Tubefilter News

Last night’s Los Angeles premiere of Easy to Assemble season 2 was everything you would expect in a sophomore debut—bigger, brasher and beaming. For the gawkers on Hollywood Blvd. peering onto the red carpet outside the Egyptian Theater, most probably thought they were scoping out a movie premiere as stars like Keanu Reeves, Kevin Pollack, Justine Bateman and Harry Shearer casually strolled past the check-in tables with cameras flashing.

The new season of the IKEA backed web series, which kicks off today, is a classic season long face-off. Picking up essentially were things left off last season, Illeana Douglas and Justine Bateman both still work at the Burbank IKEA store, playing themselves “in between acting jobs.” The rivalry of the two celeb employees squares off around the coveted Co-worker of the Year title, the retail equivalent of queen bee. It’s a 40 year-old’s Blair vs. Serena.

For the dozens of web video folks at the event, there was a underlying buzz that Hollywood is starting to take notice. It had that blend of celebrity, both online and off, last seen at the Streamy Awards. The fusion on the red carpet of web stars and traditional celebs kept the publicists extra busy, but ultimately scored the event a win in both camps. It was easy to forget this was a premiere for a web series.

Ask a Ninja creators Kent Nichols and Doug Sarine make more than just a cameo midway through the season, playing themselves and eventually making a special pro-Illeana video with the Ninja. Other cast members on hand at the premiere were Tom Arnold, Daryl Sabara, Sean Durrie, Cheri Oteri, Kent Nichols, Michael Irpino (who came in full costume), Todd Spahr and Rob Mailhouse.

Some people cringe when you refer to the web as a development ground (or minor leagues) for TV. And rightly so, the moniker is too limiting for what amounts to a super-fragemented online community of millions of avid surfers. Not every web series is meant for TV. That doesn’t stop network development execs from scouring video sites for the latest tweet-worthy vids.

With tonight’s premiere of Secret Girlfriend on Comedy Central, we have the latest data point to test the development lab theory. What started as a mobile phone series, that was later released as a web series through Atomic Wedgie, was able to catch the eye of development execs enough to order up six half-hour episodes.

The show’s creators, Jay Rondot and Ross Novie, have been at the online content game for a while, finding some success with their series The Rascal for Sony’s Crackle as well as the mobile-turned-web series for Fremantle that would become Secret Girlfriend, the TV series.

The concept of the series takes the same viewer-as-the-first-person perspective as the web series, albeit drawn out into two 11-minute chunks per episode. Sara E. R. Fletcher, who starred in the web series, takes the leading role as the viewer’s “secret girlfriend” Jessica sending frequent video voicemails to you while hanging out with your stuck-up ex-girlfriend Mandy (Alexis Krause) or your web video wannabe roommates Sam (Michael Blaiklock) and Phil (Derek Miller).

The latest addition to a long line of new media forays backed by major media compaines is Fox Television Studio’s 15 Gigs, which recently sponsored a coveted prize at the New York Television Festival. While covering the festival, I had a chance to sit down and chat with two of 15 Gigs’ executives, Ilsa Berg, Director of Programming and Rachel Webber, Director of Digital Strategy and Development. We wanted to know what exactly they are planning to succeed in a space still looking for its go-to model.

Portfolio Approach

Fox Television Studios, Fox’s cable production arm, best known for edgy shows like The Shield and Burn Notice, is taking a different approach to creating a new media branch with 15 Gigs. “[We're] not in the business of creating a destination site” proclaimed Webber, such as Sony’s Crackle, perhaps to avoid competing with parent-backed Hulu. Also, they are not strictly sticking to branded entertainment like NBC’s Digital Studio. They are looking more towards a diversified portfolio strategy, and as a company under Fox’s cable production arm, they are expecting to launch some of their web series to cable television. Don’t get the idea that they are trying to produce TV content squished into a YouTube box either, like ABC/Disney’s failed attempt, Stage 9. While their series thus far have not completely leveraged the internet’s key difference from TV, interactivity, the series they have put out have been compelling and have explored new formats. A few examples from their current slate:

Tease, a dramedy set in a strip club, definitely something not necessarily fit for TV.
The Iceman Chronicles is an absurd thriller who-done-it in the vein of Twin Peaks
The Skinny: Fat Free News, a satirical pop culture news show with many scripted moments featuring two comically vapid hosts.
When Ninjas Attack is a scripted mock-game show in the vein of G4′s Ninja Warrior, only a little more ridiculous

We knew we hadn’t seen the last of the engine room on the US Azureas when things left in a black hole cliffhanger this past spring. Sci-fi comedy web series The Crew is coming back for a second season next week after singing an exclusive deal with online video site Babelgum.

For creator Brett Register, who had been using the hiatus from the show to roll out a number of short experimental web series like Craig and the Werewolf, he said he is excited to be able to pay his talent and crew this time around.

“We were indeed able to pay everyone who worked on the show this season, which was amazing as the tagline when producing season one was, ‘don’t worry about money, we’ll all get paid in season two,’” quipped Register. “Who knew that’d turn out to be true!”

