The Black List, which releases a new edition each year, catalogs the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. For the new incubator, screenwriters are invited to submit their work to the Black List, and the five submissions chosen by Indigenous and Hutcherson will be adapted into short films, with potential for feature-length adaptations down the line. Specifically, the incubator will work with stories centered around characters in their teens and early twenties.
Hutcherson himself will direct one of the five short films born from the incubator. Indigenous will handle funding; it has committed at least $100,000 to the projects. “Great content always begins with the script, which is why we are working with the Hutchersons and The Black List to seek out strong storytellers who connect with young millennials for our first incubator,” said Jon Avnet in a press release.
Avnet and Garcia previously collaborated on WIGS, a channel centered around female-fronted content. Their new commitment to incubators will last throughout 2016, with three other projects planned. For the present, if you have a script you’d like to submit to the current incubator, you can send it along via the Indigenous website between now and January 17th.
Many YouTube multi-channel networks are essentially video hubs that boast any-and-all kinds of content, but some do have a special area of focus (think Felicia Day’s geek culture-skewing Geek & Sundry or AwesomenessTV’s Awestruck for millennial moms). Now, there’s a new network aimed squarely at helping non-profits with their YouTube and digital video strategies. The Good Amplified MCN has officially launched, with a roster of initial partners including the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Founded by Amber J. Lawson (CEO of Comedy Gives Back), Good Amplified’s mission is described in a release as “guiding nonprofits in driving awareness, donor retention, and revenue via YouTube.” The MCN’s team does this by optimizing a non-profit’s current videos for better discovery, helping the organizations develop and produce new video content, and matching a non-profit with a digital influencer who will promote its message. So far, Good Amplified has teamed with several non-profits like Make-A-Wish Foundation, Teen Cancer America, and Rett Syndrome Research Trust. And because Good Amplified is all about helping non-profits, the MCN also donates 10% of its total proceeds to charity.
Lawson explained how non-profits use YouTube to generate ad revenue from video views for their foundations. “When a video on YouTube is monetized a millennial’s view becomes a donation, meaning millennials can donate to causes they care about simply through views,” says Lawson. “This is how brand affinity is created and movements take hold, and this is massively important. A nonprofit’s mission hangs in the balance of building brand awareness through consistent storytelling. If organizations don’t start doing this now they won’t be around in the next three to five years.”
As far as the Make-A-Wish Foundation is concerned, Good Amplified has already proven its worth as a network able to produce favorable digital results. Since partnering with Good Amplified in March 2015, Make-A-Wish’s YouTube channel has seen a 66% increase in subscribers to hit over 45,000 subscribers, as well as a 54% rise in minutes viewed. Good Amplified even helped optimize one of the non-profit’s videos starring Kobe Bryant, which wasn’t showing up in YouTube search results, so that the clip generated another 200,000 views per month (it’s sitting at 1.6 million views as of this writing).
“Good Amplified has helped double Make-A-Wish America’s YouTube subscribers and driven engagement around our videos more than we could have hoped for,” said Make-A-Wish America’s Head of Digital Jono Smith. “Harnessing YouTube is proving to be vital in helping us reach supporters and build our audience.”
In addition, Good Amplified recently teamed with Teen Cancer America in October to help the organization boost its YouTube efforts and video marketing goals. Good Amplified optimized Teen Cancer America’s video campaign for the Revlon Love competition. The non-profit-focused MCN also helped the organization enlist YouTube star MyLifeAsEva to help promote the campaign.
“We have just started working with Good Amplified and their enthusiasm and professionalism has been evident from the start,” explained Teen Cancer America Executive Director Simon Davies. “They restructured our YouTube channel and improved its following overnight. The network helped us promote a campaign and they are well-connected amongst YouTube influencers. I am excited to see where they can take Teen Cancer America’s YouTube profile in the future.”
In just over two weeks, Netflix will release the Christmas special A Very Murray Christmas, starring famed comedian Bill Murray, on December 4, 2015. But until then, the streaming video service is getting subscribers excited for the special by releasing its official trailer on November 17.
Directed by Sofia Coppola and written by Coppola, Murray, and Mitch Glazer, A Very Murray Christmas tells the story of the titular funny man and actor as he tries to host an old-fashioned holiday variety show at the historical Carlyle Hotel in New York City. His attempts to throw the TV event of the year are thwarted by a massive blizzard which threatens to turn the Christmas show into one big, empty room, with most of Murray’s friends unable to appear because of the weather. Luckily, guests eventually start showing up to help Murray pull off the Christmas show on time.
