by Marc Hustvedt on August 13th, 2009
It’s kind of surprising that it took this long actually. Hosted web series are everywhere these days, reviewing everything from comicbooks, movies, video games and even street food vendors. So it’s only fitting that the this month has seen the launch of two new smart phone application review web series—Revision3′s new series, AppJudgment, and indie entry iPhun.
AppJudgment is an in-house creation that will rotate hosts through known Rev3 personalities like co-founder David Prager, iFanBoy host Ron Richards, and TekZilla and HD Nation host Patrick Norton. The new series joins the network’s growing slate of tech and internet friendly hosted web series which includes standout hit Diggnation.
Cranking out about 6 million views per month, Revision3 as a network has the edge here in terms of reach. But don’t rule out the iPhun.tv series which has its own heavyweight team behind it—internet ‘troublemaker’ Sean Bonner hosting, web series vet Rudy Jahchan (Galacticast, A Comicbook Orange) directing, and even Ask A Ninja creator Kent Nichols editing. I asked producer Tara Brown about the plans for the newly-launched site and the series.
by Alex Crowley on August 12th, 2009
Remember John Norris, formerly of MTV News? When I was a wee lad, MTV played (oftentimes good) music and had their own half-hour news program co-anchored by Tabitha Soren and Kurt Loder (who now also has his own web thing going on). Norris was one of the later alternate faces of MTV News – along [...]
by Marc Hustvedt on August 12th, 2009
Celebrity impressions are always good for a chuckle. Rarely though are they good for much more. This one, Cooking with Werner, however, is an exception to the rule. Maybe its because the subject, German filmmaker Werner Herzog, is a such a greenfield of comedic grain ripe for harvest.
You may not recognize him, but you’ve heard this guy— his signature droll narratives dominating his docu-films like Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World. He’s also helmed studio pics like Invincible and Rescue Dawn. And while the actor (Will Maier) playing Herzog is probably about thirty years his junior, his voice is spot-on. Really its a mid-1970′s Herzog.
It beauty is its clever parity, satirizing not only the eccentric filmmaker-poet but this whole celebrity cooking show trend that has a body count over 200 by now. The writing is well-researched, complete with references to a real life bet with doc-maker Errol Morris that ended with Herzog literally eating his shoe. Werner’s guest host, fellow filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, serves as his whipping boy assistant
by Pat Miller on August 12th, 2009
Fans of last year’s election drama alternate-reality game DELETED: The Game will be excited to hear that GEN247 Media have brought the mind-bending series back for another round.
The official DELETED website now has a counter running which (presumably) indicates when the new show, entitled DELETED: Redux, will begin – and, of course, the new game will start. As of this writing, the counter looks like it will end on Saturday, August 15th at 1PM Pacific, though anyone familiar with ARGs knows that things never quite turn out like you’d expect.
In typical ARG fashion, the DELETED: Redux promotional efforts have been minimal; besides the mysterious counter on the website, there’s a recap video of the thirteen-episode DELETED: The Game series that was posted on YouTube.
by Marc Hustvedt on August 11th, 2009
Alloy’s new teen drama web series Private premiered today on Teen.com, kicking off its twenty-episode foray into the web TV waters. With the prequel casting call series completed (Sanna Haynes won the role of Kiran), the scripted boarding school mystery begins. We’ve been following this series since its announcement back in May, and it stands out as one of the only stable business models for web entertainment.
Making the step into web series is a natural move for Alloy Entertainment. This is the studio behind TV’s Gossip Girl and the forthcoming The Vampire Diaries and films like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. For parent company Alloy Media + Marketing, its entertainment arm is just a piece of its play to conquer the young adult market, a market it could be credited with redefining.
“Our lead character Reed (Kelsey Sanders) falls in love with a boy named Thomas (Brant Daugherty) and we have a short window to sell that relationship,” Bank noted. “It’s something we worked on with the writers to make the viewer has an emotional resinant experience in that time frame.”
by Reed Kavner on August 11th, 2009
“I don’t think anyone has ever done this and now we know why,” chuckled director Sinohui Hinojosa after the cameras stopped rolling on the live season finale of his web series sitcom, Exit Stage Left.
by Pat Miller on August 11th, 2009
If you’ve ever described your dream date as having “parsnip toes” or “butternut thighs”, you’re going to like Vegan 101.
Produced, written, and starring Joanne Rose, Vegan 101 is a comedic take on daily life without animal products. So far, there are three episodes up at online network KoldCast TV: “Dating a Vegan” covers the Vegan dating scene, “Veg Book” takes a Vegan twist on social networking and scene gossip, and “Happy Vegan Birthday” portrays a touching couple moment – and the fallout from forgetting some key facts about your partner. The next episode, “The Raw Experience” shows a vegan couple on a blind date to a raw food restaurant. While the characters aren’t consistent from episode to episode, Rose stars in each of them, and invariably brings her visible love for the vegan lifestyle in with her.
by Gennefer Snowfield on August 11th, 2009
One of my core specialties is web series strategy, promotion and branded entertainment experiences that augment show content. As such, I work with a number of web series, many of whom overlap in genre. In a recent DM conversation with a web series producer on Twitter, he mentioned that one of the shows I’m working with is a competitor of his because they are both sci-fi series.
The fact is that most consumers don’t even realize the wealth of web TV that is currently out there, so the underlying issue isn’t competition… it’s discovery. Even as someone immersed in the web series space, I’m not familiar with every single show, or all of the channels for viewing them, which seem to pop up daily.
But online content producers can actually surmount this hurdle collectively by banding together to build the web TV category overall, attract new viewers, and dare I say, share fan bases. Although we’re seeing more longer form content being produced — and consumed — online (according to the recent Pew report), overall webisodes are much shorter than traditional TV, making it even more feasible for viewers to adopt several series within the same genre. And with the added benefit of being able to watch them on their own time.
So, where do you go from here?
