Tubefilter News

Shannen Doherty is starring in a web series? Well at least the voice of the former 90210 star is. Set for a June 3rd premiere on FEARnet, Mari-Kari an 8-episode Japanese anime-styled web series is all about identical twins (and BFF’s) Mari and Kari. The hook for horror fans? Mari is a lively school girl and her sister Kari is a ghost who does anything she can to protect her mortal sib. Doherty voices both Mari and Kari in the series from creator-director Jody Schaeffer. [FEARnet]

Revision3 now boasts some luscious HD video playback on the iPad, thanks to their first foray into HTML5. iPads, like iPhones, still don’t support Adboe Flash. Fans can now watch full episodes of all Revision3 web series straight from their iPads—we’re guessing that there’s a non-trivial number of Rev3 fans with iPads. In a somewhat bold choice by ditching Flash for HTML5—a debate that picked up heat last week with Apple CEO Steve Jobs jumping into it—the online network is one of the first to make the move. [Revision3.com]

Comedy Central’s AtomTV returns for its third season tomorrow night, showcasing the best comedy videos and web series from Atom.com each week. You’ll probably have to DVR it as it airs Wednesdays at 2:30 a.m. This season they are trying something new—a rotating line-up of comedic guest hosts on each episode, like Paul F. Tompkins (Best Week Ever), Zach Selwyn (Attack of the Show!, White People Problems), Jacob Fleischer (Intercourse With A Vampire), Team Tiger Awesome (Oprah is Dead, Avatar’d, Chick Drinks), Jay Larson (Live at Gotham, The Laundry Room) and Reigel and Blatt (IKEA Song, Weekend Plans). [Atom.com]

Although the House season finale was last night, thanks to Retrofit Films, fans will still be able to witness the world of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital…well, if they have the correct Apple device, that is. The digital production company, which has produced three companion web series for NBC’s Heroes, an animated web series for the CW’s Smallville, and web content for The Vampire Diaries, and Gossip Girl (just to name a few), has now produced a 13 part series exclusively to be viewed on Fox’s House-related app called INHouse for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices.

The three minute “appisodes” (as they are being called) will air weekly beginning Monday, May 24th and will spin-off character Nurse Jeffrey (who has appeared in two episodes of House and is played by Patrick Price) and will follow him as he explores the world of Princeton Plainsboro beyond the main characters of the show. The series is written by House staff writers and is described as having an Upstairs, Downstairs style of storytelling.

The INHouse app has already been available, being utilized during the season to include bonus episode-specific material, such as behind-the-scenes videos, interviews, and photos, access to alternative music selections not used in the show, writer supplied “House-isms” from each episode, and a video blog where writers discussed elements of each script. Weekly contests were also run, which featured giveaways of items from the set of each episode that were signed by the cast.

There’s a long standing debate over the presence of originality in derivative works—or, how much creative value does say, a spoof of an already über-popular Beyoncé-Lady Gaga video really have? The subsidiary version clearly borrows from the original, milking the internet zeitgeist for attention (and dollars) while never eclipsing its master. The flipside is of course the derivative that transcends the original, breaking both itself and the original into a new orbit of relevance—see: Numa Numa.

Somewhere in between those two poles lies a whole sea of creative output that could go either way. In web series, the title is usually the first giveaway. Sex and the Austen Girl launched today on Babelgum, a twenty-episode web series based on the best-selling Penguin novels, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, by Laurie Viera Rigler. Thankfully its name is misleading enough not to box this one into the humdrum glut of Sex and the City copycats.

Instead, it’s Jane Austen—not Candance Bushnell—that seeds the derivative nature of Rigler’s novels and now web series. Throw in a little time traveling body swap, with a sassy modern day Los Angeles 30-something Courtney Stone (Arabella Field) trading places with similar aged 19-century English lady Jane Mansfield (Fay Masterson), and you have a comedy to unfold. While shot economically on green screen, rather than opting for the pricey period film route, each episode is a fairly terse dialogue on love, dating and romance. The only thing these women seem to share is an unhealthy obsession with Jane Austen novels.

These are the same two characters from the novels, brought to life by the two capable actresses for an entertaining banter. To pull it off, the author teamed up her husband Thomas Rigler, who together with his producing partner Brian Gerber at Gerber Rigler, developed the series and as way to drive new audiences into the books. They got the backing from publishers Penguin Group and Bloomsbury Publishing for what marks the publishers’ first web series adaptation of one of their titles.

Tucked away in an alley of downtown LA, behind two intimidating buildings with “American Apparel” emblazoned on their sides, Central City Studio is hidden away behind a factory facade with a gigantic crane parked in front of it. If I hadn’t known I was looking for a production and recognized what I knew to be a grip truck parked near the crane, I wouldn’t even be aware there was a fully-functioning hospital set located within the building.

Here they were filming Asylum, the new project of Streamy Award-nominated director, Scott Brown. His first series, Blue Movies has now amassed over 2.5 million views and for his follow-up, he’s tackling a dramatic dark mystery created by Dan Williams. Williams and Brown were follow USC students, Williams produced Brown’s first short film. Tubefilter had a chance to visit the final day of shooting, a planned 14 hour day with a well-oiled crew that was unfortunately treated off to a rocky start.

