Tubefilter News

Are you a web series creator who is trying to land a hot distribution deal with a curvy budget, but you lack the PUA stylings to successfully seduce that special studio? And were you not able to grab a ticket to the December Tubefilter Hollywood Web TV Meetup before the event sold out? Well, we have just the live stream for you.

Tune in right here, right now, because we’re answering all your questions and broadcasting live from Bubsy’s East!

Many producers dream of scoring a studio deal. It must be nice, right? When someone else is taking care of all financing, marketing, and distribution, can’t you finally just focus on creating something awesome? But what is it really like when a studio gets involved? And how do you get a studio interested and involved with your production in the first place?

Find out from these creators and studio heads just what it takes to go pro. Learn what it’s like directing, producing and starring in a studio-backed web series, and hear what the Hollywood suits look for in a web series.

Going Pro Panel:

Eric Berger , Senior Vice President of Digital Networks at Sony Pictures Television
Mark Gantt, Executive Producer, Writer, and Star of Sony Crackle’s The Bannen Way
Jesse Warren, Executive Producer, Writer, and Director of Sony Crackle’s The Bannen Way
Chris McCaleb, Partner, Big Fantastic (Prom Queen, Sorority Forever)
Larry Tanz, President, Vuguru
Ryan Wise, Partner, Big Fantastic (Prom Queen, Sorority Forever)
Moderator: Marc Hustvedt, Editor-in-Chief, Tubefilter News

Watch LIVE now at stickam.com/tubefilter Want to ask the panel a question? Head to the chat room on Stickam or tweet us @tubefilter with the hashtgag #tubefilter. And one more special thanks to our good friends at Stickam for making the live stream possible.

Astronaut, Dave Scott, transmitted this message after landing on the moon as commander of the Apollo 15 crew: “Houston, as I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown…I sort of realize there’s a fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore.” Pretty awesome statement from one of the few people to have actually walked on the moon’s surface. Too bad he didn’t have a pair Pampa boots on up there when he said it.

Luckily, the vbs.tv crew, finds themselves in no such predicament as they bring us their “Exploration” web series / Palladium Boots commercial. The series is part ad campaign for Palladium Boots and part travel adventure that, in typical VBS style, explores the “hidden, underground and forgotten corners of the world’s leading metropolises.” The shoe company, owned by K-Swiss, is trying to brand itself as the maker of “hipster” boots for cool kids. Never being a hipster or a cool kid, one could easily imagine my skepticism upon exploring this series. But you know what, it actually kind of works.

In The Ruins of New York, we follow newly minted urban explorer, Brooklyn-based designer and all-round “curious fellow” (their term not mine – you guys will have to decide which side of curious he lands on for yourselves) Shawn Joswick. Herein he explores some pretty spectacular areas of New York that have long since been forgotten by the city’s less adventurous residents.

Centralia, PA is hosted by New York city artist Daniel Jackson. Centralia, PA, while not exactly a world leading metropolis, is a pretty amazing and mostly unheard of place. As of 2007 it hosted a vibrant and mind numbing population of 9 and on hearing the nature and history of the town you’ll quickly scratch your head wondering how it could possibly be such a high number. In 1962 a fire broke out in the coal mine directly under Centralia and that same fire has been burning steadily ever since. One author wrote, “This was a world where no human could live, hotter than the planet Mercury, its atmosphere as poisonous as Saturn’s. At the heart of the fire, temperatures easily exceeded 1,000 degrees. Lethal clouds of carbon monoxide and other gases swirled through the rock chambers.” Make sure you’ve got your boots on for this one.

Has it been a year already? Submissions for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards opened today, honoring the best web television of 2009 in thirty-five different categories. Winners are determined in a hybrid of public submissions from the online community and peer voting by the International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV). Eligible shows up for consideration must have been released online at least three episodes during the 2009 calendar year.

Many of last year’s Streamy winners and nominees continued to thrive in 2009 with shows like The Guild, Dorm Life, EPIC FU and Tiki Bar TV all reaching new heights of viewership. But one thing is for certain, last year’s multi-Streamy-winning Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog won’t be back to compete this time around. (Unless they sneak out that long-rumored sequel in the next two weeks!)

What’s new this year?

