Tubefilter News

Suppendapo is Wreck and Salvage’s eschatological web series and warehouse, preparing individuals for the impending apocalypse since 2005. Here’s how it works:

Persons who believe the Rapture is an imminent event and/or persons who believe in creative and entertaining online video are asked to call the Suppendapo hotline at 206-339-6324. (It’s a real number. You should give it a ring.) You’ll get their answering machine (all of the the company’s End of World specialists are undoubtedly handling other calls), at which point you will be prompted to leave your order for whatever (and I mean whatever) it is you require to live in a post-Armageddon world. Suppendapo then fulfills your order by way of an animated, clip art-heavy online video.

Animation Hotline is kinda the same thing, except without the catastrophic premise.

Artist Dustin Grella solicits interested parties to give his answering machine a ring at 212-683-2490. (Again, a real working number. Try it.) Callers can leave any message they want, though the the shorter (10 seconds or less) the better. Grella then uses his more or less incredible chalk drawing and stop motion animation skills to bring the random voicemails to life. There are musings on the national debt, things that only happen in New York, and ravings from a man that needs some sustenance.

Mike Patrick O’Brien is almost a pimp and a writer for Saturday Night Live by way of Chicago’s famous incubator for comedic talent Second City. He’s also the creator and star of the latest addition to the Irreverent Celebrity Talk Show (not to be confused with the Faux Celebrity Talk Show) genre of original web series.

Like Diablo Cody’s Red Band Trailer (which is another recent addition to this particular brand of online video programming), O’Brien’s 7 Minutes in Heaven places our comedian creator opposite celebrities in an unconventional environment to discuss personal topics and partake in whimsical talk show sideshow bits. As the name would suggest to anyone who’s successfully endured the growing process of puberty, the program takes place in an unidentified closet filled with the vestiges of clothes worn in decades past (and O’Brien tries to get lucky with his guest at the end of each episode).

The set is cramped, but the acoustics are amazing and the location lends itself to stifled-laughter-filled segments of Closet Theater and Pretend This is Your Closet and I’m a Man off the Street and Stumbled in Here and You’re a Celebrity and You Don’t Want to be Recognized. Kristen Wiig plays the role of guest the best, but Elijah Wood and Bravo’s Andy Cohen still make for entertaining in-the-closet antics.

Cowboys and Aliens may not be the big winner tonight among movie critics, but it still could be money in the box office this weekend. And if the Western sci-fi romp does top The Smurfs and Crazy, Stupid, Love in ticket sales, surely a part of the reason is due to director Jon Favreau’s hand-selected big winners on YouTube.

The American actor, screenwriter, director, and comedian sourced at least two pieces of promotional material for the film from born and bred YouTube talent. The first comes from YouTube director par excellence, Freddie Wong.

Favreau explains how he and his son have been longtime fans of Wong’s work, using adjectives like “inspired” and “charming” to describe the young content creator’s online catalog. He reached out to Wong with the idea for a good old fashioned collaboration to market Cowboys and Aliens. Before long, the two directors found themselves on the Universal backlot in Wyatt Earp-era garb for their own special effects laden OK Corral shootout.

Wong’s signature fight scenes aren’t the only type of content Favreau tapped to tease Cowobys and Aliens. Video DJ Mike Relm caught the director’s eye after he uploaded his edit of the Iron Man 2 trailer, so Favreau commissioned Relm to create a similar spot for Cowboys and Aliens. The bass heavy, technotastic remix ran briefly as a commercial for the upcoming flick.

From Sandeep Parikh to Felicia Day, The Guild has launched careers for a number of its actors, but it has also created work for the people behind the camera. Sean Becker, the series’ Streamy Award-winning director since season two, is one such case.
Becker is a rare but increasingly common case of a person who, for basically his entire career, has worked in new media. The Guild, whose fifth season officially premieres on the web on July 26, is probably his most high profile credit, but Becker has lots of plans and projects.

“It’s been crazy lately,” Becker said in an interview. “I’m keeping busy and couldn’t be happier. And I’d rather have that then not be busy at all.”

Becker has been working on passion projects with a number of Guild actors, including Jeff Lewis (The Jeff Lewis 5-Minute Comedy Hour, currently raising funds for season two), J. Teddy Garces (Sound Advice), and Teal Sherer (My Gimpy Life) and other known personalities like Taryn Southern.

It almost didn’t happen this way. Becker was brought on to the Guild by one of its producers, Kim Evey (Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show) after her husband and partner, Greg Benson, couldn’t do it. Becker’s directing experience was mostly with smaller crews of people he knew. After he’d finished his directing duties of a few episodes, he was asked to come back. At that point he thought for a moment of going back to his comfort zone.

“I had the option of coming back and I almost said ‘no,’” he said. “I don’t want to be the guy who ruins this,” he thought.

When Becker came on to the Guild, Microsoft has just signed on as an exclusive distributor, mainly because of the show’s passionate fan-base. The deal was a big deal at the time, and a lot was riding on Becker.

“Now I’m up to it,” he said. “Now it feels more like a job to me, instead of a trial.”

