by Joshua Cohen on January 31st, 2011
William Shatner is attempting to build a mini-sci-fi empire atop the foundations of being an arbiter of cool and three seasons and 79 episodes of one of the most popular television series of all time.
Last March, Shatner launched MyOuterSpace.com, an online destination that’s “part social network, part sci-fi news site, part video channel, and part production company.” He currently serves as the site’s “Admiral,” and one of his first orders of duty was to start production on a web series.
Etan Vlessing at THR reports Shatner and Amanda Tapping will both voice characters in the animated, MyOuterSpace.com original, The Zenoids. Here’s the premise:
Kozmo and Zara were once a popular singing duo on their home planet Zeno. Now their family lives on a spaceship as old as their last single, bopping around the galaxy, trying to keep the dream alive. Daughter Ziri and son Iggy have grown up in the band, reluctantly helping their parents sing for their supper – and engine parts.
Good gigs are hard to get, but Zara keeps the schedule full, even if it’s only bowling alleys and carnival shows on amusement asteroids. Kozmo’s always got a new pie-in-the sky idea, invention or big-time deal that would set them for life yet never pans out. Between Kozmo’s hustle and Zara’s bustle, they always scrape by, as the Zenoid family lives from adventure to adventure.
by Marc Hustvedt on January 31st, 2011
Up and down the video lists of YouTube’s top creators, hyperlinked annotations are ubiquitous. But in their three years as a supported feature on the platform, few have actually built their entire channels around them. The few that have honed this craft of viewer-guided storytelling have learned that it’s one way to keep viewers engaged in their work—rather than serving weekly snackables to their fans, creators like Chad Matt & Rob are serving bi-monthly feasts.
Their latest interactive, The Treasure Hunt which came to be after teaming up with TV prodCo Fremantle, first screened for audiences at the Anaheim International Film Festival back in August. Now last week their first stab at the western was released on their YouTube channel. CMR’s Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin directed the Hunt, which stars Bettinelli-Olpin alongside partners Chad Villella and Rob Polonsky.
by Joshua Cohen on January 31st, 2011
The internet’s catalog of comedy programming relating stories of historical significance is more focused towards the absurd than the accurate. Brad Neely’s George Washington and Funny or Die’s Drunk History are condensed lessons made to make you laugh, not to make you educated. AOL, Mark Burnett, John Wiley & Sons, and Coalition Films think they can do both.
Today, Burnett’s One Three, Inc. announced a partnership with Coalition Films. Together they’ve acquired the rights from Wiley to develop a digital series of comedy shorts based on everyone’s favorite high school study buddy, CliffsNotes. The plan is to release “high quality videos that provide analysis, interpretation, and criticism of the great works of literature in a fun and highly memorable way,” and to distribute those videos on AOL.
Works by Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens are the first slated to go into production, with the promise of many more to follow. Procrastinating teenagers with a distaste for the written word and term papers due are anxiously anticipating the release.
You can now add Burnett, Wiley, and Coalition to the laundry list of production partners AOL has signed in the past six months, including Vuguru, Next New Networks, Electus, Endemol, and others.
by Marc Hustvedt on January 28th, 2011
The move from feature film to web series isn’t always a smooth jaunt through the editing bay. For writer-director Marc Clebanoff that meant a hard look at what he had in his hands—a gritty indie action flick that would also prove to be one of David Carradine’s final films. But after taking their film Break out with modest success in the saturated indie market, he and Frank Krueger (who also stars in the film), re-imagined the whole project as a serialized online release, hoping new life as a web series would draw some critical attention that passed over its previous incarnation.
After months in the editing room trying to pick apart a 93-minute narrative into an episodic, the team soft-launched their new series, now called No Clean Break on KoldCast in December. And this week, with the release of their fourth episode, the pair are looking to enter the recent drive to create more drama online, following the attention around other dark indie series like Compulsions and Asylum.
Krueger stars as a remorseful hitman tasked with a bizarre contract from “The Man,” (Chad Everett) who happens to be the biggest crime boss in the city, to take him out of his terminally ill misery.
by Nicholas Carlton on January 28th, 2011
The indie web series scene in Australia continues to grow with local comedy The Future Machine. This week the show launches the final episode of its 8-episode first season. It stars comedian Matt Okine, Cariba Heine (H20: Just Add Water) and Andy Ryan (Tomorrow When The War Began) as roommates who build a time machine in their kitchen to resolve an argument.
