It wouldn’t be bad advice if someone told you to play to your strengths, to work with what you know best. For actress Jesse Draper, who is most known for playing the ditzy nanny on Nickelodeon’s The Naked Brother’s Band, that meant mixing a little Hollywood flare with her Valley roots for her indie web series. Oh, and by Valley, I don’t mean the other side of Mulholland. I’m talking about California’s other illustrious hotbed, Silicon Valley.

Draper’s web series, The Valley Girl Show, pits Draper in character as a quirky pink-obsessed host sitting down to chat with some of the world’s top business leaders and entrepreneurs. You can’t help but be reminded of a Reese Witherspoon’s Elle in Legally Blonde, juxtaposing academic bland with more ‘colorful’ smarts.

For Draper, this is her wheelhouse. Draper, the daughter of venture capitalist Tim Draper (of Draper Fisher Jurvetson), literally grew up around the titans of tech, giving her both a level of ease and access to the Valley’s elite.

Last season she landed top execs Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Sun Microsystems founder Scott McNealy. This season she says they are stepping it up a notch, if that’s even possible. Draper tells me that she looked at last season as a “pilot season,” testing out the concept and honing the character. This season she says they have upped the production quality, bringing on production company OnPoint Productions and even consulting help from the team at EQAL.

This season Draper’s guests include Elon Musk, CEO of Telsa Motors (and SpaceX), NFL star Ronnie Lott and billionaire VC Vinod Khosla. Draper and the team are also in talks with a major sponsor coming on board for the new season.

In its first season, the show was touted as a West Coast spin on Wallstrip, the now defunct business new satire web series from CBS Interactive. But Draper says she’s thinking bigger.

“It’s going to be a journey but I am going to become the pink Ellen Degeneres of the internet,” Draper told us.

The new season of  The Valley Girl Show kicks off August 31, with 15 episodes spread out over 30 weeks.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Hosted, News, News-Current Events, Web Series, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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Amid signs that the Hollywood celebrity-blockbuster model has hit a snag, Yuri Baranovsky and his team at the web series sitcom Break A Leg have signed an “odd” network deal.  Is there a new entertainment model emerging?  More on that soon.

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Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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Did you know CNN has a web series? I didn’t. It’s called Freshman Year and while it might sound like a coming-of-age college romp, it is far from it. Here’s the gist: two Congress n00bs, Jared Polis (D) and Jason Chaffetz (R) carry around Flip cams and chronicle their first terms in the House.

Polis is an openly gay man and former Internet entrepreneur elected to represent Colorado’s second district. Chaffetz is a conservative, “former chief-of-staff to Utah’s governor and married father of three who sleeps on a cot in his congressional office to save money,” according to the Freshman Year website.

In jest, Richard Galant, Sr. Producer for CNN.com, said “[Chaffetz] doesn’t mind sleeping on a cot in his office —except when the Zamboni-like cleaning machine comes down the hallway in the middle of the night, beeping loudly, or when the sirens for the emergency alert system are tested overnight.”

Chaffetz represents Utah’s third district. Politics and the people. Sounds boring, right? Wrong. In fact, what is fun and interesting about the series is the inside look it gives you into the lives of the two Congressman. The latest episode gives a behind-the-scenes look at Stephen Colbert’s interview with Polis (imagine if the comedy-personality himself actually made it to the presidency, while we’re on the subject).

In a world of hidden scandals and thick walls which “shield” the public from the harsh realities of political life, Freshman Year comes in and brings us footage of the candidates, as they are in their daily lives, pitfalls, pastimes, and progress. The show has a documentary sort-of feel. Freshman Year doesn’t stay away from tough topics either, often confronting representatives on issues such as health-care reform.

So how did the idea come to be? “We were brainstorming ideas for First 100 days of the Obama administration and thought it would be interesting to take advantage of web video to give a behind the scenes glimpse of freshman congressmen in this new administration,” said Galant. “We lent them Flip Camera HD and asked them to shoot video and send us the clips, along with text commentary pieces.”

