by Jacob Nahin on June 8th, 2009
As the summer season officially begins, it looks like another web show will be going on hiatus. EXIT Stage Left, that loveable web series featuring an off-Broadway theater troupe and the troubles they face will end its first season June 25th, but in a most unusual way. Live.
Sinohui Hinojosa, the creator of EXIT Stage Left, said in a recent press release that viewers can get free tickets to the finale which will also stream live at 7 PM (PT).
The show uses the documentary-style of story-telling that is popular with the web series’ crowd and centers around the fictional Lowry Theater Company and its attempt to put on a successful play. Play director Ronny Simons (Michael Navarra) and stage manager Jill Baynor (Terri J Freedman) are seen through the eyes of Pam William (Katie Kimball), a documentary filmmaking student from NYU.
by Lindsay Stidham on June 7th, 2009
Dailymotion and Screenworks are backing Irish animator Enda O’Connor in her creation of Bewildering Life which looks to be a fun, wild, and absurd romp based on the trailer above. The raunchy web series is being described as an animated comedy about a group of oddballs in a world where “an outwardly saintly, inwardly evil rock star with a head bigger than Jupiter can start a war Hitler would have been proud of–over a hat. Or where a hunter killer robot soldier can be gay.”
The seven-episode series will debut on June 15th with episodes released every two weeks. It will be allotted front page real estate on Dailymotion in the USA, the UK and Ireland, In addition to animating the series O’Connor voices almost all the characters himself. Irish rock band Therapy? provides the entire soundtrack.
by Marc Hustvedt on June 5th, 2009
TechStars, the mentoring startup incubator in Boulder, CO (and soon to be Boston as well) has launched its first original web series, The Founders, which will track three tech startup companies throughout the summer as they relocate to Boulder to take part in the highly selective program.
The 14-episode series, which releases weekly, will follow startups The Next Big Sound, Everlater and ReTel through their founders (Alex White, David Hoffman, Samir Rayani, Natty Zola, Nate Abbott, Adam Rodnitzky, Scott Roberts and George Aspland).
We caught up with TechStars’ Andrew Hyde and asked him what prompted the leap into web series. “We have always tried to tell the story of what we do in a better way,” he told us. “The series is a continuation of the great CurrentTV piece that was done last year.”
Behind the camera producing, directing and editing the series is Megan Leigh Sweeney of AlpineLightPictures, who also headed up the CurrentTV video project. Hyde also chips in on shooting and TechStars chief David Cohen narrates and conducts most of the interviews.
by Lindsay Stidham on June 5th, 2009
Blade Runner fans rejoice! A new web series based on the futuristic 1982 Harrison Ford sci-fi thriller is set to hit your computer screens this summer. Ridley Scott is developing the project along with his brother Tony, and his son Luke through a new division of their commercial production company RSA Films. London-based independent studio Ag8 is joining them on the project.
In a first time move by a Hollywood studio director, the project will be developed under a Creative Commons License (SA-3), openly allowing fans to re-purpose the content and possibly directly participate in the project.
by Marc Hustvedt on June 4th, 2009
Who said you can’t make money with a web series? Add one more item to the list of moneymakers: hosting Rocketboom. Andrew Baron and the team behind the long running daily internet news web series have launched an international talent search for two new anchors, one in New York and one on their new Los Angeles desk, offering up a base salary of $80,000 plus a $10k signing bonus and even a 3% of all ad revenues. Add to that paid travel, a company Macbook and even a O-1 Visa if you’re not American. Not bad for a 30-hour a week gig.
Currently there are over 120 submissions to fill the seats once graced by Amanda Congdon, Joanne Colan and current host Caitlin Hill. Notable names on the publicly viewable talent submissions include former Mahalo Daily host Leah D’Emilio, current Mahalo host Lon Harris, web host Sarah Atwood and actress and Hot Sluts star Beth Dover. And there’s also this guy, who wins best photo.
by Arjun Sharma on June 4th, 2009
Josh Weinberg’s viral sensation The Website is Down is back, and as the new teaser (above) demonstrates, we’re in for a completely different take on the same humor that made TWID such a massive hit the first two times around.
The new video is a hilarious techno remix of footage from the upcoming episode, shot security cam style a la the popular office freakout videos. In it, the poor ‘sales guy’ (you have to feel sorry for this guy’s level of technical ineptitude) freaks out on his computer while a very soothing Indian IT guy helps him out on the phone.
Tubefilter also got a sneak peek at an almost-final version of the new episode, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. I don’t want to give away any of the details, but I will say that I hope ‘yoga dude’ remains a character on the show.
by Alex Crowley on June 4th, 2009
Now that we live in an age when being a nerd is cool, all the old rules about impressing other people have to be thrown out. The old fashioned way to make a great impression on somebody was to…well, honestly I have no idea. However, today there are bountiful nerd methods to impressing your peers, [...]
by Pat Miller on June 4th, 2009
I would have never have guessed that the latest thing to do would be to watch people play video games. Even when I wrote up Project Lore, I kind of figured that was more of a testament to the World of Warcraft fanbase than anything else. Enter Pwndcast, the latest web series to prove me wrong – it consists of basically watching some guys play games (first-person shooters, usually) for the duration of a ten-minute episode.
On the game-watching spectrum, watching Pwndcast is kind of like watching a handful of mid-thirties men play a pickup game of basketball; you’re not in it for the professional-caliber play, and it won’t appeal to anyone trying to pick up any new tournament strategies. It is, however, a refreshing change of pace to watch Christian, Puna, Timothy, Jake, and whoever else opts to join in on the night’s events (Season 1 consists mostly of Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare) engage in a few rounds of good-natured gaming and equally good-natured trash talk. If that sounds like your kind of thing, go check it out here, and if it doesn’t sound like your thing, well, give it a shot anyway because you might be surprised.
