Tubefilter News

The Escapist recently added a new show to its web roster. It is a reality series that will air once a week for a year and follow a group of D&D players as they work through campaigns.

And oh yeah, most of them are porn stars. Dare I say it’s GOLD meets Blue Movies?

“We aren’t all porn stars though,” assured Satine Phoenix in a recent io9 interview. “We’re a medley of porn stars, strippers, models, a hair dresser and I am an ex-porn star/fetish model and currently an illustrator.”

Now that we’ve got that cleared up, on to discussing the show itself. Because that’s what we all care about here, right? The merits of the plotlines and production values of the show…and not Mandy Morbid assuring us her boobs are real or Sasha Grey wanting to name a character “Moretocum”.

Nick Thune is a good sport. Sure, his comedy web series Nick’s Big Show didn’t rally the throngs of fan submissions back in December’s public entry part of the Streamy Awards season. But that didn’t stop him from dropping in to announce this year’s 10 Audience Choice finalists (see video above). Nick had a little fun lobbing some jabs at the top ten. One thing we learned in the process, Nick is not a gamer. Go figure.

Gamers and the Internet have always gone well together, and this year there are three gamer-themed web series in the running—The Guild, The Legend of Neil and Noob—with the latter not even in English (it’s French). Only one drama made it into the fan-favorites, with the multiple Streamy-nominated Anyone But Me proving its fans are not to be reckoned with.

Fans can now begin voting at vote.streamys.org for their favorite amongst the 10, with one vote per person per day up until the winner is announced LIVE on stage at the Streamy Awards on April 11, 2010.

Joss Whedon weblog Whedonesque has been abuzz with web news from the Whedonverse the past few days…and while some hardcore fans are thrilled, it’s also lead to some interesting questions (“What is Clue?”) as well as a fair share of debate.

First up was the news that Dollhouse actor Enver Gjokaj has a new web series. Described as “Twin Peaks meets Clue”, Previously On Point Dume will premiere Monday on Funny or Die. The soap opera parody is told entirely through collections of clips from the previous episodes never actually showing a full episode at any point. Gjokaj plays the “Lothario landscapist,” Ron, as well as Ron’s nemesis (and doppleganger), Bron. Oh, and he never wears a shirt (female Whedonites rejoice!). Plenty of familiar faces from the world of Whedon will be making appearances though no one has yet been officially announced. “We’re definitely not Joss here, but I was inspired by Joss and by Felicia,” said Gjokaj, “the way they got out ahead of the ball on the cutting edge of controlling their content.”

Then came the bombshell that Dr. Horrible 2 could very definitely be a reality…but not on the Internet. Neil Patrick Harris dropped the news in a recent MTV interview…well, okay, he just heavily hinted at it without making any sort of commitments whatsover. But even the idea of a move from computer screen to big screen resulted in a flurry of weblog debate.

Everyone’s been digesting (and debating) the nominees in 34 Streamy Award categories announced earlier this month, but still one solitary group of nominees remains a secret. The finalists for the Audience Choice Award, the capstone of the entire Streamy Awards ceremony, will be announced Monday March 22 on Streamys.org.

Comedian Nick Thune, star of Nick’s Big Show on Atom and a regular on Jay Leno takes some playful shots at the 10 nominated series in the announcement video which will run Monday morning. None of them are spared. But having made it this far in rallying the internet’s teeming hordes, I think they can handle it.

Voting will also begin Monday morning, with fans able to watch each of the ten finalists and vote for their favorites, once per day, all the way up until the Award is announced live on stage. Yes, this year even voting during the Streamy Awards themselves will be allowed. This category has been all about fan favorites, with the ten finalists determined by those that received the most public submissions during the open submission period in December and January.

All weekend on the official Streamys Facebook page and on Twitter, there will be a contest to guess the 10 finalists, with the fans who are closest to the actual list getting some prizes from Streamys sponsors.

