The Fine Bros have gathered an audience of millions by asking kids, teens, elders, and YouTubers to react to the most significant viral videos on the Internet. Between them, those four demographics cover a wide range of viewpoints, but there are still many Americans who have not yet delivered their opinions on K-Pop. In the latest expansion of their React franchise, Benny and Rafi Fine will launch Adults React, which will star guests between the ages of 20-55.
As with the other React shows, Adults React will feature a handful of recurring participants. In particular, The Fine Bros noted in an introductory video how the launch of Adults React will provide a new home for cast members who have aged out of Teens React.
In a new twist for the React franchise, Adults React videos will often be broken down even further, with groups like college students, parents, and thirtysomethings receiving their own reaction videos. In particular, The Fine Bros noted they are searching for participants on the two extremes of their 20-55 age range: college students and parents of children ages 10 and up.
Interested participants within the Adults React age range can apply for the show by emailing The Fine Bros. Benny and Rafi haven’t announced a specific premiere date for the show, but it will arrive during the summer and will air every third Thursday, alternating with episodes of Kids React and Elders React. At the same time, further React videos will drop on Sundays and throughout the week on a secondary channel launched last year.
Reaction shots on Facebook are about to get a lot more animated. The social media site now shows users’ animated GIFs in news feeds, but brands are not able to display the looped media format on their pages.
Facebook auto-plays GIFs in users’ feeds, much like it does with native video uploaded to the site (which now garner the social site four billion daily views). The success of Facebook video likely drove the site to add support for animated GIFs, especially considering the popularity of GIFs on sites like Imgur, Tumblr, and Reddit.
Users can put a link to a GIF in their status updates, which then converts into the looping image when the status is posted. However, brands don’t seem to have the same privilege. Adweek pulled a tweet from Sesame Street’s Director of New Media Communication Dan Lewis which noted Facebook’s lack of support for GIF’s on brand’s pages.
GIFs on Facebook! But only as links! And not on Pages? Oy.
But brands on Facebook can’t participate in the GIF-sharing craze, at least not yet. We’ll have to see if Facebook adds support for the looping image format to brand pages in the future.
We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.
A comedy web series can be entertaining if its character have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, but sometimes, it’s fun to watch heroes who mean well but can’t do anything right. In The Very Bottom, a pair of interns try their hardest to help their company, but their best efforts aren’t very strong at all.
The two interns are played by Trevor Lyon and Amir Khan, who are also the two series creators. Lyon and Khan are both CollegeHumor writers, giving them some key experience within the online video world. For their personal web series, they throw in plenty of crass lines and awkward, cringe-worthy moments. The best episode is the second, in which they attempt to cheer up a stressed coworker but only succeed in creeping her out.
Threeepisodes of The Very Bottom have been released thus far. For fans of shows like Workaholics, Broad City, and anything else where the hardworking protagonists are hardly working, its a nice quick diversion.
OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT
Gastown. In Vancouver, two friends help their pal get back into the dating scene.
What You Want?Internationals live together in a basement in this upcoming web series.
We Need To Talk. Six real breakup stories provide the basis for this series.
Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.
MiTu has had an impressive history since its inception in 2012. The multi-channel network aimed at Latino audiences quickly grew in popularity, scoring its billionth view only a year after it started making content. With the U.S. Census Bureau estimating a population of about 54 million in 2013, America’s Latino community was obviously hungry for quality digital content.
MiTu’s founder and president Beatriz Acevedo will discuss this burgeoning Latino consumer base and its impact on the digital entertainment industry at a panel for Social Media Week Los Angeles (SMWLA). Acevedo will talk about how Latino digital stars are making a name for themselves in traditional media by using new media formats. The MiTu president will also address how Hispanic influencers are monetizing their work, how they’re making themselves appealing to networks and the media, and how they’re engaging with their communities.
The MiTu panel will take place on June 9, 2015 from 2-2:30 PM PST at the Bergamot Station Arts Center. You can purchase your pass for SMWLA here, and you can view the entire schedule of events here.
There is a time-honored tradition of YouTube videos that feature dramatic-sounding men speaking in young tongues. Christopher Walken, Michael Shannon, and these two chaps have all added their own contributions to this delightful genre, and Dan Rather has now joined that club as well. The former NBC anchor teamed up with BuzzFeed Yellow for a video in which he must define Internet slang terms.
