CBS weekly television news program 60 Minutes announced plans to launch a weekly web show “that begins where the television broadcast ends”—it’s called 60 Minutes Overtime, and is scheduled to launch Sunday, September 26, 2010, the same evening as the 43rd season premiere of 60 Minutes.
“So much goes into the reporting of a 60 Minutes story and often there’s more original material that doesn’t make the broadcast, or interesting back stories we don’t get to share with the viewer. Now we have a place to do that,” said Executive Producer Jeff Fager.
Each week 60 Minutes Overtime will produce three original stories based on the broadcast’s weekly television segments and pulled from its vast archive. Perhaps taking some cues from the raw journalism style of online reporting, Overtime will take audiences behind the scenes to reveal the process of producing stories and share the perspective of correspondents and staffers. “60 Minutes Overtime is going to be the only place where people can see a different side of 60 Minutes,” said Mark Larkin, Vice President, CBSNews.com. “The correspondents telling stories about their stories is the kind of thing that people are looking for on the web.”
60 Minutes Executive Editor Bill Owens will oversee the programming of the site.
Barbie gets all the attention—the outfits, the special editions, the SNL parody sketches—but what about her forlorn beau Ken?
Mattel has been looking to reinvent Ken with an ever so clever product placement as a central character in Toy Story 3D this summer. Now it looks like they are turning to the world of web series to revamp their plastic bachelor.
We came across this site for a new reality web series Genuine Ken: The Search for the Great American Boyfriend that seems to have just gone up this week. It looks like a casting call for now to find the real-life eligible bachelors who will star in the 8-episode series this fall. Is it just me or would Bannen Way star Mark Gantt be a shoo-in for this?
Genuine Ken: The Search for the Great American Boyfriend is an online competition reality show unlike any other. For eight drama packed episodes, eight eligible men will duke it out in challenge after challenge to be named the ultimate boyfriend – “A Genuine Ken” (What a Doll!). They’ll be evaluated on date-ability, personal style, personality, general hotness, and overall KEN-ability.
The intro video (not embeddable) on the site boasts this will be “a competition reality show like the web has never seen,” which got us thinking about these competition reality shows which seem to be the rage right now. MSN just launched their Tastemaker series with social media buffs, while Alloy is doing a talent search competition to cast its latest teen reality web series Talent. So why not one for the dashing gentlemen of the web?
According to the site, at the end of October the series producers will select eight top finalists who will actually be in the Genuine Ken web series. Until then, some more Toy Story 3D:
Issue-based shows always have it tough. When revolving around one subject repeatedly, how do you expect to keep an audience interested in the interim between episodes?
World Full of Nothing as a web series pretty much did everything it could to make their lives more difficult. First, this was a film, originally, which won a few film festival awards for director Jesse Pomeroy. Now it’s been re-edited and broken up into episodes to try and have a life on the web. Then, the issue this show revolves completely around is that of teenage suicide, specifically creating a secenario in which a teenager’s suicide broadcast on the web sparked a trail of copycats.
Supposedly, the trailer seems to suggest, we will be having an FBI profiler and a web predator both racing to find another one daring people to find some reason for her to continue living, with talking heads interspersed throughout utilizing this wave of suicides as fodder for their sound bytes.
In the first two episodes, it utilizes the style pioneered by lonelygirl15 in the vlog portions – that of copious amounts of jump cuts, of young people speaking directly into the camera, acknowledging the audience, etc. While this could be used to great effect—The Guild, anyone?—I don’t feel that World Full of Nothing does, other than for the shock value of the first scene.
On a serious note, if you’ve been thinking about suicide, stop reading this mindless review and go here.
Making a good film about things happening on the Internet is extremely difficult. Making a TV show, near-impossible. And making a web series about it isn’t exactly a piece of cake. Your average YouTube comments section will show how quickly viewers will dismiss something, or create resentment toward producers/directors who try to show they’re “with it” the way a father would try to talk to his daughter about Lady Gaga. There’s absolutely no acknowledgement thus far of any sense that the creators have a healthy knowledge of the Internet, other than a) People can film stupid things and post them online, and b) People will watch videos of those stupid things being done.