For Becker the Microsoft deal meant he was dealing with a bigger crew and more resources than in the show’s first season. People on set didn’t have to do multiple jobs like they had before. Today, many members of the team are also fans of the show, which improves the vibe. What’s more, Day’s scripts provide an excellent blueprint for direction. “I’ve never really had to do too much,” Becker said.

But it would be a mistake to think of The Guild as a TV-style show or Hollywood film, despite its longevity and popularity.

Two weeks after Comcast received the a-okay from the US government to acquire NBC, the cable operator and internet and telephone service provider shutdown the broadcast network’s digital studio. If you thought that action signified a greater movement within the three-letter-network television community to shuffle off its original new media initiatives, AMC has some news that will make you rethink your outlook on the role of traditional TV networks in the online video industry.

The home of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and The Killing (we won’t mention Rubicon) today announced the launch of AMC Digital Studios, “an online destination to incubate and to develop web series from up-and-coming talent to be showcased at AMCTV.com.”

The first such original web series to launch under the umbrella of the internet’s newest new media studio comes from writer and director Peter Glanz. (I’m emphasizing launch because, as savvy Tubefilter readers already know, AMC wrapped the series’ production back in March, well before the announcement of this new digital studio.) The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks stars Adam Goldberg as a successful theater director who pays several visits to his therapist – played by Bluth family patriarch Jeffrey Tambor – and stages an intricate play that resembles his own life. The show will premiere simultaneously on AMCTV.com and Hulu on August 22.

YouTube may be out pitching star-studded multi-million dollar original web series, but the internet’s largest video sharing site with 150 million or so unique monthly viewers and seven years’ worth of shiny new content uploaded every single day(!) is doing its best to foster, promote, and support the kind of basement born, homegrown, DIY talent and initiatives which, over the past six years, helped the site gain so much traction.
Programs like the YouTube Creator Institute and YouTube NextUp aim to elevate talented online video creators from the level of amateur to professional. The YouTube Partner Program now boats over 20,000 members, all of which share in the advertising revenue earned against their videos. YouTube’s monthly On the Rise campaign gives opportunities for overlooked and undersubscribed channels to land some coveted promotional real estate on the site’s homepage.

And now the Awesome YouTube Partners Report profiles 20 YouTube Parnters “who are changing lives, businesses and in some cases, history.” The document and accompanying channel (FYI, you can’t yet view the fancy pants, customized channel in Cosmic Panda) are meant to inspire (by way of pretty pictures and brief bios) would-be YouTube creators and contributors worldwide and show them what you can accomplish with a camera, a computer, a YouTube account, and good amount of dedication.

VidCon 2011 is here kids, and that means online video’s version of Comic-Con is upon us once again. Huzzah! This year’s LA-based Con is a three day event, the first of which this Thursday shines a focus on the online video industry itself, examining the business models, players and opportunities facing our industry in 2011 and the years ahead. Friday and Saturday on the other hand are geared toward the community and fans that actually devour—and create—the explosion in web shows.

Now if you were lucky enough to score a ticket to VidCon this year before it sold out in record time, then it’s time to start pouring over the agenda and making some tough choices of what to hit up. All of this madness of videomaking fun goes down at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Century City. Did we mention there’s a Nerf gun room?

There’s panels and sessions on everything from tripping out your camera gear, to connecting with the camera to crafting the best headlines for your work. And heaps of top video stars will be on hand performing—Shane Dawson, iJustine, MysteryGuitarMan, Philip DeFranco, The Vlog Brothers and countless more. VidCon founders John and Hank Green like to say, “it’s basically a chance for people in this new world to get together to have a good time, learn stuff, hang out, and help online video get bigger and better.”

If it seems like we’ve been covering EpicMealTime a lot on Tubefilter, that’s because we have. And we have because of a few reasons:

The trio Canadian carnivores Harley Morenstein, Alex Perrault, and Sterling Toth create compelling content for culinary connoisseurs and your everyday lover of glutton. As their tagline goes, “We make dreams come true. Then we eat them,” which is accurate. Because if you didn’t dream of animals stuffed in animals stuffed in animals stuffed in animals stuffed in animals and Baconators – lots of Baconators – before you watched the program, you definitely will after.
The show is popular. By our accounts it’s the fastest YouTube channel ever to reach one million subscribers, a feat it accomplished in no more than nine months.
EpicMealTime is entertaining, especially when done live.
And now you can add another reason for our coverage of the series. EpicMealTime is now bigger than Justin Bieber. At least on YouTube.

The channel featuring gonzo gastronomical concoctions is up to 1.3 million YouTube subscribers, jumping past Kidrahul’s 1.28 million. That means in the past month alone EpicMealTime has acquired some 300,000 new YouTube subscribers. That’s a rate of roughly 10,000 subscribers per day. That’s a lot! (During EpicMealTime’s nine-month sprint to 1 million subscribers, they averaged 4,000 new subs per day.)

Here’s what Morenstein had to say about moving past Bieber on the charts:

We actually love the kid and respect what he’s done to the point that his YouTube subscriber numbers were a huge milestone for us. So Bieber gets worldwide fame, millions of dollars and a Segway but EpicMealTime gets YouTube.