“There’s a pretty crazy story about what happened to us”, explained Brown. “We had a lot of preparation done. A month in advance we had scouted a location. We had this awesome hospital in Pasadena, they actually shot the 9th season of Scrubs there. We get the crew and they show up on Friday, we’re going to shoot Saturday. So literally 12 hours before we’re going to go to picture they arrive there and they are shooting another show … It turns out that 3 weeks ago, the owner we had the agreement with, who we had paid and everything, sold the place and didn’t tell us. But the producers really kicked butt and got us new places. We started shooting at Santa Clarita Studios, which is a full-service soundstage. Then we went to a place called Linda Vista and shot there two days. And now we’re finishing out here, on this set. We had to add a line about remodeling because we have two very distinct types of architecture in this building.”

Shooting on the RED One, the show boasts high production values and a script riddled with LOST-esque twists and turns. In fact, as Brown explains, the show has a lot of “blank meets blank” potential: “Imagine that House meets The X-Files. It’s about a hospital for the criminally insane but there is a sci-fi, paranormal twist to it. Basically, without giving too much away, you’ve got these patients that come in every episode who have a psychological condition that has resulted in them committing a criminal act. And in between, just like on House, the doctors are working on it and there is that doctor drama. Only our doctor drama has this paranormal, sci-fi edge to it. … It’s if Lost had doctors in it and they were trying to cure people.”

In the wide world of web series, God once played a familiar character. The likeness, embodiment, or idea of Him starred in or provided the format for at least a few of online video’s earliest successes. Mr. Deity depicted Him as a self-conscious Creator riddled with neuroses. God, Inc. showed us He’s the head honcho at a white collar, corporate HQ, and that heaven is more like a micro-cap regional papter and office supply distributor than a pearly-gated paradise, place on Earth, or half-pipe.

Despite online video auteurs’ early devotion to God, He’s recently lost some screen time in favor of His Son and fallen Angels. In Dan McNamara’s The Bear, the Cloud, and God, however, the Holy Father is born again and back with a fire and brimstone, supremely awesome vengeance.

In each installment of the uber-short-form web series, the cuddly, crudely animated Bear makes his way up to to the top of a rolling green hill to hang out with his bright-eyed and fluffy friend, Cloud. A few seconds of pleasantries ensue, and just when you think you may be watching a show designed for the Blues Clues crowd, God enters the scene straight from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He exacts his wrath on innocuous Bear, the rolling green hillside is splattered with a bit of Bear’s blood, and then the credits roll.

Yes, you read that title right: this one is naughty. So if you’re at your office desk right now, beware of watching the link above. Though if you did happen to be watching at work, you can at least take comfort in the fact that the show is not in English, so unless your co-workers happen to be or speak Italian, at least they won’t know what the heck you are watching. The screams of pain might bother them though…

The premise of Quiz and Wax is simple: it’s basically the television game show The Newlywed Game where couples are asked questions to see how much they really know about each other. The difference is that on Quiz and Wax, if the guys get the answers wrong, their punishment is to have their hair ripped out with with hot wax applied by a dominatrix who also serves to host the show.

Created for Italian online station Bonsai TV (which appears to be geolocked to Italy, but some of its shows can also be viewed on the station’s YouTube account), the show was created by Italian filmmaker Simone Damiani. He created the show specifically for Endemol Italy, with which he has been working with for quite a while.

Craigslist launched a weekly web series—craigslist TV—that documents its storied users of the online classifieds. The 14-episode reality series stars mostly users from the Los Angeles area, with one fashion designer desperately trying to get Sandra Bullock to wear one of his dresses. [AP]

Break Media turned to his users to decide which of three web series pitches to greenlight, thanks to sponsor Mountain Dew and their “Power to the People Dewmocracy” campaign. Users can vote now through Which one will soak in pixelated limelight: Lucky Losers, Loveless Larry or Carson’s Revenge? [Break.com]

Justine Bateman has signed on for a role in the second season of Anthony Zuiker’s ‘digi-novel’ series Level 26, according to a tweet today from the Easy to Assemble star. The second book Zuiker’s trilogy, Dark Prophecy: A Level 26 Thriller Featuring Steve Dark is due for release on October 14, 2010.
[@justinebateman]

Peter Bragiel’s travel documentary series inTransit continues down through Mexico and Central America. In episode 4, below, Peter arrives in the “Pearl of the Pacific” (Mazatlan) where Carnavale is just beginning. [inTransit.tv]

When an indie film makes a run through the festival circuit and scores a studio distribution deal, it’s a path so well trodden that it’s hardly worth batting an eye at. But for original web series, the nascent festival scene has few examples of major pickups to point to. That is until the gritty, Urban Wolf and its creator Laurent Touil-Tartour made the flight over from France to screen at the Independent Television Festival last summer. “Have you seen that French series?” dominated the festival chatter, so much so that when the project made it to execs at Sony, they jumped on it.

Flash forward to today, as the 15-episode action drama debuts online with the first five installments on Crackle. Urban Wolf cuts to core of the post-9/11 surveillance culture in major cities around the world, hypothesizing a scenario where a joy-riding hacker can infiltrate the system for a deadly game of cat and mouse. Vincent Sze stars as an MIT grad arriving in Paris for job interview with an executive search firm. Quickly, the man realizes those ubiquitous cameras that canvas the airports and now almost every corner of the city are watching him. Someone is after him; the chase begins.

The French Connection brought to film one of the greatest chase sequences ever orchestrated. It was 1971 and yet still to this day Gene Hackman racing a comandeered Pontiac LeMans after a NYC Subway train shows its indelible marks on our modern day blockbusters. Cinephiles, yes, I’m aware that it was a) not in France or b) a car chase not a foot chase, but the comparison still stands. And in what to date is the most elaborate chase sequence—practically the entire 15-episode series—from an episodic web series, it begs the question: Webephiles, will this be the internet’s French Connection?