So far, 14 episodes have aired at around 7-8 minutes each. They started off at about a new episode each week but seemed to have fallen to 1-2 per month.

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Documentary, News, News-Current Events, Web Series by Jacob Nahin
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Gritty, gooey and gore galore gives the original post-apocalyptic web series, Lady Wasteland a strapping gun-toting formula suited for sci-fi fans. The series runs rampant with zombies, cannibals and human targets who struggle to stay alive by a new set of rules.

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Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Heather J. Taylor
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We got an early teaser (above) of new thriller web series Compulsions, which is still in post-production. This one piqued our interest early, with a few notable web series names in the mix. Stars Craig Frank (The Crew, Private High Musical) and Annemarie Pazmino (Sorority Forever) are recognizable to web fans. And as of now, the only other announced cast member is Janna Bossier. A few other recognizable faces make an appearance but are being kept under wraps.

The basic setup is that even completely normal people have hidden and often dark desires, or compulsions, that are kept inside and never acted upon. Of course it would be a lot more interesting to find out what would happen if they did act upon them. And that’s where this series picks up. Three leads, three different compulsions. One of them is sadism.

Writer-creator Bernie Su said they are “trying to push the level of web drama to another level, one that is sophisticated and thematic with different levels of character development.” He went on to tell me that much of  the dramatic series out there online aren’t clicking with viewers because they often drop the ball in some key pieces of the puzzle.

“In drama you have to execute on every level, unlike comedy which tolerates lower production values,” said Su. “They either do too much with too little or too little with too much.” Su and his team are hoping to land somewhere in the middle of those two, telling their emotional story within the confines of limited budget and resources.

Su and producers Michael Tohl tapped an experienced crew to help pull this off. One of their first scores was veteran producer Robert Grand, who had line produced big-budget films like The Fugitive and Star Trek: Generations. Also brought on was AFI-trained director Nathan Atkinson and DP Jason Raswant.

Su noted that they are beginning talks with distributors, even considering releasing the series as an interstitial series on a cable network. We’ve seen a few of these micro-series nestled within commercial breaks before, and TNT had some luck wooing sponsors for them last fall.

“There’s very few web series that can draw in a TV audience,” added Su. “We think we can be that series.”

Series creator Bernie Su on the set of Compulsions

Filed under: Articles, Drama, Featured, News, Thriller, Web Series by Marc Hustvedt
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I’m a little over halfway through an advanced copy of Anthony E. Zuiker’s novel Level 26 that was given out at Comic-Con last month. And I can honestly say that this latex wearing contortionist killer (“Sqweegel”) has officially creeped me out. It’s one thing when you read a crime novel and are limited to your own mind’s imagery of the twisted killings. But when you mix that with interstitial video episodes, you get those perverse contorting images burned into your retinas. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Zuiker, most known for creating the megahit procedural crime drama franchise CSI, has made the move into two mediums he hasn’t touched—publishing and web television. Ok, it’s really three if you count his surprisingly formidable start to his blogging career on the Level 26 site. It’s everything you don’t normally get from Hollywood players—refreshingly candid and actively updated by the man himself.

The project was announced back in March and perked ears of the online drama world with news of web studio EQAL’s involvement.

I had a chance to chat with Zuiker before his panel at Comic-Con and I wanted to figure out how genuine his commitment to online storytelling really was. He was remarkably humble about his new steps into blogging and the challenges of online audience building.

“I’m not some sort of television mogul who just decided he’s going to throw his hat in the race,” said Zuiker. “I’m literally committed to the space. I feel like I’m starting at ground zero with respect to an unproven community. I want to earn a level of authenticity with that audience and realize that I am taking a chance and putting my money where my mouth is. Hopefully through my blog posts they will really get to know me and develop an authentic following, not just a fan following. That’s for me to earn still.”

