Tubefilter News

Ok, it’s Friday before the holidays, and this is admittedly an innocuous story we’ve been following, but ever since the news of YouTube star Fred’s first full length feature film—Fred: The Movie—getting made, we’ve been hooked. Like which name actor they are casting to play Fred’s dad. Even the New York Times decided to jump on the Fred movie bandwagon with an in-depth look earlier this month. We did learn that “budding British singer and actress” Pixie Lott co-stars.

And what to our wondering eye did appear on craigslist last night, but news that there’s a yard sale in LA’s Silver Lake neighborhood on Sunday for props, set dressing and costumes from the film’s shoot this fall. We’ll probably get up early on Sunday (7 AM start) and attend this, if only to talk to some die hard Fred fans in the flesh. We will try to get some of these fans on the record, perhaps on video, for your enjoyment.

Also for your amusement, we’ve included Fred’s official “Christmas is Creepy” music video (above) which blew past 3 million views this month. The four-track album is available on iTunes and features another popular single “Christmas Cash.”

Fred star Lucas Cruikshank is also attached to star in Emo Boy alongside Jaime King in the movie based on the comic book series from Steve Emond. If you feel like wagering on the success of Fred: The Movie, it’s already trading over at Hollywood Stock Exchange. Today’s quote: $14.22 (up$.13 today), which is off slightly from it $15 “IPO” on November 25th.
And what to our wondering eye did appear on craigslist last night, but news that there’s a yard sale in LA’s Silver Lake neighborhood on Sunday for props, set dressing and costumes from the film’s shoot this fall. We’ll probably get up early on Sunday (7 AM start) and attend this, if only to talk to some die hard Fred fans in the flesh. We will try to get some of these fans on the record, perhaps on video, for your enjoyment.

Also for your amusement, we’ve included Fred’s official “Christmas is Creepy” music video (above) which blew past 3 million views this month. The four-track album is available on iTunes and features another popular single “Christmas Cash.”

Fred star Lucas Cruikshank is also attached to star in Emo Boy alongside Jaime King in the movie based on the comic book series from Steve Emond. If you feel like wagering on the success of Fred: The Movie, it’s already trading over at Hollywood Stock Exchange. Today’s quote: $14.22 (up$.13 today), which is off slightly from it $15 “IPO” on November 25th.

American Idol co-creator Simon Fuller is prepping a reality web/TV hybrid series with Hulu called If I Can Dream, which will follow three aspiring actors, a model and a musician trying to make it in Hollywood. Hulu will stream new episodes each week exclusively on its site when it launches in early 2010. MySpace, Pepsi and Clear Channel are also involved in the project. [THR, NewTeeVee]

Break Media, which owns popular video site Break.com along with a slew of other male-focused sites, announced a partnership with VOD platform Clearleap via the Clearleap’s Content Marketplace, making selected videos and web series available to cable and IPTV providers for their VOD offerings. [Break Media Blog]

Anyone But Me launched the much awaited second season to their web drama, with the help of promos from celebs Zachary Quinto, Liza Weil and Eric Stoltz. The season’s opening ep “The Real Thing” (below) see Vivian and friends dealing with a day of “unexpected encounters” in New York. [AnyoneButMeSeries.com]

Ashton Kutcher’s cancelled CW show The Beautiful Life: TBL has found new life online, as Katalyst has scored HP as a sponsor and released the rest of the season on YouTube. There were only five episodes done (and two aired) when it got the axe, but Katalyst plans to air all five. “What we feel like we’re doing is creating, in some ways, an industry first,” Kutcher told Reuters. “A show that couldn’t find its legs on television, we believe can find its legs on the Web.” [MTV.com]

The Legend of Neil, the gamer comedy web series from creator Sandeep Parikh and Atom.com, is making the web syndication rounds with Season 2 scoring a front page skin on Dailymotion this week as part of their Zelda movie Hero of Time promotion. [Dailymotion]

This has been an exciting year of achievements for the Web series industry, from the first Streamy Awards dedicated to recognizing excellence in original online entertainment to exciting new series developed by talented independent producers, resource-rich traditional entertainment studios, and Internet TV channels that also produce original content.

As we draw to the close of 2009, an opportunity has arrived that will give Web series content producers another distribution channel for greater audience discovery and revenue opportunity – Video on Demand (VOD).