Last year, Lisa Kudrow capped off the night of winners by presenting the Audience Choice Award (see below) quipping about her Obama-level Blackberry. Fan favorite Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog took home the honors. But with no Dr. Horrible in the running this year, it’s hard to say which show can swell up their fans into some click-to-vote love this time around.

While a large chunk of the digital and social media world were networking it up at SXSW (and believe me, those left behind or who decided to leave early were quite jealous), a smaller but just as voracious group of unique storytellers and academics gathered at USC for the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the UCLA Producers Program, School of Theater, Film and Television co-sporsored one-day conference Trandsmedia, Holywood.

Lead by Denise Mann, Associate Professor, Producers Program, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, Annenberg School of Communications, USC, the conference was a one-day affair packed to the gills with panels discussing everything from how transmedia is reconfiguring entertainment to tips and tools on designing your own transmedia stories, to where the future of marketing utilizing transmedia may be heading.

Although an entire article onto itself could be written about “What is Transmedia?”, and the term itself is heavily debated (one of my collegues instead refers to himself as “Platform Agnostic” while others think the term “Cross-Media” is simpler and more accurate), but the general consensus is that it is telling a story across numerous platforms. A simple example would be the Star Wars franchise, which began as a TV show and extended to movies, novels, video games, etc.

Back in January, we reported on the public beta of the Vpype Live Broadcaster, a live interactive video application for Facebook. On March 15th at the Social Media World Forum in London, the social video company officially announced the release of the application, which is now available to all 400+ million Facebook users.

The application boasts several features, most of which mirror those available through comptetitors such at Ustream, Stickam, and Livestream, but of course limited to Facebook users. This may on the surface seem like a limiting factor, and yes, those without Facebook profiles may not find the service as useful, but within the Facebook structure, the application requires nothing but a click to setup and is particularly useful for creating live, interactive events on fan pages. It can even create a tab on your profile for easy organization and accessibility.

I decided to try out the app yesterday evening and made a few notes on what I liked and didn’t like. These are by no means an exhaustive list as I have not yet had a chance to try out all it’s functions, but it will give a basic insight into what a first-time user might expect.

On starting a broadcast, you are asked whether or not you want to post that you started a broadcast to your profile and I liked having the option. There was also a list of information such as how long you wanted the broadcast to be (15 minutes was the minimum option) and how many people would be viewing (maximum was 300). I wonder how this would effect, say, 1 hour shows thast happen to go long or shows that wish to have more viewers than 300.
I was using my internal microphone and the volume on my computer was turned on. This resulted in horrible feedback upon starting my broadcast. Once I muted my speakers, it was fine but I was afraid that I was not recording sound. Upon playback, I discovered I was. So when I broadcast next, I will have to remember to mute my speakers ahead of time.
Recorded shows are automatically archived ALONG WITH chat. I really like this feature as often a lot of valuable information gets discussed in chat that isn’t always referenced in broadcast.
The application boasts several features, most of which mirror those available through comptetitors such at Ustream, Stickam, and LiveStream, but of course limited to Facebook users. This may on the surface seem like a limiting factor, and yes, those without Facebook profiles may not find the service as useful, but within the Facebook structure, the application requires nothing but a click to setup and is particularly useful for creating live, interactive events on fan pages. It can even create a tab on your profile for easy organization and accessibility.

I decided to try out the app yesterday evening and made a few notes on what I liked and didn’t like. These are by no means an exhaustive list as I have not yet had a chance to try out all it’s functions, but it will give a basic insight into what a first-time user might expect.

The smart ones did.

If you are serious about creating online entertainment there is absolutely no reason that attending SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) shouldn’t be on your must-go list. The five day conference, which just wrapped up Tuesday night drew 12,000 of social media and web junkies for a non-stop, bleary-eyed bender of business cards, panels, free BBQ and new connections. It was like camp for internet people.