Zuiker said the idea for Sqweegel was born in his mind about seven years ago while in the shower. It was several years later that he would take the idea out to publishers. He said he pitched the idea to 8 publishers and had 7 offers the following day, resulting in a bidding war between Dutton and Hyperion before Dutton won out. The deal itself is said to be seven figures for three digi-novels and corresponding web series. Zuiker quipped on the panel that he “put every single penny of that deal into production.” In fact he mentioned that they spent more that the total book advance on the first one.

His attention to the web series’ production shows, and Zuiker’s TV background is not lost on the 20-episode series. He shot on the RED camera and cast professionals, recognizable faces like Michael Ironside, Daniel Buran, Kevin Weisman and Bill Duke. And to really sell the creepiness of his uber-killer, he found actor (and world record holding contortionist) Daniel Browning Smith to play Sqweegel. He even brought on fashion designer Marc Ecko to go the book cover art and even a special edition t-shirt.

There are traces of CSI banter in the series, but Zuiker pointed out that “it goes horrifically more horror and dark and Rated R.” “I wanted to make sure that this wasn’t something that when you watch it you feel like you’ve seen it on television,” he added, “I wanted it to be a lot more edgier than that.”

Zuiker even showed me a preview version of the iPhone/iPod app that blends the novel with the video cyberbridges. Truthfully, it seems like the only frictionless way to experience the project, since it fully downloads the episodes as part of the application purchase though iTunes. The other methods, like reading the book on the couch within reach of a laptop are passable, but naturally require nearby internet access. So much for reaching on the beach.

How far a reader wants to experience the project is up to them, say Zuiker. “If a passive reader just wants to read the book they’re happy,” Zuiker noted. “But if some early adopter wants to go as deep down the rabbit hole as the possibly can, that’s there for them too.” He even mentions some mild ARG elements like a phone number to call the killer that might have the killer calling you back.

Watching the series on its own is a bit tricky I’ve found as I accidentally jumped one ‘cyberbridge’ ahead of where I was in the book. I was missing some context to the episode and realized I need to catch up on the print side.

The official launch of the Level 26 series is September 8, the same day as the book hits the shelves. With still weeks to go until the launch, there’s not shortage of activity on the Level26.com community site. “The primary focus of the site is the content and the discussion around it,” said EQAL co-founder Miles Beckett, who’s company custom built the site using tech from its Umbrella software platform.

EQAL’s Greg Goodfried put it this way on the Comic-Con panel: “Books are an amazing medium of connection, and with the web, the world is now your book club.”

Filed under: Articles, Drama, EQAL, News, Thriller, Web Series by Marc Hustvedt
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The Swedish, commercial superstore that offers “affordable solutions for better living” is continuing to coast towards pop cultural immortality, via this Jonathan Coulton song, comedian Mark Malkoff, and numerous other send-ups. Ikea Heights takes more of an exploitative route, where the store unwittingly becomes the set for a web series about murder and cracking wise.

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Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Michael Shaw
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Quick update on The Guild’s promo music video, “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar,” which has been creating quite the buzz before the hit comedy web series returns for Season 3 next week. Today the video broke the 1 million views mark on YouTube, and has taken the #1 spot on as the top music video on iTunes (see below).

The video hit YouTube on Monday, taking just two days to reach the million view mark. The $0.99 MP3 is also selling well on Amazon, currently the #6 #1 best selling MP3 download on the site. UPDATE (via Felicia): The song itself is the #1 MP3 on Amazon, while it is also listed as an ‘MP3 album’ where it is #6 overall.

Guild creator and star Felicia Day wrote the lyrics to the song and Jed Whedon composed the music and directed the video. While originally available on XBox Live as a free download as part of the company’s distribution deal with the web series, the video really took off once set free for embedding via YouTube. Season 3 of The Guild premieres August 25th on MSN, XBox and Zune.

