Twitch has just made it easier to watch recorded streaming content on the go. Twitch’s app users are now able to watch video-on-demand streams and highlights via their iOs or Android devices.
Twitch partners and channel owners who have enabled HTTP live streaming will have past video-on-demand content for Twitch’s app users to watch. These mobile users can find all viewable on-demand content through a channel’s Activity Feed. If app users are watching a channel’s live stream, they can click the Activity Feed button in the streaming player. Alternatively, app users can find on-demand content via the Search page or Following directory by tapping offline channels to be taken to the Activity Feed.
However, Twitch notes a drawback to this new on-demand feature, which only affects Android users. In a company blog post, the video game streaming platform explains that due to a possible security vulnerability, Twitch developers had to make changes to the Android app while adding the new VOD feature. Users who wish to use watch saved videos must install the new 4.0 Twitch app on their Android 4.1+ compatible devices, and delete the 3.2.3 version (which Twitch stopped supporting as of May 20, 2015).
As of January 2015, Twitch boasted 1 million monthly viewers, and 16 billion minutes of streams and videos watched every month. If you don’t already have the Twitch app installed, you can download it in the Google Play store or in the iTunes app store.
MedExpress had a bit of fun with semantics in its latest round of YouTube pre-roll ads. The healthcare clinic just launched an “anti-viral” series of ads the company hopes are so boring, they’ll actually prevent the videos which come afterwards from going viral.
Created by ad agency Fitzgerald & Co, MedExpress’s anti-viral campaign loosely plays with the various meanings of viral. As a healthcare clinic, MedExpress’s goal is to stop infections and diseases from spreading among the U.S. population. And while “going viral” online is actually a good thing, MedExpress decided to jokingly lump viral videos in with the diseases it’s trying to stop.
The resulting pre-roll ads boast a medical professional who tells the viewer in an effort to stop the upcoming video from going viral, MedExpress made the “most boring, unskippable video [ads] ever.” The medical employee then proceeds to do a bunch of (you guessed it) mundane activities, like trying not to blink or playing several instruments horribly wrong all at once.
Ironically, the MedExpress ads are just clever enough that some YouTube users may not actually be annoyed by them (which would help boost brand recall among those viewers). However, the MedExpress pre-roll ads are no Geico “unskippable” ads, so we’ll have to see how YouTube viewers respond to the healthcare clinic’s anti-viral campaign. You can check out all of MedExpress’s anti-viral pre-roll ads on the clinic’s official YouTube channel.
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.
Even after the apocalypse strikes, Los Angeles will still need Uber drivers, and a recent web series provides a look at what ride sharing will look like in the post-apocalypse. Veteran actor Willie Garson leads Towncar Willie, in which he ferries celebrity passangers across a hellish landscape to the airport.
Towncar Willie is actually a companion for a separate web series called Whole Day Down, which made it onto our radar three years ago. In that series, Garson co-stars alongside Patrick Breen as a down-on-his-luck gallery owner. An explosion at the end of the first season turns Los Angeles into rubble, and that event sets the stage for Towncar Willie, which follows Garson’s day job as an Uber driver.
Towncar Willie feeatures the same brand of oddball humor as its parent series, with plenty of guest stars keeping things lively. Rob Morrow of Numb3rs outs himself as a brony, while the cast of Squaresville endures Garson’s come-ons. The first episode, though, features a Driving Miss Daisy reenactment between Garson and Evan Handler.
Across four quick, punchy episodes, Towncar Willie delivers plenty of the bizarre interactions that have become a hallmark of Breen and co-creator Tai Fauci‘s work on Whole Day Down. All of the episodes for both series can be viewed on the Whole Day Down YouTube channel.
Sister Conference. Three real-life sisters live together and hold apartment meetings in this web series.
Nicolife. A self-absorbed young man chats with the videographer who is recording his life.
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.
Netflix is teasing Wet Hot American Summer fans with some new images. The streaming platform has released photos from its upcoming original series, set for premiere on July 31, 2015.
