Calico Works, in association with Attention Span Media (the group behind Streamy Awards nominated Dorm Life and Simon Fuller’s If I Can Dream) premiered the long-awaited original web series The Clinic on Hulu today. The series may provide some humorous insight to those having trouble making sense of Proposition 19 on November’s California ballot.
Before HBO debuted the latest season of its hit original series, True Blood, the premium cable network released a set of six online minisodes as way to whet viewers’ appetites. The only problem was, they sucked.
Dubbed A Drop of True Blood, HBO was not shy about publicizing how the series of minisodes was written by showrunner Alan Ball and features the main True Blood cast. But the installments provided viewers with little action, foreshadowed nothing of the events in Season 3, and altogether look like the pet project of an HBO intern who was assigned to compile and upload deleted scenes picked up off the cutting room floor.
I said as much when I wrote about the series. A Drop of True Blood is disappointing because True Blood has a history of innovative marketing techniques and in seasons past, provided its fans with great supplemental content. The series has sweet characters and a rich mythology, which viewers are more than willing to engage in if given a good opportunity.
That good opportunity can be found at babyvamp-jessica.com.
The site is the online home for True Blood’s Jessica Hamby (played by Deborah Ann Woll), a newly turned vampire who resorts to videoblogging for the same reasons that many a teenage girls are drawn to the medium. She’s trying to navigate the bumpy road of adolescents, negotiate the relationship between her own physiological changes and social mores, and find a few online friends for support.
And support, Jessica has definitely found. Each of her weekly video entries regularly receives hundreds of comments, as do her written blog posts. They range from moderate vitriol (“You act to much like a teenager”) to adoration (“I just love you Jessica! and I love Pam too :) I enjoy your blog and thank you for allowing us on your journey of being a baby vamp”), but all are a testament to how much hardcore fans will engage with compelling content.
Jessica’s vlog maintains its relevancy to True Blood proper (Jessica usually comments on the events of the previous episode), and lets viewers dig deeper into one of the show’s most interesting characters. Here’s hoping HBO keeps up the great work with similar supplemental content and doesn’t let Jessica meet the true death anytime soon.
This is the first in a new series of profiles centered on the people who make web series. The goal is to provide a bit of insight into not only the actors but also the writers, creators, and even the agents and executives working in the web TV space. Hopefully, this will be a series that readers will enjoy. First up, OzGirl star, Shanrah Wakefield.
Shanrah Wakefield grew up in the small town of Moe (pronounced Mowee) in Victoria, Australia before moving to Melbourne when she was 17. After a stint at the Lee Strasburg Theater Institute in Los Angeles, she returned to Australia and graduated from Monash University in Melbourne, earning degrees in Liberal Arts and Law. In Australia, one can earn a law degree in four years rather than the debt-crushing seven needed in the US. “I think people will be surprised to learn I’m a lawyer”, she states with a certain degree of self-deprecation. Even at an early age the self-described show off knew she wanted to be a performer.
In 2008, Shanrah starred in the short film, Rock Shop directed by future OzGirl creator Nicholas Carlton. Later that year, Carlton cast Wakefield in the Streamy Award winning series portraying the pivotal role of Megan, a self-obsessed former child star who serves as a guide to Sophie Tilson’s Sadie. Surprisingly, she has little in common with her OzGirl character save for the fact that they both can string together a row of expletives that would make the saltiest of sailors blush. The critically acclaimed series ran for 23 episodes taking home several awards at the 4th Annual ITV Festival including Best Acting, which Wakefield accepted with her costar Sophie Tilson. Wakefield would later star in a short film, written and directed by Tilson. Following the success of OzGirl, she moved to LA to pursue an acting career.
Cracked.com, the producers behind Streamy Award winning web series Agents of Cracked, just announced its newest original series, After Hours. Set in a late-nite diner, After Hours features four friends who come together each week to address a new pop culture-related question that is dissected and answered by the team through humor, quick-hitting dialogue and clever animations.
If content is King, marketing Queen, and distribution a Prince or Princess, then Alloy Media + Marketing is the entire royal family.
The provider of “youth-focused innovative media” has produced some of the most popular teen-oriented programming in recent memory, both online and off (including Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, Haute & Bothered, and Private). The company is behind some of the most trafficked online destinations (including www.alloy.com, www.teen.com, and www.gurl.com), drawing more than 51 million millennials every month across its network. And Alloy also owns and operates Channel One, a news program broadcast to middle schools and high schools across the US with a daily reach of over six million teens.