Rather’s definitions don’t quite match up with those of the BuzzFeed audience, which is part of the fun. The rest of the appeal concerns Rather’s stereotypical anchorman voice, which sounds so nice it can ever make conversations about the dadbod seem smart.
It’s the perfect video to put a smile on your face at the end of a long week. It’s so charming, I’ll even excuse the fact that a comment reading “I don’t know who this guy is but he’s fun to listen to” has 146 likes. Now I feel old.
A project that went viral back when it was still in its nascent stages is going viral again now that it has been completed. Kung Fury, which raised more than $600,000 on Kickstarter after its absurd trailer struck a chord with 80s aficionados, has now been released for free on YouTube, where it has scored more than three million views in its first day online.
Kung Fury is a loving send-up of cheesy action movies from 80s. David Sandberg, the film’s writer and director, also stars as its badass hero, who lends his name to the title. Across 30 minutes, Kung Fury travels back in time in order to complete his mission: Kill Hitler. The German “Kung Fuhrer” is played by, of all people, Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone.
Before it was ever a rollicking, time-travelling adventure to Nazi Germany, Kung Fury was a delightful two-minute trailer on the YouTube channel of production company Laser Unicorns. The trailer made a huge splash; to date, it has received more than 10.6 million views.
The trailer fueled Kung Fury’s Kickstarter campaign, which, after raising $630,019, now sits among the crowdfunding site’s most funded film and video projects. As soon as the full-length version of Kung Fury hit YouTube, its fans once again supported it en masse. Its hard to find many other 30-minute videos with millions of views, but Kung Fury gets it done.
At this point, there’s only one more thing left to say: We need a sequel. Please, Laser Unicorns. Kung Fury must fight again.
Ipsy is expanding its business and offerings for creators. The subscription-based beauty company, co-founded in 2011 by YouTube phenomenon Michelle Phan, has launched the ipsy Open Studios for the development of up-and-coming beauty creators, and is also hosting the latest Generation Beauty event from May 30-31, 2015.
The new ipsy Open Studios focuses on helping beauty creators improve their careers through various tools, mentoring, and events. Creators can sign up free of charge to use studio space and production equipment, attend one-on-one coaching sessions with Phan, gain access to industry conferences and networking events, and even receive a monthly subscription to ipsy’s flagship Glam Bag product.
“Much of ipsy’s growth and success can be attributed to our amazing content and the talented creators we’ve partnered with,” said Phan. “Just a few years ago, I was an aspiring artist myself, so I know first-hand the challenges facing beauty content creators today. Through ipsy Open Studios, we hope to empower the next generation of storytellers with more resources, tools, and relationships.”
“From the beginning, we’ve elevated digital content creators to be the true voices in beauty,” said CEO and ipsy Founder and CEO Marcelo Camberos in a release. “Our goal is to give back to the beauty creator community and enable talented creators to break through and find an audience.”
In addition to the Open Studios, ipsy is hosting the Generation Beauty conferences at the L.A. Live Event Deck from May 30-31. The event brings together popular beauty creators, their fans, and makeup brands in a large networking, collaboration, and discovery-based environment. Last year’s Generation Beauty event attracted more than 2,500 attendees, 20 brands, and over 200 YouTube beauty vloggers with a combined total of 45 million subscribers. Ipsy is hosting a second Generation Beauty event from October 3-4 in New York City.
Ipsy currently ships over one million Glam Bags every month to subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. The company was on track to hit $84 million in revenue in 2014; now, ipsy reports it is has hit the $150 million milestone mark.
Jack Link’s is the most recent brand to turn to YouTube celebrities for help with an ad campaign. The beef jerky snack food company tapped The Dudesons, Kevin Breuck, and PrankvsPrank to create some sponsored ads based on Jack Link’s long-running “Messin’ with Sasquatch” campaign.
In the latest round of ads produced by the YouTubers, regular citizens snack on Jack Link’s, encounter Sasquatch, and decide to mess with him. For example, one video finds a couple at a wedding using the creature’s flower allergy to lure him towards the cake before shoving his face into the sweet treat. In another clip, three men glue a shiny coin to the ground so Sasquatch can’t pick it up.
The “Messin’ with Sasquatch” campaign has been around since 2006. Jack Link’s plans to release more spots throughout 2015, featuring other products like its turkey jerky and its teriyaki-flavored jerky. The Dudesons, Kevin Breuck, and PrankvsPrank will also create three more “Messin’ with Sasquatch”-inspired videos for release on their individual channels.
