Tubefilter News

Props to Elon Musk for stepping up as guinea pig number one on the new season of The Valley Girl Show which premiered today. Ok, maybe it’s not so ballsy considering last season’s guests, but for the founder of both electric car darling Tesla and rocket maker SpaceX, you have to think he’s turned down interviews from considerably more credible outlets.

Officially, the pitch line they are sporting is, “imagine if Reese Witherspoon’s character in Legally Blonde had taken Silicon Valley instead of Harvard Law-and been brunette-and you have the Valley Girl.”

This smart girl playing dumb (or is it a smart girl playing a dumb-sounding smart girl?) has been tried before. There’s a earnest charm reminiscent of Kim Evey’s Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, though Draper’s Valley Girl character doesn’t commit as fully to the archetype. Nor does it play up the awkwardly comedic tension of Citizen Kate, which skillfully played the blonde girl interviewing top politicos on last year’s presidential campaign.

While we’re on the subject of promo videos for web series, we couldn’t pass up this latest one from the guys up at Diggnation. Sure, sitting down for a full episode of Kevin and Alex’s antics can run you about a full hour of your day, but a one-minute promo is sometimes all you need to remind you to check back in on the boys.

Host Kevin Rose performs a complete fail of a golf putter chip shot from the stage of their most recent episode, a live show from Phoenix. With co-host Alex Albrecht egging him on, Rose drills the oversize ball smack in the face of an innocent audience member, prompting a justified use of Keyboard Cat. (If you’re one of the three people on the internet that doesn’t get this ref, then study up over at another useful web series, Rocketboom’s spinoff series Know Your Meme.)

We were messing around on YouTube recently, cause that’s what we do, and stumbled across a curt little promo video of a flabby fellow running through a field lugging an old TV. Turns out this ‘TVs are heavy’ lesson was a promo for an upcoming web series, though it might as well be our new Tubefilter mantra. Unabashed. Stalwart. Practical.

Promos are key to snatching attention in an ever-crowded sea of budding web series, and the guys behind MacAwesome only needed to 36 seconds to grab ours. Co-creator Graham Bowlin plays Shannon Abercrombie, the twentysomething bonehead 80’s TV jogger in the spot. As it turns out, the series isn’t just another clan of ironically-dressed acting class buddies riffing each other. It’s actually one of the few web series centered around an underage kid.

hat becomes a little more obvious in the second promo (below), a longer form intro to homeschooled protagonist Josh Dove. The 17 year-old high school senior has to survive life at an actual school with an assortment of oddball characters. That, and he’s trying to land the lead role in the school play (Shakespeare’s Macbeth) to score his dream girl (Sydney Shepherd).

For half of the team behind the series, Bowlin and director Andrew Mitchell, MacAwesome is actually their second web original, having made the zombie comedy series American Heart last year that also found a home on KoldCast.

Do you know what a Hedge Fund is? I don’t. And neither do the boys at the Claude S. Dutchy, LLC hedge fund. But, damnit, they’re determined to make it rich enough to race Lamborghinis, orbit earth in space, swim with their pet mako sharks and have orgies! Or so, Claude says in episode two of this uneven, yet satisfying web series, Hedge Fund.

Creator, writer and director Chris Murray conceived the idea a couple of years ago, ‘while the economy was strong and money was flowing’ about four slackers without a clue who decide for no good reason to start a hedge fund. The boys operate out of their one bedroom apartment in Manhattan concocting angles to success that include uber-skinny jeans, croissandwiches and one bogus ten million dollar promissory note.

The brains behind the operation, Claude Thornbush, played by Tyler Evans, gets the bright idea in the premise pilot after overhearing a couple of real hedge funders discussing space trips, orgies and Lamborghini’s in the bathroom at the restaurant where he waits tables. Evans, it should be noted is the bread, butter and the glue of this show. Without trying to be hyperbolic, I’ll liken him to Will Ferrell both in his portrayal of a character with unfounded, yet unbounded confidence, and his comedic delivery. This guy is hilarious and one of the main reasons to watch the show.