World Full of Nothing so far hasn’t created a character that I genuinely want to follow. It might be my own personal feelings on suicide, or that the profiler and the web predator – despite a six-minute-ish pilot and a second episode that’s a bit longer – haven’t even shown up on screen yet, and are only briefly featured in the trailer. The show hasn’t told me who I should be care about, and who is simply around for flavor.
In what little I’ve seen of Rachael – the fifteen-year-old girl who wants people to give her a reason to live – I honestly didn’t like her. The first video she makes, without giving any sort of backstory, any sort of reason, just seems attention-starved. The second episode, she completely contradicts herself tonally and calls those who’re killing themselves publicly “idiots,” despite confessing that she’s thinking about it – y’know, publicly. And this, ultimately, is the pitfall of trying to break a film up into an episodic form. For all I know, the very next episode we find out the sort of horrible upbringing she’s had, constant bullying at school, and she’s going public to cry out for help.
What’s more, we’re two episodes in, and the supposed premise – Rachael wanting people to give her a reason to continue living, the web predator and profiler chasing after her – hasn’t even begun, yet. What’re we waiting for?
The news clips, which are supposed to serve as the thematic underpinning to the show, are seriously heavy-handed. Yes, talking heads are typically sensationalist hacks. Yes, they will make unrealistic demands that will create a chilling effect on free speech. Yes, superchurch ministers will make a national come to Jesus talk. We get it. That the acting in those news show clips feel wooden and forced only makes them seem to drag on even longer.
As much as I have a dislike for Michael Moore’s similarly heavy-handed (and in many ways, willfully deceptive) style, he pretty much already covered this – and did it better – in this clip of Bowling For Columbine.
I don’t believe that World Full of Nothing grabs the emotional truth – and it certainly doesn’t in the first two episodes. If I’d gotten to see a little bit more, I may think otherwise, but unfortunately, there are very few people who would give a show three full episodes to get hooked.
Win, Fail or Trainwreck: This doesn’t really go into any of these categories. It’s constructed well from a production standpoint. There aren’t any glaring errors (though, in the vlogs, they don’t commit to the style; how do you zoom in on a character who is supposedly recording it by herself?). The acting doesn’t make me want to pull my hair out, but it isn’t grand, either, the cinematography is fine, and the direction doesn’t offend, though it seems to really want us to be shocked.
It’s just sorta there, not doing much (should ‘Sorta There‘ be a review category?). If you’re feeling morbid, you might find some of the suicide montages entertaining, but then there’s probably something wrong with you, anyway.
Cecil B. DeMille is an American film legend. He directed classic movies of both silent and sound, including Cleopatra, The Ten Commandments, and The Greatest Show on Earth. The Golden Globes has an award for oustanding lifetime achievement in the world of entertainment named after him. Last year, Robert De Niro presented it to Martin Scorsese.
De Niro lavished praise on the American director of Taxi Driver and Goodfellas and concluded his commendation with, “I can’t help but think if times were a little different, how proud Cecil B. DeMille would’ve been to be honored with the Martin Scorsese Award.”
If the Golden Globes took place in North Korea, however, both acclaimed directors would receive the Kim Jong-il Award.
Turns out, the dictator of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a huge cinephile. In addition to owning a video library with over 20,000 titles (he’s particularly fond of slashers, Godzilla movies, and anything starring Elizabeth Taylor), Kim Jong-il wrote the definitive book On the Art of Cinema (in which he refers to himself as “Genius of the Cinema” and credits the Genius of the Cinema with conceiving the idea of multiple-camera setup), has over 11,890 film credits, built a film studio in Pyongyang, and kidnapped South Korean stars of the silver screen to act in early North Korean films. And thanks to Generalissimo’s state-sanctioned cult of personality, he’s revered by his people as the greatest director, producer, financier, costume maker, set designer, screenwriter, cameraman, and sound engineer that ever lived.
