At least 110 million individuals worldwide visit one of the 32 localized versions of Paris-based video sharing site Dailymotion on a monthly basis. Those aren’t YouTube numbers, but they’re certainly not insignificant, and can ideally be leveraged to get content exclusive to Dailymotion a ton of views.
The latest piece of content exclusive to Dailymotion that will ideally be the beneficiary of those views is a nerdcore zombie apocalypse web series called The Dead Must Die. It’s created by South African-born, UK-based, and Marmite-eating director Matthew Snyman and features two stereotypical gamers both named Steve (one’s played by Stephen Russel, the other by Johnny Helm) who find all their first-person shooter training left them ill-prepared to actually fight hordes of undead.
Dailymotion and Alex Barkaloff produced the seven-episode series that’s based off of a Twitter account about how to deal with a zombie-ridden end of days scenario. New installments will debut weekly every Friday at 12AM EST. No word yet on the deal points other than the series is exclusive to Dailymotion during its initial release.
If web series about gamers bearing witness to the imminent zombie apocalypse is a sign the imminent zombie apocalypse is almost among us, then get prepared. Late last year Machinima debuted Bite Me, a zombie web series and marketing tool for the video game Dead Rising 2 with a premise similar to Dead Like Me.
Looks like Kelly and Erin are at it again. The duo from The Office‘s Streamy Award-winning series Subtle Sexuality have finally released their long-awaited follow-up to their “smash hit” music video ‘Male Prima Donna.’
Today Subtle Sexuality released a new music video ‘The Girl Next Door,’ a Taylor Swift style country-pop anthem featuring Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling) and Erin Hannon (Ellie Kemper), along with a Behind the Scenes video presented by characters from The Office:
The music video also features Ry Howard (The Office Co-Executive Producer B.J. Novak), who sings the hook:
Now looking back 40 years later
My one regret is choosing not to date her
The hot girl wasn’t that great
She was a bad mother, she was always late
Shoulda gone for the girl next door from the very start
But it’s too late cuz she died of a broken heart
The full lyrics and special thanks are worth checking out on the Subtle Sexuality site—Kelly thanks Kate Middleton “for bringing royalty back.” The video was directed by Kaling who also directed The 3rd Floor, another companion series from The Office.
With web spin-offs Kevin’s Loan, The Mentor,The Accountants, and Fanisode, The Office and NBC have done an excellent job engaging loyal fans during the off-season and between episodes. Keep up the good work.
Spring blooms across this fine country with all sorts of bright perennials, including the much scorned college admission rejections letters. A slight variant, the garden weed of your bouquet of paper, is the tenebrous Waitlist letter leaving over-achieving high school seniors in a maniacal state of self-cogitation.
This, combined with an abundance of free time on YouTube, can be a dangerous, if not amusing, cocktail for self-expression. It started with “Dear Harvard,” an original piano ballad from Grace Oberhofer , a YouTuber from Washington who posted the video after she received one of those ill fated letters from none other than Harvard.
Then came “A Heartfelt Plea for MIT,” a derivative on the concept—posted as a video response to “Dear Harvard”—from Sarabjot Anand. At least we think it’s him, since we don’t actually see Anand singing in the video montage of his extracurriculars and newspaper clippings. But judging by the off-key reaching for some of the higher notes, we have to assume he’s the real deal here, and makes no allusions to his singing ability.
Whoa there MIT you put me on the waiting list, what’s the deal yo?
I love you and Tim does too, we’ll live in Cambridge see the view, what’s the hold up for?
You said wait till March 14th.
I said all right we shall see.
Waited so long just to see.
You have been waitlisted!
Both videos are ample, though there has to be better talent out there given the quality of musicians on YouTube these days. So far no “Dear Princeton” or “Dear Yale” editions have popped up, so if you find yourself on such a list, it wouldn’t hurt to whip up your best. But if singing your heart out and facing the shame of YouTube commenters doesn’t work, it doesn’t hurt to know the dirty secrets of college waitlists.
StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit organization founded in 2003 with a mission “to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.”
Over 30,000 interviews from more than 60,000 participants have been documented this way and preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress for posterity. A select few of those 30,000 interviews also get animated.
StoryCorps uploaded its first animated interpretation of a story back in May of 2010. Cartooned iterations of the storytellers appear on screen and act out the sometimes sincere, sometimes anthropomorphic, and sometimes hyperbolic action. It’s like a version of Doogtoons that tugs at your heartstrings.
