Tubefilter News

Desperados is a tequila flavored beer (Hey, at least it doesn’t have milk) produced by the Fischer Brewery in Schiltigheim, France and traditionally marketed towards the Germans living across the border 9 kilometers away. The France-based creative ad agency Dufresne Corrigan Scarlett and digital production house MediaMonks want to change that last part.

Fisher hired the two companies for an interactive YouTube takeover campaign targeting drinkers worldwide. The Desperados Experience asks for your age, country, and the sex you want to party with before determining if you’re old enough to drink. If you’re of age, the doors open and a video begins that eventually reaches out to touch the YouTube player and takes over the entire page.

It’s kinda cool! It’s also kinda getting old! We’ve seen this type of advertising tactic a bunch of times before (from Nintendo, Samsung, The Expendables, and Tipp-Ex). What started off as a fantastic, jarring way to get consumers’ attention and admiration is now fast becoming played out.

The Desperados Experience, however, does incorporate a few extra elements that keeps it clever. Viewers can opt to let Desperados access your Facebook account, which it will then mine for pictures to strategically place throughout the video. There’s also a mini-gaming portion. At one point in the ad, Desperados tells viewers to drag the video slider to break down a wall to gain access to a party that looks like the Big Boi concert at Austin’s Seaholm Power Plant.

That interactive component is the best part of the video and where these types of YouTube takeovers – and YouTube interactivity in general – have the most room to grow.

Google launched its original video viewing and sharing service, Google Video, on January 25, 2005. On October 29, 2006 Google acquired YouTube. In May 2009, Google discontinued the ability to let users upload content to Google Video. And on April 29, 2011 Google will finally shut Google Video down.

On that date, Google will officially transition the site from a video viewing and sharing service to a video search engine, which will make YouTube the company’s one and only major video viewing and sharing destination (and hopefully encourage ComScore to change the company’s name in its monthly Online Video Rankings from “Google Sites” to “YouTube”).

The news came in the form of an e-mail addressed to Google Video users late last week:

Dear Google Video User,

Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.

Saturday is Charlie Chaplin’s birthday! Blow out a candle with some piano accompaniment for the would be 122 year-old and watch Google’s ode to who I’m told is one of the best screen legends of all time.

The world’s largest video sharing site created a Google Doodle for the occasion that’s less of a drawing cleverly incorporating a person, theme, or idea into an iteration of Google’s wordmark, and more of a YouTube video. The two-minute short shows a destitute Charlie Chaplin impersonator engaging in 1920s hijinks in order to make friends and score a hot meal.

Classic Charlie Chaplin, right!? People all around the world, especially those super fans in Adipur, Gujarat, India and anyone going to www.google.com must be watching this video, contributing to an astronomical view count in the tens of millions, right?! Well, the world may never know.

The view counter is conspicuously absent from the Charlie Chaplin video. It’s something noted by hundreds of the video’s 4,676+ commenters, turning the missing view counts into a big topic of conversation. These kinds of comments come in three basic categories:

Today YouTube launched YouTube Copyright School, a program designed to educate users on the rules of copyright law and how to play by them.

Copyright School is part of YouTube’s on going effort—as with its Video Identification online rights management technology and other programs—to encourage copyright owners to use YouTube and, more importantly, to avoid costly legal battles.

The school employed the Happy Tree Friends gang from Mondo Media, in which Russell (a sea otter character who is, coincidentally, a pirate) learns some valuable lessons about copyright infringement. “You could be sued and found liable for monetary damages,” the videos’s narrator explains. “Or you could lose your YouTube account.”

YouTube employs a three strike rule, after which the user is “banned for life” from YouTube. Violations may also include mashups and remixes, depending on whether its defined as a “fair use.” More information is contained at the YouTube Copyright Center.

YouTube will require copyright violators to attend the school, which requires watching the copyright tutorial and passing a quiz to show that you’ve paid attention and understood the content before uploading more content to YouTube.

The creation of Copyright School is in fact a softening of the three strikes rule, in which accounts are automatically removed after three uncontested copyright notifications without any chance for appeal. Now YouTube will take a more flexible approach: “So, today we’ll begin removing copyright strikes from user’s accounts in certain limited circumstances, contingent upon the successful completion of YouTube Copyright School, as well as a solid demonstrated record of good behavior

With a forearm full of tattoos and roving kitchen that cooks up miracles with everything from local produce to foie gras and escargots, Chef Ludo Lefebvre is on a mission.

After making a name for himself in the Los Angeles restaurant scene with stints at L’Orangerie and Bastide (you may also recognize him from his two appearances on Top Chef Masters), Lefebvre was searching for something new and a way to create dishes without boundaries. His insatiable hunger to find the best ingredients, the most authentic foods from around the world and to honor his roots in French cooking led to the creation of LudoBites.

