For all you Pinko, Commie, bleeding heart tree-huggers out there, there’s a film festival just for you. And you can screen all the selections online. The ninth annual Media that Matters Film Festival kicked off at the beginning of June with a screening at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and will continue [...]
My first impression of Ross Bollinger’s Pencilmation: It’s nice to know someone is out there keeping it real. While 3D animation soars to ever higher heights (see what I did there?) and cartoons are made for late-night potheads instead of early-morning children, Pencilmation takes it back to Looney Tunes-style simplicity.
By “simplicity” I mean that the main characters of the show are: a pencil, and whatever the pencil happens to draw. (The acting is phenomenal.) Like Stickman Exodus, the series consists of a bunch of doodles on a piece of paper, though where Stickman Exodus tells a story, Pencilmation simply plays with the pencil and the drawings. Draw a line and write “Quicksand” over it, and the poor stickman will start to sink. Give the stickman his own pencil, and he’ll start trying to save himself from the animator’s abuse – until the animator escalates issues by picking up a pen. And so on. All set to some playful chiptune-esque tracks.
In order to get an insight into the mind that created Pencilmation, we decided to get in touch with the creator himself, Ross Bollinger:
I hate giving bad reviews, especially when I know the makers meant well, but honestly, this show needs work. Out of Office is a bi-weekly Brit entry into web tv about a pair of business partners who have set up a virtual office by video conferencing from the comforts of home and well, that’s about all there is.
Ben Neale plays Jason, our point of view into the world. Jason is the tech-side of the start-up duo and Neale with his elastic face and bug eyes performs his tech-heavy lines competently as the aloof couch-bound nerd. Then there’s Helen, Jason’s all too congenial girlfriend (what woman is really that cool with her bf slackadaising on a sofa all day in his unmentionables?), played rather nicely by the plain-Jane-but-oddly-hot Sarah Coyle. And then the businessman of the two, David, is played by Fergus March, whose face we never get a full glimpse of as he does various personally hygenic activities on the other side of the video conference, ie, brushing teeth, exercising, getting dressed for meetings, etc. And through no fault of March’s own, what he’s doing is as banal as it sounds.
Welcome to the branded entertainment gold rush. The early days of web series were nothing compared to what’s coming down the pipe. Back then a handful of awkward campaigns on clunky pages so wrapped in custom branding were somehow seen as the only way to integrate web video and advertising.
Today’s ad agencies have sharped up a bit though, most all of them setting up internal digital divisions complete with a new crop of mad men tasked with making content that connects. This new school knows it needs Hollywood, much like Hollywood needs its brands.
Case in point is Subway’s new reality web series Fit to Boom, created by television studio Reveille in partnership with MSN and Publicis Modem, the new digital arm of ad giant Publicis USA. It’s the first project out of MSN’s new Branded Entertainment & Experiences Team (BEET).
Those of you out there who don’t find it easy to fall asleep once the sun sets might find solace in Cafe Insomniac, the latest machinima project from London-based Callous Productions.
Cafe Insomniac tells the story of a man named Justin, the proprietor of Cafe Insomniac, a cafe which is only open during nighttime hours. Justin slowly eroded into insomnia after an encounter with a mugger turned unexpectedly lethal; with nothing else to do with his sleepless nights, he decided to open up a cafe to cater to the similarly afflicted. Currently, only the first episode is out — just enough to promote the show, introduce a handful of the characters, and give us a taste of the impeccably-orchestrated noir atmosphere that permeates Cafe Insomniac’s walls.
Summer hiatus. To some people these two words mean kicking back, slowing down and catching up on long lost sleep. To others, it means it’s time to get busy.
For Brett Register, creator-star of sci-fi web series The Crew, we’re going to say it’s the latter. With one episode left to come in The Crew’s 15-episode season, Register teased out the first episode (above) of Lost & Found today, hinting at what is expected to be a busy summer. Featuring fellow Crew star Craig Frank (Private High Musical) along with web series vet Katy Stoll (Prom Queen, Couples, Private High Musical) and Register himself, Lost & Found is the first of a handful of short web series coming out from the newly formed creative team, Absolute Disaster.
The five-person ensemble, a mix of actors and technical talent includes Register, Stoll, Frank and actor Haley Mancini (Prom Queen, Weeds, Mad Men) with The Crew’s Tim Riese coming on board as director of photography for all projects.
Pretty people and big name producers continue to dominate programming over at TheWB.com. Pushed is no exception. Created by the producers of Law and Order Morgan Gendel and Jeremy Littman, Pushed has definitely brought the art of suspense with a big whiff of soap opera to this newest WB addition. The show is another one to add to the guilty please list if you like a godo tale of who’s your enemy, who’s your friend, who’s your lover, who’s your murderer. Pushed is really almost like a better version of The Bold and the Beautiful in bite sized, easily consumable amounts.
It’s classic soapy setup – London Willows, a stunning young model (Veronica Taylor) not knowing who to trust as her husband Kurt (Mark Matkevich) plays mind games trying to get her to believe she’s responsible for a bloody family accident. Catherine Hicks star as Dr. Rosen and William R. Moses, Holland Roden and Scott Seymour rounding things out.
We’re tying up loose ends for the first annual Onfronts and are extremely excited about the event. OnfrontNYC is designed to articulate the value of online entertainment with a keynote from industry-leader and Generate founder, Jordan Levin, followed by presentations from leading digital entertainment studios, a panel discussion with some prominent figures at the leading [...]
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