Netflix’s Wet Hot American Summer is the eight-episode sequel to the 2001 film of the same name (that is way better than its 31% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). While the movie told the story of the last day of summer camp at Camp Firewood in 1981, Netflix’s original series will cover the first day. Wet Hot American Summer stars the majority of the original film’s cast members, who are now basically all big-wig Hollywood names like Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, and Bradley Cooper.
In November 2014, YouTube announced YouTube Music Key, a music streaming service that offers song and videos to its users at both free and paid subscription tiers. The launch of Music Key’s public beta seemed to signal the end of the app’s long, drawn out development process, which was set back by numerous delays. Now, however, a new email from YouTube to Music Key’s beta users has revealed another postponement for the service. In the email, which was reported by The Verge, YouTube announced a four-month extension of Music Key’s beta as it continues to work on streamlining the service.
“As one of an exclusive group of Music Key beta users, your feedback has helped make it better each day,” reads the email. “And to thank you, we’ve got good news! Your free trial is being extended.” During the additional four months of testing, YouTube will have extra time to touch up both internal features (such as the app’s data usage and its effect on battery life) and external ones (such as its catalog).
As YouTube continues to streamline Music Key, it is fending off several challenges to service. A music rights startup is threatening a billion-dollar lawsuit against YouTube over unresolved licensing issues, and independent artists have also expressed dissatisfaction with Music Key’s terms. Meanwhile, several potential competitors have emerged. Jay Z, who is trying to sell hi-fi audio with his Tidal service, dissed YouTube in a recent freestyle rap, and Spotify has also announced its plans to offer videos alongside its primary music streaming service.
These obstacles are putting a lot of pressure on YouTube Music Key. YouTube initially said the service would be ready for a 2015 public launch; we’ll see if the video site manages to hit that deadline.
This Christmas, if you don’t have any pressing plans, consider spending your holiday with Bill Murray. The enigmatic actor will host A Very Murray Christmas, a special directed by Sofia Coppola that will premiere on Netflix in December.
A Very Murray Christmas will be hosted by Murray and written by Murray, Coppola, and Mitch Glazer. Netflix describes it as “an homage to the classic variety show featuring Bill Murray playing himself, as he worries no one will show up to his TV show due to a terrible snow storm in New York City. Through luck and perseverance, guests arrive at the Carlyle hotel to help him; dancing and singing in holiday spirit.”
Netflix shared a teaser for the program on its YouTube channel:
As you might expect, A Very Murray Christmas will be full of guest stars. According to Netflix, participants will include George Clooney, Paul Shaffer, Amy Poehler, Julie White, Dimitri Dimitrov, Michael Cera, Chris Rock, David Johansen, Maya Rudolph, Jason Schwartzman, Jenny Lewis, Phoenix, Frederic Moulin, Rashida Jones, and Miley Cyrus.
A Very Murray Christmas will add a Yuletide twist to Netflix’s existing library of original series and comedy specials. It’s still very early to be talking about the holiday season, but Bill Murray is a comedy legend, and more important, he’s all I want for Christmas.
Quest Nutrition and Matthew Santoro will soon have lots of random food facts to teach you. The healthy snack brand and YouTube star have released the trailer for their upcoming web series Food for Thought, which is set to premiere on May 28, 2015.
In the trailer, Santoro, who boasts over 6.1 million subscribers on his own channel, explains how Food for Thought will cover “tasty, little-known facts” for all the foodies out there. The series will consist mostly of top ten lists, which Santoro is famous for making on his channel. Santoro gives some examples of the weird topics he’ll be discussing, like how chickens are descendants of dinosaurs and how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (who just officiated a wedding for the Prank It Fwd web series) eats 820 pounds of cod every year. (Seriously.)