In this roving restaurant, known in the culinary world as an aptly named pop-up restaurant, Ludo has become a cause celebre. Reservations at LudoBites are so in demand the day they become available that they have crashed the Open Table site with an overwhelming number of requests.

Now Lefevbre and his wife and business partner Krissy are literally taking their show on the road. As if changing location in Los Angeles for LudoBites was not challenging enough, they are currently touring America and popping up in six states to bring the magic of LudoBites around the country. And the Sundance Channel’s cameras are along for the ride, currently documenting the couple’s adventures – from watching Ludo hold a raw buffalo to seeing him create a red chile kettle corn for in Santa Fe – for their upcoming show Ludo Bites America.

If all of this talk of food whets your appetite, you can take a peak into the world of LudoBites with the 5 part series that chronicles the food, the staff, the dining experience, and explains what it all means. After eating at four of the LudoBites location and tasting some of the most delicious and creative dishes I could ever imagine (e.g. chorizo soup with cantaloupe and cornichon ice or poached roasted pickled foie gras with acacia honey, autumn fruits, and roses) you can trust me when I say Ludos makes exceptional food that is both gorgeous and delicious.

We caught up with Krissy Lefebvre to find out more about the new web series and the upcoming Sundance Channel show while they were on the road on Colorado getting ready to pop up in Denver with an all buffalo menu.

Dystopian futures have officially reached the point of earning their own genre within web series. Whether it’s noir-ing the Koopa kingdom (There Will Be Brawl), cloning (Aidan 5) or just life in general (Afterworld). Perhaps it’s the twisted minds of video creators, or the relative lack of decent sci-fi in the Cinemaplexes—or perhaps the proliferation of green screens and After Effects amongst the video crowd, but the web has become the front lines for the genre.

Dystopians have yet to turn the genre on the world of web video itself, projecting what might unfold should the current trajectory of loosely organized chaos ensue. Enter YouTupolis, a Sin City—inspired green screener unveiling a world of zombie-like video creators trapped in a vicious cycle of production, with no end in sight. Only those few on the outside of this mega-city called “YouTupolis” (owned by YouTube) give—ironically—video diary glimpses of a life free from the lucrative Partner agreements.

YouTupolis is the brainchild of Valentina, already well known in YouTube circles for her 56k-subscriber Val’s Diary channel, and Wojciech Lorenc a teacher in Columbia College Chicago’s Television Department, who aimed to create “a sci-fi satire of YouTube and YouTube community.”

By now you’ve heard the news an animated TV comedy series based on the uber-popular The Annoying Orange web series is one step closer to fruition (LOL!).

Annoying Orange creator Dane Boedigheimer partnered with LA-based management and production shop The Collective to create six 30-minute episodes and score the puntastic program a television distribution deal. We know a few of the details, like Tom Sheppard will pen the first six installments, Conrad Vernon will executive produce, and Malcom McDowell will voice one of the characters, but other info is hard to come by.

So, we went straight to the source and asked Boedigheimer himself a few questions about what to expect from an Annoying Orange TV series:

Tubefilter: What does the one-to-four-minute Annoying Orange web series look like once it’s transformed into a 22-minute TV show? What should viewers expect?
Dane Boedigheimer: Viewers can expect all of the core things that made Orange popular online, except now we’ve expanded the world exponentially…we really wanted to open it up and not be limited to where we can take the show and what kinds of situations the characters get themselves into. Don’t worry though, Orange will still be his same old lovable annoying self.

TF: Will the six episodes you’re producing with The Collective follow any kind of overarching storyline? Or will they be more like one-off episodes?
DB: A little of both actually. Each episode could be considered a “one-off”, but at the same time there’s running themes and situations in each episode that will get flushed out as time goes on.

TF: I know The Collective has a great relationship with Nickelodeon from their partnership on Fred: The Movie. On which network do you think The Annoying Orange TV show will end up?
DB: Unfortunately this isn’t a subject I can expand upon at this time. Really, I’m just excited by the opportunity to expand the web series to another medium.

Last October, we confirmed with The Annoying Orange creator Dane Boedigheimer that a deal to bring his animated web series to television was in the works. Today, Boedigheimer and his series aout what happens when pieces of fruit that normally play the role of standing still in Cezanne paintings become aware and develop attitudes is one step closer to TV.

Nellie Andreeva at Deadline reports LA-based management company and production house The Collective partnered with Boedigheimer to produce six episodes of The Annoying Orange animated TV comedy series. The episodes come complete with A-list cartoon talent, including Tom Sheppard (Pinky and the Brain) handling writing responsibilities, Conrad Vernon (co-director of Monsters and Aliens, Shrek 2) executive producing, and Malcom McDowell lending his voice to one of the characters.

The Annoying Orange TV show also comes with it an inherent, built-in audience 1.4 million YouTube subscribers and 7.8 million Facebook Fans strong. Though those aren’t quite Vin Diesel kinds of numbers, they should still easily help sell television executive on the series.