Tubefilter News

Creating a web series is challenging at every step, from production to marketing, but perhaps the biggest hurdle is among the first: getting money. Kickstarter, a site for crowdsourcing arts funding, is increasingly become the go-to source for web series creators unable to secure grants, industry money or private funds to get production going. We Are With the Band, for example, used their Kickstarter funds to upgrade their camera and sound equipment. GOLD used the site to finance their first season DVD.

Kickstarter is simple. Creators develop a pitch on the site, using video, text or both. They set a fundraising goal and have 30 days to reach it. Users donate money – it’s not an investment – to the projects and if the project reaches its goal, creators get the money. For more information, click here.

“We like for Kickstarter to be a tool,” co-founder Yancey Strickler said, noting how funds can be used for anything from production to traveling to a film festival. “We’re happy to just fill in gaps or be a way to get from X to Y.”

Over 5,000 projects have used Kickstarter for funds, and of those just under half have reached their goal. But the number of projects is accelerating: 2,500 campaigns are currently in progress and 300 new projects are added each week, Strickler said.

5 EASY TIPS FOR KICKSTARTING YOUR WEB SERIES
1. HAVE A GOOD IDEA:
This doesn’t seem like advice, or perhaps it’s too obvious, but it helps to think about your audience. A good idea should make someone think: “I want to see that!” It doesn’t have to seem traditionally popular – web series should be different! – but it should interesting to a passionate group of people. For example, web series creator Steve Cooper raised $3,000 for a talk show using a simple video but a catchy tag line: “bringing you people you’ve heard of but never heard from.” A couple of series marketed themselves to thoughtful subcultures: Ultimate Energy Showdown addressed fossil fuel consumption, while Perennial Plate targeted sustainable eating. A coherent, simple, catchy idea is easier to market.

Temperatures in New York broke triple digits at least two times this week. The humidity is bumping 80%. After walking a few blocks, enduring the most offensive heat wave to hit the City in the last decade, all you want is the soft, cooling kiss of your air conditioner, the relaxing comfort of your couch, and something good to watch on TV.

In these cases, when even a few mouse clicks seem like hard labor, internet television simply won’t do. The inherent interactive nature of the web demands too much of someone who just wants to lean back and be entertained.

Enter YouTube Leanback. The just-launched feature from the world’s largest video-sharing site aims to mimic the east of the TV viewing experience while using the power of the internet’s social recommendations to deliver clip after clip of content you actually want to watch.

The full-screen, high-definition (whenever available) videos play in succession, one after another, automagically, without any clicks. According to the YouTube blog, the content you see is “based on your YouTube settings and preferences, including content from your subscriptions and videos your friends are sharing on Facebook (assuming you’ve connected your YouTube account to your Facebook account). You can also watch the most popular comedy, entertainment, news, or more.”

The navigation system for YouTube Leanback is stupid easy. You scroll to different videos in your feed by using the right and left arrow keys, the down arrow brings up different channel options, and the up arrow key reveals player controls and a search bar. Like a remote for traditional television, Leanback’s controls are relatively intuitive and have an extremely low learning curve. Play around with the feature for only a few minutes and you’ll already feel like a veteran user.

To say YouTube Leanback is game chaning would be premature and somewhat of a hyperbole, but it certainly has the potential to be. Joseph Tartakoff notes how the recommendation engine doesn’t always make the best choices, though that will certainly improve in time. And a couple botched suggestions by no means renders the service unusable.

On the contrary, Leanback is the closest online approximation to channel surfing I’ve seen in years of frustrated, failed attempts. It’s an excellent discovery tool, perfect for those times when you know you want to be entertained, but you’re not quite sure what you want to watch. Sit back, relax, turn on the computer, tune in, and let us know what you think.

We first wrote about DiGiTS the week it launched last fall, amazed at the spectacle that was a real life Italian male model (Fabrizio Brienza) trying shamelessly to score phone numbers of New York City ladies. Sure, it was a little odd and perhaps a little creepy, but not surprisingly

Now some 15 million YouTube views later, as DiGiTS gets its third season under way, the show has a new host, new look and even its own spinoff series. They have shed the slightly creepy middle-aged model for young German-British YouTuber Colleen Prietz (aka ThePickupChick).

Technically this is the show’s second host switch, trying out Lesley as a female version of a streetwalking pickup artist. At the time some fans balked at the replacement of cheesy Fabrizo, and the viewership numbers declined for the second season. But four episodes into the third season, the viewership numbers are trending even higher than the show’s original favorites.

For Driver Digital Media, the New York-based company behind the series, the idea was to broaden the show’s appeal to wider audience and ultimately build a network of web series.

