Tubefilter News

Lots of chatter this week about live web series, but who says scripted series can’t have a little live streaming fun too? The Legend of Neil dropped its season 2 finale (above) yesterday and followed it up with a live chat last night on UStream with the cast that drew over 10,000 total viewers. First watch the episode to see if the show’s involuntary protagonist Neil/Link (Tony Janning) will ever get princess Zelda (Angie Hill) out of the hands of the evil Lord Gannon and his lackey Wizrobe.

Highlights from the live chat, which featured Janning and co-creator Sandeep Parikh and cast members Felicia Day, Angie Hill, Mike Rose and Eric Acosta will be posted on Atom later today.

Legend of Neil is clearly the online network’s biggest original series hit so far—check out the tagline under the Atom.com logo (right). The Comedy Central owned site is doing their part to market the series, at least in an online fashion, with a series of posts on the site giving fans some behind-the-scenes action like a two-part director’s commentary. An excerpt from Parikh, who also stars as Zaboo on The Guild, adds some color to the remarkably raunchy musical episode (below) starring Felicia Day as the Fairy.

What a night last night—thank you to everyone who made it out to the sold out Tubefilter Hollywood Web TV Meetup, the night was teeming with creative energy. It started off with a packed panel session, “Going LIVE!” where we got into the nuts and bolts of live streaming web series. The entire panel, which can be watched now on demand (above), reached over 700 concurrent viewers on the live stream through Stickam.com and here on Tubefilter News. A higher-res version of the panel will be available soon.

We took a clue from panelist Tyler Crowley’s live web series, This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis, and did what Jason calls “making love to the sponsors.” So you might catch a few shout-outs to our sensational sponsors—Ooyala, AMD, Sony Creative Software, Showbiz Software, and Blip.tv. As fellow panelist Brian Gramo of TheStream.TV quipped, “you can’t TiVo past that” when we showed the sponsors some love.

In all over 550 attendees made it out to the Meetup, all buzzing with a renewed energy that brighter times are here for web series. You could feel it and see it in the faces of creators and enthusiasts in the room. Rob Welkner of Coin-Op TV Live made a nice writeup of the Meetup, with his co-host Hailey Bright on the panel. As Welkner concluded,

I’ve been to a ton of panels on the Future of Web Series Production, but most of them take place at conferences like Digital Hollywood, which are dedicated to new media. On Sunday, October 11th, independent film organization Film Independent (FIND) got into the act at the FIND Filmmaker Forum with a panel entitled “Going Online: New Stories for New Media.”

In the midst of a weekend filled with sessions covering the art and business of indie film, the panel gave the producers, writers and directors in attendance a look into the possibilities the smallest screen has to offer. The session was specifically focused on creating content for the web, as opposed to using the web as a means of distribution for feature films. Producer Ami Armstrong (Mr. Nice) moderated, and panelists included Jonathan Stern (Producer, Centrifugal Films), David Worthen (Sr. Vice President, Fox Digital Studio), Scott Sanders (Director, Black Dynamite) and Mike Farah (Producer, Funny or Die).

Armstrong kicked off the session with the question, “Who’s actually watching all these videos online?” The general consensus was that while so far the young male demo has dominated, there is an emerging female audience for web content. Panelists cited breakout shows In the Motherhood, an MSN online original that was picked up for broadcast television by ABC, and Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy.

Stern, producer of Wainy Days, Children’s Hospital and Hot Sluts, says that he is starting to put together a few shows created by women over 30. “It’s almost easier to get a female-driven show going right now,” says Stern, “because the sponsors are looking for it. The Axe’s of the world already have a foothold in that space.”

Cheers took half a year to become the show we all remember and love. Seinfeld took an entire season to find its groove. New series often need your patience as they figure out what they are, and if you hang in there you might just be rewarded with truly unique programming. New TV shows these days tend to be cancelled before ever firing on all cylinders, but this is the web and we do things a little different here. My experience with The Fast Foodie is a great example.

The Fast Foodie is a comedy mockumentary starring Jerry Duppa (Hannes Phinney), “America’s preeminent fast food journalist.” Each episode follows Jerry, almost always from inside his trusty Volvo, as he scours the streets in search of fast food delicacies to write about on his blog. The series is the creation of writer-producer-director-editor-hyphenate Matthew Bardocz who shares the writing duties with Phinney, and is produced independently on what appears to be a shoestring budget.

I was excited when I first heard the concept. In a world filled with Yelps and Chowhounds, we all know “foodie” types who fetishize Korean BBQ and obsess over where to truly find the country’s best crab cakes, and this seemed like the perfect way to satirize them. But unfortunately the first four or five episodes disappointed me. Sure, Jerry ate lots of fast food, but I didn’t feel the foodie element. He just talked about how he enjoys a McRib (eww) or a Butter Burger (double eww), but not in that elitist nitpicky way in which real foodies boast about how only they know where to find the most authentic fish tacos in the Southwest.