And that’s my point. If you’re making any kind entertainment on the web, you are internet people. Meeting other internet people is part of your job. The apps and tools that are emerging out of the developers at SXSW matter to your web series.

Entertainment on the internet spent the past 5 years learning how to go from crawling to standing up and making its first wobbly steps. Now it’s 2010 and mainstream eyes are gooing over this clever toddler of a medium. The really interesting stuff—like location-based interactive ARGs built around a web drama—is just getting started.

The tools and apps startups, many of which came in from San Fran, need the web creators and storytellers, and vice versa. The guys at Boxee didn’t throw their daytime house party on Sunday just to throw back Shiner Bock. They wanted to meet the content folks.

Brands Came To Play With You

Case in point, Chevrolet. They weren’t just a SXSW sponsor, they came to get to know the internet and the people making and doing really interesting things with it. And their team came out in force. We’re not talking hired gun booth babes, but the actual decision makers that are figuring out how to best pair their brand with what’s driving attention online.

Chevy even shuttled a number of web video and social media creatives on a 30-minute ride out to a BBQ dinner at the Salt Lick just outside of Austin. They wanted to hear what these creators have in the works, and how perhaps they could get involved to support that.

And Pepsi teamed up with web show hub blip.tv to create the PepsiCo Podcast Playground, bringing in Epic Fu host Zadi Diaz to interview a number of web video people like Kenyatta Cheese, Tim Street, Gary Vaynerchuk, Brett Register, and yes, even me (see below). They care about this space, and it’s much deeper that slapping logos on signage and passing of free soda. They want to know what is coming next.

Web TV Super-Meetup

There’s only one place you’ll find a more concentrated gathering of decision-makers in online entertainment—that would be April’s Web TV Week in LA headlined by the Streamy Awards. (My bias duly noted.) But second to that is SXSWi. Let’s say you wanted to get to know the digital content studios and distributors, after five days in Austin you could have connected with the top brass at Revision3, Next New Networks, EQAL, Screen Actors Guild, Funny or Die, Babelgum, Digitas, Katalyst, College Humor, Boxee, Ustream, YouTube, blip.tv—all of whom had a serious presence (not to mention parties) here at South-by.

It’s not just the companies, but the vets of the video scene that are mingling around and are flush with lessons learned and advice on growing an audience online like Steve Garfield (he even wrote a book on it), iJustine, Kevin Rose, Phil De Franco, Taryn Southern, Leo Laporte, Amanda Congdon, Gary Vaynerchuk, Kent Nichols, Shira Lazar, Alex Albrecht, Amanda Coolong and Steve Woolf.

Conceptually clever 2 Girls 1 Cop, created and written by Erica Bardin and Susan Graham has two things going for it: hot girls and great production value…and that’s it.

Not that that’s a bad thing. I didn’t mind losing the three and half minutes to watching actresses Juliana Barninger and Daina Gozen eventually undress to their skivvies to avoid a parking ticket. However, I did find the comedy in this “comedy” to be lackluster and broad.

The basic concept is a spin on the car safety device, OnStar, only this one is called OnSluts which is designed to help hot girls get out of jams with the law. In the pilot, Cheerleaders 1 and 2 are pulled over by Officer Duda, played competently by Hal Rudnick. The girls are then instructed by the OnSluts, played by Bardin and Graham, via dashboard video, on various ways to convince Duda to throw out their ticket.

Structurally, we watch three scenarios which escalate in prurience and success until they finally force Duda to tear up the ticket by threatening to tweet a compromising picture they orchestrated with the help of the OnSluts. This final punch is the funniest bit and got a smile out of me, but nothing to write home about.

I like the basic idea of the show, it’s just that I didn’t laugh, due partly to performance and partly to writing. While clever in concept, the writing is just average and broad, unfortunately. There’s an abortion joke that falls flat, is not needed, and made me cringe; and then a smeared brownie moment that could have been funny (maybe?), but just plays as bad titillation.