Jennifer Lopez’s production company Nuyorican Productions has partnered up with Latin Entertainment network Movido TV to produce B Gate, a new comedy web series about security guards at the back gate of a Hollywood movie studio. The other series on Movido TV’s slate are Cancun Nights, starring Academy Award-nominated actor Eric Roberts and Fernando Carillo; Pico and Paco, an animated comedy about two cats in the Beverly Hills mansion of Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith; Adam N’ Eva, starring Tiffany Thiessen; and Student Lounge, a sketch comedy series featuring Efren Ramirez and Jesse Garcia. The series are scheduled to launch this fall.

On this week’s episode of The Web.Files, host Kristyn Burtt takes another trip down the red carpet with the cast and crew of Vampire Mob. Created by Joe Wilson, the series stars John Colella, Reamy Hall and comedy legend Marcia Wallace. As stated in the interview, the inspiration for the series came to Wilson while he was working as a private investigator on a mob related case at which point he realized vampire and mobster go together like peanut butter and vampires. Who knows? If the series is a hit then it could spawn a number of copycat vampire hybrid stories. Vampire cowboy, vampire Pilates instructor, vampire actor (wait, they already did that one), the possibilities are endless

Sir Ridley Scott made headlines last year when he announced plans to produce a web series based on his cult classic Blade Runner.

The director of such hits as Alien, Thelma & Louise, and Gladiator, said his replicant redux – titled Purefold – “is a search for what it means to be human and understanding the notion of empathy.” But like most sci-fi stories colored with a punk-gothic vision of our future, Purefold may never see the light of the day. A lack of funding caused production houses RSA Films, Baby Cow, and Ag8 to cease their activities with the project.

With his robotic web show on what appears to be permanent hiatus, Scott is turning his attention towards something more human. Together with director Kevin Macdonald (Last King of Scotland, One Day in September, Touching the Void) and in partnership with YouTube, Scott is set to produce the documentary Life in a Day.

On July 24, participants from all around the world are asked to capture their own lives on camera and submit the footage by July 31 to the Life in a Day YouTube channel. Macdonald will then edit the footage together, molding the disparate clips into “the cohesive story of a single day on earth.”

Everything is fair game, from the ordinary (i.e. “a sunrise, the commut to work, a neighborhood soccer match) to the extraordinary (i.e. “a baby’s first steps, your reaction to the passing of a loved one, or even a marriage”) as long as the shooter can beat a Voight-Kampff machine and the footage doesn’t contain copyrighted materials. Sponsored by LG Electronics as part of its Life’s Good campaign, the finished product will simultaneously debut on YouTube and at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Individuals from cultures outside of the English-speaking world are also encouraged to contribute. Scott Free, Scott’s production company behind Life in a Day, will distribute “400 to 500 cameras to NGO’s and non-profits in 20 different countries and areas ‘on the wrong side of the digital divide’ so that the film may have a truly global voice.”

As Ryan Lawler notes, this isn’t YouTube’s first foray into crowdsourced films. The video sharing site’s recent collaboration with the Guggenheim aims to obtain creative work to showcase at the museum’s October celebration, and YouTube’s Symphony Orchestera pieced together a live, Carnegie Hall concert from top auditions from musicians around the globe.

Hilarious video e-card titan JibJab released its latest piece of interactive brilliance: a new video in the theme of AMC’s Mad Men, whose fourth season is slated to launch July 25.

The card, Mad Men Starring You!, encourages participants to upload their head shots, then transforms them into Don, Roger, Betty or Joan in an interactive scene. The free video makes the entire cast into the user’s own personal entourage, except this time they’re all spouting one-liners in the voices of Jon Hamm, John Slattery, January Jones, and Christina Hendricks.

Remember that feeling two years ago when the first few seconds of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog fluttered across your computer screen? It’s like that.

Today, after almost a year and a half in the making, countless articles building up to its online premiere, and even network TV appearances before even a frame had hit the internet, Jon M. Chu’s dance drama web series The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (The LXD) bowed on Hulu today.

I’m not going to mince words here, this series is transformative. It sets a new bar for what to expect from an online series of any budget, shattering the tired misconception that online series are by definition inferior to film and TV. This one is instead a work of art—visually and emotionally as we are drawn into a masterfully constructed world filled with

For longtime web series viewers desperately awaiting the next Dr. Horrible, something so remarkably original it would become a bellwether of an entire movement, The LXD is 2010’s web blockbuster.

The cast isn’t littered with the latest teen drama stars, and most of the names are only know to followers of underground hip hop dance. Luis “Luigi” Rosado, a Bboy dancer, plays outcast Trevor Drift and Chadd “Madd Chadd” Smith, a popper, stars as fallen soldier Sp3cimen And if it weren’t for the breakout success of FOX’s Glee, we many wouldn’t have heard of dance phenom Harry Shum Jr. who plays Elliot Hoo and also serves as one of the show’s lead choreographers.