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Comedy, Musical, News, Production Companies, The Guild, YouTube by Marc Hustvedt
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To create the entertainment of the future, writer-director Drew Daywalt reaches back into the past to fuel his imagination. The creator of Camera Obscura, the upcoming supernatural thriller web series from MWG Entertainment, draws much of his inspiration from the short form storytelling of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on the horror of anticipation. Camera Obscura shares the sense of dread prevalent in such literary classics as Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

The series follows Clara, an orphan brought up by her alcoholic, absent grandfather. After he dies, she finds a camera that belonged to him, and discovers that it can capture demons. She also discovers that her grandfather’s work was not done, and it falls on her shoulders to complete his task. It’s a nice little family story with a whole lotta’ scary going on.

The cast features familiar faces such as Reagan Dale Neis (Malcolm in the Middle) as “Clara,” Timm Sharp (Till Death), and three-time Emmy winner and Golden Globe winner Jack Klugman as “Grandpa Sam.” Daywalt had previously worked with Neis and Sharp on his feature debut, Stark Raving Mad, and he wrote the parts in Camera Obscura with them in mind. He was thrilled when Klugman agreed to do the series, excited by the sense of weight and history the performer would bring to the role.

While shooting, Daywalt told Klugman that he was surprised he had taken the role in Camera Obscura, given that Klugman hadn’t done anything paranormal since Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone. “Jack paid me one of the biggest compliments of my life,” says Daywalt. “He said ‘That’s because that was the last time someone handed me a script that was paranormal that’s this good.’ You can imagine how that felt!”

Six creature actors are featured in Camera Obscura alongside the series leads, and a decent chunk of the budget was dedicated to practical – as opposed to digital – effects. The production shot for two five-day weeks with a crew of nine at locations that included the abandoned Linda Vista hospital in downtown Los Angeles. Daywalt shot in standard definition on the Canon XL2. Though others pushed him to shoot on HD, Daywalt insisted on standard def because he needed a camera that would handle low light situations well…and not expose everything in his special effects.

At first glance, Camera Obscura might seem like a strange match for MWG. The company’s mission is to produce and distribute original digital content for the adult female demographic. In contrast, the horror genre’s main audience is comprised of testosterone-laden teen-age boys. MWG’s first series, My Two Fans, is a comedy about dating; their second, Road to the Altar, is a wedding mockumentary. So where the heck does a story filmed in a creepy deserted hospital, populated with creatures named Mr. Hurt, Splinter and The Bag fit in to MWG’s development slate?

Max Goldenson, President of MWG, explains, “Camera Obscura is a supernatural thriller, and it certainly does have a great deal of special FX and is definitely visually jarring, but when you peel back that layer of spectacle and imagery, it’s the story of a young woman getting over the death of her grandfather. Everything else in the series ties into that relationship – the creatures, the puzzles, the allegory, all of it. It’s a much more complex and intimate way to tell that story, but that’s one of the reasons we felt it would be such a great fit for the web. We believe the women we’re targeting, historically and currently, are drawn to stories steeped in horror and suspense, particularly when it’s this intricate.”

As a studio, MWG put up the funding for the series and owns the rights, though there is a backend profit participation deal in place with Daywalt. MWG plans to monetize the series via a combination of ad sales, sponsorship and brand integration. They work with a brand integration agency that specializes in these deals for web, TV and film, and their goal is to make deals that reflect the niche audience specific to each of their projects. They are currently in talks with a specific brand sponsor for Camera Obscura, but have not yet announced a deal.

The decision to work with Daywalt was much simpler. Goldenson and MWG vice president of development Robert Kandle immediately knew they wanted to meet with the filmmaker after seeing some of the films on the web that he had done with Fewdio, the horror collective that Daywalt founded with a group of like-minded content creators.

In 2007, with the writers strike looming, Daywalt, writer-director David Schneider, former Newmarket exec John Crye, and actors Paul Hungerford and Kirk B.R. Woller decided to join forces. Says Daywalt, “We were all looking at six months of being completely unemployed. We knew the strike was going to last, and we needed to do something. We also wanted to reinvent ourselves. All five of us are big fans of genre.”