Quest announced Food for Thought, with Santoro already slated as host, back in April 2015. The nutrition company’s new series joins several initiatives the brand has already completed with other YouTubers. For example, Quest has worked with iJustine and Casey Ho (aka Blogilates) on videos involving healthy fudge popsicles and cooking with quality ingredients.
You can catch the first episode of Food for Thought on Quest’s official YouTube channel on May 28. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 4 PM EST.
High Maintenance is one of the best web series the Internet has to offer, and MakeSpace, a storage company that calls itself “your closet in the cloud,” has recognized the skill of the show’s creative duo. It has enlisted High Maintenance creators Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair for a trio of commercials.
The commercials advertise situations in which MakeSpace’s app-controlled storage service could come in handy. In one, a mother redecorates her son’s room just seconds after he leaves for college; in another, a woman orders some decorations on the fly to thoroughly creep out her date; the third spot, which feels the most like a short episode of High Maintenance, stars a slovenly man who pulls a fast one on his subletters.
As an email from MakeSpace explains, the company’s VP of Marketing, Rion Harmon, is a High Maintenance fan. He noticed the similarities between the MakeSpace delivery team and High Maintenance’s pot-dealing protagonist, both of whom get sneak peeks into their clients’ lives during deliveries, and he reached out to Blichfeld and Sinclair to recruit them for the spots.
High Maintenance began in 2012 as an independent web series. In 2014, after it received loads of critical acclaim, Blichfeld and Sinclair teamed up with Vimeo for six new episodes. In 2015, on 4/20, the duo announced their next big move: A six episode TV series that will air on HBO. No release date has yet been announced for those new episodes.
Enzo Knol may not be a familiar name to American viewers, but the Dutch YouTuber is a celebrity in his native country of the Netherlands. Knol boasts over 680,000 subscribers and more than 300 million video views on his channel, and soon, he will star in his first feature film. It’s called OFFLINE, and it will premiere in Dutch theaters sometime in 2016.
Produced by NewBeTV and Just Productions, OFFLINE will tell the story of rival YouTubers who must work together to get the internet back online after a cyber-attack causes the web to crash and kick off an internet blackout across the Netherlands. Vincent van Zelm and Iván López Núñez are writing the comedy flick, and Núñez will also direct the film.
Knol, who is partnered with the European multi-channel network Divimove (whose majority owner is FremantleMedia), will star in the film as himself, alongside other Dutch and internationally-known YouTubers. Knol will be filming behind-the-scenes videos during the filming of OFFLINE to increase awareness and interest in the movie among his social media followers.
‘’The concept of OFFLINE really appealed to me because the internet plays such an essential part in my daily life, and in that of the other YouTubers of course,” Knol said in a release. “This is a great project and I am very excited to play a leading role in it.”
Other cast members of OFFLINE will be announced at a later date. The Dutch film is slated for release in 2016.
Mundy, who in addition to his work with Screen Junkies also stars in the Comedy Central web series Nothing to Report, became friendly with Johnson after infamously fawning over him during a 2013 press junket. Since then, Mundy has interviewed Johnson several more times, and he planned to sit down with him again at a junket for the upcoming film San Andreas.
Defy Media, which runs both Screen Junkies and Prank It Fwd, had other ideas. The digital production company set up a wedding altar at the junket and brought in Mundy’s fiancee Dilara, who agreed to marry her beau right there. Johnson, who is a legally ordained officiant in California, led the ceremony. Is there anything he can’t do?
This isn’t the first time Defy Media has used Prank It Fwd to pull a “positive prank” on one of its own. In 2014, when the program first launched, Smosh Games host Jovenshire got the chance to meet his celebrity crush, Emma Watson.
Defy’s latest prank is another strong addition to the smile factory that is Prank It Fwd. And Mundy will probably go down in history, too. As far as we can tell, he’s the only person to ever get married while wearing American flag pants.
Tyler Oakley is already a star online. Now, his name will be more familiar to traditional television viewers, too. The 26-year-old YouTube vlogger appeared as a guest on The Ellen Show on May 21, 2015.
