Tubefilter News

There’s a lot of talk about money in online video lately. Who’s getting licensing deals, 7-figure advances, funding rounds—yet in the hubbub it’s too easy to take our eyes off the broader context of how the internet is reshaping entertainment.

Last night in LA, at Celebrate the Web’s screening of hastily-made web series pilots was a welcomed reminder that the independent, cooperative, sure-I-can-help-you-out attitude that underlies this whole creative revolution is alive and well. And that’s a very good thing.

Sure, it doesn’t hurt that there was some cash on the line—$500 grants to each of the two overall winning teams—along with a development deal with online comedy network My Damn Channel. But ultimately this was as festival about just getting out there any shooting something, rather than just talking about shooting something.

Enough burying the lead. Out of the sixteen pilots in the competition, two took home overall honors one from the Audience voting online and another from a judges panel that included CTW organizers Jenni Powell, Taryn O’Neill and Stephanie Thorpe along with My Damn Channel CEO Rob Barnett, Molly Templeton, myself, Bernie Su and Olga Kay.

Comic book legend Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, and Iron Man, and former president and chairman of Marvel Comics, has partnered with Vuguru for a YouTube Original Channel.

YouTube released its first wave of original channels as a part of its $100 million content initiative under the direction of Robert Kyncl, who left Netflix to to join Google as VP of TV and Film Entertainment.

Lee’s new channel, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, is produced by Michael Eisner’s digital studio Vuguru and POW! Entertainment, a media and entertainment company founded by Lee. The new channel is slated to launch in 2012 and will feature exclusive programming around amazing characters and extraordinary individuals.

POW! is also working with EQAL on a new branded consumer website TheRealStanLee.com to ramp up community engagement. “As a lifelong fan, it makes it that much more exciting to be in business with Stan Lee,” Miles Beckett, Co-Founder and CEO of EQAL, said. Greg Goodfried, Co-Founder and President of EQAL, added, “Stan Lee is an important brand and we are especially happy to bring all of the tools EQAL has to further his expansion in the digital and entertainment realms.”

Capitalizing on his large loyal fan base and highly recognizable brand, Lee is shrewdly shifting towards a direct-to-consumer business model, opening up new licensing and revenue opportunities for the company alongside its franchise developments for its motion pictures.

The partnerships with YouTube and EQAL signal the importance of prominent multi-media presence across key platforms to ensure enhanced engagement with audiences worldwide.

We’ve teamed up with Digital LA and Non Profit Effect for a panel on how companies work with their strategic partners to leverage digital marketing and social media for social good.

We’re streaming LIVE now from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Join us to get tips on how organizations can work together to use these digital marketing and social media tools to find strategic partners, coordinate campaigns, and join forces to help each other reach good goals.

Panelists

Lisa Potter, Movember, PR & Communications Director
Caitlin Coble, TOMS, Social Media Manager
John Travis, Drop In The Bucket (DITB), Co-Founder
Dale Partridge, Sevenly, CEO and Co-Founder
Phillip Javelana, City Year LA, Sr Communications and Brand Manager
Claudia Sanchez, J.Brand
Moderators

Brady Hahn, Non Profit Effect
Kevin Winston, Digital LA

BlackboxTV has joined the club.

This past month YouTube announced a slate of nearly 100 all-original channels as a part of its $100 million premium content initiative. The new channel features a scripted series from Anthony E. Zuiker, creator of CSI, Tony E. Valenzuela, and Collective Digital Studio.

“I believe now, as I did when I uploaded my first short film in 2007, that YouTube offers filmmakers an amazing place to showcase their work and share their stories,” Tony E. Valenzuela, Creator and Director of BlackBoxTV, told Tubefilter. “I am extremely excited to jump into this next phase of BlackBoxTV with my new partners, Anthony E. Zuiker, Dare To Pass and Collective Digital Studio whose guidance and experience will help BlackBoxTV accomplish it’s #1 goal: to deliver the best Sci-Fi, Horror and Thriller content to the web.”