“We’ve noticed that a lot of our brand fans have embraced pranking Sasquatch,” Jack Link’s director of marketing Kevin Papacektold Adweek, who originally broke the campaign story. “Some have even re-enacted some of our pranks on YouTube. We see this new campaign as a natural progression of how fans personalize our ad campaign.”
Given the popularity of its stars, #HeyUSA season two was also going to be a hit. Mamrie Hart, the star of Astronauts Wanted’s travel web series, has a devoted following on her You Deserve A Drink YouTube channel, and the five guests who joined her on the road–Kinglsey, Tyler Oakley, Flula Borg, Colleen Ballinger, and Jenna Marbles–are all online video stars as well.
When Astronauts Wanted produces a series, though, it is interested in much more than video views. With programs like #HeyUSA and @SummerBreak, it creates a vast network of social media content that continues to engage viewers after they’re done watching. In #HeyUSA’s case, these social media integrations were particularly vital, as they directed fans to the show’s primary home on The Scene. “Our goal was to increase the social cloud and decrease the YouTube piece of it,” said Nick Shore, Chief Creative Strategist at Astronauts Wanted, “so we were deliberately building the cloud and delivering it towards the Scene.”
Sure enough, Astronauts Wanted managed to build up a huge social cloud far bigger than the one that surrounded #HeyUSA’s first season. Hart and Grace Helbig’s maiden voyage generated 186 million impressions on social media; this time around, #HeyUSA achieved more than 290 million impressions. Social media engagements also rose, from 3.85 million to 5.9 million.
How did Astronauts Wanted score such a big upward trend? The answer, it says, is superfans. By engaging with the show’s most devoted followers, Astronauts Wanted was able to drive a huge amount of traffic. The top 40 superfans drove 22 million impressions on their own.
Astronauts Wanted has a very clear definition of a superfan. “We mark super fans as someone who continually engages with HeyUSA content (that is not a host or cohost), is a fan account, or continually shares the sentiment of “I am crying/ you are my everything / you are life / OMG YOU RESPONDED I LOVE YOU HEYUSA,” wrote Shore in an email. When the #HeyUSA social media team sees those sort of tweets, it is quick to respond. Here is a recent example of the show’s Twitter account’s interaction with its fans:
@bubberbuddy i knew i could count on you for the drink emojis!
These short of interactions provide a “push” for #HeyUSA superfans:
“They tend to act first socially. They’re the first ones to say something is new out. They’re waiting for it. And they talk about it a lot…The bulk of the interactivity is on Twitter and Instagram. It’s their frequency there. And their sentiment as well. We run sentiment tools over what they’re saying. You can screen for certain language, such as “HeyUSA is my life”…The [fans who] are causing the most noise are probably the ones who have fairly excitable followings as well, they’re causing the most ripple socially. It’s all organic. Our only incentive really is that we’re in a dialogue with them and giving them special access and assets.”
The assets Shore mentions include VIP access, swag, and social media shoutouts, all of which build positive relationships with superfans. “Our social teams are building a relationship with those superans, beings nice to them, and priming the pump to give them free merchandise,” he explained. “We give them private links and assets and photographs and gifs and stuff that is unique to them and say, do with this as you will. We treat them like super-consumers of the content, almost like creative collaborators.”
#HeyUSA’s hyper-focused social media strategy certainly isn’t unique to the show’s second season, but but a few important decisions helped Astronauts Wanted expand its network of superfans. Most notably, fans were allowed to vote for the YouTube stars who they wanted to see traveling alongside Hart, thus allowing the audiences of the chosen stars to connect with #HeyUSA’s audience. In particular, Shore noted that Ballinger’s episode was most successful on social media, in part because the woman behind Miranda Sings posted “like crazy” on Instagram, said Shore. There are huge fandoms talking about who should come on as guests in Season two,” he added. “So it dramatically increased the size of the social footprint in season two.”
As Astroanuts Wanted continues to produce more content across the Internet, it will continue to work with its audience to spread the world. As Shore puts it, the passion of superfans “is like a super targeting marketing tool,” and at any time, those fans are just a tweet away.
Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments of YouTube Millionaires here.