A total of seven StoryCoprs animated stories have been uploaded to the web in the past year, all created by the Rauch Brothers. The latest dropped earlier this month. It features Kay Wang, who was dragged to a StoryCorps booth by her son and granddaughter. She tells stories of childhood disobedience and her gig as a detective for Bloomindgdale’s, which sounds awesome, especially from the mouth of a geriatric.
For a second year in a row, YouTube is teaming up with NBC’s ode to vaudeville America’s Got Talent. The world’s largest video sharing site has been charged with finding that special someone who can do something special and show it to the world on YouTube-centric installments of the television series.
Interested individuals have from today until June 9 to submit their audition videos to America’s Got Talent’s YouTube channel. YouTube will gather all the submissions. A “panel of NBC representatives” will review those submissions and select their 20 favorites to display. YouTubers will then vote on their favorites of the 20 between June 28 and July 9. The winner will be crowned America’s Got Talent’s YouTube Poeple’s Choice Winner. He or she will do that thing he or she does so well on live television with an opportunity to take home $1 million for his or her efforts.
Comedy Central Digital has teamed up with Axe Shower to tap comedian Rob Riggle as the host of a new “reality style” (their words, not ours) series Axe Dirtcathlon, in which coed teams compete to see which can create the biggest mess in 90 seconds.
In an attempt to prove “The Cleaner You Are, The Dirtier You Get,” the four-part series pits couples against one another in a bunch of crazy challenges like the “Taxi Dash,” during which contestants try to change into as many weird clothes possible in the back seat of a taxi racing an autocross track by a stunt driver. Yeah. I had to rewind it a few times to understand what the hell was going on. The two other episodes, “Art Smear” and “Toga Party,” are equally bizarre, and I love it.
“As a guy, I can appreciate the fun in getting a little dirty. As a comedian, watching others get dirty and making fun of them while doing it provides all the enjoyment I need!” said Riggle. “You’ve got guys and girls competing in challenges where they start out clean and end up pretty dirty. Plus, I am there to add my incredibly poignant commentary – what more could you want out of the internet!?”
Owen Benjamin co-hosts, providing a colorful play-by-play complementing Riggle’s roast of the contestants—who I’m told are competing for a trip to Spain to participate in La Tomatina, an enormous tomato food fight in Valencia.
BrightRoll is a San Francisco-based video advertising network that started operations in 2005. It’s now, according to comScore, the fourth largest property in America in terms of video ads viewed.
In March 2011, BrightRoll delivered over 387 million video ads, hitting 22.8% of the total US population. That means a little more than 1 out of every 5 people living in this country view at least one video ad delivered by BrithtRoll every month. Pretty impressive! You’d think a company with that kind of reach would know a thing or two about the state of online video advertising. It does.
Brightroll conducts an annual agency survey called the Online Video Advertising Report. Every year, the company polls the advertising agency executives and media buyers it works with to get a sense of their spending on, feelings about, and understanding of online video advertising. The third iteration of the report came out this week. Here are some key takeaways:
28% of buyers revealed that they expect to see the greatest increase in ad spending in the online video category for 2011, followed by mobile video (27%) and social media (25%)
86% of respondents are shifting at least part of their display dollars over to video, while 64% plan to shift TV dollars to video; budgets are also migrating from search, social media and direct response, though in slightly more modest numbers at 28%, 27% and 26%, respectively
Nearly two-thirds of respondents indicated that online video is equally as effective, if not more effective, than television advertising
41% of media buyers view targeting as online video advertising’s greatest attribute, representing an increase of nine percentage points from 2010
For the third year in a row, buying directly from online publishers was reported as the dominant means of purchasing inventory (52%), followed by ad networks (31%), broadcasters (10%), portals (6%) and ad exchanges (2%)
96% of respondents indicated that research into the efficacy of online video helps drive value for advertisers, though just 35% are conducting research of their own
It’s important to note our sources. BrightRoll is most likely polling individuals and agencies it already works with, so of course those individuals and agencies are going to be more likely to see the benefits of online video advertising and allocate their ad buys accordingly. But still, those numbers above are overwhelmingly positive for the online video industry.
Individuals are spending nearly as much, if not more time online than watching they are watching traditional television. The results of BrighRoll’s study indicate more ad dollars will start following those viewers onto new media. It’s about time.
