Tubefilter News

Creative freedom is a phrase we hear quite a bit when asking creators what drew them into these precarious web series waters. Sometimes the phrase comes off as if its speaker, once free from the inhibiting chains of corporate control, will be able to deliver entertainment’s much-awaited mega-masterpiece.

There’s really a number of stories behind Showbizzle. A successful TV veteran mentoring his daughter’s development as a writer in Hollywood. For Charles Rosin, who was executive producer/showrunner for the first five seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 (the original), there was the ‘A Ha!’ moment a few years ago when ABC put up episodes of LOST on iTunes.

Big Screen Little Screen is a monthly meeting of online video creators that recreates the film-school experience with informal screenings and earnest feedback from peers followed by beer and networking.  It’s a great way for up-and-coming web shows to grab some much-needed attention. The next Big Screen Little Screen is scheduled for this coming Thursday, [...]

Leave it to VBS.TV to once again send a documentary team into the craziest of locations where sane, stay at home, whiteys like myself would only consider going with advanced technical gear and a swat team of commandos as tour guides. After all, they brought us along with them when they explored voyeur gore on [...]

The Official Selections of the 4th annual Independent Television Festival have been announced, completing the slate of indie web shows joins series OzGirl and Operation Midnight Climax we teased out last week. The ITVFest is a festival for independently produced, original and innovative television pilots and web series which offers a chance for web television creators to showcase their work to a live audience and the chance to pitch development executives that can bring their projects to the next level. All of the selections are independently produced webseries produced completely on spec and available for further development opportunities. The festival takes place in Los Angeles from July 31st to August 6th.

Official 2009 Web Series Selections:

2012

Los Angeles-based producers Jessica Bertulis, Kamali Minter and Helen Truong present this interactive viral and webisode series abouta techno-geek who embarks on a quest to change the future when he intercepts a series of internet transmissions from the future warning the impending apocalypse. The series stars Kevin Held, Jared Asato, Brit Marling, Neal Xingu Rodl, Ron C. Patric.

The Clean-Up Crew

Last summer we discovered this USC film school graduate thesis from writers Tim Dragga & Scott Rickles about the misfit crew at Frank’s Crime Scene Steam-N-Clean and the hilarious and gruesome world of crime scene cleaning, where “death means dollars.” The series stars Dale Midkiff, Richard Riehle, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Tuione, Chrissy Anderson, Travis Willingham, and Jessica McClendon, and is produced by Tim Kolesk and Tarika Khan.

Imaginary Bitches

Andrew Miller’s inventive comedy starring Eden Riegel about a single woman who deals with the lonely reality that all her friends are busy with serious relationships by creating imaginary friends—who unfortunately turn out to be total bitches caught our eye a year ago as it emerged from the 100-day WGA Strike. The series also stars Elizabeth Hendrickson, Brooke Nevin, Connie Fletcher Staton, Jessalyn Gilsig, Greg Rikaart, Chandra West, Michael Traynor, James Kee, Aaron Staton, Brittany Ishibashi, Sam Page, Billy Aaron Brown, and Charlie Koznick, is written by Andrew Miller with Nichole Millard and Kathryn Price, and produced by Seth Adam Cohen and Judson Morgan.

Johnny B Homeless

New York-based producer-actor Al Thompson presents the story of a professional couch surfer (in fact not homeless but rather just constantly stays away from home to give his girlfriend some space) who has the uncanny ability to help those he comes in contact with and whose couch he crashes on. The series, produced by Kahler R. Hart, Jennifer Westin, and Geoffrey Quan, also stars Kenan Thompson and Kevin Christy, is written by Sherman Payne and Christian Magalhaes and directed by Greg Stees and David Spates.

The Lone Wolf

We traced this web series from Johnny Borda as it launched out of Los Angeles’ Channel 101 community into a Clearwire deal this past October. The comedy series follows a Hollywood stuntman who loses his memory when the perfect stunt goes wrong and who must embark on a tireless quest through the great Los Angeles area in search for his own identity. The series stars Matt Peters, Bennie Arthur, and Chad Fogland, is directed by Oren Kaplan.