Netflix originally announced A Very Murray Christmas back in April 2015. At the time, the streaming subscription provider released a 24-second teaser to introduce viewers to a very dejected-looking Murray gazing out over the New York City skyline. Then in October, Netflix released a longer preview of the Christmas piece, which highlighted several of the guest stars who will appear on the special, including George Clooney, Chris Rock, Miley Cyrus, Amy Poehler, Jason Schwartzman, Michael Cera, Maya Rudolph, Rashida Jones, and Paul Shaffer.
You can watch all of A Very Murray Christmas when the special arrives on Netflix on December 4.
YouTube’s most talented performer (at least as far as she is concerned) is getting her own on-demand special. Miranda Sings, the alter ego of entertainer Colleen Evans, will star in Miranda Sings: Selp Helf, which will arrive on Vimeo On Demand on December 14th.
Selp Helf will translate Miranda’s successful live shows into a digital format. Over the past few years, Evans has toured the world, putting on shows in character and drawing huge crowds wherever she goes. Many of her other fans, however, have been unable to unable to attend any of Miranda’s live shows, and for that group, Evans hopes the Vimeo special will be a worthwhile consolation. “After touring the world for years, there are still millions of Mirfandas that have yet to see the live show but are eager to watch it,” she said, referring to the name Miranda’s fans have applied to themselves.
Online video stars like Evans have flocked to Vimeo On Demand in order to take advantage of the selling platform’s flexible setup and creator-friendly approach. On Vimeo’s side of things, partnerships with these stars have proved lucrative, with the financial success of PJ Liguori’s Oscar’s Hotel serving as the most concrete example. Oscar’s Hotel delivered groundbreaking sales figures for Vimeo, but given the purchasing power Miranda’s fans have displayed across multiple platforms, Vimeo’s record books could soon be rewritten once again.
Maker Studios has a new deal with an international sports group. The Disney-owned multi-channel network is working with A.S. Roma, the premier Italian club dedicated to soccer (aka football in the rest of the world), to build up its YouTube channel and expand the club’s reach across its digital verticals.
Under the partnership, Maker Studios will work with A.S. Roma to create new, original video content (like soccer-related shorts) to help attract more viewers and subscribers to the soccer club’s YouTube channel. A.S. Roma’s channel currently boasts 18.5 million views and around 150,000 subscribers. The MCN will also help to create brand sponsorship opportunities for A.S. Roma.
StreamDaily notes Maker and A.S. Roma have already been working together on various projects since August 2015. The two companies partnered to create video content featuring Italian YouTubers ilvostrocaroDexter (who claims over 1.2 million subscribers) and iNoobChannel (more than 260,000 subscribers). The video featuring ilvostrocaroDexter has over 480,000 views alone as of this writing.
President of A.S. Roma Jim Pallotta said in a statement how the Maker deal works in tandem with his team’s vision “to deliver great content to our fans wherever they choose to watch video across the world.”
The emergence of Snapchat has allowed the ephemeral messaging app to cultivate its own creative community. High-profile Snapchatters are becoming more common, and in order to support that creative class, the app have created a new label that identifies its celebrity users in an appropriate manner. It has launched an “Official Stories” feature that places emojis next to usernames of notable accounts.
The emojis are essentially Snapchat’s answer to the check marks that signify verified accounts on Twitter and Facebook. As The Daily Dot notes, Snapchat’s emojis of choice only sometimes make sense, at least superficially. Ariana Grande, whose username is moonlightbae, gets a moon next to her handle. Jared Leto, on the other hand, is marked with a cactus. Your guess is as good as mine.
The launch of Official Stories allows Snapchat to give more credence to the accounts of its most famous users, but it also serves as a way for Snapchat to direct users toward its most desired content. “If a Snapchatter has an Official Story, their name will appear under an Official Stories header when you search for them,” reads a Snapchat web page introducing the new feature.
Official Stories are one of several recent additions to Snapchat. The app has also launched a store where users can purchase filter-like “lenses” for $.99 each.
Celebrities who have already received their own emoji verification include Justin Bieber, Kylie Jenner, and Tiesto. Snapchat also hinted that it may expand Official Stories to a wider group in the future.