Valenzuela first caught our eye in 2008 with 2009: A True Story (a Streamy Award nominee), and at Tubefilter’s panel at SXSW last spring, he discussed the BlackBoxTV concept and its dependence on a strong base of fellow YouTube producers. “It’s also important to mention the awesome support that the YouTube community has given to BlackBoxTV over the course of our first year, Valenzuela said. “Without the help of people like Philip DeFranco, Shane Dawson, iJustine, Toby Turner, Joe Nation, Onision, and others, it would have been extremely difficult for our films to reach as many people as they have.”

This one comes with a stern warning we need to get out of the way. If you’re either a terribly naive fan of Rebecca Black’s vocal abilities or completely lacking in a sense of humor, then it’s best to move along, nothing more to see here.

For those of us who decry the pervasive auto-tune, this one hits home. The resident funny people over at Break whipped up an un-auto-tuned version of the viral pop singer’s new music video “Person of Interest,” using what they say is her “RAW, UNMIXED, ORIGINAL vocals” and synced them up to the new video. Astonishing.

Technically Break did this before when her “Friday” follow-up “My Moment” debuted back in July—with Break’s parody version racking up over 5.6 million views with a lively 58,000 comments from Black haters and lovers. Wherever you stand on the internet’s unforgiving assault on a the girl who just wanted to be Britney, you have to admit we are all tuned in.

Rebecca Black – Person of Interest (NO AUTO-TUNE VERSION)

The season finale or Dragon Age: Redemption dropped today.

Now, if you haven’t been watching DA:R (that’s how us viewers / cool kids write it), it’s a web series-gaming crossover from BioWare, Machinima, and online video sweetheart Felicia Day. This sixth and final weekly episode, dubbed Saarebas brings the story of Day’s ‘knife eared’ Evlin assassin Tallis to a climax and demonstrates the epic live-action world Day created based on a video game.

I must confess, I’m not an avid player of Dragon Age the game. I only started watching DA:R because of Felicia Day. I’m a long-time fan of her seasoned web series The Guild. But last February, when Day showed a teaser trailer of her upcoming original web series on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, that was enough to get me to tune in. Felicia Day with elf ears? Sold! Though when the first episode premiered back in October, I was lost in this world of Qunari and Chantry. Who are these characters? Is Tallis a name or a title? What is with the strange blood splatter?

Just when I realized I was interested in learning the answers to the above questions, but not interested enough to rummage through Dragon Age wikis to find them, Day started posting video commentaries for every DA:R episode. They’re great! Each installment not only touches on Day’s favorite filming moments, but also explains the style and story choices she had to make in transforming a virtual, computer-generated world into real life.

For example, in the Episode 5 Commentary Day explains the blood splatter VFX was designed in the style of the game. The effect allowed the characters to “reset” like their RPG counterparts, while practical blood would have taken actual clean up time and slowed down production. Now it all makes sense!

If you asked most people outside of Hollywood to name the top producers in television, I’d take a bet that Mark Burnett would make be the most common name on those short lists. He is, after all, one of the most well-known names in the industry, having created international TV franchises like Survivor, The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and The Voice.

Now, the 51 year-old producer is trying his hand in the online video arena with the recent launch of his first original series for the internet—animated comedy CliffsNotes Films on Cambio as joint project with AOL, Coalition Films and Josh Faure-Brac. We had a rare opportunity to sit down with Burnett this month in his Santa Monica office to discuss how he views the transformation of entertainment and the rise of the internet as a viable medium of its own. We also solicited questions from you the loyal Tubefilter readers, and you came up with soem great ones. A few of them made it into the final cut of the interview.

Check it out below (or directly on YouTube)

It was late June, the dog days of summer, when fast-talking Ray William Johnson leaped over Ryan Higa to claim the top most subscribed spot on YouTube with his primary channel, raywilliamjohnson. At that point he was at just over 3.9 million. Today, and some 1.1 million additional subscribers later, he’s reached another milestone by being the first channel to hit 5 million subscribers. Oh, and a not-too-shabby 1.4 billion total views.

These days none of the top creators on YouTube are sole-channel warriors anymore—many have two or three secondary channels some of which are themselves in the Top 100 list. Johnson’s animated music video channel yourfavoritemartian is a Top 20 powerhouse of its own with 1.6 million subscribers on 260 million total views.