I just learned all this in the past 30 minutes after becoming slowly gripped by and then severely engrossed in The Vice Guide to Film: North Korea. Created and distributed by VBS.TV, the three-part series highlights Vice co-founder, Shane Smith’s state-mandated tour of North Korean monuments with a focus on the facade of a film industry in Pyongyang. It’s a helluva captivating look into what life would be like if Hollywood was headquartered in Oceania.
It’s also a reminder of the great pieces of journalism coming out of VBS. Smith and company started the broadband video network after growing tired of talking about “cocaine, whores, and denim” on the pages of Vice Magazine. They went on a mission to do “the real deal…not just the usual bullshit.”
And bullshit this ain’t. Give VBS.TV a few more years of producing content like The Vice Guide to Film and viewers won’t even realize it’s an offshoot of a popular hipster rag. Interested parties will discover Dos and Don’ts through the magazine’s affiliation with the online video network, not the other way around.
RJ Williams is on a mission to conquer Hollywood, one fun celebrity interview at a time. From face time with some of the biggest names in Hollywood to championing up and coming talent that will be the next big thing, the Young Hollywood team works around the clock.
In order to create a celeb friendly environment—and actually get those celebs to show up—Young Hollywood has set up their studio in a suite at the Four Seasons Los Angeles in Beverly Hills. Williams is so dedicated to the success of Young Hollywood, he has moved into the hotel to keep his focus zeroed in on the day to day workload it takes to make the Young Hollywood world happen. He does takes a few breaks to head downstairs to modern Italian restaurant Culina. A man’s got to eat.
With more than 3 million unique visitors last month Young Hollywood is well on its way to establishing this mark on the entertainment landscape. Their co-branded programming with Yahoo, Hulu, TV Guide, MySpace and now even live streaming content on YouTube as part of the site’s live alpha product test this week. Their YouTube channel already boasts over 48 million views.
Yesterday Tubefilter visited the Young Hollywood set, to see this TV studio in a hotel suite for ourselves. We sat down with Williams just after he had interviewed the cast of The Jersey Shore a segment with Snookie, The Situation and the gang that was live streamed to YouTube. The cast then celebrated their good work by ordering chicken fingers and fries from room service.
We sat down on the white leather sofa to learn more about the place where everyone from Lady Gaga to Justin Bieber have stopped by for a chat. We asked Williams if if all of the investment in Young Hollywood was to one day aiming to develop the format for network or cable TV. Williams is clear that the company will continue to focus their efforts on the digital world. Their recent live streams on YouTube included interviews with Tony Hawk, Dane Cook, Steve O (see above) and the orangest cast on TV those loveable GTL kids from The Jersey Shore.
Williams and his team are learning quickly that producing live streaming shows are challenging. On Monday Tony Hawk got caught in traffic and was surprised that when he knocked on the door of Young Hollywood’s hotel suite that were already live. Viewers got to see Williams tell Hawk they were live and prep his with his mic and mark all in plain view. With each live broadcast the team learns strategies for improving every aspect of working live.
So what constitutes young for Young Hollywood? Are 28 year olds over-the-hill? Williams says that it’s not about age it’s about attitude and that he would love to interview Betty White. And who is the next big thing? According to Williams, get ready for the all boy singing dancing phenoms, Mindless Behavior. Also on the horizon Young Hollywood will experience their first awards show season. With their set up at the Four Seasons they will be at the apex of all the action during the awards show hoopla. For RJ Williams that is just where he wants to be.
Some more snaps of their retrofitted Four Seasons suite:
Today Babelgum announced that all finalists for its inaugural Animatron Online and Mobile Animation Film Festival will be available for public viewing on its cross-platform web and mobile distribution channels. The festival includes nearly two hundred finalists whose professionally produced animated shorts will be screened and voted on by a newly formed international jury that includes animators and industry specialists including Jeff Scher, Peter Bishop, Charlotte Bavasso, Isaac Littlejohn Eddy and Tommy Pallotta.
