Ryan’s the “girlfriend” of this equation), it was a road trip for a week in a minivan that spawned such a bond, and a creative partnership. Shortly after realizing that their artistic aesthetics and goals were in alignment, Watkins and Templeton created Dank and Nank, a daily, under-a-minute-long, short-form series on YouTube.

On one hand, the series follows the conventional formula of more traditional shows that feature young, funny singles struggling to get along (think Friends, Unhitched).  On the other, the format and style make it unique. 

###Episodes are short and sweet, with barely enough story to convey, but just enough to get viewers hooked.  It’s a quick joke.  A comic strip.  And easy to consume with an average episode running for about 40 seconds, both when they’re good (often), and when they’re not-so-good (sometimes). 

The topics cover normal roommate stuff.  One episode features Nank asking Dank if she uses eye cream and then suggesting that she might want to consider it when she says no. Another is twenty seconds of Nank flipping out over a pain in his liver, only to discover that the liver exists on the other side of his torso. In a four-part continuing storyline called Nank Sells His Virginity, Nank puts himself for sale on Craig’s List (even though he’s not really a virgin) and finds a taker – a pretty Asian woman on whom Dank suspiciously finds an Adam’s apple. (A more traditional plot than some of the others with less of a satisfying payoff, but still, for a total of two-and-a-half minutes of storytelling and investment, it’s pretty OK.)

In order to create a daily dose of short-form comedy, the Dank and Nank team shoots their show in “rounds.” For each round, the gang writes as many stories as possible and shoots them over the course of three days, usually producing 30 little episodes for their series at a time. To keep things simple, the filming of Dank and Nank’s dysfunctional relationship typically happens against the backdrop of three different sets, all of which are at Templeton and Watkin’s actual apartment.

In spite of the existence of other web TV that looks and feels more like traditional media in its structure and production value, Templeton and Watkins enjoy the cheapness of their show.

“The Web is a really fun playground,” Watkins told me. “It’s like a training ground, and I find if what you’ve created is too polished, it plays against the web community.” Thus, Dank and Nank fits in beautifully with the overabundance of other amateurish videos on YouTube. But unlike so many crude uploads, this is a scripted series with yuks and heart.

Watkins and Templeton, who live like true bohemians just a stone’s throw from Dodgers Stadium, have yet to figure out how to turn their show into a money-making enterprise. “Last week,” Templeton said, “we dressed as clowns and did a kid’s party…we also built some shelves for a friend.”

“We just gig it,” Watkins chimed in. “I recently got paid to teach someone how to juggle.”

And yet their lack of resources hardly keeps them from creating cool content. In fact, they have five separate shows launching this summer, to upload on their soon-to-be-designed site crazydanks.com. The details are sketchy, but I can tell you that one is billed as a “sex-fueled cooking show.”  Site unseen, it’s awesome. 

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Sarah Ricard
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It seems like all the sudden people realized that lunchtime was primetime for internet-video and began clamoring to associate their shows with a midday in-cubicle respite. 

Welcome LunchBox, the new video offering of IFC.com, created with For Your Imagination, that aims to be the "daily guide to what’s happening in music, film, in politics, as well as IFC and all the cool stuff happening online and in [their] own media lab." Is there anything this show won’t cover?    

###Perhaps IFC should begin the process of creating an online video presence by developing many IFC-niche series, the first of which should focus heavily on the interesting MediaLab, IFCs independent film studio focusing on web and on-air content development and financing. 

LunchBox is hosted on a semi-custommized Brightcove player with disabled embeds, so if you want to watch the show, you’ve got to go to them.  This is a pet peeve.  Why alienate potential viewers?

As Quincy Smith, President of CBS interactive has smartly noted, "We can’t expect consumers to come to us. It’s arrogant for any media company to assume that.” 

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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Perfect for chicks who read Wired and Real Simple – who would flip channels between Discovery and the DIY Network – Revision3 launched a spunky female-oriented talk show called popSiren, which will include everything from DIY projects to interviews to science experiments.



popSiren is hosted by Sarah Lane and Jessica Corbin, two pretty and intelligent ladies – lest you think beauty and brains can’t co-exist within a single woman – who navigate the show through cute banter, on-location segments, in-house interviews, Mr. Wizard-type demonstrations and the term of the day. 

(Episode 1’s term of the day, by the way, is an acronym from UrbanDictionary.com – "ACB" – which translates into “Air Conditioner Booty,” the phenomenon by which a woman’s posterior protrudes not unlike an air conditioner window unit. It also happens to be a feature which co-host Corbin is to proud to demonstrate on her own person.)

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Sarah Ricard
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