by Marc Hustvedt on July 12th, 2011
Not even a week into it, and Kenny Powers‘ new campaign for K-Swiss is already shaping up to be this summer’s Old Spice Man. Incidentally, Powers even dropped his own scent commercial baked into this athlete-heavy assortment of internet win.
The concept finds the Eastbound and Down star taking over the underdog show brand K-Swiss as the company’s new CEO, or really it MFEO. He then shakes up senior management ranks by bringing in a roster full of pro athletes—Chiefs QB Matt Cassel as the new CMO, UFC fighter Jon “Bones” Jones as the new HR Director, and The Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels as Director of Community Outreach.
There’s a ton of these videos working their way around the internet this week, but since we know our readers are generally fans of NSFW versions, when available, here it is. Technically, there’s nothing here that will get you fired, just some lewd humor and language. But we don’t know where you work, if you do at all, so take the warning for what it is.
by Julie Wolfson on July 12th, 2011
Humanitarian projects take many forms around the world. Some of the serious issues facing families – like having clean drinking water and safe way to gather and cook food – touch people in a visceral way. Programs like Charity Water dig clean-water wells in Africa. The Solar Cooker Project helps refugees from Darfur harness the power of the sun to safely cook for their families. These kinds of initiatives inspire individuals to help combat problems facing our big world and help transform our global community for the better.
The Paradigm Project’s latest initiative – The Stove Project -is another project that’s both touching and incredibly beneficial to those in need. It’s mission is simple: Make fuel efficient stoves available to people in developing nations. Recently, the creators launched an original web series called Stoveman with the goal to bring attention to the safety and medical concerns associated with gathering wood and cooking daily meals over open wood fires.
The four-week series follows Greg and Austin on their a mission to distribute five million fuel-efficient cook stoves to people in need. Watch women cook over open fires, walk miles to find wood, and live on less than $2 per day and you’ll see and hear the story of why the project was founded and the goals were set.
In the first episode, Austin and Greg walk all day collecting wood with a group of Gabbra women from Northern Kenya. Their newest friend Gumato takes them on a woodwalk to experience a regular day in and around his home.
We caught up with Spencer to ask him about his experience and what it was like being the stoveman.
Tubefilter: When did you first learn about the issues people face cooking over an open wood fire?
Greg Spencer: There were two points for me personally when I “learned” about this issue
TF: How did you come up with the stove project?
by Drew Baldwin on July 12th, 2011
Metacafe and Strike.TV announced that original web series Dwelling was voted the winner of its recent MetaVote contest.
Dwelling garnered 34 percent of audience votes, beating out 6 other original web series which all together generated over six million views over the course of a month.
The series, created, written, and directed, by Anthony Q. Farrell, a writer for NBC’s The Office and a three-time Writers Guild Award nominee, centers around three people who “willingly share a house, but unwillingly share their lives.”
The MetaVote contest sourced the shows from Strike.TV, which launched out of the Writers Guild strike of 2008 and has focused on professional writers in the entertainment industry as its creative base—the other series in the contest, Unknown Sender, Coma, Period., Let’s Get Laid, Daryl from OnCar, Hildy Hildy, and B-Rock, featured writers from Die Hard, The Simpsons, Knight Rider, and Malcolm in the Middle, in addition to The Office.
Metacafe is funding a second season of Dwelling on its site, with support from a brand advertiser which may be integrated into the
by Marc Hustvedt on July 11th, 2011
Mondays are popular launch days for new web series and today has a few new ones to dive into, including the first time Statesiders can watch Vuguru’s thriller The Booth at the End which until now was only available to Canadian and UK viewers.
The Booth at the End
“People come to The Man in the booth with a wish, and he makes a mysterious deal requiring them to complete a task that challenges their sense of right and wrong.”
Xander Berkeley stars as The Man, in this well crafted single-location series—it all takes place in a roadside diner—that pushed the lines of moral ambiguity for all of us. What kind of devil’s bargain would you make to save your child’s life? Or to look prettier?
This one won’t win honors for effects and chase sequences, but you’ll be thinking afterwards that’s for sure. The series was original intended as short, 3-minute episode, but now that Hulu is hungry for longer form, it’s been cut into 22-minute eps.
by Drew Baldwin on July 11th, 2011
When you put yourself out there on the internet, beware. You will be judged. If we’ve learned anything from Rebecca Black, it’s that hurtful comments, parodies, and legal troubles can accompany any young teen’s innocent attempt to attain online notoriety.