Oakley, who boasts over 6.9 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, told DeGeneres he could barely believe he was alive because he was so floored to be on her show. The vlogger and author of the upcoming book Binge not only discussed his YouTube career, but also told DeGeneres about his meeting with President Obama and called the Oval Office’s desk “cute.” Oakley also explained how one of his videos influenced the singer Ricky Martin to come out as gay, which the vlogger said was mind-blowing considering he “used to have a crush on [Martin].”
At the end of Oakley’s interview, DeGeneres said she had a gift for the YouTuber which she wanted him to use the next time he shot a video. The gift turns out to be a Ellen-themed video set, complete with a desk boasting the show’s logo and a cardboard cutout of DeGeneres “sitting” next to Oakley’s chair.
Oakley took to social media to share behind-the-scenes clips as he was preparing to go on DeGeneres’s show. The digital star mostly posted pictures of his shock about being invited onto the talk show in the first place:
Oakley also released a new vlog about his Ellen Show visit. The digital star describes how he first encountered DeGeneres right as he entered the studio, and how he flew his mom out so she could watch him live. In his typical humble style, Oakley thanks his viewers for growing his YouTube career to where it is today. “I feel like this is a journey that we are going on together,” Oakley tells viewers. “I couldn’t be more thankful.”
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.
For five friends who love video games and know how to sing, YouTube has proven to be the perfect outlet. Since 2010, The Warp Zone has provided a steady stream of entertainment by delivering a cappella renditions of famous themes and putting pop culture twists on Top 40 songs. Now, The Warp Zone has more than one million subscribers to show for its efforts, and we helped the channel’s creative team celebrate by asking them a few questions about their work:
Tubefilter: How does it feel to reach one million subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans?
Warp Zone: It feels awesome! It’s taken us nearly 5 years of consistent uploading to get here so it feels like a huge milestone and kind of makes us look back on the incredible journey it’s taken us to get here. A lot of fans, friends, and family have been sending us their congrats so it’s felt very special. It also happened on Davis’ birthday, which made it even better!
To the fans, we’d like to say “THANK YOU,” to everyone old and new who has subscribed to the channel. We read all of your comments, positive and negative haha 😉
TF: How did your YouTube channel first come together?
WZ: The 5 of us: Michael Davis, Brian Fisher, David Odom, Michael Schroeder, and Ryan Tellez started making YouTube videos together in college as part of a film club at Santa Clara University. After graduating, we all wanted to continue pursuing filmmaking together, and made a pact to move to Los Angeles. Upon moving to LA in September 2010, we started The Warp Zone YouTube channel and partnered with Maker Studios, where we also worked as production employees. We worked at Maker for 3 years until going full time on TWZ during the summer of 2013. We’ve since joined Defy Media, who has had a huge impact on our growth over the past year and a half.
The Warp Zone as a concept came from a bond that we all shared in college over playing video games and making videos together. Several of our most popular sketches in college were focused around gaming. We also all enjoyed watching superhero movies together and still attend midnight showings as a group to this day. A few of us were even in a band together. So, a nerdy sketch comedy and music channel seemed like the perfect combination of all our interests and talents.
Another fun fact, Odom and Fish were high school friends, as were Schroeder and Davis. Ryan is the glue that holds us all together.
TF: For your music videos, what does your creative process look like? How long does it take to create one of those videos?
WZ: There are a few different ways that we get inspired to make music videos. We hang out and joke around with each other a lot, so sometimes an idea will come up just out of conversation. And then the critical part will be if one of us writes it down so we remember it. Sometimes, we totally forget and those nuggets are unfortunately lost from the internet forever, never to see the light of a computer screen, phone, or tablet. Other times, we’ll have a brainstorm session where we talk about different games, tv shows, and movies we’re currently watching and see what we can poke fun at or match with a popular song. And honestly, sometimes it just comes from a fun play on the original title. Examples include “Steal My Kill,” “One Ring,” and “One More Fight.” There have been several instances where someone just comes up with a title, and then everything else developed from there, haha!