Each episode of Daily Vice will run for 5-7 minutes and cover cultural and lifestyle topics not typically covered through other media outlets. For example, in the debut episode of the news show, one segment introduces viewers to a real-life X-Files-style pair of investigators looking for aliens in Roswell, New Mexico. Daily Vice will also provide its own take on important current events, including the premiere episode’s report of the recent terrorist attack victims at the Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris.
Vice is also working on its second original series for go90 since the brazen media brand partnered with the platform back in July. The upcoming series, called Autobiographies, will cover exactly what the title implies: profiles of various cultural and lifestyle personalities, including rapper Pusha T and the Sacramento Kings’ Willie Cauley-Stein. Autobiographies launches on go90 in December.
In addition to its original programming for go90, Vice has also pushed forward on another impressive initiative in recent weeks. The daring media brand officially announced its own linear TV channel called Viceland, which will live on A&E’s old H2 channel and boast new original content. A&E purchased a 10% share in Vice back in August 2014, and rumors started circulating in April 2015 about how the cable network would work with Vice to bring the media company its own channel, a speculation which ultimately came true.
You can catch all episodes of Daily Vice on go90 by downloading the app for free.
Each year, Dictionary.com adds new words, phrases, and proper nouns to its database. In 2015, the list includes chillax, respawn, and feels, but what do those words mean? What do they connote? In order to answer those questions, Dictionary.com enlisted a group of social media influencers, who offered up their personal definitions for this year’s neologisms.
To create the videos, Dictionary.com teamed up with Collab, which is best known for working with Vine stars. Collab turned to its roster of partners, including Meghan McCarthy, Lizzza, Harmony & Elliot, Matt King, Brock Baker, Rickey Thompson, and JD Witherspoon, and turned them loose on the dictionary’s new words. The results are a mixed bag. Some of them are earnestly informative; others, such as the video describing “yaaas” (yes, that is a real word now), move more in the cringe comedy direction.
The videos were posted to Dictionary.com’s YouTube channel and featured on the website’s homepage, which also offers up words of the day and word facts. There are seven videos in all, and they define just a small handful of the new words that have been added to the Dictionary.com database. A full list of those words and phrases–including bestie, facepalm, doge, and EGOT–is available via Dictionary.com.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by OpenSlate. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]if
Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.
It’s another installment of the weekly Tubefilter Chart of the Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide and the internet is full of Beliebers.
Chart Toppers
Justin Bieber is in the #1 spot on the worldwide chart this week. The 21-year-old Canadian pop star’s November 13, 2015 release of his fourth studio album (and its associated music videos) have done wonders for Bieber’s view count. Uploads from Purposehelped his YouTube channel to almost 123.3 million views on the week. Adele is next up in second place. The British musician back from a three-or-so-year hiatus is still racking up tens of millions of views with her latest single, Hello. Her YouTube channel ended the week with more than 114.8 million views.
LittleBabyBum is up next in the #3 spot. The YouTube home for music videos of your favorite toddler-aged sing-alongs received more than 103.2 million views in the week. The international destination for Turkish music videos netd müzik dropped down to fourth place. The YouTube channel and YouTube network for Turkish-language music amassed almost 97.2 million views on the week.
And rounding out the Top 5 is WWE. The YouTube home for World Wrestling Entertainment slammed down just about 95.8 million views in the week.
Top Gainers
The honor of one of our Top Gainers this week goes to Jimmy Kimmel Live.
In the absence of any viral hits, shiny new music video releases, or other random outliers, Jimmy Kimmel’s YouTube channel had one of the better weeks of all the channels on the chart. The YouTube home of Kimmel’s eponymous late night talk show saw an uptick in views thanks to a steady stream of show clips and the Country Music edition of its now classic Mean Tweets series. The video racked up several million views and helped the Jimmy Kimmel Live channel to a 36% week-over-week increase in views, more than 42 million views on the week, and the #44 spot on the worldwide chart.
Distribution
All in all, the top 50 most viewed YouTube channels accounted for 3,201,493,468 views last week. Here’s the distribution of a few of those channels by multi-channel network:
Vevo: 14 channels in the Top 50, with Justin Bieber at #1.
Maker Studios: 4 channels in the Top 50, with PewDiePie at #14.
AIR, BuzzFeed, Fullscreen, Machinima, XMediaDigital: 2 channels each in the Top 50, with AIR’s Miss Katy at #27, BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Video at #13, Fullscreen’s FamilyFunPack at #11, Machinima’s VanossGaming at #20, and XMediaDigital’smashamedvedtv at #9.