Companion web series of hit TV shows are usually passable affairs, relegated to second-tier characters from second-tier writers rooms. GLEE on the other hand hit the goose in the gullet with its choice of Brittany S. Pierce (Heather Morris) to host her own web show—Fondue for Two. Personally, she’s one of the only consistent gut busters for me in the hour-long musical comedy.
Fondue is a simple setup, an internet talk show shot from Brittany’s bedroom, where the deadpan bombshell dishes up some hot gossip over some actual hot fondue. The first episode stars fellow gleeks Mercedes (Amber Riley) and Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz)—and her portly feline Lord Tubbington. Hard to imagine she went from one of Beyoncé’s backup dancers to one of network TV’s funniest ladies.
No official word from FOX on how many of them are planned, but given the rabid online fan base for anything Glee, we figure there’s a good chance we’ll see more of them. The sneak peek video alone already broke 135,000 views on YouTube. And the official Glee YouTube channel is up to 253,000 subscribers with a whopping 214 million views. So you could say there’s some strong demand for more online video from the musical power-franchise.
We write about quite a few deals on Tubefilter, web series that inked pickups from BET or Hulu or MSN, but we got to thinking that there’s more to the story of online video than just the weddings. Why not see peek into the more colorful dating life of these projects?
Luckily, we were able to talk Zach Blume and Kai Hasson, the guys behind one of our favorite series of last year, White Collar Brawler, into sharing their one-sheet pitch for Season 2. Part of the deal was complete candor, with everything from view counts to production budgets. The goal here is to share with readers what WCB is out on the market pitching with, and see how it works out for them.
It’s never as easy as a just having good logline, but those help. “Fight Club meets MTV’s Made” is what they are leading with.
For background, the docu-reality web series launched last September, following two former office workers in San Francisco—Hasson and Nate Houghteling—on a three-month journey to document their indoctrination into amateur boxing. “The blood, sweat, tears you’ll see are real. The punches to the jaw are real. This is really happening,” they reminded us as they prepared to face off against each other in one final boxing match.
Throughout the season they would link up with trainers, nutritionists, boxing coaches and of course a growing number of fans who vicariously embraced their twentysomething bravado. Live events would become a core part of their season, with one boxing face-off pitting employees from various top Bay Area tech giants like Google, Zynga and Apple against each other in a “Tech Beat-Up.” It would even help score the series nationals press hits like The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and ESPN.
Now the three-man team, which formed Portal A Interactive as their production company, is looking for sponsorship and distribution partners for Season 2.
“White Collar Brawler is all about personal transformation, testing your limits, and escaping the cubicle,” Blume tells us. “We’ve made an effort to reach out to the type of sponsors whose brand reflects these themes. For Season 1, we brought together a lot of smaller sponsors who played different roles throughout the show. This time around, we’re looking for a brand that is big enough to sponsor an entire season.”
First up is their video pitch trailer, coming in at a tight one minute and twenty-one seconds:
The Numbers
Let’s take a look at the numbers. Views for the first season, which banked most of them on YouTube and blip.tv, came in at just over 2.5 million across 23 episodes and 20 bonus videos. During the peak of the show’s season, they notched over 110k visitors to the show’s site, and a social media footprint on Facebook and Twitter of over 18k. And for their live events, over 1,500 showed up to cheer them on and make side bets on who would come out the victor.
The Pitch
Creatively, the team is setting its sights higher for the new season, planning on following a cast of 12 ‘white collar’ fighters in six U.S. cities training to be the ultimate boxing champion of the group. Twenty episodes of White Collar Brawler 2: America Fights are planned, each one around four to seven minutes, released twice per week. To find the contestants, they will be casting through video submissions by fans driven through their social media channels. It also looks like they will be working the rivalry angle again too, but this time going after some deeper feuds—North vs. South, Brooklyn vs. Manhattan, and the recently heated Facebook vs. Google.
“Season 1 was a story about two normal guys who train to become boxers,” Hasson tells us. “In Season 2, instead of just one matchup, we’ll be following office workers from cities across the country as they learn to fight and eventually step into the ring. What excites us is that this time around we’ll be telling more stories and diving even deeper into the themes behind the show – the lack of physicality in the modern lifestyle and what happens when you introduce it into people’s lives. As creators, we’ve been trying to figure out the best way to tell stories on the internet, and we’re going to keep pushing the envelope with WCB 2. As an awesome side note: We’re going have more live events and more fights this season, which we think our fans will love.”