We’re live streaming, right now, from the October Tubefilter Hollywood Web TV Meetup from Busby’s East! Time to get down and dirty about the future of live streaming web television. Watch as we talk to our panel of live streaming experts, cut through the hype, and drill down on what could be next big trend in web series. We’ll cover:

Tools, tech and platforms – which one is best?
Engaging and interacting with a live audience
What content is best for live streaming
Making money on live streaming shows
Production tips from the pros
Going LIVE! Panel:

Hailey Bright, Co-Host, Coin-Op TV Live
Drew Baldwin, Producer, The Streamy Awards (and Tubefilter co-founder)
Brian Gramo, Founder, theStream.tv
Tyler Crowley, Executive Producer, Mahalo Daily, This Week in Startups
Bismarck Lepe, Founder, Ooyala
Moderator: Marc Hustvedt, Editor-in-Chief, Tubefilter News

Today we have a little news of our own. Ok we didn’t break the story, PaidContent did, but why not hear it again from the source? Tubefilter announced today that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Tilzy.TV. The New York-based media company, founded by Jamison Tilsner and Josh Cohen, has been an integral part of the web video scene since early 2007.

This is a new chapter for Tubefilter as a company. We’re bringing onto the team a pair of experienced and passionate co-founders in Josh Cohen and Jamison Tilsner. These guys get it, and share a deep concern for the web creative community. As of today articles from the Tilzy.TV site have been migrated over to Tubefilter News and are now integrated into the site with a decal to indicate articles that were originally published on Tilzy.TV.

Sure, there was a friendly East Coast-West Coast thing between Tubefilter and Tilzy, but at our core we all firmly believe in the same thing—that there’s something monumental happening with the birth of open web entertainment. That’s what brought us together, along with NewTeeVee, to co-host the first ever Streamy Awards this past March.

There’s no question the set-top box market is a crowded one. It’s also a messy one, with conflicting interests with the cable co’s tying up the race to true convergence in our living rooms. But Roku might be pulling off a sneak-around with its next rollout bringing on a whole new crop streaming original web content.

I have one of these scrappy, nondescript $99 boxes sitting on top of my underused Apple TV. So far the Linux-based interface is light, but the real winner has to be its deftly simple clicker. That, and Roku might have found the sweet spot at $99, much less than Netgear’s pricey $179 option.

For the most part, Roku’s swift sales, which were recently quoted in the “multiple hundreds of thousands” of units, are closely tied to the rollout of Netflix’s popular streaming movie service. (It hooked me) The tech inside the box was actually developed by its founder Anthony Wood seven years ago while he was still working at Netflix.

Now the privately held (and profitable) company is adding content partners beyond its initial three—Netfilx, Amazon Video on Demand and MLB.TV—and some notable web series shops are getting front billing. The latest to jump on is online network Revision3, who’s CEO Jim Louderback announced the deal on Friday, even showed off a demo on the latest TekZilla episode (above).

Back in July came word that web series distributor Blip.tv had inked a deal that would send its thousands of web series to Roku boxes. (Disclosure: Blip.tv is a sponsor of the Tubefilter Web TV Meetup) Also joining them on the next upgrade—dubbed The Roku Channel Store—will be Mediafly, MotionBox and even Leo Laporte’s TWiT TV.

As to when exactly this new upgrade will hit the boxes, Roku’s Brian Jaquet said the launch is “very soon,” but didn’t specify a date. So no word whether it will be out in time for Netflix’s first stab at web series, Splatter, which is set for a Halloween debut. With more content, the simplicity factor does stand to wane a bit, but apparently some new personalization tools will help make management of shows to watch a little easier.

Fall Web TV Week is finally here! It kicks off tonight with the October edition of the Tubefilter Hollywood Web Television Meetup in Los Angeles at 7:00 PM. The night gets under way with a special sold-out “Going LIVE!” panel all about live streaming web series streamed LIVE at 7:20 on Stickam and right here on Tubefilter.

Going LIVE! Panel:

Hailey Bright, Co-Host, Coin-Op TV Live
Drew Baldwin, Producer, The Streamy Awards (and Tubefilter co-founder)
Brian Gramo, Founder, theStream.tv
Tyler Crowley, Exec. Producer, Mahalo Daily, This Week in Startups, Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show
Bismarck Lepe, Founder, Ooyala
Moderator: Marc Hustvedt, Editor-in-Chief, Tubefilter News

Spotted on the Meetup RSVP list…

Private High Musical’s Taryn Southern..The Guild’s Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Sandeep Parikh, Sean Becker and Kim Evey…The Bannen Way creators Mark Gantt and Jesse Warren….Blip.tv founders Mike Hudack and Dina Kaplan…lonelygirl15′s Jessica Rose and Yousef Abu-Taleb…Legend of Neil’s Tony Janning…The Crew’s Brett Register, Craig Frank, Angie Cole and Cathy Baron…EPIC-FU’s Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf….Prom Queen creators Chris McCaleb, Ryan Wise and Douglas Cheney…Saftey Geeks’ Dave Beeler and Tom Konkle…Coin-Op TV’s Robert Welkner and Hailey Bright…EQAL co-founders Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett…A Comicbook Orange’s Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan…The Fine Brothers…This Week in YouTube’s Lon Harris..Next New Networks’ co-founder Tim Shey…The Burg’s Matt Yaeger…Elevator’s Woody Tondorf…Harper’s Globe’s Melanie Merkosky…With the Angels’ Carly Jones….and many, many more!