Tubefilter News

NBC’s Heroes is no stranger to web series, having had internet tie-ins since season 1. But what’s unique about this television/new media relationship is that each inception of the online counterpart has continued to push the boundaries in terms of how much crossover occurs between the main series and concurrent web series. It’s last installment, Nowhere Man, took a main character from the show, Eric Doyle (played by David H. Lawrence), continued his journey online, and then returned him to the main show to finish out his storyline.

In it’s latest incarnation, NBC plans to push the envelop even further by creating a number of multi-media elements to the new series including one-minute scenes airing online directly tied to the on-air story, interactive SMS synced to broadcast, a Heroes survival game, graphic novels for mobile devices, and a $25,000 sweepstakes which links the interactive story.

The actual storyline of the new series is still mostly wrapped in mystery but it will revolve around a carnival and the people with extraordinary powers that run it, including a new character introduced in the web series that will then appear on Heroes this season – the daughter to carnival member Lydia (played by Dawn Olivieri). Like her mother, Lydia will have a power of her own. An additional three characters from the series also play a part in the web series. (information via IGN TV) This “Carnival of Redemption” was a focal point of the promotion of Heroes at Comic Con, with a fully functional carnival being built across the street from the San Diego Convention Center.

We’ve all heard of the famously shady Hollywood accounting. You know, the kind that moves numbers and dollar signs around until even Titanic somehow fails to make a profit when it comes time to pay out the backend points. Low Budget, a new feature-film-turned-web-series on KoldCast TV from Canadian production company Capital j. Films, has a concept inspired by just such accounting practices.

The series revolves around actor/writer Jaye Wolfgang (Pat Thornton) and director/producer Jason Rosa (Neil Green). They run a fledgling Hollywood production company that’s never actually produced anything besides a stack of unpaid bills. They’re even startled when the phone rings, assuming it had been cut off. But luckily it wasn’t yet, because the voice on the other end of the line is a naïve Canadian producer who hires them site unseen to make a travel series of vacation hotspots in Canada.

This week, NBC Universal Digital Studio launched its second original scripted comedy series In Gayle We Trust, following up on the early success of Tony Hale starring CTRL. Written by Brent Forrester (NBC’s The Office), the series centers on the lives of the fictional residents of Maple Grove. Tying all these unique personalities together is insurance agent Gayle Evans, played by Elisa Donovan (Clueless, Beverly Hills, 90210, Sabrina The Teenage Witch), whose love of her job is infectious to those around her.

“In Gayle We Trust is at the center of our desire to create compelling original digital entertainment with brands,” said Cameron Death, VP of NBC Universal Digital Studio in a release. “We’re excited to have American Family Insurance on board as the exclusive sponsor of this intriguing and quirky new series.”

The branding of the show is straight-forward and to-the-point: Gayle is an American Family Insurance provider and the majority of the episodes focus around her selling different types of policies to her friends and neighbors of Maple Grove. But the clever writing and the cast of talented actors keep it from feeling like one big advertisement. Take for example one character’s answer to inquiring about whether he needs to purchase identity insurance: “Do you sell identity insurance? … Because as a plumber, my identity is pretty irresistible.”

Fresh off of Breakdown Services today is a casting breakdown for what appears to be a feature film version of YouTube’s most viewed web series, Fred. The complete breakdown is below and it looks like they are casting the supporting roles Bertha, Judy and Kevin with the title role of high-pitched teenager Fred Figglehorn presumably going to 16 year-old Lucas Cruikshank.

There’s not much else to go off of here. The production company, Derf Films, seems to have been set up just for this project (Derf is Fred backwards). Director Clay Weiner has his own popular YouTube channel, mittymoo, and this looks like his first feature after a steady resume of branded spots through Biscuit Filmworks. Casting director Sheryl Levine seems a good choice to cast precocious teenagers having cast Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh and Zoey 101.

We recently learned that Fred/Lucas draws in a healthy six-figure income from the YouTube series, but making a feature seems like a no brainer. On a side note, we noticed that Fred is actually no longer the most subscribed channel on YouTube, with comedian Ryan Higa ousting him from the spot.

At the launch of the new season BFF, MySpace boasted about the success of season 1, saying that “we got over 6 million views” for the teen game show web series. We often report these numbers as the truth, given that there’s no real auditing of them and for better or worse they are technically accurate. But who’s kidding who?

Much to our chagrin, we noticed an auto-playing full episode of BFF cranking away within the MySpace player tucked inside an ad unit on Jon Heder’s IMDB page yesterday. So naturally we clicked on it and were taken to episode 2 of the new season and saw an astonishing 595,404 “total views” listed above the video. Total number of comments (a good indicator of whether or not video views are organic)—9. Just 9 out of the nearly 600,000 people were moved enough to leave a comment.

Sony’s Crackle.com announced its fall lineup today and as expected, the Jon Heder lead zombie comedy Woke Up Dead is the headlining web series in the bunch. The online network is known for rolling out new 13-week seasons four times a year, and this new slate has just three new original series in it. The other two newcomers, Groundlings comedy Hardline: Inside the Idaho Sex Cult and Barry Sonnenfeld’s The Esquire Digital Man join the weekly returning series Anytime with Bob Kushell, Penn Says and My Long Distance Relationship.

The most touted is clearly Woke Up Dead from web vets Electric Farm Entertainment (Gemini Division, Afterworld, Valemont), which first popped up in development last summer. After finally lensing earlier this summer, the series calls itself a “re-imagining of the zombie mythology” with Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) plays a USC college student thrust into a world of zombie powers after accidentally dying and waking up, well, dead. Expectations are high for this one with co-starring comedians Josh Gad, Krysten Ritter, Wayne Knight and Jean Smart rounding out the cast.

We’ll have a more in-depth look at Woke Up Dead coming soon from our on-set visit with the producers, Stan Rogow and Brent Friedman and stars of the series before it premieres on October 5.

With over 1.6 million hits on YouTube, The Fine Brothers’ “100 Movie Spoilers in 5 Minutes” is a prime example of true viral video success. Plus, it delivers what it’s title promises. The follow up, which was purposely released right before this year’s Oscars, spoiled all of the Best Picture winners in Academy Awards History and has near 500,000 total views.

This time around, Benny and Rafi Fine are tackling television in the latest installment of their Spoilers series. Released in honor of the upcoming Emmys and beginning with this year’s nominees for Best Drama and Comedy, no genre is safe from spoilage…including anime, kids shows, early cancellations, and sci-fi (…Felicity?). We also learn Rafi’s true feeling about Winnie Cooper. Having been released yesterday, the video is already racking up the views and with the Fine Brothers past successes and loyal fanbase, this installment will most likely go viral as well.

How would you like to meet a leech specialist who is searching for a rare leech that lives only in the backsides of hippos? Or a scientist that plays in a rock band called “Harry and the Potters”? How about an engineer who is an All-American pole-vaulter and Free Runner?

Thanks to Nova’s new web-only series The Secret Life of Scientists, you can meet all these fascinating people and more. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Secret Life of Scientists will highlight a total of 32 scientists and engineers over the next two years. Series producer Joshua Seftel had this to say about creating the series: “I was making a film about cancer research a few years ago and I was meeting these scientists, these researchers who were incredible. They were Noble Prize winners and making great breakthroughs in their fields. And I thought, ‘why don’t I know anything about these people?’ … Yet I know the kind of iced tea Tara Reid drinks. No offense to these people … I just feel like we consume so much info about (celebrities) yet we know nothing about the scientists that are making such huge contributions to our world.”