Tubefilter News

Hayden Black first channeled a local area news anchor with career ambitions far beyond reporting on your local area Chuck E. Cheese’s way back in 2006. Gordon Winston-Smythe, Black’s Manchester-born news man trying to make it in a city that’s not quite Los Angeles, is one of just two major components of the web series Goodnight Burbank that haven’t changed in the past five years. The other is the sereis’ premise.

The show is still about all the awkward workplace hijinks that take place in, around, and about the newsroom before, during, and after daily news broadcasts. And the focus is still on the back and forth banter between the anchors, who compete for attention from the camera and affections from their crew. But the other major components of the series (namely the cast, the length of the episodes, and the distribution platform) have changed.

Today, Goodnight Burbank debuted a new season of 30-minute episodes starring Black alongside Laura Silverman on Hulu, making it the second comedy web series to stream episodes on that site that last that long. I caught up with Black over e-mail to get the scoop on who’s picking up the tab for production, how he landed at Hulu, and what he’s learned in 5+ years of being in the business of faux news.

Tubefilter: This is the fourth iteration (after the original series, Breaking News, and Hollywood Report) of Goodnight Burbank. How’d it come to be?
Hayden Black: It was born from two separate conversations I’d had; one with Hulu who were interested in promoting but not paying for a half-hour version of GNB, and one with Channel 4 in the UK who were interested in a half-hour British TV version. Channel 4 asked what a half-hour version would look like and I thought the best way of answering them would be to shoot them myself.

Tubefilter: Who’s funding the series?
HB: Men in black.

Tubefilter: Why the half-hour format? Was that your vision and you found partners who agreed? Or did you find partners first and then decide on the length of the episodes?
HB: Why? Why not? It was a concept that always worked, a show (in it’s original version) thats biggest complaint from the fans was that it wasn’t long enough. It certainly had challenges such as finding a way to shoot a studio-bound show in a way that made it visually arresting and telling a story in 30 minutes of real time (it takes place during a half-hour newscast). But I think I overcame them. You tell me.

(Editor’s Note: I like the longer version, and actually see myself more likely to watch episodes at this length than if the installments were shorter.)

The talents of Taiwan’s most famous animation studio are usually reserved for reenacting top tabloid journalism and memetic news, but Next Media Animation recently lent its uncanny cartoon abilities to one of the longest-lasting web series on the internet.

NMA partnered with perennial daily web show Rocketboom for a Casual Friday segment that showcased a candy-colored, cartooned Mememolly explaining how expectant parents can act a little wacky.

Rocketboom creator Andrew Baron told me how the relationship came to be:

We hunted NMA down because we love their work and thought it would be fun…It’s the start of a new collaboration. The clip that went up on Friday was sort of an experiment for a news story that might typically be mixed in with a regular Rocketboom news day. We’ll probably sprinkle them in once a week or run them as full episodes when they can stand alone.
Stay tuned to Rocketboom to catch NMA’s headier fare.

A few years back I attended a launch event in Los Angeles for YouTube’s first sortie in the independent film world. It was a moderately well attended event kicking off the site’s Screening Room, a dedicated channel to distribute film festival gems, both shorts and features, that were otherwise trapped in the maze of the festival circuit. Aside from a puzzled reaction on stage from filmmaker Miranda July, the move was celebrated by the indie film crowd in attendance.

But now three years later, it’s clear that the Screening Room hasn’t quite been the boon for indie filmmakers that they had hoped it might be. The quality of films doesn’t appear to be the culprit, but still the ytscreeningroom channel has just 1.6 million total views and 56k subscribers. Ok, to be fair, the total views number might have to be ignored here, as most of the films now released on there are really counting towards the festivals’ own view counts. But still, with channel views (that’s how many views of the page itself) at just 9 million after three years, somehow the Screening Room is in need of a makeover.

It’s Easter Weekend! Some individuals are celebrating the resurrection of some 2.1 billion peoples’ messiah by scaring children, invoking Bob Ross to paint eggshells, or gorging on cream-filled, chocolate-sphered bits of deliciousness.

This guy, however, is hunting choice moving image selections from the online video world to share with reader. After some semi-thoughtful deliberation (people like making videos for Easter a lot more than they like making videos for Passover) here are my top three faves, in no particular order:

Half Way to Halloween

Trick ‘R Treat director Michael Dougherty created this Easter greeting on behalf of the horror-happy people at Fearnet, who wanted a vehicle in which to showcase candy-coated razor blades and roasted rabbits in the middle of Spring. They also needed something to do while counting down the 191 days until their own big holiday filled with the once dead.

Easter – Game Room

Game Room is a twice weekly comedy web series shot from the vantage point of a Microsoft Kinect or Playstation Move-like device. In the ‘Easter’ installment, Carly Anderson does her best Jesus of Nazareth impression in order to level up.

Super Scary Horror Theater is a sexy comedy horror show debuting this Friday night live from the Streamin’ Garage (a “six camera, live streaming entertainment network broadcasting an eclectic mix of programming in HD”). The series, which invokes the spirit of past genre progenitors like Elvira and Count Scary, will show classic horror movies interspersed with live interactions with the audience via chat and Skype.