12 new award categories have been added, based on community feedback from last year and the ever evolving landscape of web television. The new categories added include Best New Web Series, for new shows that premiered online in 2009, Best Foreign Web Series, for shows created in countries outside the U.S. and Best Branded Entertainment Web Series, covering shows that originated from a brand or ad agency. The new categories should allow for clearer distinctions between the thousands of eligible web series.

Babelgum announced today it has secured exclusive rights to distribute season 1 of Old Friends, which is now up in its entirety, and that production is wrapping up on season 2 which will be released on the site in January 11. We’ve been following the work of New York comedy standouts Nick Ross and Tim Curcio for a while now, even before their popular comedy series hit the web earlier this year. Ross had starred in 2008′s Park Bench series, which stood out for its sharp witted simplicity—”two lusty yet oblivious dudes whiling away the summer on a Central Park bench,” according to our reviewer.

The 7-episode first season of Old Friends, tells the story of Tim and Nick, two 28 year-olds who are reunited after not seeing each other since high school. There’s a classic comedic tension setup, with a little love tangle going on. Tim is now married to his high school sweetheart, Andrea (Amy Flanagan), who happened to lose her virginity to Nick back in high school. And now Nick is, as luck would have it, dating Andrea’s best friend, Katie (Natalie Knepp). You know, child’s play.

We asked the pair about how much art imitates life, so to speak. “While Tim is married in real life and Nick is single, neither one of us are quite like our characters. Nick has shorter hair now, and Tim is not a total whine-o,” they said.

Despite developing a solid following on YouTube and College Humor, the show has been taken down as part of the deal. Babelgum has licensed popular web series before, though not always getting exclusive rights to what amounts to second-run syndication of the debut season. The Guild’s first season, for example, can be found on Babelgum, though it still remains up on YouTube and MSN. Other series like The Crew and Hurtling Through Space At An Alarming Rate were exclusive to the site.

Crossroad Films produces Old Friends along with Ross and Curcio’s Metropolitan Bait and Tackle production company that includes director Matt Cady. The concept sprouted from one of Ross and Curcio’s live sketch comedy shows at UCB Theater in New York.

In October, Vuguru announced it inked a multi-million dollar deal with Canadian media behemoth, Rogers Media. The partnership gives Vuguru – a three-year-old web television company founded by Michael Eisner – two things. One, a distribution partner with 51 radio stations, two television networks, one Major League Baseball team, and a multitude of other print publications and broadcast outlets, ranging from a Canadian edition of Hello magazine to Canada’s only nationally televised shopping service. And two, an influx of cash with which to triple production and create a reported 10 to 15 new web series in 2010.

Today, Vuguru named Larry Tanz president. The entertainment industry executive and digital media entrepreneur will have the responsibility of soundly spending Rogers’ “significant capital investment” on “high-quality, scripted, story-driven productions” with known talent and advertiser, distributor, and audience appeal. If his resume is any indication, he’ll perform very well in the new position. Before Vuguru, Tanz was CEO and President of LivePlanet (the entertainment company founded by Ben Afleck and Matt Damon that created, most memorably, Project Greenlight) and also Co-Founder and President of digital studio, Agility.

In one of his frist orders of business, Tanz will be rolling out the Vuguru library (which includes web series like Prom Queen, The All-For-Nots, and Foreign Body) on Rogers On Demand networks. In the coming months, he’ll oversee the productions and distribution of Prom Queen: The Homecoming; Pretty Tough “an adaptation of a successful young adult novel from accomplished television writer and producer Liz Tigelaar;” and The Booth at the End, a “physcological thriller” starring Xander Berkely and directed by Jessica Landaw.

Web series fans, take note. The International Academy of Web Television, the independent, non-profit organization that serves as the voting body for the Streamy Awards, officially announced its Board of Directors today along with its first Chairman, Michael Wayne, co-founder and CEO of DECA (Digital Entertainment Corporation of America).

“Just as the Academies of Motion Picture and Television Arts and Sciences had humble beginnings, so do we,” said Wayne in the IAWTV press release today. “While our industry may be in its early stages, it is growing at an exponential rate … 2010 promises to be a phenomenal year for the International Academy of Web Television with the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards and the continued expansion of our membership.” Before DECA, Wayne served as the Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Sony Pictures Digital and Sony Pictures Television.

