Seven years after he moved out of Melrose Place and Alison Parker’s life, Andrew Shue started a website with his 30-something soccer buddy from New Jersey all about supporting, informing, and connecting moms. Five years after that, CafeMom is now one of the internet’s top destinations, with over 7.6 million unique visitors a month (and [...]
42 years ago this August, the late Iain Macmillan shot of the most iconic photos in music history. The photographer and friend of Yoko Ono was given about 15 minutes perched atop a ladder while police stopped traffic on Abbey Road outside The Beatles’ recording studio of choice with the same name. John, Paul, George, [...]
The Digitour is a 27-city live and in person national tour of top web stars. It kicked off in Los Angeles on April 12, 2011 and ended 33 days later in Miami, Florida. Online musical personalities with rabid fan bases and a combined view count that numbers somewhere in the billions participated. Tonight, live and in person, we ask a handful of them how the tour went down.
We’re live from the Tubefilter Meetup for Digitour Debriefed. Dave Days (#1 Most Subscribed YouTube Musician of All Time), DeStorm (#10 Most Subscribed YouTube Musician of All Time), MysteryGuitarMan (#8 Most Subscribed YouTuber of All Time) and Sarah Evershed (Executive Producer of The Digitour and President of The Cloud Media) are on stage to share their experiences from the tour and what’s it like to be a musician in an online video age.
Check out the live stream above, courtesy of our good friends at Stickam. And if you have questions for the audience, shout ‘em out to @tubefilter on Twitter. To get a taste of what we’ll be talking about, check out the exclusive, behind-the-scenes video of the Digitour (which we’ll also be premiering live at the Meetup) below.
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television show that had an original run of 26 seasons from 1963 to 1989. In 2005, Russel T Davies penned a reboot of the series, which is currently in its sixth season (which also makes Doctor Who the longest running sci-fi TV series ever). In 2006, Davies created a Doctor Who offshoot called Torchwood, which filmed its fourth series in Los Angeles and Wales. That series is called Miracle Day.
You still following? Good. Me too. Now Streamy Award-winner and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battelstar Galactica scribe Jane Espenson was tapped to pen ten episodes of Miracle Day. And similar to how Battelstar Galactica spawned an original web series spinoff called The Face of the Enemy (which was set in the the world of the Twelve Colonies and prominently featured BSG characters), so too will Miracle Day have a companion web series. It’s going to be called Web of Lies.
You still with me? Good! This is where we get to the news part. Espenson is so super jazzed about her writing gig and the companion series that she let slip one of its major players. Eliza Dushku (from Buffy, Angel, Tru Calling, and another Joss Whedon joint, Dollhouse) will star in Torcwhood: Web of Lies.
The TV show and its web companion will be distributed in the US by Starz. You can catch their premieres in early July.
Being a startup entrepreneur is hard. First, you have to find and execute a great idea (or at least an idea). And second, you have to take care of all the businessy things that come along with creating and operating a company. Things like taxes, payroll, health insurance, incorporation documents, small business insurance, and other important minutia and mandatory idiosyncrasies that make the government make sure it’s okay with whatever it is you’re doing.
But where’s a startup entrepreneur supposed to learn about and acquire all these stamps, documents, and seals of approval? I have no idea! Well, except if you’re a professional services startup with 10 employees or less. Then I have some idea where you can get small business insurance. You can go to Hiscox.
The London Stock Exchange-listed insurance provider that specializes in niche areas of the insurance market (including art collections and kidnapping/ransoms) is extending its services to small businesses in the US. To market its new product, Hiscox commissioned a web series (with a low-to-mid six figure production budget).
Leap Year is a scripted dramedy that tells the story of “five friends and first-time entrepreneurs facing the highs and lows of starting a business.” Or, more specifically, five friends and first-time entrepreneurs get fired, all invest in a shared office space, and all create new startup businesses to compete for $500,000 from a mystery investor.
The program’s executive produced by Wilson Cleveland and CJP Digital (creators of The Temp LIfe, The Webventures of Justin and Alden, Suite 7, and Bestsellers) in association with Happy Little Guillotine FIlms (Yuri and Vlad Baranovsky’s digital production shop behind titles like 7-Eleven’s Road Trip Rally and Break a Leg) and Attention Span Media (the company that brought you Dorm Life and If I Can Dream).
ClevverTV is one of those YouTube channels that when you’re not wearing your teenage girl hat, it’s possible to overlook. But at 547 million total views and 317,000 subscribers, the flagship of LA-based Clevver Media is a force to be reckoned with. Its niche of teen entertainment news, movie previews and even celeb gossip has blossomed since its launch in 2008, vaulting the channel to #59 on YouTube’s Top 100 most subscribed channels.
Today the network is launching their fourth dedicated YouTube channel, Clevver Music, adding to its sprawling sub-verticals of Clevver Movies and Clevver Games. Instead of using its main channel anchors Dana Ward and Josyln Davis, Clevver tapped two new hosts for the new Music channel, a mix of TV and music experience in Bridget Daly and former Virgin Records Music exec Brian Corsetti.
“Our first Clevver Media property, ClevverTV has allowed us to build a substantial YouTube and teen audience by providing upbeat and snackable content surrounding the young entertainment industry. Through Clevver Music we are not only able to provide that audience with music news from the hottest artists, but it will also enable Clevver to reach new audiences obsessed with today’s music culture,” said co-founder and Executive Producer Michael Palmer on the launch.
If you make a Venn Diagram that shows the cast of Glee in one circle and the cast of The LXD in another, Harry Shum Jr. would be the only individual listed where (and the only reason why) the two circles intersect. That is, except if you’re making your Venn Diagram in the summer. Then, you’d just be looking at two concentric circles. That’s when The LXD joins Glee on tour.
Jon M. Chu’s online original megahit about dueling factions of dancers with superhero powers is reuniting with the cast of the most web video savvy series on your TV for a 16-city national tour beginning on May 21 in Las Vegas and concluding on June 18 in Uniondale, NY. Last year the two casts combined for a similar live and on tour collaboration.
Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy conceived of the Glee Live in Concert! tour while Shum Jr. is in charge of, and the artistic director for The LXD collaboration, along with Christopher Scott. Fox recently announced it will film this year’s tour to turn into a concert flick, Glee Live! In 3D!, directed by Kevin Tancharoen, the creator and director of the red hot Mortal Kombat: Legacy web series.
You know that Kiefer Sutherland web series? The one that debuted on Hulu where the former CTU agent plays a God-fearing, Roman Catholic, repentant hit man alongside John Hurt, Michael Badalucco, and Sebastian Becaon? The one that’s directed by Brad Mirman and distributed by Digital Broadcasting Group? The one that’s called The Confession? Yeah, that one! It’s being turned into a movie.
Dave McNary at Variety reports Image Entertainment made a non-live streamed announcement at Cannes that the “integrated home entertainment company” is in final negotiations to obtain the rights to title. Image plans to reformat the online original into a feature-length film, for which it will own the “home entertainment and digital rights.”
If and when the film gets made, The Confession will be one of a very select group of original web series to make the jump from the computer to silver screens. Fred, a hyperactive prepubescent with a chipmunk’s voice and teenager’s body created by Lucas Cruikshank, jumped from YouTube to Nickelodeion in the form of a feature film late last year.
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