Babelgum is partnering with the Hamptons International Film Festival to co-present select winners from the Animatron Festival at the Hamptons Animation Showcase. “We have a special emphasis on the art of animation this year,” said Holly Herrick, Programmer and Special Projects Producer at the Hamptons Festival. Festival programmers hope the partnership with Babelgum will prove to be a great boon for independent animators looking to find a broader audience for their short films.
Karol Martesko-Fenster, SVP and General Manager of the Babelgum Film & Animation Division, said, “We’re pleased to be highlighting the work of independent animators while focusing on the craft of this important filmmaking form at the Hamptons International Film Festival along with some of the top innovators in the industry. Animation is one of our key focuses at Babelgum, and the Animatron Festival demonstrates our ongoing commitment to honoring the work of talented filmmakers and providing innovative new ways to distribute their work.”
Finalists from the Animation Festival have the potential to win cash prizes totaling $20,000, with awards given to first place and runner-up contestants in each of the four categories, as well as a Grand Jury Prize Winner. Public voting for the Audience Awards begins today and continues through October 10, 2010.
The Animatron Online and Mobile Animation Film Festival Jury:
Saraswathi Balgam, Founding Director of Rhythm & Hues India, President of ASIFA India
Charlotte Bavasso, Founding Partner and Managing Director of Nexus Productions (Lemony Snicket)
Peter Bishop, Animator (Captain Star, Bromwell High)
Isaac Littlejohn Eddy, Animator (Cat, Dog, Stoop) and Cartoonist (The New Yorker, Time)
Tommy Pallotta, Producer (A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life) and Director (American Prince)
Bill Plympton, Director and Animator (Idiots and Angels, Hair High, Guard Dog)
Frank Rivera, Animator (Nickelodeon, PBS) and Founder of Animation Mafia studio
Jeff Scher, Painter and Filmmaker (A Year in the Animated Life, HBO, PBS)
Web series producers are coming to know the waiting game is part of the game. We’re not talking the Darrelle Revis style holdouts (yet), but it does mean not always taking the first distribution offer that comes along. Without a mechanism in place to adequately promote—and monetize—a web series, waiting for the best deal can be the smarter move to recoup those non-trivial production costs.
When a deal with another distributor for the series fell through last fall MWG Entertainment was left in a position of releasing this well-hyped series on their own, or putting it up on the digital shelf in hopes of scoring a better option. They chose the latter.
We were a part of their respectable PR push that included exclusive clips, teaser trailers and on-set photos of writer-director Drew Daywalt and his team crafting up some impressively gruesome effects. But then Halloween, the show’s target launch date, came and went and it left us wondering just what exactly happened to Camera Obscura?
Now, a year later, Camera Obscura is prime to launch exclusively on Dailymotion on October 1st. (See trailer below) The 20-episode horror-thriller centers around a young woman who “discovers her deceased grandfather was a demon hunter and now his quest to save humanity is hers to finish.” New episodes will release (week)daily for four consecutive weeks throughout October.
As part of the launch, horror site DreadCentral.com is teaming up with Dailymotion on a halloween costume contest where fans cans submit videos that show off their scary Halloween costumes with a $1,000 cash prize going to the top vote getter.
Speaking of web series that have been holding out for an ample paid distribution deal, Christopher Preksta’s The Mercury Men still has yet to bow online. Latest rumors circling around however are that the retro-sci-fi web series has in fact scored a distro deal with a studio that will be announced soon.
Alloy Entertainment, the production company behind Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, and The Vampire Diaries, launched their newest project, Hollywood is Like High School with Money, a web series based off the book of the same name by New York Times bestseller Zoey Dean. The series stars Kelsey Sanders, Ian Harding (Pretty Little Liars) and Brian Hallisay (Privileged), and features an appearance by The Hills reality star Whitney Port with outfits from her new clothing line Whitney Eve.