David Barker, Tom Sheldrick and Matt Okine (director, writer and star respectively) co-created The Future Machine and cleverly designed a concept that’s expansive in its scope (it’s about time travel), yet limited to a single filming location – an apartment. While many web series have been filmed in filmmakers’ apartments due to low budgets, this series pulls out all the stops in terms of delivering a robust and high quality level of production.
Director of Photography Nino Tamburri chose to shoot the series on the Canon 5D and 7D (now a staple of indie filmmaking) with a wide array of SLR lenses providing a filmic visual aesthetic. The excellent photography combined with Shona Menzie’s production design transforms a bland warehouse into a colourful and often exciting bachelor pad. Throw in some decent acting and funny punchlines and the series is effective as a low key, high concept comedy.
The budget of the series is reportedly AUD $15, 000 – and for 30 minutes of content, that ain’t bad. Especially when you consider that director David Barker comes from a commercial background (he co-founded Sydney-based commercial production company, Taxi Films) and actor Andy Ryan was one of the ensemble of teenagers in the big-budgeted, Stuart Beattie-helmed action flick, Tomorrow When the War Began.
But it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. A recent article in Encore Magazine sparked a passionate and fiery debate about the success of the series and its future, which inclined at least one YouTube commentator to post a video in response. Still, the creators are optimistic and pleased with their views surpassing the 10,000 mark.
by Lon Harris on January 28th, 2011
Comedian Barry Sobel – best known for his ’80s “hip hop comedy” routine and his appearance in Revenge of the Nerds II – hosts a new online variety series for Lexus’ LStudio and Tom Hanks’ Playtone Company. It’s called The 3 Minute Talk Show and here’s the catch: it’s a late-night talk show in the Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien mold, but all in just 3 minutes!
And here’s the problem. (Well, one of them…) It can’t hold to its own somewhat flimsy gimmick. I suppose the format itself COULD work. The interview is a quick clip and one question, then a comic comes out and does one joke, there’s some quick banter, and you’re out.
But the first two episodes are both six minutes long! They even have a clock that supposedly counts down the 3 minutes, but it’s fake and goes super-slow because the show is longer. This is most likely intended as a joke, but it’s not so much funny as it is confusing, and the fact that the whole show is running with a constant countdown is distracting. I found myself looking at the clock more than the program. Never a good sign.
But my biggest issue is with Sobel. His whole bit here is just making fun of the fact that it’s a web show and it’s only 3 minutes (or 4 or 5). Maybe I just watch more web shows than most people (okay, I definitely do), but I don’t find the concept of video made for the Internet in itself all that amusing. When all the jokes are “Hey, no one’s watching, it’s the Internet!,” it makes me not want to watch. It’s sort of like Sobel thinks I’m the joke. And maybe he does…but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy his show.
by Joshua Cohen on January 27th, 2011
Isaiah Mustafa is back. He’s be-toweled, in an innocuous bathroom setting and talking about Old Spice with that special kind of diction reminiscent of a SFW Brad Neely cartoon inspired by marketing for OK Soda.
It’s been seven months and millions of views since hotshot advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy positioned Mustafa in the pantheon of Internet Awesome by way of an interactive, personalized, and prolific online video and social media campaign.
Mustafa’s stint as the Old Spice Guy immediately invigorated his entertainment career, kindling a relationship with Tyler Perry and landing him at least two film roles. The successful campaign apparently also lead Mustafa to doing more Old Spice campaigns.
In his latest video, Mustafa promises, “new advertisements to inform the people on this crazy blue marble that we call earth how they or their men can use Old Spice to smell as fresh as the freshest place on Earth,” which part of me thinks is great, and the other part of me doesn’t think is great.
Short of Wieden and Kenney concocting something equally creative and innovative to Old Spice Guy’s YouTube campaign, I don’t see how the new adverts will live up to expectations.
by Drew Baldwin on January 27th, 2011
The A.V. Club—the pop culture wing at The Onion—debuted Inventory, a new series based on their unconventional pop culture lists.
Inventory first began as (and continues to be) a weekly feature on the A.V. Club website in 2005 and grew to be one of the most popular features on the site, now with over 300 lists and its own coffee table book. List examples include:
Exploring 24 great films too painful to watch twice
14 tragic movie-masturbation scenes
18 songs about crappy cities
6 Keanu Reeves movies somehow not ruined by Keanu Reeves
22 great songs inspired by heinous true crimes
13 particularly horrible fast-food innovations
8 great films made by directors after they turned 70
The latest episode, ‘Roc-Doc Dicks,’ aired today and features rock n’ roll documentaries that make their subjects look like dicks. Last week the series premiered with ‘Blockbuster Knockoffs’ which focused on, among other films, Mac and Me (check out the McDonald’s dance scene).
