by Drew Baldwin on October 18th, 2011
Trespass, the new psychological thriller directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage, didn’t just come out in theaters this weekend—the movie was also released on YouTube Movies as well.
In an interview on the YouTube Blog, Director Joel Schumacher explained the factors that led to the decision to release Trespass on YouTube as well as in theaters. “I’m all for progress. I know certain people in my industry are furious about … their films being shown in anyway except the way they were supposed to be meant to be seen [in theaters],” Schumacher said. “There’s no stopping technology.”
Though the choice to release Trespass on YouTube may have been made for more practical reasons. Despite the film’s critical acclaim and premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, Trespass opened in only 10 theaters, grossing just $16,816 according to Box Office Mojo. Both Kidman and Cage draw large international audiences, and perhaps Warner Bros. hopes that a domestic release combined with some online traction might increase international sales. The DVD is scheduled to come out November 1, 2011, less than a month after its theatrical release.
Trespass is available via the MillenniumVOD YouTube channel for $6.99, along with free content on YouTube Movie Extras.
by Chris Landa on October 17th, 2011
The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks is an interesting new series that fits into AMC’s brand of intelligent programming and is the first piece of original content to come from the relatively new AMC Digital Studios. The show is unique and will instantly appeal to Wes Anderson fans with its style, narration and brand of humor. So much so, that after watching the opening credits I knew exactly what to expect.
The program follows the exploits of Arthur Banks (Adam Goldberg), a neurotic New York playwright who attempts to deal with his love life, which he in turn uses as inspiration for his latest play. To say Banks is a highly introspective and troubled Semite that would look familiar in a Woody Allen film is a fair assessment. He regularly visits his therapist (Jeffrey Tambor) as he strives for psychological and emotional balance.
In the first episode, Banks pulls a “Polanski” (which, in this case, means having consensual sex with an underage girl and, in this case, doesn’t mean sleeping with an underage girl after drugging her beyond the point of consciousness – in case you don’t follow the exploits of Roman Polanski). The sexual escapade soon causes the death of his current relationship.
by Joshua Cohen on October 14th, 2011
Speaking of cuddly cartoon violence and inappropriate stick figure animation, Aaron Simpson at Cold Hard Flash discovered an uber-short-form original web series that combines the two.
Jim Mortenesen is a storyboard artist and freelance writer for Nickelodeon whose side project, 15 Seconds to Hearbreak, features crude representations of the young human form in frenzied pangs of love-fueled frustration, suffocation, and decapitation. The weekly episodes each depict a scene of unexpected animated injurious physical force that generally ends with the shuffling off of one cartoon’s mortal coil. And, as the name would suggest, all the action tends to happen in 15 seconds or less.
Mortensen’s consistently uploaded weekly episodes since August 27. Aside from the content, the best part about them is the length. As with all uber-short-form original web series, the time investment is minimal.
If you like what you see, you can easily spend a literal minute or two watching the entire 15 Seconds to Hearbreak catalog and feel entertained. And if you don’t like what you see, you can easily spend a literal minute or two watching the entire 15 Seconds to Hearbrak catalog and not feel like you procrastinated away too much time.
by Marc Hustvedt on October 14th, 2011
Is time travel really possible? Does hydrogen make a sound? Why is the universe expanding, and why is it accelerating? How does the sun actually work?
Yeah… right away I knew this is my kind of series—intellectually stimulating and yet accessible and concise. One Minute Physics is one of its names, though officially known on YouTube as just Minute Physics, it quickly illustrates findings at the forefront of academic physics in a curt, breezy one-minute-plus format.
The weekly series, which launched in June, comes from the hands of creator Henry Reich, a producer with an unlikely mix of Physics scholar and production veteran. And the two fields aren’t just casual interests, Reich earned two degrees in Physics, one at Grinnell College and then a Masters at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics before leaving Canada and heading to Los Angeles to go after an MFA in Film Production at USC. (Side note: check out Reich’s festival-winning Star Wars student film.)
To distribute the series, Reich has a distribution partnership with New Scientist magazine that is fairly open—it selects episodes to run for its readers—but the minutephysics YouTube channel isn’t just a passive re-posting, it’s a fully breathing life of its own. Reich has grown the channel to over 32,000 subscribers in just over three months, and total views at just shy of 2 million. Not surprisingly, one of the most popular videos is in fact a cat video, but at least we’re talking Schrödinger’s Cat.
by Drew Baldwin on October 14th, 2011
Tubefilter is proud to sponsor Top 10 in Digital Comedy, a panel at Digital Hollywood featuring leaders in online comedy.