With these assets, Alloy has developed a model for web TV success: 1) Find a web series that targets teens (possibly based on a popular novel from Alloy’s book publishing division), 2) attach a sponsor looking to reach teens, 3) market the hell out of the series across Channel One and on all of Alloy’s websites, 4) distribute the series across those very same properties, 5) repeat steps 1 through 4.
It worked with Haute and Bothered and LG. Then again with Private and Johnson & Johnson. Alloy’s now hoping the model holds for First Day and Kmart.
Starring Tracey Fairaway (Make It or Break It) and Elizabeth McLaughlin (Ugly Betty, The Clique), First Day follows a “teenage girl who repeatedly relives her first day at a new school.” It’s like Groundhogs Day for pubescents, showcasing back-to-school gear and Selena Gomez’s fashion line instead of Bill Murray.
The eight episode original web series debuts tomorrow and features “unique retail components” in each installment. Viewers will be able to click over to Kmart.com and by products worn by First Day characters. A sweepstakes will also send one lucky winner to NYC for his or her (most likely her) head-to-toe Kmart makeover.
In addition to First Day, Alloy is scheduled to release two more digital properties before the end of the year. Hollywood is like High School With Money, a web series adaptation of Zoey Dean’s New York Times bestselling novel of the same name and Talent, a music talent search that’s part scripted series and part reality TV show.
MG Siegler wrote a must-read piece on TechCrunch this evening (The Full-On Assault of Cable is Underway) that has me thinking about the battleground for our living rooms on this final week of summer that is about to begin.
Apple is set to unveil its much-awaited Apple iTV device this Wednesday at an event in San Francisco—essentially a take-two on its painfully restrictive Apple TV brick that is now collecting dust under my Roku box. The big talk is all around content, specifically the reported 99-cent rentals of TV episodes.
Currently you can only buy TV shows on iTunes, which means a pretty steep price to pay to catch those few episodes of Mad Men you missed. So Apple never really faced off head to head with cable, which is essentially a rental service with an all-you-can-eat $120 bill. But now with a fresh new $99 device and an a-la-carte rental option, the face-off is officially here.
Sigeler’s right, the battle for our living rooms isn’t just about convergence, it’s about freeing us from an oppressive $120 monthly cable bill and abysmal customer service for a glut of content we don’t even watch.
[This is the latest column from Tubefilter News' resident new media legal expert, James C. Roberts. Last time in Part 1 of a two-part series on ownership rights at major video sites he tackled reader questions on video uploading to Facebook. This week's the series concludes with a deep look at the YouTube TOS. ]
In the last column we discussed how ownership of posted videos is affected by the TOU/TOS (Terms of Use/Terms of Service) for Facebook. This time we turn to the TOS of the gejillion pound behemoth, YouTube. So, the question is:
Do you own the videos you post on YouTube?
The answer: Yes.
But that’s not really the right question. Here are two more:
Can YouTube use all or part of your videos?
The answer: Yes. The YouTube TOS has you giving a license to them.
Can other YouTube viewers use all or part of your videos?
Gary Vaynerchuk debuted Wine Library TV on February 21, 2006 as a way to both market his family’s New Jersey wine shop and make the traditionally highfalutin wine world more accessible to the everyperson. With its host’s infectiously animated personality and gift for similes, Wine Library TV soon became an internet sensation and made Vaynerchuk a social media star.
First there were the appearances on Conan and Ellen and a laundry list of profiles in major media publications. Next came the first release in his 10-book deal with HarperStudio, Crush It, which climbed to #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. And now there’s the satellite radio show.
Last night Sirius XM premiered Wine & Web with Gary Vaynerhuk. Broadcasting live from Sirius XM’s Rockefeller Center studios in New York City, Vaynerchuk “will help millions of satellite radio listeners across the country navigate the world and culture of wine, social media and more.” The live call-in show airs every Thursday from 10PM EST to Midnight EST. On the premiere installment, Vaynerchuk welcomed Opus One Wineries CEO, David Pearson for the first hour, and foursquare co-founder, Dennis Crowley for the second half.
I’m not sure how close a Sirius XM radio show gets Vaynerchuk to being able to buy the New York Jets, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
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