The group invested in equipment, taught themselves how to edit and got to work shooting horror shorts for the web based on the shared aesthetic of anticipatory dread rather than terror. When they first started, however, they got a lot of raised eyebrows. Many of their friends and colleagues expressed doubts about the potential for short-form horror to succeed on the web. They kept hearing, “The Internet is for comedy – guys falling down and landing on their balls, kittens playing piano, dudes wearing 164 shirts.”

But Fewdio is composed of a group of savvy artists who know their genre’s history, so they kept the faith. Daywalt points out that horror has historically been short-form. “The campfire tale isn’t a two-hour epic,” he jokes. “There were very few novels that were horror novels – they were mostly short stories, they were in pulp. Horror has always been sort of a red-headed step child to literature in all forms, whether it’s pop, film or written.”

For inspiration, Fewdio looked to people like Rod Serling, whose focus was on storytelling as opposed to slash. Their shorts received a warm embrace from some of the group’s favorite horror critics, such as Fangoria, and last year Wes Craven chose the collective’s Breach as one of his YouTube Halloween favorites. They just released an anthology DVD of their first batch of films.

The experience Daywalt gained doing the web shorts prepped him well for Camera Obscura. He got used to leaner and meaner budgets, and learned a few tricks of the trade for storytelling on the web. For example, he believes it’s important to develop a visual shorthand for each piece, establishing characters onscreen in an instant, while at the same time avoiding stereotypes.

Another challenge Daywalt grappled with during the writing process was figuring out how to create a series that was germane to the web. He didn’t want Camera Obscura to feel like a longer piece that had just been chopped up into 6-minute segments for online distribution. He eventually found his solution in he way he structured the episodes.

Explains Daywalt, “I approached each episode like it’s own short story that had an opening with a dramatic question, a resolution to that dramatic question and usually a cliff hanger ending that would draw you back to the next episode. Sort of an abrupt cut to black, hopefully leaving the audience going OH MY GOD!”

Camera Obscura is currently in post-production, with an anticipated October 12th launch date on a variety of platforms.

Photos courtesy of MWG.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Horror, News, Production Companies, Thriller, Web Series by Tamara Krinsky
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It started as a clever riff on Quarterlife, Marshall Herskovitz’s popular web series-turned-short-lived-NBC drama, but somewhere along the line, 2/8 Life gathered up its own set of fans. The charming comedy of a group of twentysomethings, led by vlogger Angela Curtis (Nellie Barnett) in search for meaning in a hyper-connected world, returned for its second season on Hulu last week.

Matt Vascellaro created the series which was developed as an original property for the Independent Comedy Network (ICN.TV). While ICN has pretty much been dormant this year, with several key members taking off for other ventures, it still technically owns 2/8 Life, which remains the site’s most popular series. That didn’t stop Vascellaro and his team from dusting of the second season which he says they shot over a year and half ago.

I caught up with Vascellaro and asked about the choice to continue the series and the long delay in getting the second season online.

“Like a mini-version of Behind the Music, I think a lot of web shows get a tiny taste of “success”, which is difficult out in here in  LA because the prospect of “making it” always seems to be floating just above your head. As a result shows end up shifting their focus to potential ad deals, options, brand treatments, etc., and accidentally away from their fans.  While some of these business development things are absolutely necessary, I think the most successful web shows to date have shown that there is no substitute for an active, engaged and loyal fan base. That is why we’ve shifted our distribution approach for this season, abandoning our previous “hyper-syndication” model, and focusing instead on Hulu and Facebook as our main platforms.” (emphasis added)

They launched the promo video (below) for Season 2 back in 2008, and were one of the first web series to get a deal with Hulu. “I think they initially approached us because we were doing slightly longer-format episodes that had full A and B storylines,” said Vascellaro. “A year and a half ago, we were one of the first and only web shows featured, but now we obviously face a lot more competition. This has been a blessing in disguise though because it has forced us to step up our game and come up with some inventive ways to stand out on the site,” he added.