There are plenty of places on YouTube where film fans can go to complain about movies that didn’t quite hit the mark. Few channels, though, celebrate film as deeply as CineFix, which recently surpassed one million subscribers. The YouTube hub run by Whalerock Industries has combined its staff’s deep knowledge of film with a handful of fun concepts to create a channel filled with compelling original series.
Recently, CineFix also expanded its library by working with members of the YouTube community to create Superhero in Training, a reality about the transformation from ordinary schlub to action hero. We asked about that series–as well as several others–when we discussed CineFix’s accomplishments with the channel’s staff.
Tubefilter: How does it feel to have one million subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans?
CineFix: We still occasionally refresh the page to make sure it doesn’t say 1,000. We’ve been making a lot of videos for over a year and a half and 1 Million Subscribers is always this lofty goal you hope to hit one day…like someday in the far future. So the fact that it happened and now we have to set goals that sound even crazier is amazing, and unbelievable, and it makes us incredibly grateful there’s so many people out there who like our stuff and want to know as soon as it comes out.
At the end of the day, all we do is make videos we are proud of and we think celebrate film in fun ways. We cross our fingers that other people will like them. So, if there’s one thing we’d like to say to the fans, it’s just, “THANK YOU for watching, for the support, for commenting and challenging us and each other to make things better, and please keep letting us know what you want to see!”
TF: When you look at the videos that have most resonated with your fans, do you notice any common elements?
CF: The fans at Cinefix really like to learn things in fun ways–whether that be learning about movies they’d never heard of, about what happened on set, what films influenced others, how-to techniques on DIY filmmaking, or even just learning about storylines and films they forgot about from Easter Eggs we put in videos and long discussions in the comments–the videos that really seem to work for the fans are ones where there’s at least one thing you can walk away with having learned while being entertained.
TF: When sharing facts about movies, do you guys choose to discuss particular films based off feedback from fans or do you tend to pick ones that interest you as film buffs?
CF: We tend to do a little of both. There are films that we really love that we try to find time to discuss, there are movies that are coming out that we try to watch and find things out about, there’s the movies only crazy film buffs have ever heard about but we feel everyone should know about so we try to fit those in too, and we get a lot of requests from fans. So we sift through it all and see what gets requested the most and try to make sure to give fans things they want as well. There’s A LOT of movies out there! Luckily, we get to make a new video every day, so there’s always time to hit all the favorites in different ways.
TF: Where did the idea for Superhero in Training come from?
CF: Chris Pratt? Haha. Clint has actually been wanting to do the show since the earliest days of Cinefix… probably because Clint just wanted to get fit and find a reason to motivate himself! But after Pratt lost 60 lbs to play Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy, we were discussing it and Clint brought up the show idea again because it’s something we keep hearing about over and over–actors changing their bodies to play different roles (it’s almost the first thing that comes to mind when someone says Christian Bale)–and these days especially this seems to be true with everyone playing superheroes.
So the idea was simple, now that this is a constant part of the movie making process–if Andy Dwyer could become Star Lord–is this something anyone can do? Is it ALL makeup and CGI? What is the process really like? How hard is it? Could we do it? And IF we do it–let’s play superheroes! Now we’re here, and it’s been very, very hard, but an amazing learning experience.
TF: I’m a big fan of Film School’d. How do you think a detailed film education changes the way viewers consume movies?
CF: First off, we live in a time where we have access to EVERYTHING! ALL THE TIME! So consuming movies is harder because it’s not just the 10 movies in the theater this weekend, or those 10 plus the 50 at Blockbuster Video, it’s all movies ever, from all over the world, whenever you want…what do you watch? Something like Film School’d hopefully makes you curious about so many of the classics that really should be seen. We really hope you watch an episode and go, “Now i’m going to go see that on Netflix” or whatever service you use.
Additionally, knowing your history is important. It’s important to know why things are the way they are and how we got to today. The Marvel Cinematic Universe wouldn’t exist without the rise of serialized cable TV or Richard Donner’s Superman, or Star Wars, which wouldn’t exist without sitcoms or westerns or Japanese film, and you could keep going and going! We could do a video tracing a web-series like High Maintenance or Broad City back to War and Peace or Guardians of the Galaxy all the way back to Baroque Theater! Detailed film education helps us to better appreciate what we have now – it helps us get easter eggs and references for fun, it helps to see why certain stories work and why some don’t, and it definitely makes you more excited when an artist tries something totally new!