But it’s different when a kid attempts to attain that online notoriety through KIDZ BOP. Like Sesame Street Online and other internet destinations for barely and pre-teens, the #1 kids’ music brand in the United States has made great efforts to create a safe, positive community for youngins and shield them from trolls and highly negative reactions.
That’s why parents can feel totally okay about their kids entering into the second annual KIDZ Star USA Talent Search. It’s a nationwide contest soliciting 90-second submissions from kids with musical talent to find the next tween superstar.
The talent competition, open only to kids and teens ages 15 and under, gives aspiring performers a chance to compete for a recording contract with the RCA/JIVE Label Group and a starring role in the next KIDZ BOP TV commercial or music video. Top contestants will also be featured in an original series from Endemol (a production company that’s no stranger to reality programs on the web) that will showcase the kids’ journies on their way to find out who will be the next KIDZ Star USA.
“KIDZ Star will be an amazingly interactive and engaging video series and community which will create a co-viewing experience for kids and their parents, and we are extremely excited to find the next great KIDZ Star,” said David Armour, VP of Digial Programming for Endemol USA. “This project further solidifies our position as a leader in interactive transmedia programming and development.”
by Marc Hustvedt on July 11th, 2011
Rumors on the internet are a crazy thing to watch unfold, especially when the target is Justin Bieber fans. Sometime this Monday morning rumors started flying that YouTube was set to take down the 583-million-view monstrosity that is Justin Bieber’s music video for “Baby” over copyright claims allegedly coming from Micahel Jackson’s camp over the late pop star’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” video.
It’s led to not just one, but two trending topics on Twitter today, one of them roping in YouTube with a “Dear YouTube” plea to #dontdeletebaby. This all was fueled by the very real take down of another teen heartthrob’s video—Rebecca Black’s infamous “Friday”—which was trapped on Ark Music Factory’s channel despite Black owning the rights to the song and video. Incidentally, Black is releasing a “new single” next Monday. (Bangles cover?)
by Joshua Cohen on July 11th, 2011
Before Seth Green Executive Produced stop-motion animation shorts featuring action figures in unlikely situations reciting uncharacteristic lines of dialogue for television’s Comedy Central, he Executive Produced more or less the same program for the web.
Sweet J Presents was the original Robot Chicken. Green and Matthew Senreich created, wrote, and produced the show for Sony’s ScreenBlast.com way back in 2001 during the internet’s first online video craze. It lasted one full 12-episode season before it’s funding disappeared when the Dot-com bubble popped. 10 years, a wildly successful television series based on his original web show, and an original reality web series later, Green is once again starring in a Sony web program featuring alt superhero-focused and action figure-oriented animated comedy.
Issues is what happens when you take those Jerry Seinfeld and Superman Amex commercials off the streets of New York City and into a pschyologists’s office. The six part series brought to the web by Sony’s Crackle.com is created by Matt Oakes and Josh Cooke and stars Cooke along with cameos from at least a half dozen talented actors and comedians (including Green, Rob Riggle, Eric Stonestreet, Greg Grunberg, Ron Livingston, and Eddie Kaye Thomas) voicing cartooned superheroes with neuroses in front of a live-action human therapist.
by Joshua Cohen on July 10th, 2011
Videogum monsters, YTMND artists, 4Chan users, the makers and users of the 3frames iPhone application, and the guys and gals that curate and visit this site know animated gifs are the best. For those times when actual text and emoticons simply can’t explain your feelings, thoughts, and/or beliefs in a funny, sometimes ironic, and often times retro kind of way, nothing works better than a series of images displayed on a continuous loop like a never ending flip book of awesome.
But animated gifs are really for kids. Moving images showing Google+ lay the smack down on Facebook like the two corporations are high school nemeses or revealing how a black cat ominously file its nails are the works of teens and post-college kids looking for cool and comedy in the world of online pop culture.
So what do grownups and/or artsy types do when they want to create an image with aspects of never ending motion? They create cinemagraphs.
Cinemgraphs are animated gifs for adults. They’re pretty pictures with touches of continuous movement, the kind of images you’d expect someone so artistically inclined to create after looking at those moving pictures from Harry Potter and thinking, “Hey. I can do something like that, but for reals!”
I have no idea if Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck are fans of 4Chan or JK Rowling’s Wizarding World, but I’d like to think those were their muses when they created the soon-to-be-uber-popular cinemagraph phenomenon. The two New York City photographs seem to be the progenitors (or at least popularizers) of the medium. They add both subtle and explicit bits of motion into their fashion photography, NYC shots, and New York Times photo essays of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, sometimes combining upwards of 60 images into a single shot.