Vascellaro says this season is focused on the fans, building it around what he calls “the Facebook strategy” around being where his audience spends their time online. He hinted at a Hills parody called “The Valley” starting in episode 5, and plenty of new sketches and cast video features in between weekly releases.

As for ICN it remains unclear whether any other of their series will see more action. There was even the somewhat ironic news last fall that Quarterlife creator Herskovitz was teaming up with ICN on a project called Your Name Here, which appears to have fallen apart.

Episode 2 of 2/8 Life comes out Wednesday with the season building to an “incredibly intense cliffhanger” according to Vascellaro. Series regulars Emily Fox, Daniel Campagna, Jestin Lentz, and Bob Wiltfong all return for the new season. “After testing the waters in the first season,” Vascellaro noted, “we found what this show was really about: A group of idiot kids struggling to grow up at an age where they should absolutely already be grown up.”

Filed under: Articles, blip.tv, Channels, Comedy, Hulu, News, Web Series by Marc Hustvedt
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AbTV. That’s my nickname for WeTV.com, the online offshoot of the cable network. And not because I can pick up the latest in abdominal workouts. This, folks, is where you go to see the results of some major ab work.

WeTV has one purely online program (which they launched over a year ago): Hot Coffee Break. You’ve probably heard of it. Guys taking off their shirts while in the laundry room, at the park, cleaning the house, frosting a cake. You get the picture. Wherever a guy can remove his shirt, they have one doing it. No dialogue, just music and the guy. Once the shirt is off, typically in the first five seconds, the viewer can study the resulting ab shots for about 30 seconds. That’s it!

Interesting choice of emphasis. I’m wondering if Hot Coffee Break will expand its coverage to other areas of the anatomy. Got to tell you, for my contemporaries, abs are not a big deal. Brains are the next big thing. Of course, some would say it’s about time we caught up with men’s programming. Which would mean that the brain would be the last area of study.

Anyway. WeTV ran a new ‘episode’ of Hot Coffee Break every day last July. Literally lasting about 35 seconds each, WeTV offered them as a quick pick-me-up. CBS News called it “steamy.” If you visit the show’s site, you can learn the names of your favorite men, vote for your favorites after reading the Playboy-esque bios and revel in the fact that you’ve participated in the, um, community. You can even download Hot Coffee Break wallpaper. So far, it’s just for your computer screen. I’m sure someone will think of turning it into something you can use on your walls.

There’s a great deal more programming available on the main site, WeTV.com, but it’s all video capture of the network programming. When we contacted the network, they very cordially sent us a press kit detailing their upcoming network series—some of which include full episodes streamed online.

There are two other networks that specialize in women’s programming, Lifetime and Oxygen. Of the three, WeTV focuses the most on celebrity-influenced culture topics, from relationships to weddings, and features almost entirely reality programming. There are reruns of women-centric situation comedies. But none of them are making original online programming.

As a girl, I’ve been watching very closely to see where all of this goes. And Tubefilter News will be the first to report if the Hot Coffee Break guys decide to leave the shirts and remove something else. Or start drinking green tea.

But the question remains: After an entire year, why hasn’t WeTV created more original online programming geared towards the biggest online demographic, with arguably the most significant purchasing power?

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Web Series by Guest Author
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In 1980 ABC aired a show called Mr. and Mrs. Dracula. It was a situational comedy about a husband, a wife, their two kids, and a pet bat named Gregor. Oh, and they were all vampires, but maybe you guessed that from the title? The show was canceled after one episode. A year later they re-shot the pilot and then canceled it again.

“Why do I bring this up,” you ask? Well, because to me Mr. and Mrs. Dracula had to have been the lowest rated TV show of the 80’s.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Michael Neal
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