It normally takes us about a month to produce a music video from concept to upload, depending on how many Red Bulls Ryan consumes during music production.
TF: On a similar note, how do you choose your song subjects, and do your fans play any role in that process?
WZ: We covered this a bit in the previous question, but we also try to be timely with uploading videos around the same time as a popular game, TV, or movie release. A great recent example would be our “Mortal Kombat A Cappella” video which we uploaded a week after Mortal Kombat X came out. That video resonated very well with our fans, who were excited about the new game.
Also, though we don’t typically consider requests for our major music videos, we do look at comments when deciding what a cappella to do next. So while we don’t explicitly ask fans for suggestions, we do pay attention to what people are requesting in the comments.
TF: Do you guys have a favorite video you’ve made?
WZ: The most special video to all of us is probably our “Halo 4 – Glad You Came” music video. This video was the first sponsored project that we made and we really put our all into it. We rented a cabin up in Big Bear for the weekend, got a big boy film permit for the location, and shot into the wee hours of a freezing cold night, leaving our cinematographer with a bad case of bronchitis. He’s dead now…just kidding, he’s fine.
While the video is comedic, there’s also a lot of heart to it, and it actually makes us feel kind of sad and nostalgic at the end. We all really like the Halo franchise and were genuinely excited for Master Chief’s return in Halo 4. We feel like that probably comes across in the video and led us to making something that is very sincere, which seems to have resonated with the fans. To date, it is our most viewed video with 8.2 million views. We’re all very proud that this is our most popular video!
TF: Have there been any video ideas you’ve had that you have deemed unfeasible?
WZ: Plenty! We have tons of ideas we would have loved to do, but couldn’t for a variety of reasons like budget limitations, or the subject matter being too racy, or no one but Schroeder wanting to do a shot-for-shot remake of Newsies. Most of the time, though, it comes down to not having enough time in the day to do everything, and therefore needing to prioritize certain ideas over other, less topical ones.
TF: What has been your favorite aspect of your collaborations with other YouTube channels?
WZ: We have a couple favorite aspects of collaborations. The first is that we’ve been able to work with super awesome people with talents and skillsets we might not otherwise have access to, such as acting, music production, vfx experience, etc. And by working with them, we’ve been able to produce videos that are of a higher quality than we would normally be able to make on our own.
Another aspect that was unexpected when we started, is that we’ve become very close friends with many of the people with whom we have collaborated. People like the Smosh and Smosh Games guys, TJ Smith, Jesse Cox, The Completionist, Rosanna Pansino, Husky Starcraft, Katie Wilson, and many more. It’s something we didn’t see coming but are very grateful for and honestly, without the support of these people, we would have never hit a million subs.
TF: Ever think about taking your act on tour?
WZ: We’ve actually played live a couple times. Once was on What’s Trending, and once was at The Escapist Expo in Durham, North Carolina. Both times we played our song “One Ring,” which is probably the song that best features all of us in it. We would love to perform live more and incorporate other songs as well, but honestly we’re so busy producing our weekly content that we just haven’t had time to plan it.
Also, Davis has crippling stage fright, so we’re working on that too 😉
TF: What’s next for your channel? Any fun plans?
WZ: For the most part, what’s next is to just keep what we’re doing but better: Bigger and more frequent music videos, as well as live action sketches and a cappellas. Long term though, we’d really like to build on the success of our “The Office of Smite” series from last year. “The Office of Smite,” was a web series parodying the mockumentary style of The Office but featuring video game characters from Smite interacting with each other between matches. This web series, which was released over 8 months, was a surprise hit with our fans.
We’ve always wanted to make more long form narrative content, and this proved to us that there is a taste for it with our audience. We have future hopes to create another web series, that would be released on a more condensed schedule, but nothing set in stone just yet. For the time being, you can expect to get your standard weekly Wednesday Warp Zone content!