Operation Midnight Climax

This stylized drama from producers Ramesh Thadani, Juan Reynoso, Zach Jordan and Glenn Sauber explores the CIA LSD experiments conducted in San Francisco brothels during the 1950s. The series stars Meredith Salenger, Todd Cahoon, Quinton Flynn and Stephanie Lemelin. Read our recent coverage for more details.

OzGirl

We’ve had our eye on now nineteen year-old Aussie director Nicholas Carlton since the debut of Austrailia’s first lonelygirl-esque social web show back in November. The series stars Sophie Tilson, Shanrah Wakefield and Richard Askin and is executive produced by Darryl Carlton. Catch our recent coverage about OzGirl’s DVD launch.

Psycho Bob

The AV Club’s Andrew Cochrane has developed an experimental “Sunday comic strip” storytelling technique for this series about the adventures of a psychopath named Bob. The series stars Sean Bury, Marie Lively, Nick Clark, Jesse Jones, Nick Armstrong, Evan Gaustad, Douglas Sarine, Mary Pat Farrell, James Applebury, Mark Rogers, Matt Wyatt, Phil King, Kevin Ford, Jillian Batherson, and is produced by Craig Bauer.

Sometimes the best stories don’t need to be made up, since history is littered with untold gems. Like, say that time the CIA thought it would be a good idea to test their new mind control drugs (LSD) on unsuspecting “recruits.”

A new web series from the team at Strange Science, Operation Midnight Climax, tackles this questionable time in post-war US history.

This of course naturally allows for some rather vivid visual shots in the web series, and the stylized 50′s sets and camera effects definitely take us along for the trip. The cast is stocked with veteran TV actors—Quinton Flynn plays CIA spook Jake Kowalski and Todd Cahoon stars as his former Army pal Reed Spencer. The pilot episode (above) takes us through the setup of one of the brothels and the recruiting of four “lovely lieutenants” : Millie (Meredith Salenger), June (Stephanie Lemelin), Ethel (Jessica Myerson) and Bea (Vernetra Gavin) who lure in their subjects. Director Zach Jordan (Joe Digital, Inc.) helmed the project which was written by Ramesh Thadani.

Look, CNBC, we applaud your new web series efforts but your years of sensationalist stock hyping isn’t going to get swept under the run that easy. The launch of the network’s new 10-episode web series this week, Boom, Bust & Blame, is a small start to deconstructing this mess of a financial crisis.

You got to love the poll that asks visitors to the site who is to blame for the financial crisis. Notably missing amongst the choices? These so-named ‘financial entertainment’ media outlets like CNBC itself. Apparently self-aware critical review is not part of the script.

For many of us, it’s been years since we sat in a science or math classroom and explored the material bases of our universe. And then, even if we were engaged by the material being studied, the seemingly esoteric language of symbols posed a daunting barrier to further progress. In other instances, poor instruction may [...]

The world does not need another dating webseries. At least not after Hell Froze Over, which is pretty much the last word on the subject. Protag Jody, played to perfection by Tracy Clifton, has decided to date every man she’s ever rejected and we get to watch. That’s the show and as an idea,…eh, as they say, it’s all in the execution. And, well, here it’s executed pretty well.

I’ll start off by saying that some eps are uneven. Production quality isn’t stellar by any means. Some perfs could use a little brushing up. In short, it ain’t perfect. But it’s very watchable, likeable and sometimes dead funny. And, frankly, Tracy Clifton, is f’ing good. Her timing, delivery and her basic portrayal of the oddly oddball Jody who seems to have no awareness of her oddity, is simply genius. Clifton has real star quality, and I don’t say that lightly.

The other standout for the series is the writer J Wilder Konschak. He has an uncanny ability to jump the shark in every episode with Jody’s reject dates. From a white-suit wearing psychopath that Jody seems to find irresistible in episode one to a persistent bleeder in the season 1 finale, there is not one dull apple in the whole rotten bunch.