Tubefilter News

The TV show Community has a shtick they use to great effect. Any given episode is told in the style of a different genre of film. In “Contemporary American Poultry,” Abed goes mad with chicken power in the stylings of a Scorsese mafia flick. In “Modern Warfare,” it’s a mix of war, action and zombie apocalypse tropes.

Utilizing this same tactic in spirit, Stalker Chronicles does the same thing, only with a mix of playwrights, influential filmmakers and poets. At the center of it all are actresses and creators Jamie Lou Moniz and Genie Willett, who are stalking one Ryan Braun.

“Once the stalking commenced, they began using covert names to disguise their identity. Since they both seem to be the yin to Ryan’s yang, they called themselves the Yin Ladies, or Yin Yin, or Yinny…”

Right away the show is clear – the stalking conceit is specifically to have our leads be blank slates that can be filled in with the style of the episode. Simple, but when you’re trying to get an online audience to appreciate Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in the pilot episode, it’s probably best you don’t add complexity.

In the first two episodes, there was plenty of uncertainty, but where it really fires on all cylinders is episode three, “The Spectacle,” which pulls from “early filmmakers Geroge Melies and Robert Weine, with emphasis on visual spectacle, including a combination of music, dance, and variety acts.”

Jonah Ray has a new web show, and he gets to blow things up! The bespectacled comedian has found a home for Joe Genius, his new science series where he “proves how exciting, hilarious, and sometime dangerous, homegrown science can be.” Dedicated Tubefilter readers may remember his early-2009 show Jonah Ray’s BarBeQuay on maniaTV. [Revision3]

The Battery’s Down, the web’s Glee-ful musical comedy full of cheery young Broadways actors, may be on an indefinite hiatus, but that isn’t stopping the New York crew from having a Season 2 CD release party. The free event hosted by Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records is this Sunday, July 18th at 8:30pm at Hurley’s (232 West 48th St. at 8th Avenue) featuring live performances by Jenna Coker Jones, John Hill, David Hull, Marla Mindelle, Dani Spieler, Nina Sturtz, Alysha Umphress and Jake Wilson. [The Battery's Down]

Diablo Cody has an internet talk show.

It’s called Red Band Trailer, which is a play on the film industry’s “red band trailers,” which don’t adhere to content guidelines established by the Motion Picture Association of America. As the title would imply, Cody’s celebrity conversations don’t adhere to any sort of content guidelines established by the blasè, one-on-one star interviews to which we’ve grown accustomed. It’s also shot in a trailer, specifically a 19′ Airstream International, which was once used by the US government to quarantine astronauts, and is now used by Cody to quarantine celebrities.

The insider-y reference in the title and the humor in the double meaning is a good representation of what to expect in the series. It’s typical of kind of entertainment we’ve seen from the Academy Award-winning writer of Juno and United States of Tara. Cute, sometimes too cute, smart, self-deprecating, and funny-though-not-really-funny-ha-ha.

Beautifully produced by Cody and her husband Dan Maurio, the first two episodes list Cody’s title as “Attention Starved” and “Pariah,” and place her opposite Adam Brody and Chelsea Handler. Both interviews have a healthy mix of non sequitur storytelling, classic celebrity Q&A, and alone time with a Robert Pattinson pillow doll.

We’ve seen this kind of celebrity interview shtick before. The difference with Red Band Trailer is it’s worth watching.

In July of 2007, the social networking site Bebo launched the original web series KateModern, created and produced by EQAL, the team behind lonelygirl15. The show was immediately popular with audiences, garnering over 1.5 million views a week. Furthermore, the series was a financial success thanks to its partnership with Bebo, which aggressively courted advertisers and promoted the series. It was a successful model, one that has yet to be fully replicated. AOL acquired Bebo in 2008, an acquisition that ultimately proved disastrous for the company, but does not impugn the effectiveness of Bebo’s model.

At the time of the acquisition, many thought it would be a boon for web series. AOL was not only an established Internet company but also, thanks to its earlier acquisition of Time Warner, a major media powerhouse. Bebo for its part had spent the previous year positioning itself as a type of new media TV network carving out a niche as a destination for original scripted web series. The resulting partnership could have resulted in a Hulu style video site featuring original content developed for the Internet, coupled with a social networking site to support the interactivity that was a major part of web series at the time, all with the backing of a major studio. Had Bebo been able to replicate the process it pioneered with KateModern many of the problems faced by web series today, such as cutting through the clutter of online video or securing funding, would have been largely mitigated. Unfortunately, AOL missed an opportunity.

In an effort to further capture the growing mommy market, Procter & Gamble’s Pampers division has launched a new series on Pampers.com and the brand’s Facebook page called Welcome to Parenthood, in which parents face the three major challenges of raising toddlers and infants: diapers, potty training, and bed time.

Anticipation has been building up to a boiling point since Felicia Day’s tweet at the end of June announcing Season 4 of the hit web series The Guild would debut today. The first episode, “Epic Guilt,” picks up where Season 3 left off.