“We’re taking everything we did in Season 1 – big events, offline participation, heavy emphasis on social media, an aggressive local strategy, etc. – and amplifying it Season 2,” adds Blume, “For example, where Season 1 only took place in San Francisco, Season 2 will take place in cities across the country. The budget will reflect these changes.”
The Pitch Sheet
We’ll check back on the progress of their pitching Season 2 later this spring. And if you’re interested in contacting the WCB team, email zach [at] portal-a.com. What do you think? Who would be the ideal sponsor or distribution partner for White Collar Brawler?
[Ed. Note: Tubefilter has no financial interest in this project and it is presented here for editorial purposes to illustrate the process of pitching. Want to share with us your pitching process of a web series? Let us know. The deal is you have to share actual view counts and other relevant figures.]
Yesterday KoldCast TV launched Bros, an original comedy about four recently graduated fraternity brothers who try to make it in the professional world and screw up at almost every chance they get.
From the show page:
Max, Al, Luke, and John fratted hard in college. Now it’s time to move on and actually pay their own way. They are driven to succeed and make the world a better place, unfortunately their maturity level doesn’t match their drive. As they stumble through the bar and through job interviews, they begin to learn what it takes to fully graduate from college life and become a responsible member of society full of purpose and resolve, not natty-ice.
The five episode series features great performances and solid dialogue. The first episode, which is presented as a dramatized reenactment of real events (with names changed to protect the innocent), highlights the failings of a recent job interview: hitting on the boss’ daughter, knowing nothing about the company, and including “Al’s mom” as an interest on your public Facebook profile.
Bros is written and directed by Michael Figari, and stars Elya Beer, Keye Chen, Julian Conrad, and Robert Acinapura.
With YouTube’s big announcement last month, it seems “live” is on everyone’s mind these days. And as more attention is placed on appointment viewing and entertainment events, live producers are betting the money is sure to follow.
theStream.tv sure thinks so. Brian Gramo, who founded the interactive web television studio and network that has produced over 1,300 live broadcasts, announced a new, bigger home for theStream.tv in Hollywood: theStream.tv 4.0 HD Studio, which boasts 4,000 square feet of space with a control room, offices, and make-up room.
The studio plans to open its doors in June 2011, inviting live shows to take advantage of its 25 Megabit upload speeds and state of the art live HD streaming equipment.
The good news comes nearly a year after Gramo’s announcement that theStream.tv lost its only sponsor, which forced Gramo to lay off his two full-time employees and eventually put the studio on hold.
YouTube announced the winners of its first ever NextUp Creators contest to identify 25 video creators to make up the network’s inaugural NextUp class. Each of the winning creators will receive $35,000 to help fund future video production as well as attend a 4-day YouTube Creator Camp (also a first) in New York City for “personalized training and mentoring to build their brands and improve their content.”
This is the first major initiative out of the team that came over from the company’s acquisition of NY-based Next New Networks in March. Next New Networks was known to have a 70-page handbook on mastering YouTube that it shared with its creators, though its likely to have some updates now that they have some hands on time with the inner workings of the platform.
The 25 winning creators, all of whom are YouTube partners, range from musicians to comedians to a trick basketball shooters, a makeup artist, a skateboarder and a screencasting Final Cut wizard:
Each of the winning creators were acked to create a little video intro of themselves, here are some of them, while the full 25 are on the NextUp Creators channel:
At least 110 million individuals worldwide visit one of the 32 localized versions of Paris-based video sharing site Dailymotion on a monthly basis. Those aren’t YouTube numbers, but they’re certainly not insignificant, and can ideally be leveraged to get content exclusive to Dailymotion a ton of views.
Spring blooms across this fine country with all sorts of bright perennials, including the much scorned college admission rejections letters. A slight variant, the garden weed of your 
StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit organization founded in 2003 with a mission “to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.”
Interested individuals have from today until June 9 to submit their audition videos to 
In an attempt to prove “The Cleaner You Are, The Dirtier You Get,” the four-part series pits couples against one another in a bunch of crazy challenges like the “
BrightRoll is a San Francisco-based video advertising network that started operations in 2005. It’s now, 
Companion web series of hit TV shows are usually passable affairs, relegated to second-tier characters from second-tier writers rooms. GLEE on the other hand hit the goose in the gullet with its choice of Brittany S. Pierce (Heather Morris) to host her own web show—
We write about quite a few deals on Tubefilter, web series that inked 
Let’s take a look at the numbers. Views for the first season, which banked most of them on 