The 10 episode series, adapted by Carly Althoff (the recent ABC Family movie Mr. Everything) and directed by Janice Cooke (Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, 90210 and Privileged), follows an eager but naïve assistant who gets lessons on how to survive the cutthroat world of Hollywood from her boss’ queen bee teen daughter. The series is part of a three back-to-back web series (including First Day and Talent) announced by Alloy Entertainment’s East Coast President Josh Bank back in July.
The series will be distributed via the premium, multi-platform digital entertainment network AlloyTV. Alloy Entertainment’s Leslie Morgenstein, Bob Levy, Josh Bank and Tripp Reed will serve as executive producers.
It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Wes Craven here at Tubefilter. The iconic film director is responsible for the better part of the scares during our coming of age and he’s also a big fan of online video. (Remember his takeover of YouTube for Halloween?)
So when BlackBoxTV sat down with Craven for a fan-driven interview, we knew this was worth checking out. Craven is as prolific as ever right now, currently shooting Scream 4, a reboot of his franchise that reinvented horror movies in the 90’s. And on October 8th, his latest film My Soul To Take opens wide in 3D—yes, it’s Craven’s first foray into 3D. (It’s also in 2D for the purists.)
BlackBoxTV founder Tony Valenzuela (metonyv) is a pretty talented director in his own right, scoring a Streamy nomination for his Orwellian 2008 series, 2009: A True Story. The series was in fact one of Craven’s picks for Halloween that year. So we’re pretty sure the self-described ‘Craven fanboy’ had fun with this one.
The interviews kicks of the second phase of BlackBoxTV, where three weeks of scripted episodes are followed by a “BlackBoxTV Extra” featuring a director interview along with BBTV production updates, Valenzuela tells us. Then after two weeks the cycle repeats itself. So we haven’t seen the end of their Twilight Zone fueled mind trips.
Valenzuela directed the video along with fellow BlackBoxTV member Joe Nation TV. The animations are what crack me up however, and for those we can thank Roy St. Clair.
The series, in which Caparulo riffs about things that annoy him, aims to provide some “comic relief for life’s annoying irritations.” The shaving gel (not shaving cream!) products are “all about preventing irritation,” with a line of soothing gels designed for every shaving need. The connection here is the notion that Edge helps prevent shaving irritation amidst life’s everyday general irritations.
Thankfully the brand presence doesn’t extend any farther than this, and viewers will be grateful that the brand doesn’t insert itself into Caparulo’s charming standup bits about such irksome topics as “Fast Food,” “Shopping,” “Cell Phones,” “Night Clubs,” “Pools,” and “Basketball.” And despite the surrounding images of the products and Edge logos, Caparulo doesn’t refer to Edge, and no products appear in the videos themselves.
“If you had John smoothing shave gel all over his body saying, ‘I love this stuff,’ it wouldn’t feel right,” Alfred Giordano, Senior Vice President and Creative Director at Edge’s marketing agency Ryan Partnership, told the New York Times. “It had to feel man cave-ish, and if we were putting the brand too forward it would have felt very inauthentic. When guys are alone and girls aren’t around, these are the sorts of things that guys talk about.”
Taking a different approach to rival and category leader Gillette (Procter & Gamble), which features sports stars like Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, the tennis player Roger Federer, the French soccer star Thierry Henry, and formerly Tiger Woods, Edge and parent company Energizer Holdings (which purchased Edge from S. C. Johnson & Son and Schick from Pfizer) is trying to appeal to the everyday man, who may be overweight and suck at basketball like the self-depricating Caparulo.
On the Edge Anti-Irritation Zone website, users are encouraged to submit their own videos to be judged by Funny Or Die editors for a chance to win a trip to Vegas with their buddies and $5,000, and features a study that determined the most irritation-prone cities in the United States along with a tool that measures how irritated you are by how fast you smash the keys on your keyboard.