Lots of surprises have been rumored on The Guild community forum, including the return of Wil Wheaton and some characters from previous seasons, especially those members of the Axis of Anarchy.

Microsoft and Sprint are back as returning sponsors, promoting the series on MSN and its affiliate networks. Season 4 will also be downloadable from the Zune Marketplace and available in over 12 countries in a 1080p instant stream on Xbox Live. Bing Video has also set up a destination site for the series, which will update with the latest episodes.

The premiere comes just in time for next week’s Comic-Con in San Diego. Last year, The Guild gave us several surprises, including the unveiling of their music video ‘Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?‘, the premiere of The Guild Season 3, the reveal of Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek fame) as a Season 3 special guest star, and the announcement of Guild comic book deal with Dark Horse.

“We have awesomeness planned for you [at Comic-Con 2010]” the The Guild website states. It’s been rumored they are trying top last year’s unveilings. The entire cast of The Guild is confirmed to be in attendance, and new content from the show will be premiered at the panel on July 24.

It all started with Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.

The duo behind Adult Swim’s oddball Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and those absurd Zach Galifianaks Absolut commercials you love were tapped by white hot advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy to direct some Old Spice TV spots. The ads feature ex-NFL linebacker Terry Crews, his massive biceps and chiseled sub-5% body fat frame, and Heidrecker and Warehim’s special blend of bizarre.

You can call the campaign “Corporate America’s relentless co-option of the interesting,” but I just call it good advertising. And it only gets better.

After the success of the Crews commercials, Wieden and Kennedy called up award-winning commercial director Tom Kuntz to create his own set of unique Old Spice spots. Featuring chiseled ex-NFL wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa, Kuntz’s ads take the Hedecker and Wareheim beat-you-over-the-head brand of weird down a notch, just enough so as to maintain the strange without being too scary.

The results are fantastic. Kuntz’s flagship ad, ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ has nearly 13 million views on YouTube alone since its February release.

If Wieden and Kennedy stopped there, they’d have a seemingly extremely successful campaign, generating tons of exposure and press hits for their client, while reestablishing Old Spice’s image in a younger, hipper, Axe-loving market. But this may just be the campaign’s beginning.

What do you do after you’ve established an intriguing commercial character with viral potential? You get interactive and social.

Starting yesterday, Old Spice Man Isaiah Mustafa began posting YouTube videos in response to random Twitter messages from both laymen and Hollywood and internet elite. Personalized messages to Kevin Rose, Rose McGowan, Ellen Degeneres, Alyssa Milano, and Gizmodo built buzz, while clips created for Twitter users like wawoodworth, jieyeow, and Muffinzeshlongun give the campaign an equal opportunity appeal. It’s as if Subservient Chicken was upgraded for the micro-blogging age and played by a character from the cover of a Norah Hess novel written by Brad Neely (aka the most brilliant ad campaign ever).

Old Spice has uploaded 122 (and counting) 30- to 60-second long personalized videos in the past 24 hours. Impressive, to say the least, but what impresses me most is no one seems to mind the shill. This is, after all, still advertising, and the creative minds at Wieden and Kennedy are trying to manipulate audiences into having positive associations with a product in order to sell more units. In the past, online video has been especially prone to criticism for its branded entertainment, but in this case, no one seems to mind.

Is it because of the innovative nature of the campaign or its off the wall humor? Definitely, but incorporating those elements into a two-way environment is what makes the public a-okay with the commercials. Viewers feel like Mustafa is pitching a product with them, not at them. Brands looking to tap the inherent interactive opportunities of the internet should take note. This is the ad campaign your ad campaign should be like.

Late last month, AOL quietly announced that it had agreed to sell the social networking site, Bebo, to Criterion Capital a private investment firm. While neither side has disclosed the actual purchase price, most reports indicate that it was less than $10 million dollars, a fraction of the $850 million AOL paid just two years ago for the company. AOL had hoped the acquisition would position itself as a major player in online social networking. Bebo for its part showed great promise, largely due to branding itself as a destination for original online content, starting with the successful web series, KateModern. In the end, AOL’s dreams of social media dominance went unfulfilled, Bebo ceased supporting original productions, and many people lost their jobs.

Bebo, which started in 2005, gained significant attention in 2007 with the announcement that it would co-produce KateModern, the first in the series of lonelygirl15 spin-offs. Bebo had hoped to distinguish itself from rival social networking sites by developing a slate of original content, which in turn would foster a high level of interactivity with the audience through its network. Fans could interact with the characters and each other, as well as engage in behind the scenes discussions with the producers, writers, and actors. In this manner, Bebo hoped to replicate and expand upon the interactivity lonelygirl15’s creators had created with its existing fan base.

It was a bold move that gained the upstart network much needed attention not to mention an influx of new users primarily from the U.S. where it had lagged significantly behind both Myspace and Facebook. In fact, many believe it was the move into original production, specifically the success of KateModern, which made Bebo so attractive to potential buyers while simultaneously driving up the price.