The board is an impressive collection of talent from the web television world, bringing together their experience in areas such as content creation, finance and distribution. First up is Blip.tv co-founder Dina Kaplan, who will serve as the board’s Vice Chair. Besides the experience with distribution through Blip.tv that Kaplan brings to the table, she also brings a journalistic perspective having won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. Mo Koyfman, Principal at Spark Capital, a venture capital firm whose notable Web TV investments include Next New Networks, EQAL, Boxee, and Veoh, will also sit on the board. Before Spark Capital, Koyfman was the COO of Connected Ventures, parent company of popular web video sites Vimeo and CollegeHumor.com.

Also joining the board is John McCarus, someone who has intricate knowledge of branded entertainment as VP Director of Brand Content at DIGITAS, whose clients have included high profile companies like Disney, General Motors and KRAFT.

Then there’s content-creation and who better to sit on the board than The Guild creator-star Felicia Day who has created one of the most successful web series to date. George Ruiz, Head of New Media at talent agency ICM, will serve as the board’s secretary. The board will also include Tubefilter co-founders Brady Brim-DeForest, Marc Hustvedt, Drew Baldwin, Josh Cohen and Jamison Tilsner.

Here’s a classic romantic comedy trope. A supremely nice guy wants to get with a supremely icy girl. Your role as an audience member is to hope the guy achieves his goal. If you enjoy these love stories, Wage Slaves might just be for you. Otherwise, the web series is a tough sell.

Wage Slaves is a workplace comedy set in a Portland coffee shop, featuring crazy coworkers, crazy customers, and Mitch, the one sane guy stuck in the middle. Mitch is played by Morgan Lee, a good actor who displays a low-key charm and solid sense of comedic timing. Unfortunately, his character suffers from a lack of flaws that makes him barely recognizably as human. He’s an embodiment of the “nice-guys-finish-last” stereotype. You can almost hear the author’s voice telling you, “Look, he’s unlucky in love, but it’s so totally not his fault! Sympathize!”

Conversely, Mitch’s love interest (Stacy, played gamely by Lara Korbin) is given line after line of shrill insensitivity. She bluntly proclaims her hookup with the smitten Mitch to be “a huge mistake,” telling him about her other amorous encounters to make him jealous, and generally embodying another stereotype – the damaged ice queen.
Fictional relationships like these feel like a one-dimensional fantasy. The character we are encouraged to identify with and root for can do no wrong, and all of the flaws and negative traits are piled on the one being pursued, effectively making her an enemy to be conquered….with love!

The acting is by far the series’ strongest suit. The production values suffer from a basic lack of professionalism. Handheld cameras are utilized for no apparent reason – it’s not stylish or intimate, it’s just slightly distracting. Locations and sets aren’t dressed up enough to be convincing, and there’s a tremendous amount of air between scenes, between individual cuts, and even between lines of dialogue. This tightens up a bit as the series progresses, but the average episode length is still over 15 minutes. That’s an eternity in internet-time that only the most exceptional web-series could hope to justify.

A lot of effort has clearly been put into Wage Slaves (in true indie style, creator Chris A. Bolton writes, directors, produces, and edits the show), especially considering the sheer amount of scenes and locations featured throughout its six-episode first season.

Thomas Haden Church, former Wings regular and breakout star of 2004 film Sideways, is going after the one meidum he hasn’t dabbled in yet—the internet. The 49 year-old Oscar-nominated actor has signed on to star in FEARnet’s new original web series Zombie Roadkill which is set for a Spring 2010 release on the site and through its video on demand network. Henry Gayden wrote the script for the six episode horror-comedy which David Green will direct.

It’s the fourth project made for FEARnet from Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures, which had crafted 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails and 30 Days of Night: Dust to Dust, and Devil’s Trade for the network. Aaron Lam from Ghost House will produce the series. Also announced joining the cast is teen David Dorfman known as the little boy from The Ring flicks.

Zombie Roadkill centers around a group of college kids as they are driving on an unfamiliar road. Everything seems fit for a road trip to the lake but, when the group accidentally runs over an unsuspecting squirrel, they quickly realize there will be a price to pay. The cursed road brings the zombie squirrel back to life to haunt the kids. After the kids crash and everyone is injured except the younger brother, he is forced to set out on a journey to defeat the ancient curse and save his brother and friends before it is too late.

Just like FEARnet’s latest series Fear Clinic, which reportedly has been doing quite well this fall, Roadkill will be visual effects heavy. Quantum FX, known for their work on Watchmen and Where The Wild Things Are, are being brought on to handle creature effects.