So maybe you’re on summer vacay and skipped a few days of your Tubefilter fix this week. (Lucky you.) So it being Friday we’re once again recapping the top web series news of the week. Monday started off with the release of the highly anticipated Legend of Neil musical episode on Atom. It’s one of the only web series eps we’ve actually felt obliged to drop the NSFW warning on just to look out for our office-locked readers. The 9-minute episode (above) so far is coming in at over 138,000 views—not bad at all for week one of a mid-season.

There was also our unabridged roundtable discussion on just what the heck the oft-used ‘Branded Entertainment’ buzzword is all about. As brands dip more toes in the web video content pool, there’s no shortage of opinions about what this means. It’s a long one, but well worth bookmarking for some weekend reading.

And of course we can’t ignore the fact that The Guild launched season 3 on Xbox on Tuesday before its wider (MSN/Zune) launch next week on September 1. The popular series also quietly nabbed a retail DVD deal by the same company that put the Dr. Horrible DVD on the shelves earlier this year.

And finally, several examples of network TV turning to the web to find fans for their fall lineups, including a prequel web series for CW’s The Vampire Diaries and a web series/ARG for ABC’s FlashForward.

On October 6, 2009 at 2 PM Pacific Standard Time, everyone on the planet blacked out at exactly the same time (called the Global Blackout or GBO). During the 2 minutes and 17 seconds that passed, every person experienced a vision of where and what they were doing on April 29, over 6 months later. These visions are deemed by a government task force created to investigate the GBO as FlashForwards.

And thus begins the ABC series named after these visions: FlashForward. Co-created by Blade and The Dark Knight writer David S. Goyer and Star Trek writer/producer Brannon Braga, the series is slated to premiere on September 24th. But like a few other television and film projects, the series is integrating an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) to promote and build a community around the series. Using Internet videos, live events, original websites, and social networking sites, the FlashForward ARG strives to give players a truly immersive experience.

The game is currently two-pronged, having begun on July 23 with the launching of TruthHack.com, a video blog series reporting on the Global Blackout and run by Oscar Obregon, who according to his bio is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and author of the international bestsellers Parties/Over and Fire Sale.

Could the co-dependent relationship between Hollywood development execs and writers be any more dysfunctional? Like most Tinseltown marriages, it’s born from mutual desires and devolves quickly to a strained partnership. To get their projects produced, writers need the execs, and to find new projects, execs need the writers. They can endure long separations and even [...]

This wasn’t initially intended as a Q&A interview, as we don’t usually do that about a web series that hasn’t even been fully shot yet and doesn’t even have any major distribution lined up. But sometimes you have to break the rules to get to the good stuff. Zack Finfrock makes a great case study of an indie web series creator starting where a whole host of other would-be web stars are too—with an idea, a teaser trailer, limited resources, oh and some unusually talented friends.

Finfrock’s series, Emerson Wild, centers around a young man (Emerson) who’s taken it upon himself to hunt monsters, trudging his way up the ranks of the monster hunting community. We’ve seen similar stabs at this casual, everyman play on superhero bureaucracy, most recently with Captain Alpha Male and The Junior League of Superheroes. As of now only a (long) trailer is out, which could even pass as episode 1. With just over 15,000 views on YouTube since its release last month, a few people have taken notice.

Do you have the cast/crew list available? I noticed the ubiquitous Craig Frank in there.
Finfrock: Hahah, yeah, Craig Frank. Well, we have a great cast and crew list available on our website, www.emersonwild.com. I’ve actually recruited Tim Reise, Brett Register and Craig Frank thanks to my time as Crewman Anderson on The Crew. I met Brett while we were extras on The Guild in season 2. I ended up redoing the backgrounds for Brett for The Crew, and a friendship grew from there.

I’ve also been very fortunate to meet and work with Vincent Guastini, our creature effects creator. He’s a very talented, very professional guy. He’s been in the monster effects business for over 20 years, and his enthusiasm for Emerson Wild has been amazing. If it wasn’t for the fact he also sees big things in Monster Hunter, we wouldn’t have our “lobster” in that preview.