The Edge campaign isn’t Energizer’s first partnership with online distribution portals to market its products; the company enjoyed great success with Clean Break, a non-scripted web series from Sony’s Crackle and Schick Hydro.
This week, Disney Online debuted a pair of original web series with the Mississippi-born mother of four as its sole human star. The rest of the cast is comprised of Muppets.
In The Muppets Kitchen with Car Cora, our esteemed chef is welcomed into the world of Jim Henson Company’s creations with open arms, punny humor, and classic Sesame Street hijinks. It’s part food-themed variety show, part mom-oriented family-friendly entertainment as Cora, Angelo (a new Muppet chef with “style, panache and a quirky habit of cooking up chaos), and company formulate recipes based on an assortment of themes, like “Game Day,” “Movie Night,” and “Breakfast Isn’t Just Breakfast Anymore.”
Hasty Tasty Cooking Tips with Cat Cora and the Muppets takes a more streamlined approach. It axes the ancillary antics of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, and other classic Muppet characters, in favor of providing domestic cooks with “step-by-step instructions, specific culinary information, helpful tips, nutritional guidance, and advice on how to get kids excited about cooking.”
Both programs are exclusively sponsored by Honda and the National Milk Mustache “got milk?” Campaigain.
The Muppets Kitchen and Hasty Tips aren’t Cora’s first foray into business with The Walt Disney Company. In August of 2009, the chef opened up Kouzzina, a restaurant with Mediterranean-inspired cuisine at Disney’s BoardWalk Inn at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida.
Auto-Tune The News dropped Episode 13 (above) today featuring superstar rockers Weezer teaming up for a little political harmony. Guess who takes the cake for this week’s best unintentional auto-tune? Yup, it’s the first win for President Barack Obama. Side note, this video will probably put the Streamy-winning Gregory Brothers over the vaunted 100-million view mark on YouTube. [schmoyoho]
Landline TV and Babelgum have found a hit with their Kids Reenact web series that humorously puts kids in place of top reality shows like The Jersey Shore, TMZ, The Real Housewives of New Jersey and The Hills. Their latest target (above)? Keeping up with the Kardashians. [Babelgum
The Boxee Box is now available for pre-ordering today, after many months of eager waiting from Boxee users. I mean we played with one at CES back in January. Anyway, some hardware changes, as equipment maker D-Link announced that the set top box will be powered by Intel’s CE4100 Atom processor instead of NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chipset. The Boxee Box starts shipping in early November. [NewTeeVee]
Revision3 scooped up tech modder Ben Heck’s new web series, The Ben Heck Show, with sponsor element14 already on board. The new series debuted today on the tech-heavy network as well element14’s modder community site. We heard about this one a little while back and were thinking this felt like a Rev3 show. Our gut was right. [Revision3]
Mind My Brains, Darling! We’ve always had a soft spot for @WorldofHiglet, one of the more austere fans of original web series like The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. So it’s only fitting that the UK-native would craft a scripted web series of her own. The rough teaser for the series was posted online over the weekend and today their fundraising drive began in earnest on IndieGogo for the peri-apocalyptic zombie drama. [The Last Geek Bus Home]
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CBS weekly television news program 60 Minutes announced plans to launch a weekly web show “that begins where the television broadcast ends”—it’s called 60 Minutes Overtime, and is scheduled to launch Sunday, September 26, 2010, the same evening as the 43rd season premiere of 60 Minutes.
Issue-based shows always have it tough. When revolving around one subject repeatedly, how do you expect to keep an audience interested in the interim between episodes?
RJ Williams is on a mission to conquer Hollywood, one fun celebrity interview at a time. From face time with some of the biggest names in Hollywood to championing up and coming talent that will be the next big thing, the 
Today 
Web series producers are coming to know the waiting game is part of the game. We’re not talking the 
It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Wes Craven here at Tubefilter. The iconic film director is responsible for the better part of the scares during our coming of age and he’s also a big fan of online video. (Remember his 
Shaving product manufacturer 
In 
Landline TV and Babelgum have found a hit with their 