TF: Do studios ever approach you regarding tie-ins for their upcoming films? If so, how do you execute those videos while still remaining impartial in reviews?
CF: Yes, occasionally we work with studios to promote the release of a film in theaters or on DVD and we’re happy to do so if we think it’ll provide an awesome video for the audience, but that doesn’t impact reviews. We’re very open with the audience when something is promotional. At the end of the day, we can look at a movie and say “this scene would be amazing made out of cardboard” or “this film would be SO MUCH FUN in 8/16-bit style” and do an episode, but then watch the full film and honestly review it with a “it’s not a great movie and here’s why…sorry.”
TF: What movies are you most looking forward to in the coming months?
CF: Every single one of us on the team has a different answer to this question but Crimson Peak, Spectre, Mission Impossible, The Martian, Black Mass, Star Wars, Silence, Paper Towns, Trainwreck, Dark Places, Hello My Name is Doris, Jane Got a Gun, Knight of Cups, Mistress America, The Overnight, Southpaw, Hateful Eight… if it happens, The Assassin, Cosmos, La Blessure…Someone in the group has each of these and more on their list. There is still a lot of 2015 left!
TF: On a similar note, which movies from this year do you think would make for the best Kids Reenactments come Oscar time?
CF: Who knows what will get a nom this year…. there’s a lot of movies that probably won’t get one that would still be fun–Kingsman, Ex-Machina, Age of Ultron, and Tomorrowland would all be fun. Sometimes the ones that are so adult you have to step back and go, “how do we even try that with a kid?!” are the best ones. There’s the sense of hesitation going into it, and then it’s a simple, clean, fun joke and there’s a sense of satisfaction to that. But we’ll see what gets a nom.
TF: What’s next for CineFix? Any fun plans?
CF: More of what people love–8-bit, What’s the Difference?, Film School’d, Things You Didn’t Know, but we’re also going to be trying some new shows that address things fans have been asking for and hopefully they’ll work. It might be fun to dissect the movie making process in action from soup to nuts and put it all out there for people to see. It would be a hell of a ride. Who knows! There’s only one way to find out.
YouTube introduced support for 360-degree videos back in March 2015. Now, Google’s online video site will allow 360 video viewing on the Google Cardboard virtual reality set, as well as on some Apple devices, for the first time ever.
At the Google I/O event in San Francisco, YouTube announced the 360 video support for Cardboard, and said the videos would soon also be viewable on all devices running Apple’s iOS 8.0 operating system. YouTube already allows 360-degree playback on its Android app, as well as via Google’s Chrome internet browser.
In addition to added 360 video support, YouTube will help creators make videos using this immersive filming format. All six YouTube Spaces located in Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, New York, Berlin, and Sao Paulo now offer the Jump capture rig, a circular device with 16 camera slots which allows creators to shoot and compile 3D videos.
The new 360-degree Jump camera rig has already been used by Grammy-nominated artist Avicii. In a collaboration with YouTube music star Kurt Hugo Schneider, Avicii filmed the new music video “Waiting for Love” solely using the Jump cameras at the YouTube Space LA. Here’s the fascinating final result:
YouTube noted it has plans to introduce even more video-viewing experiences to its platform in the future, such as bringing 3D viewing to 360-degree videos.
PBS Digital Studios is sponsoring a show making its return to the internet. The Good Stuff, which began back in 2013 and is hosted by YouTube celebrity Craig Benzine (known as the WheezyWaiter to online video fans), launched its newest episode on May 18, 2015.
Episodes of The Good Stuff, which each focus on a different theme, are split into separate videos contained in an overarching playlist. The first four-part episode of the series explores everything about sleep, including its history, its scientific aspects, and its effects on health. Upcoming episodes will investigate topics like the future of food, thrill seeking, robots, and the phrase “seeing isn’t believing.”
Benzine originally started The Good Stuff because he liked the format of radio shows such as This American Life and RadioLab. These shows talked about one theme or topic over the course of several segments which were part of a single episode. So Benzine looked for sponsors to help him make a web series version of the unique format.
“Google provided funding for the first 10 episodes of The Good Stuff in 2013, but when funding ran out, Craig approached PBS Digital Studios to see if they would be interested in continuing the show. And they were!” said Matt Weber, producer of The Good Stuff, in an email.
The Good Stuff has nine more episodes planned, and a new episode/playlist will be available on the second Monday of every month on the series’ dedicated YouTube channel.