The star of the show is one Ms. Dementia, played by one Kat Steel, who is currently starring in the web series Fresh Hell. She will emcee the evening’s events while she and her man servants will play a few games with the live audience. (It should be noted that in addition to being an actress and model, Kat Steel is a well-known cosplayer. For those unfamiliar, cosplay is when a person, usually a lady who’s easy on the eyes, dresses up as a favorite character and lets nerds ogle them at conventions. Such experience should serve her well in this series.)

A live show can be draining on its host, with audience interactions being unpredictable and a frequent need to vamp while thinking on one’s feet. But given her similarities to Elvira, Steel should have no difficulty filling the role.

The Streamin’ Garage has managed to establish itself quickly in the web series space. The studio broadcasts each week on YouTube and Ustream, where it has passed over two million views. Created by Elaine Ewing and Travis Rink, Super Scary Horror Theater is the sixth series launched by the network, since it began last year. Both Ewing and Rink worked with the Streamin’ Garage on previous projects.

While the show will be available on demand through YouTube and Blip, half the fun of watching is watching live. Fans of the Streamin’ Garage’s flagship show, Stupid for Movies know that the chatroom is at least as entertaining as the series. Furthermore, Super Scary Horror Theater is built around audience interaction as an integral part of the show. Without the audience the show would seem dead.

In case you didn’t know, April is Earthquake Preparedness Month, and in light of the recent 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan it couldn’t be more appropriate timing. Coincidentally, the American Red Cross Los Angeles Region had been preparing an original web series about earthquake preparedness since February that was set to premiere March 13—two days, it turns out, after the Japan disaster.

The Magnitude, “a web series about love and other natural disasters,” actually premiered on March 11—the day of the Japan earthquake—on PrepareLA, a site developed by the Red Cross of Greater LA to facilitate disaster preparedness education for Southern California.

The five episode romantic comedy follows a group of young Angelenos as they prepare for a major earthquake. “From a scavenger hunt for emergency supplies to earthquake drills before watching the Sunday game, the overall message in each episode is that disaster preparedness is fun, easy and important, reads the show’s website.

The series was created by Jordan Melograna, a Red Cross volunteer who wanted to convince his friends there is an urgent need for individual earthquake preparedness—quite a prescient impulse.

The Magnitude hasn’t gotten a lot of traction on YouTube, which is too bad since the series is well written with compelling characters and performances. Perhaps it was a matter of timing: the show may have been drowned out by the attention surrounding Japan quake, or we’re not ready for a comedy about ‘The Big One’ quite yet.

Andy Landen hasn’t even graduated film school yet, but already has an impressive string of web series under his belt—Do Whatever, a branded comedy series for Subway that racked up around 500,000 views on My Damn Channel, and his most recent, After School Club, an indie dark comedy. That’s not to mention the string of videos and even a feature film, Carried in the Whale, that he has collaborated on.

Landen embodies the latest iteration of film school grads, a generation native to the internet, whose laboratory is an endless jungle of upvotes, likes and comment threads. The Ontario, Canada native—yes, Canadians do seem to be all over online video—picked up the filmmaking bug while making videos of his younger brother skateboarding. This even led to a documentary film on skate culture, Amateur, that made waves on the festival circuit scoring awards along the way.

With just a month left in his MFA program at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, Landen is about to join the ranks of film school grads in Los Angeles, only he just may have a leg up on some of his classmates. Already he’s successfully pitched a room full of brand executives to had over a five-figure check for his three episodes web series (Do Whateever) from just a treatment. That kind of experience can’t be simulated in a lecture hall.

Content creators know about crowd funding. Sites like Kickstarer and IndeiGoGo allow individuals and companies the opportunity to raise cash from friends, family, and the intrigued in order to get productions off the ground.

For the uninformed, here’s the basics of how it works:

Someone who’s high on realizing a dream but low on funds starts a campaign on a crowd funding site. He or she explains the project and solicits contributions in various dollar denominations. Each dollar denomination corresponds to an object of appreciation (like DVDs, signed DVDs, special credits, secret footage, lunch with the director, a home cooked meal with the cast, and so on, and so forth). People then donate money to the project. If enough people donate to the project and the project meets its funding goals, everyone who donated receive objects of appreciation corresponding to how much cash they contributed.

It’s a win-win. The content creator gets money to make his or her creation and people who pledged get something special for their support. And that’s almost exactly but not quite what J. Sibley Law is doing for his latest venture in web television, TangoDango.

“It’s a channel that will run five web series a week, with a different one each day of the week,” Law explained over e-mail. “We’re producing three shows – Uncle Vic’s Kitchen, News for Blondes, and Splatter – and partnered with Up On the Roof for Scenes from the Movies and writer Jack Rushen on a comedy variety show…These will all run at least through September and we’re actively developing new work to run later in the year, all with 13-week seasons.”

That’s an ambitious plan! And to make it happen Law started an IndieGoGo campaign. I know what you’re thinking. He must be looking to raise a ton of cash in order to create a studio churning out that quantity of content, right? Probably! But that’s not what the IndieGoGo campaign is for.

Law is looking for $2,000 for TangoDango by way of 2,000 individual $1 donations. The point here isn’t to raise capital, it’s to build an audience. From the site: