by Joshua Cohen on May 14th, 2011
Lisa Kudrow played a psychotherapist who only interacts with patients via FaceTime with a poised facade and more neuroses than a Woody Allen marathon for the first time in 2008. That’s when LStudio – a new media studio and online video destination founded and funded by luxury car company Lexus – debuted Web Therapy.
Since then, Lexus has produced 48 episodes of the web series over the course of three seasons featuring personalities like Meryl Streep, Courtney Cox, Julia Louis-Drefyus, Jane Lynch, Selma Blair, Molly Shannon, and more. They all seek resolution and catharsis, but generally only receive frustration or confusion. You can catch them all the installments online, and come July 17, you’ll be able to catch a select few on Showtime, too.
In Spring 2010, the premium television network picked up Web Therapy to run as interstitials between regularly scheduled Showtime programming. Anouncements released earlier this month indicate Showtime will finally air the first of ten new episodes of Web Therapy on Tuesday, July 17. Rashida Jones, Bob Balaban, Lynch, and Cox are all slated to guest star opposite Kudrow.
by Joshua Cohen on May 13th, 2011
If you’ve recovered from your bout of Royal Wedding fever and since turned your attention to things more American only to realize you prefer the ridiculous pomp and decorum associated with courtship traditions of a millennia years old monarchy to mint juleps and labor disputes between billionaire NFL team owners and millionaire athletes with stunted lifespans and 3.6 year careers, than Funny or Die has a web series that can give you another bout of Anglophilic hysteria.
Will and Kate: Before Happily Ever After is an online original series from FoD that gives viewers a look into the lives of the now happily wedded couple in the days and moments before they tied the knot. Oliver Jackson Cohen takes on the role of an aloof Prince William and his fivehead while Allison Williams plays Kate Middleton as an apologetic significant other who is sensitive to her future husband’s whims and incredibly privileged upbringing.
Like most good celebrity spoofs, Before Happily Ever After works because it ventures into absurd territory while still keeping a foot on the even path of reality.
by Marc Hustvedt on May 13th, 2011
It’s not hard to notice that Shira Lazar is a maven on Twitter. Very little slips past one of her handful of carefully watched social streams, despite being one of the hardest working women in web video. And now it seems, Lazar has taken the old ‘Do What You Love’ adage to heart, launching her latest—and most ambitious—project to date, convincing not only an old media institution but an old guard bluechip brand to back What’s Trending, a weekly live interactive web show and a daily news source for exactly what Lazar and her team know best—what’s trending on the internet and social media.
Even as we wrote about Lazar’s many web shows over the past few years, she would often hint at her vision of creating a show built around trending news topics. But the concept needed the right mixture of backing and distribution, something too often overlooked in new web series launches.
That meant taking the concept to CBS News, where Lazar had a semi-regular blog (‘On The Scene‘) and video blogging correspondent gig on the now-defunct Tomorrow Show. The idea of a distinctly old media news brand in taking the leap into backing a live web show wasn’t exactly an easy sell. It helped to wrangle a major brand sponsor—AT&T—into sponsoring the show.
by Joshua Cohen on May 13th, 2011
We already told you about Rob Riggle, Owen Benjamin, and Team Tiger Awesome’s Comedy Central-produced, Atom-distributed, Axe-sponsored web series Dirtcathalon, showcasing attractive college coeds competing in a variety of fratcacular challenges, but that’s just one of two recent online original initiatives from MTV Networks. The other is The Download.
Comedian Jordan Rubin and internet blogger and personality extraordinaire Molly McAleer host the tech-centric program on the set of eHarmony. The two trade banter about irritating aspects of social media or technology, play around with a Samsung TV (the program’s sponsor), and welcome celebrities like Jerry O’Connell to discuss things ephemeral and internet. The best thing about it is it’s actually funny. (That “set of eHarmony” line I stole from the show).
D.M. Levine at Adweek reports the two series are the first of several in the works to come out of a newly organized, dedicated web production arm of MTV Networks’ MTVN Entertainment Group. The entity that oversees Comedy Central, Spike and TV Land never before had an online only production unit. Levine explains in the past “producers on the network’s regular shows lent their efforts to the production of Web-only content.” Now, this new division will handle all online original productions.
by Marc Hustvedt on May 12th, 2011
Online video syndication has had a checkered history over the past five years or so, and the notion of guaranteeing video views lurked near the backwaters of the video scene, in close quarters to the shadowy axis of ad unit autoplay, view fraud and outright gaming of the system. Paid video syndication, an increasingly larger part of most branded entertainment campaigns, has become a business of its own, though still clouded by the murky associations with practices with which the industry is still grappling to form its opinion.
San Francisco-based Alphabird is emerging as the leader in the paid video syndication business, while at the same time battling the perception issues of its field. It touts its ability to “guarantee audience” on premium website publishers and YouTube, insisting that its videos are distributed in-page, as opposed to in-banner. Clients like Warner Bros., Disney, Fox and Fremantle Media and have turned to the company to help push out its online video projects to prospective viewers strewn across a myriad of sites.
Today AlphaBird announced it has acquired brand integration matchmaker PlaceVine for an undisclosed sum. Co-founded in 2007 by Adam Erlebacher and Greg Neichin, PlaceVine was the winner of The Wharton Venture Award, for building a platform that matched brands with placement and sponsor opportunities in web, TV and film projects. The PlaceVine team will be staying on board to join Alphabird.
by Joshua Cohen on May 12th, 2011
I told you YouTube was getting more serious about music discovery.
Less than two months after the launch of Music Tuesday’s on the YouTube blog – an editorial offshoot crafted by the musos at YouTube that highlights their YouTube.com/Music featured selections – the world’s largest video sharing site today debuted the YouTube 100 Music Chart.
It’s the initial makings of a Billboard style weekly list of “song traffic across official music videos, user-uploaded videos and viral debuts, and uses this data to provide a holistic view of song popularity.” The most interesting and innovative component of the chart is who’s on it.
This week’s Top 10 includes On the Floor by Jennifer Lopez, Judas by Lady Gaga, E.T. by Katy Perry, Look at me Now by Chris Brown, and a few spots down at #9 is Friday by Rebecca Black. A few more spots down at #44 is Nice Peter, sandwiched between Rihanna and Lil Wayne. That’s homegrown YouTube talent listed alongside international pop stars with major record label deals (plus a few acts that count as both), which makes for great opportunities for up-and-coming musicians to get more easily recognized by producers and brands looking for fresh talent. Pretty cool, right? I think so, too.
by Joshua Cohen on May 11th, 2011
Steve Brodner is a decidedly liberal, politically-charged, modern day Norman Rockwell meets Al Hirshfeld who satirizes the political arena by way of illustration and caricature. If you watched Warren Beaty run for Senator of Straight-Talkin’ Crazy Town in Bulworth or picked up a copy of Esquire, The Progressive, The Village Voice, or Harper’s Magazine in the last 30 years you’ve probably seen his work.
If not, you can catch Brodner’s work on his every other weekly or so Slate V web series Smashing Crayons. I’m guessing the title is a play on the drawing techniques preschoolers and the artist’s three decades worth of frustration with government powers. At least that’s what it looks like. Whimsical cartoons with light, curly lines and vibrant colors fill each installment while Brodner’s voicever highlights whatever unsavory political issue is making headlines at the moment.
by Joshua Cohen on May 11th, 2011
In heaven everything is fine and everyone drinks David Lynch Signature Cup Organic Coffee. At least that’s what the 65-year-old filmmaker and TV director who made the whole world wonder who murdered Laura Palmer would have you believe.
Lynch, who is no stranger to creating commercials containing uncanny content, recently uploaded and ad spot where he slings his organic, fairly traded cups of joe by way of a flirty conversation with the head of Barbie doll uncomfortably placed in his firm grasp.
Lynch is a long-time fan of online video. Way back in October 2008, the original Eraserhead signed a deal with the now defunct ON Networks for a web series that never saw the light of day based on his book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity.” Lynch’s website was also once home to a repository of sporadically uploaded weather reports, animated coyote programs, and other things sufficiently surreal for people who like David Lynch movies to enjoy for the small cost of $9.97 per month.
It’s no surprise that Lynch took the web to market his wares, but what is surprising is the execution. This ain’t your daddy’s David Lynch, and that’s a bad thing. If whispering sweet greetings while bending Barbie’s neck on top of fairy tale music constitutes what now passes for Lynch’s signature disturbing imagery, then dude might as well give away his director’s chair. The commercial is different, that’s for sure, but I’d expect more from the man who used to make ad spots like this.