Perfect Storm
A Perfect Storm is converging around VOD that can be a win for all concerned (especially the audience), but only if thoughtful strategies are implemented now to ensure its success moving forward. In a nut shell:

Discovery will be simplified through VOD for consumers who still prefer to watch their entertainment on a TV set (and let’s face it – many do).
Popular Web series in the online world like The Guild, After Judgment, Dr. Horrible and others will make their debut to a significantly larger audience.
Though there is a generational gap in awareness about Web series (also tied to level of geekiness), there is a shared appreciation for quality entertainment content.
A VOD revenue model for content creators, who deserve to be rewarded for their quality content.
In order to take advantage of this opportunistic moment, the Web TV industry should consider recommending industry standards to VOD partners for how audiences can best discover the “Web Series” category and individual shows. This would include suggestions such as what the On Demand Menu should be (such as a “Web Series” menu button) to category strategy (should audiences be able to search Web Series by genre (e.g., Comedy, Drama) or channel (e.g. Revision3, blip.tv) or both? Recommended industry standards would certainly simplify audience discovery—which is what we all want!

The VOD Landscape
There are a growing number of choices for consumers to watch streamed Internet content on their TV sets, through game consoles such as Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox, to Blu-ray players, traditional broadcast cable boxes and not-so-traditional Internet streaming set-top boxes. Why some folks have been predicting the death of the set-top box is baffling given the market reach potential for original online entertainment. What matters now is how Web series can get in on these developments to expand the industry’s audience reach.

Following is a very brief snapshot of some of the activities happening at the moment.

[Ed: This is the latest installment of our new weekly web series critic column Pass The Mustard. No sugar coating, no doublespeak, no hand holding. Just brutally honest reactions from one guy: Ned Hepburn. We'll throw a handful of web series at him each week. Agree, disagree, love him, hate him, but please don't punch him. Got something clever to say in retort? Leave a comment below. He'll probably read it and embarrass you later. His opinions are his own, so take them or leave them.]

So this week, I got sent four shows. And I learned a lot about myself, and hopefully you’ll learn a lot about you. And then we can all learn a lot about each other. Say it with me: Friendship.

Also, I pan four web shows. I didn’t even mean to! That’s just what I got sent! So there’s that. Enjoy!

Love Pop Trash
Friends. Romans. Countrymen. What do I think about this? What do I indeed think about this. Is it good? Sort of. Is it bad? Kind of. I watched all of the episodes in the time it would talk to make most people to make microwave dinner, which I think is the fault of this show. How do you build a narrative in two minute episodes? They have character here, but nothing I can damn follow. God dammit. I’ve had whippits that have lasted longer than this thing. With a little more push on story, this could go further, especially the narrative between the mall cops. Other than that, it doesn’t hold my attention any longer than I remember this computer is also a machine I can view porn on.

Mommy XXX

Now, I like porn. And I like web videos. And I like porn web videos. And out of the four that I got screened this week, this was the most watchable. This is the most “episodic” web show I’ve seen, and wouldn’t be out of place on a (slow) night on A&E. (That being said, have you ever been to what we Los Angelenos call “The Valley”? This is that show. This is The Valley in a show. If you live in the area code and understand how blah-zay ‘the valley’ can get, you might understand how this show fundamentally is; as in, it’s a million fucking miles from Shakespeare).

I’ll put it this way. It’s like an Errol Morris documentary that I didn’t learn anything and Philip Glass was out to lunch. It’s aiming for greatness but seems to stop at the mall before it gets the library to learn anything. If they eased up on the “Gshaw! We’re filming a porn star!” thing, they might have something. It tries to be a popcorn show when it would serve better as an actual case study. Really, trust me. It’s close to brilliance, but shoots for schamltz. Why does it do that? Irony is a dead scene, friend-o.

Battelstar Galactica’s follow up prequel series Caprica has pushed out their full pilot online (above) before its series premiere Jan 22nd on SyFy, and it reminds us that this may not be the only time the show flirts with web viewers. Streamy Award winner Jane Espenson is behind the series, along with fellow Battlestar writer Ronald Moore.

Tubefilter’s Drew Baldwin spoke with creator and Executive Producer David Eick ealier this year at the Caprica premiere screening at PaleyFest09, and asked whether we can expect a Caprica web series, he said, “it’s a possibility.”

