Tubefilter News

Today, just days after Apple’s recently re-invented AppleTV hit stores last Friday, Google announced an update on Google TV—the first official progress report since Google TV’s introduction at Google I/O five months ago.

Even CSI creator Anthony Zuiker knows he can’t ignore YouTube these days. With pre-orders just starting for the second novel in his Level 26 trilogy, he’s trying something different this time around with respect to those innovative little “cyber-bridges” that thread together the printed pages with live-action video. Instead of making the short-form video segments exclusive content that only those that buy the physical book can unlock, this time they are free for the world on YouTube starting today with Part 1 (above) of Dark Prophecy, “The Reading/Hanged Man.”

Last fall for the first chapter in the ‘digi-novel’ trilogy of of Steve Dark (Daniel Buran) and his hunt to find the world’s most gruesome serial killer ever seen, a so-called ‘Level 26 killer’ known only as Sqweegel, Zuiker included a special code at the end of certain chapters that sent readers to the Level26.com site to actually watch the scripted video interludes. Fans did end up posting the codes online for those that didn’t buy the book, but the lack of any widescale distribution was noticeable.

Tom Hanks is making a web series.

Dave Itzkoff at the New York Times broke the news late last week that the person in possession of one of the entertainment industry’s most crowded mantels will release an animated, post-apocalyptic, episodic online program in early 2011. Dubbed Electric City, the series will flip the iconic sci-fi idea of a dystopian future on its head, and present a WALL-E-inspired “good life and good world [that] has been created out of the usual end-of-life scenarios.”

Produced by Hanks, his producing partner Gary Goetzman, and their Playtone Company, Electric City and its accompanying announcement are interesting for at least three key reasons (aside from the obvious, “OMG Tom hanks is doing a web series!?”):

Tom Hanks is making a web series for the same reason everyone else is making them. No film studios or television companies wanted to make Electric City as a film or TV show, so Hanks is taking it online. Hanks tells Itzkoff he conceived of the series over six years ago and shopped the project to several American studios, but couldn’t find a match. After several iterations, the show evolved into a web series comprised of 20 three-minute installments.

Big Guns in Hollywood are taking web series international. After Hanks couldn’t find an American studio for Electric City, he went to India and found a partner in the Mumbai-based studio, Reliance. No stranger to funding American entertainment projects, Hanks said Reliance, “Immediately came to us.” Hanks is also enthusiastic about the 700 or so million people in India who speak English, “who are very much used to looking at things that last about three minutes on their phones.”

If a story about one of the entertainment industry’s biggest names seeking international funding and distribution for a web project comes as no surprise to you, that’s because it’s been done before. Michael Eisner’s new media studio, Vuguru, signed a multil-million dollar deal with Canada’s Rogers Media and just recently announced Fireworks International will sell a Vuguru series, The Booth, overseas on 183 channels in 166 territories.

Tom Hanks is excited by online video. He went a little YouTube-happy on set during the filming of one of his latest motion pictures, Larry Crowne. The guy also has an affinity for filming Woody sightings. Just by the fact Hanks has a YouTube channel with at least a handful of uploads shows you he’s excited about new media. Something which leads me to believe I’ll be writing about many more Tom Hanks web projects in the not-so-distant, hopefully anti-Orwellian future.

Vuguru hinted at this last week when news of their 2-year exclusive international sales deal with ContentFilm’s Fireworks International broke, but today comes the specifics on what led to the partnership in the first place. Fireworks has sold Vuguru’s The Booth at the End to Fox International Channels (FIC) in all territories, excluding the US and Canada.

The two-year distribution deal, which is exclusive for 18 months, plugs Booth into FIC’s 183 channels worldwide, which together boast over 875 million global subscribers. It’s a sweeping deal, arguably the most comprehensive international pickup of a web series to date, as Fox is getting internet, broadcast TV, mobile, and download-to-own rights for all durations of the series.

Durations? Yes, that’s the latest buzzword to keep handy for digital distro conversations. On the international TV marketplace anything and everything can be chopped and served up to order depending on the platform. As with most all of Fireworks’ multiplatform projects, there’s always a short form and a longer form TV-friendly version ready to go.

“All right, let’s do this thing.”

So begins the show. It’s a hell of an opening, with eery, strange visuals—none of which make sense. An old man staring eye-to-eye with a demon, walking down a dark corridor. The arresting imagery gives way to Clara, the granddaughter of this old man, packing up his things after his death. In the process, she discovers his camera, an old thirties relic. Only it isn’t really a camera – it physically can’t make photos, and inside is a strange collection of items.

Then the nightmare comes.

With web series inching upward in running time, and dramas typically wanting to make use of that increasing length of viewer attention, I wouldn’t say I’m surprised at Camera Obscura’s three-minute average length—pilot excepted, which is about seven minutes—but certainly intrigued. It’s clear that this is a show wanting to take its time, and each episode doesn’t do all that much, but rather than adding more time to flesh things out, they opt to keep from wearing out their welcome.

In 2009, the WGA East started getting serious about digital media. The then 58-year-old labor union representing writers in motion pictures, television, cable, and broadcast news, began acquiring new media signatories in order to bring web content creators into the fold. By the first half of 2010, the WGA East welcomed at least 46 individuals or companies creating online entertainment into its organization.

So, what do you do if you’re a labor union labor and you’ve recently expanded to encompass an entirely new, creative work force that operates in a burgeoning entertainment medium? You honor that new, creative work force with awards.

The WGA East and the WGA West announced the very first WGA New Media Writing Awards. Digital recognition and honors will be dispensed at the WGA Awards on Saturday, February 5, 2011 at simultaneous ceremonies in LA and NYC by way of two categories: Outstanding Achievement in Writing Original New Media and Outstanding Achievement in Writing Derivative New Media.

A panel of Writers Guild members “selected for their experience in the new media genre” will be responsible for judging the preliminary and final rounds. And only programs containing “work that was written and produced under a WGA collective bargaining agreement and for which the Guilds have determined the writing credits may be submitted.”

If you think your piece of online video is deserving of praise and qualifies so far, check out the official rules and submissions form here. The WGA New Media Writing awards will be accepting entries through November 23, 2010.

Last week, week the independently produced Canadian web series Venus Spa launched its second season, a milestone few web series reach.

Venus Spa is an over-the-top, tongue-and-cheek peek inside a fictional 80′s health club complete with big hair, bad wardrobe, and worse music; however, for those with fond memories of the 80′s, the retro comedy might bring back some lost recollections of the past glory days. For others, well, those who forget history are doomed to bring back leg warmers.

For the second season the producers have doubled the number of episodes to 26. The hope is that a longer season will allow the show to build upon and sustain its momentum and keep audiences engaged for a longer period. The first season received over 500,000 YouTube views with individual episodes averaging a respectable 25,000 to 30,000 views each. Furthermore, the series performed particularly well with males 35 and older, a demographic not usually associated with YouTube success.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the web TV paradigm is that content can be geared toward, in some cases, very small niche groups, and offers programs a chance at success that in other cases never would have been given an opportunity.

Check out season two of Venus Spa and leave a comment below and let the show’s cast and crew know what you think of the series. Good, bad, or indifferent, all a series’s creator can ask is that one gives his or her show a fair shake.

Last Friday at the New York Television Festival My Damn Channel Co-Founder and CEO Rob Barnett let the cat out of the bag: Streamy Award nominated comedy web series The Temp Life is coming to his network. The series, which takes a comedic look at the highs and lows of hourly workers, premieres its fifth season on December 6th.