Tubefilter News

They certainly don’t have the CGI smoothness of George Lucas’ Lego Star Wars series, but Fabian Moritz’s stop-motion, Lego World Cup highlights may just be the most popular brickfilms in the galaxy.

The 19-year-old German football fan began making Lego films three years ago, re-envisioning matches of his hometown Hanover club as played by little construction toys. At the commencement of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Moritz decided he’d take the most thrilling match of each day’s play and make a Lego video of all the must-see moments. “Each goal takes between two and three hours to do,” Moritz told the AFP, and requires roughly 80 pictures to make the stop-motion animation come to life. Hence, unlike many American soccer fans, Moritz loves the low-scoring games.

The popularity of Moritz’s videos have lead to two production deals; one with the UK newspaper The Guardian to make videos of all the England games, and the other with Bild Daily for all of Germany’s matches.

So far, Mortiz’s most viewed video is England’s match against the USA, which ended in a 1-1 tie thanks to English goalie Robert Green’s error on American Clint Dempsey’s mediocre shot. Moritz includes a number of instant replays of USA’s tying goal from multiple camera angles. He also incorporates the original television commentary, complete with the constant annoying hum of the vuvuzelas.

On this week’s episode of The Web.Files, host Kristyn Burtt attends the red carpet premiere for SOLO: The Series. Among those interviewed on the red carpet are Jonathan Nail, the series creator and star, Michele Boyd, who plays Nail’s patient and long-suffering wife, Rob Gokee, who composed the majority of the series’ music as well as many other members of the cast and crew. In addition to the interviews, there are a number of never before scene clips from the series. Well, never before seen unless you attended the premiere.

SOLO: The Series is a highly anticipated sci-fi comedy created by and staring Jonathan Nail. The series centers on Scott Drizhal who is selected to take part in a three year solo mission to Mars as part of a reality TV show. Unfortunately, 36 days into the mission the show is canceled and Drizhal is left alone with only a wise-cracking AI named Phal 9000 to keep him company. Meanwhile back on Earth his gracious and meek-tempered wife, played by The Guild’s Michele Boyd, seeks to have him declared legally dead so that she can claim the insurance money. Will Drizhal make it safely to Mars and more importantly will his show be picked up by another network? Only time will tell.

Since Yahoo partnered with Microsoft to get itself out of the search business, the aging-search-giant-but-still-traffic-behemoth is more focused on creating original content for its over 160 million monthly visitors.

The Yahoo Web Series formula has been relatively straightforward. Take a popular vertical, create a low-cost but well-produced show for said vertical, find low-cost but talented individuals to host said show, and get massive amounts of views by throwing around links on your highly trafficked homepage. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That’s how Yahoo launched a handful of its original web series – like TV in a Flash, What’s so Funny?, Spotlight to Night Light, and the uber-successful Primetime in No Time. More recent titles – like Who Knew?, TechTicker, and Sports Minute – came out of its recent production partnership with huge advertising holding company WPP’s Group M Entertainment, but follow the same basic format.

Now, Yahoo is changing up their formula and throwing some celebrity in the mix.

Ben Stiller has been tapped to create, direct, and produce a web series starring his parents commenting on current news items. Stiller’s become increasingly interested and involved in new media over the past year. He’s used YouTube and Twitter to great effect in marketing his Red Hour Films production company and, more importantly, helping to do good things for people around the world.

Set to launch before the end of the year, the unnamed web-only show will feature Jerry Stiller (famous for playing Frank Costanza on Seinfeld) and Anne Meara (who together were apparently quite the comedy duo) and will presumably be hysterical.

Atom.com’s anticipated comedy series Johnny B. Homeless launched this week from creator Al Thompson. The NYTVF-winning series stars Thompson as well as SNL star Kenan Thompson in a battle to see who is truly the “greatest couch surfer alive.” Three episodes are currently live, with six more coming out in the next three weeks. [Atom.com]

Revision3 finally launched its own iPhone app this week. It had been a noticeable absence for the tech-savvy online network, but most people (including us) relied on the fan-made Greenbox app which did the trick. Fans, your next task is an iPad app now that Rev3 supports HTML5—get cranking! [Revision3]

Streamy-winning drama Anyone But Me continues to rack up awards this year, picking up
The People’s Silver Telly Award—the highest honor—at the 31st Annual Telly Awards this past weekend. [Telly Awards]

Break Media is becoming a superpower network. In an announcement today, the company said it has added 23 new verticals and hundreds of new premium partner sites to its network, including live streaming video site Justin.tv. While mostly this is an ad network deal—Break will sell inventory across all of these sites that together give Break a reach of 110 million people worldwide per month—it’s also a potentially dominant force for web series distribution. Our bet is we’ll see a flurry of targeted male-centric web series pushed out from them over the next year. [Break Media]

Next New Networks is about to reach an astonishing 1 Billion combined views for its online programming. To get fans in on the excitement the network has launched a countdown site, NextNewBillion.com, where you can vote for when you think they will hit the fated milestone. One notable stat from the site: It only took NNN 8,000 episodes to hit 1 billion views, meaning the average Next New Networks video gets over 125,000 lifetime views. [Next New Networks]

Ford announced it has renewed its branded chat web series Play It 4-Ward for a second season which just launched recently. Generate, which has moved into producing more branded entertainment fare lately, produces the series along with Microsoft’s Branded Entertainment and Experiences Team (BEET) for distribution on MSN. Guests this season include Chris Kelly, ‘Major Nelson’ from Xbox, Sarah Lane, Greg Grunberg and Thomas ‘Weird Science’ Dolby, amongst others. [Play It 4-Ward]

A power outage hit the ABC lot on Monday about an hour before Jimmy Kimmel was set to tape Jimmy Kimmel Live. The brown out shut down the control room, broadcast transmission center, and tape operations area. Kimmel, whose late night talk show has a recent bump in ratings and is seen on average by more than 2 million viewers each night, handled the situation with aplomb.