Top 10 in Digital Comedy is moderated by Amber J. Lawson, the “Comedy Impressaria Extraordinaire,” as a part of Digital Hollywood’s Los Angeles Content Summit. The panel is a part of Monday’s Digital Comedy Summit, which includes Women In (Digital) Comedy: The Funnier Sex? and How To Turn Your Funny Idea Into A Web Series, as well as a Writers Boot Camp breakfast with Kevin Pollack and Transforming the World Through Comedy kickoff event.
Top 10 in Digital Comedy
Amber J. Lawson unveils her Top 10 Picks in Digital Comedy for 2011.
Moderator: Amber J. Lawson, Comedy Impressaria Extraordinaire
David Beebe, VP Digital Studio, Fishbowl Worldwide Media
David Tochterman, Head of Digital Media, Innovative Artists
Allison Kingsley, SVP Digital, Ovation
We had a chance to peek at Lawson’s Top 10 Picks, and—spoiler alert—the clear winners are women and podcasts. Other nods go to entertainers from late night, branded entertainment, Comedy Central, Funny Or Die, Hulu, and the new bred of digital management agencies. Get the full list at the panel.
Join us Monday, October 17, 2011 from 11:15 am to 12:00 pm at the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey.
by Drew Baldwin on October 13th, 2011
School children may be getting a dose of YouTube right in the classroom.
The YouTube Teacher’s Channel encourages teachers from primary and secondary schools incorporate videos in the classroom.
YouTube argues that teaching with videos increases student engagement, provides free access to thousands of high quality educational videos, lengthens in-class instructional time, and expands the type of instruction to fit a variety of learning styles.
The Teacher’s Page helps teachers set up a YouTube channel, create playlists, and make and upload new videos. The page can spark discussion, organize relevant videos, archive work, and encourage further exploration, and help students review for an upcoming exam.
Teaching with video also allows teachers to “flip the classroom,” where students watch a video on the basic concepts at home so teachers can use class time to focus on applying those concepts. The result is a more engaging, collaborative environment rather than the dull lecture.
by Marc Hustvedt on October 13th, 2011
My spellchecker never likes it when I type Clevver, but inventive spellings are nothing new when crafting an easily searchable brand name. And let’s face it, search is no small part of what vaulted LA-based Clevver Media into the Billion Views Club on YouTube, with two primary channels, ClevverTV and ClevverMovies getting the bulk of them.
Now the company that built a business around distributing studio movie trailers on YouTube—before ramping up its own original productions—is branching out to other platforms with a freshly inked distribution deal with Dailymotion. The Paris-based video hub is picking up four of Clevver’s entertainment content channels—ClevverTV, ClevverMovies, ClevverMusic and ClevverGames.
In a revenue sharing partnership that brings over the now thousands of existing Clevver videos with it, Clevver is also producing exclusive new content for Dailymotion under the ClevverMovies channel starting today with hosted “from the floor” coverage of New York Comic-Con with host Tatiana Carrier.
by Joshua Cohen on October 13th, 2011
Will Arnett is one half of the branded entertainment production company DumbDumb, which he founded with Jason Bateman back in early 2010.
Under that banner and since that time, the duo has proceeded to produce a handful of original web series with household brand names attached, including a selection of Dirty Shorts for Orbitz and a celebrity talk show hosted inside your local neighborhood Denny’s dubbed Always Open (which, in addition to being very funny, was also was a very big success for the brand, increasing the restaurant chain’s awareness among a younger demo). The creators of the popular first-person shooter Call of Duty also recently tapped Arnett and Bateman’s DumbDumb to create premium companion programming for the video game’s soon-to-be debuted online entertainment hub.
The guys clearly have a lot going on in the digital space, but your average 11PM EST viewer of TBS may or may not be aware of the kinds of programming DumbDumb produces. So, Arnett told and showed them.
After Arnett and Conan go through a requisite bit about making fun of people with red hair, Arnett continues on to debrief the host, Andy, the studio audience, and viewers not unlike you about the kinds of things DumbDumb does. The segment’s capped off with a self-referential, irreverent commercial Arnett and company created for Conan’s show.