And here’s the distribution of the this week’s Top 50 YouTube channels by country of origin:
United States: 26 channels in the Top 50.
Canada, Great Britain: 4 channels in the Top 50.
India: 3 channels in the Top 50.
Russia, Thailand, Ukraine: 2 channels each in the Top 50.
Ireland, Netherlands, Philippines, South Korea, Sweden, Spain, Turkey: 1 channel each in the Top 50.
OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 225,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.
A trio of musicians known for their work on YouTube have found the time to shoot a new music video. Kurt Hugo Schneider, Tyler Ward, and Mike Tompkins take center stage in “All Time,” which is sponsored by watch brand Timex.
Timex sponsored the video in order to promote Metropolitan+, a new analog watch that tracks its wearer’s activity. As Schneider, Ward, and Tompkins dance around a park, they watch their steps closely, and Timex clock faces appear in the corners of the screen to show the new model in action. In case that wasn’t enough branding for you, the song is also built on top of the sound of a ticking clock.
Schneider is no stranger to brand deals; among his other projects, he also created a music video alongside Buick. “All Time,” like that video, is shot in one take, though Schneider uses some special effects to add another dimension to the camerawork. The result is pretty neat, and you can check it out on Schneider’s YouTube channel:
NBC has a way for potential subscribers to test out its recently-announced comedy streaming service SeeSo. The broadcast television network will launch a month-long, free beta so users can experience the subscription-based comedic entertainment platform before they consider signing up for $3.99 per month.
The SeeSo beta program will allow participants to get a sneak peek of the ad-free service’s stand-up comedy sessions, classic television shows, curated films, and several of its new, original series. For example, SeeSo beta users will be able to watch the platform’s upcoming The Cyanide & Happiness Show, based on the popular Streamy Award-winning web comic of the same name, or the previously-announced The UCB Show with Amy Poehler. NBC noted back in October 2015 that SeeSo’s beta, which officially begins on December 3, will be a private program open to select participants.
“It’s like the soft-opening of a restaurant,” said Evan Shapiro, EVP of NBCUniversal Digital Enterprises, in a statement as reported by Variety. “Everything is free, while you try out Seeso, sample our great classic comedy and get a taste of our exclusive original series. We think our stuff can help you laugh better, and we want you to Seeso for yourself. But, just like the soft-opening of any new neighborhood club, space is limited and we might ask for your patience while we work out our service.”
SeeSo will arrive in full the first quarter of 2016. You can sign up to be a part of the beta and be notified of the service’s launch by visiting seeso.com.
For the fourth time, Defy Media is using prank videos as vehicles for social good. The multi-channel network and production company has launched another season of the Prank It Fwd web series, and this time, Hunger Games stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth joined the fun by pranking Smosh.
As with the other seasons of Prank It Fwd, the series’ fourth round is hosted by Greg Benson, built on a combination of practical jokes and positivity, sponsored by Barefoot Wine & Bubbly, and led by creators from within the Defy Media network as well as celebrities from TV and film. One of this season’s centerpiece pranks takes place at a Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 press junket, where Smosh stars Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla believe they are pulling a fast one on Lawrence. Instead, Lawrence reveals herself to be in on the joke and part of a counter-pranking effort led by Hutcherson, Hemsworth, and a young Smosh fan with muscular dystrophy.
Several other new Prank It Fwd videos will arrive across the Defy Media network over the next couple of days. Clevver teamed up with The Today Show’s Hoda Kotb to give a young man an “Entourage for a Day,” Simple Pickup assisted a prom for senior citizens, and Benson focused his efforts on a local animal rescue shelter.
Defy Media Chief Content Officer Barry Blumberg has called Prank It Fwd his network’s greatest accomplishment, and as the campaign returned, he offered more praise for it. “We kicked off Prank It FWD in April 2014 aiming to turn the prank convention on its ear and add value into the world. Since then, a campaign built on promoting change through positive pranks has grown into a global movement, making an impact with viewers that has far exceeded our expectations and continues to change the lives of deserving recipients in ways we never could have anticipated,” he said in a press release. “We’re proud to bring back another season with more great talent and life-changing surprises that promise to drive this important program even further and inspire others to prank it forward with us through the holidays.”
Check out the Prank It Fwd videos across YouTube. Watching and sharing the series lets you get in on the charity: For each 1,000 views it gets and each social media share tagged #PrankItFwd, Defy Media will donate $1 to DoSomething.org.