Determined to let the world know his capabilities to entertain are not constrained by the bonds of broadcast television equipment, Kimmel taped the entire episode of Kimmel Live on his MacBook. He carried his laptop to and fro throughout his office, the studio, the editing bay (so viewers could see the show’s planned, pre-recorded segments), and on stage. The television audience saw guests Seth Rogan, John Henson and country artist Dierks Bentley all through the lens of Kimmel’s computer screen.

It was an unplanned stunt that Jimmy Fallon (the self-proclaimed Tech King of Late Night) should’ve thought to plan months ago. It garnered a ton of attention from the press. But what’s more is the episode is genuinely great. The question is, why?

Was it great in a “goofy, amateur-hour, show-must-go-on sort of way”? Yes. Was it simply super cool to see a behind-the-scenes, and alternative look at a broadcast television talk show? Definitely. Did Kimmel’s composure under adverse circumstances especially charm the camera? For sure.

But the main reason why Kimmel’s webcam episode is so good is because it was taped on a webcam. The medium is the message.

Ever since Bree’s life and death on the web series Lonelygirl15, we’ve been conditioned to record and consume webcam footage far differently than broadcast television. The proximity of the camera, the act of holding the laptop up to your person and physically moving the device to lead viewers through your story creates a kind of intimacy devoid from other forms of media.

On Wednesday night, Kimmel took viewers along for a very personal taping of Kimmel Live. The impromptu, self-guided tour of his office, co-workers, and personal paraphernalia and shotgun seat during his interviews made the episode feel more genuine, more real than any amount of close-ups and high definition ever could. The recurring technical issues throughout the taping (Kimmel and Rogan’s mics went out mid-interview) only add to the episode’s appeal. In an industry rife with contrived, candy-coated PR stunts, it’s a breath of fresh air to see spontaneity captured on such a small, intimate screen.

Bravo, Jimmy. Here’s to more blackouts on live, pre-recorded broadcast TV.

Today marks the launch of Revision3’s new series Tom’s Top 5, featuring internet personality Tom Merritt, current TwiT Network host and former journalist at CNET and TechTV. Viewers of the new series can quickly download the low down on the newest geek culture news in short segments hosted by Merritt.

Tom’s Top 5 provides insightful commentary on technology trends, from gadgets to the latest memes, peppered as always with a little of Merritt’s characteristic wit. The first episode, ‘5 Must Have Geek Gadgets‘ premiered today, followed by ‘5 Worst Syfy Shows’ next Tuesday with a new show each week.

A year ago, we began to notice a surge in live streaming web series, a rush that came as the technology and platforms finally caught up to the growing demand from creators for direct interaction with their audiences. Platforms like Ustream, Stickam and Livestream made “going live” even simpler than uploading a video to YouTube. And for creators who sought out a more professional setup than static webcams, new inexpensive tools like the NewTek Tricaster made multi-camera switching suddenly within reach.

TheStream.tv and maniaTV were some of the first online networks of live shows, using custom-built studio space to run their multi-camera broadcasts and lively chat rooms. The trend saw a noticeable uptick in 2009, so much so that we dedicated a whole night to exploring the lure of live streaming web shows at the Going Live panel at the October Web TV Meetup.

Then came news this spring that Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis had spun off his crop of live streaming shows into its own funded network, ThisWeekIn. Even Diggnation’s Kevin Rose is now launching a live web show later this year.

A new live streaming network has emerged on the scene from two Hollywood veterans with some deep connections to mainstream talent. Michael Davis, a former CAA agent, and Robin Ruzan, a comedy writer and producer, launched The Room Live, a network of online shows, in January of this year. From a converted loft just off of Hollywood Blvd., their studio now boasts seven shows ranging from comedy to talk to live music and even a bachelor-minded cooking show—The Single Chef with Matt Skollar.

I had a chance to visit a live broadcast of Celebrity Liar, with Reid Scott and Jamie Kaler, stars of TBS’ My Boys, trying to poker bluff host Andrew Hill Newman with some outrageous childhood stories. The crazy part being that one of them was actually telling the truth. (See episode above).

We caught up with The Room Live’s producers Davis and Ruzan to find out more about their business model, and just how exactly they had already managed to score an impressive roster of talent guests that includes stars like Helen Hunt, Hank Azaria, Jon Lovitz, Matthew Perry, Kevin Pollak, Diablo Cody, Sheryl Crow.

Modern day treasure hunting is generally an expensive, highly technical, scientific endeavor monopolized by muliti-million dollar, publicly traded corporations with Discovery Channel television shows. Successfully finding some booty is the result of reliable historical information, accurate ocean dynamics, specialized detection technology, superb robotics, and a helluva lot of luck.

We Lost Our Gold takes a different approach. The soon to be released web series hunts treasures with the help of puppet pirates, a puppet ninja, and you.

If the website is to be believed, the creators of We Lost Our Gold have buried a wooden chest filled with $10,000 worth of Sacajawea and John Quincy Adams US$1 coins somewhere in the five boroughs of New York City. Beginning August 1, eight weekly videos will be released telling the tale of a bumbling crew of ne’er-do-wells attempting to retrace their steps to find their lost riches. Clues and easter eggs will be hidden throughout the episodes. Decipher their hidden meaning, obtain a pair of shovels, and find the “X” that marks the spot to become $10,000 richer.

If the website is not to be believed, the web series still looks fantastic. High production value puppet pyrotechnics coupled with pirate accents, a ninja, and a storyline cloaked in mystery is enough to pique the interests of nearly everyone on the internet.