While it’s not exactly TV-level money going around, it is in fact a step up in terms of production budgets and actors’ salaries. The indie mockumentary series had previously camped out with online network KoldCast TV before signing the larger money deal, reportedly in the mid-five figures, with Babelgum for the twelve-episode new season.

For Season 2, the full original cast will be returning, including Craig Frank, Philip Bache, Ariel Lazarus and Register himself. As with most web series on their second go-round, some new notables have joined the cast, like former lonelygirl15 star Jessica Rose, and a slew of web names as guest stars—Robin Thorsen (The Guild), Benny Fine (The Fine Brothers), Tom Konkle (Safety Geeks: SVI) and Payman Benz (Awkward Pictures). Register’s longtime cohort Tim Riese is back as DP of the green screen comedy.

The majority of NYTVF was dedicated to screenings including everything from in competition pilots, web series premieres, and even specialty screenings like Channel 101 NY. A good portion of the in competition pilots can be found on NYTVF’s MSN Video channel. They will host the pilots for the next few weeks, including the festival winners. To wrap up our coverage of NYTVF, we thought we would share six unreleased web series you may have missed that should be popping up online soon.

Johnny B. Homeless, the people’s choice winner at the festival, follows creator and star, Al Thompson, playing the titular Johnny B., “The world’s Greatest Couchsurfer.” In the pilot, Al’s friend and SNL star, Kenan Thompson, plays Johnny B.’s arch-rival. The show follows Johnny as he attempts to win back a coveted spot on his friend’s couch while being constantly sabotaged by Kenan’s character. This series hit home for me as while in NYC, I, of course, couch surfed my way through the city from friend to friend. Expect this series to do big things very soon, I’m told they are currently weighing a number of online distribution offers.

A group of teenagers discover an old well hidden in a derelict house. They of course take a look at what is inside…and end up disturbing something very sinister indeed. And here’s the fun part: the audience has the chance to stay a step ahead of the characters in this creepy tale.

Written by British author Melvin Burgess – dubbed ‘the godfather of young adult fiction – The Well is a four-week drama collaboration between the BBC and Conker Media created for BBC Two, bbc.co.uk and Bebo. As episodes are released on BBC Two, additional tasks and challenges will be released online designed to reveal backstory or to uncover mysteries within the show. For instance, at one point a character hides an item in the house on TV and the audience can immediately go to a 3D replica of the house online in order to solve a puzzle to uncover the hidden item.

In a press release, writer Melvin Burgess spoke about how The Well is an excellent fit for the transmedia experience: “A ghost story is perfect for this, because at the heart of every ghost story is a mystery waiting to be solved – a back story, about how the horror arose and others in the past who have brought it back to life.”

The October countdown is on for MWG’s supernatural thriller web series, Camera Obscura which is now just a week away. The new exclusive preview content out today includes the first continuous clip from the series, a minute’s worth of an episode, which gives another brief tease into this dark chiller from director Drew Daywalt.

Reagan Dale Neis stars as Clara who gets left an old book from her grandfather (Jack Klugman) that turns out to be filled with some nasty creatures from a parallel dimension. Opening the book lets them loose and that means Clara must take grandpa’s old camera with the help of an LA police detective (Donnie Jeffcoat) and recapture those bad boys, Ghostbusters style.

Also out is a short behind-the-scenes look at how the heck they pulled off those special makeup and creature effects. The show’s special effects EPK (below) is worth a look if that’s your thing and you want to try to reverse engineer that Splinter fellow (pictured right). Creature effects artist Jeffrey S. Farley of Obscure Artifacts handles the effects and Dirk Von Besser and Mikal Sky crafting the makeup and sculpting.

It’s not exactly coincidence that today’s launch of Sony’s zombie comedy web seriesWoke Up Dead comes on the heels of the company’s box-office-winning $25 million opening weekend for Zombieland. In fact it was pretty much by design. With its debut on Crackle today, the Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) led comedy is the latest example of how the studios are starting the work their digital properties into the synergistic business mix, capitalizing on buzz from one property to drive interest in another.

The series is touted as the tentpole of Crackle’s fall lineup, one that is slimmed down from previous seasons to feature just a handful of premium, more polished online series from Sony Pictures Television. It’s the latest from online creative shop Electric Farm Entertainment, the guys behind web series like NBC’s Gemini Division and more recently MTV’s Valemont.

Heder stars as a six-year USC grad turned office drone, Drex Greene, who suffers an inexplicable accident that leaves him, well, undead. Now a confused newbie zombie, Drex tries to figure out what exactly is going on with the help of his wannabe filmmaker roommate Matt (Josh Gad) and an eager young med student turned love interest, Cassie (Krysten Ritter).

We had a chance to head to set this summer and catch a day of shooting at their downtown LA warehouse set. Electric Farm’s Stan Rogow, a veteran TV producer in his own right, is now considered a Web TV veteran with a number of commercially successful projects under his belt. He talked about the comedy heavyweights they were able to assemble for the cast which alongside Heder, Gad and Ritter include Wayne Knight (Seinfeld), Jean Smart (Samantha Who?), Meital Dohan (Weeds) Daniel Roebuck and even web star Taryn Southern (Private High Musical, Sorority Forever).