Arguably, this isn’t much to go on. It’s probably just a good excuse to show our readers the Caprica pilot. Battlestar did release a well-received web companion series—The Face of the Enemy—which picked up a Streamy last year, so this wouldn’t be new ground for this group. We do hear that SyFy is looking to build out more web-only series for its site, and this might be a natural fit. Alessandra Torresani, Eric Stoltz and Esai Morales star in the TV series, and who knows if they would be involved in the companion web series.

The Guild season 3 may be wrapped, but that didn’t stop the hit show from celebrating one of its favorite holidays, Christmas. For those that remember, last year’s ‘The Guild Christmas Carol Raid’ made our favorite holiday videos list.

This year they have taken it up a notch (or six) with an interactive YouTube video adventure of sorts, showing off their latest faux merchandising. The full set of six parody commercials, “The Guild Sells Out” hit the interwebs today. The videos were written and directed by special effects artists Greg Aronowitz, who crafted the oversized avatar weapons and props for The Guild’s viral megahit Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? music video. The Guild’s Felicia Day and Kim Evey produced the videos.

While I wish the toys themselves were actually for sale—like the Codex Answer Orb — the commercials do promote something fans can buy, the Season 1 & 2 DVDs on Amazon and those trendy Guild t-shirts on Jinx.

Well that was it, the last Hollywood Web TV Meetup of 2009..nay..the last Tubefilter Meetup of the decade! And we’ve come a long way since our first Meetup at Blankspaces back in summer of 2008, when Tubefilter was a fledgling startup trying to bring attention together this active and growing web community.

Since the launch of the 2010 Streamys website yesterday afternoon, we’ve already received thousands and thousands of submissions from around the world. Attendance at the Meetup was fantastic, and over 13,000 viewers tuned into the live stream at Stickam—last night was truly a testament to the fact that this industry and community has really come into its own. And you all are a piece of that, so congratulations.

Tim Street, a longtime supporter of the web series community and Tubefilter (see the blundering guerilla interview of me he took at that first Hollywood Web TV Meetup), gave an inspiring call to action “savor this moment in time” with what’s happening Street also made a call to action for web series creators to join the International Academy of Web Television (the IAWTV), the voting body behind the Streamy Awards which just announced its Board of directors and new Chairman, Michael Wayne of DECA. For those of you interested in shaping the Streamy Awards and the future of web television, please apply to the IAWTV.

Before we kicked off the panel, Tubefilter CEO Brady Brim-DeForest introduced an exclusive preview of Sony Crackle’s upcoming action packed The Bannen Way (sorry live viewers, you had to be at the Meetup to see it!) and then the official trailer, which by all accounts looked phenomenal. Creators Mark Gantt and Jesse Warren truly outdid themselves, and it showed. As Editor-in-Chief Marc Hustvedt asked the crowd during the panel, “can you believe that was a web series?”

Next New Networks officially announced their “Next New Creators” program today, which works with upstart indie web series and brings them into the NNN mix in a slightly less formal way than some of the network’s originally developed shows. The 4 year-old online TV network—which is really a family of channels like Barely Political, Threadbanger, Indy Mogul, and Channel Frederator—had been working with a select group of shows over the past year in non-exclusive fashion.

Auto-Tune the News, the breakout musical satire series from the Gregory Brothers, is probably the most notable of the early crop of shows to come out of the program, grossing over 35 million views on YouTube and other sites. Other web series like those that were tapped for NNN’s new foodie site, Hungry Nation, were also in the program including Daniel Delaney’s street food escapes on Vendr.TV and Max and Rebecca Lando’s Working Class Foodies and LushLife NY’s 12 Second Cocktails. Grace Randolph’s Beyond the Trailer (above), the company chose to roll into their established Indy Mogul channel which averages a reported 3 million views a month. From the partnership, the show itself surpassed 500,000 views a month according to NNN’s numbers.

Essentially the program lets shows that are getting a footing on their own take the next step by plugging into the company’s vast distribution and marketing apparatus. Key partnerships like featured placements on YouTube and Yahoo can help fasttrack undiscovered shows into broader audiences. The have an open submission for on the site for creators to apply for the program, which they say is a non-exclusive partnership. “Next New Creators’ brings creator-owned content into our online TV networks with simple, creator-friendly deal structures,” they wrote on site.

We asked Kathleen Grace of Next New Networks what kind of shows their were looking for. Grace herself is an indie web creator having crafted hipster comedy The Burg and indie rock tale The All-For-Nots with her Dinosaur Diorama partner Thom Woodley.