by Drew Baldwin on November 8th, 2011
Comedy duo Smosh snagged a new channel among the 96 Original Channels revealed by YouTube as a part of its premium content initiative.
The new channel, Smosh Animation, is slated for launch sometime early next year, and will feature the type of comedy that has come to define Smosh—just in a different medium, says Barry Blumberg, President of Smosh and Executive Vice President at Alloy Digital, who’s producing the project.
“YouTube has been an amazing partner of ours for the past 6 years and their support for our new animation channel signals a new phase in our relationship,” Blumberg told Tubefilter. “We are honored to be viewed by Google in the same light as Shaq and Madonna.”
Teen and young adult focused Smosh serves over 85 million video views each month on YouTube and Blip.tv (on Smosh.com). The Smosh channel boasts over 3.5 million Youtube subscribers, and nearly 1 billion Youtube upload views (992,557,791 to date).
by Joshua Cohen on November 8th, 2011
Andrew Clancy’s four-minute and 54-second A Year in New York is significant for a couple reasons.
First, it’s beautiful. The New York City-based cameraman and editor shot all the footage on his Canon 7D and Canon S95. That first camera was released in late 2009. That second one in late 2010. So, while the internet is chock full of talented filmmakers constructing pretty montages of urban life shot over an extended period of time and set to Solsbury Hill-esque tracks of slow-building inspirational tones, this may be the first to be filmed with such high quality equipment.
Second, it’s good. Clancy’s slow-moving pans and locked frames of everyday NYC rites of passage, parties, modes of transportation and ephemera collectively tell a sliver of a story about early 21st century life in Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs.
Third, it feels almost like it’s instantaneously a piece of some sort of anthropological importance.
by Joshua Cohen on November 7th, 2011
Vin Diesel currently has 28.2 million Facebook fans, which makes him one of the most liked entities on Facebook that isn’t a social network, video sharing site, international pop star, or Megan Fox. He posted the angelic picture you see to your left last Friday. In the last three days it’s accumulated over 85,000 likes, 7,500 comments, and 5,000 shares.
How Diesel became this popular isn’t the point of this article. (Read: I have no how Diesel became this popular.) But what is the point of this article is how Diesel may or may not leverage that massive popularity into view counts for his upcoming web series.
Diesel, his One Race Films, and Fox Digital Entertainment announced in February they would collaborate on The Ropes, a Vin Diesel-produced and Vin Diesel-guest-starring original web series based on Diesel’s experience as a muscley bouncer with an ear piece on the side of the velvet rope these guys want to be on. We haven’t heard much news of the project since the initial announcement, but Tambay at IndieWire recently stumbled across this behind-the-scenes video of The Ropes’ EPK shoot by Echosworld Productions. Take a look:
If you can judge a web series by a video of its electronic press kit, The Ropes looks kinda okayish. But the quality of the program may not matter much considering Diesel’s online following. If and when The Ropes finally hits computer screens (the video above is from June 2011), it’ll be interesting to see how many Facebook fans convert into web series watchers, especially considering Diesel doesn’t have his own established YouTube or online video presence.
by Marc Hustvedt on November 7th, 2011
Talk of YouTube’s new original channels consumed Kardashian levels of conversation in the video business over the past week, and it’s been keeping us busy. The news came in a flurry, all at once as nearly all of the 100+ new YouTube-funded channels were announced late last Friday. It was akin to lottery day for the several dozen new media and traditional production studios, all eagerly looking to see just who got what.
“The web is bringing us entertainment from an even wider range of talented producers, and many of the defining channels of the next generation are being born, and watched, on YouTube,” said YouTube’s Global Head of Content Partnerships Robert Kyncl at the announcement.
Deepak Chopra is one of the chosen ones for Kyncl’s new ‘wider range’ of talent coming to the world’s largest network. The doctor and inspirational thought leader is launching his first dedicated entertainment channel, The Deepak Well, in early summer of 2012, with the help of digital studio Generate.
by Joshua Cohen on November 4th, 2011
Speaking of online video companies using infographics as marketing materials, Burst Media just aggregated information from an October 11, survey of 1,025 U.S. online adults aged 18 or older into a visually appealing design showing “how much online video content they watch, the kinds of content they watch, and how they feel and act after viewing online video advertisements.”
The Massachusetts-based 15-year-old online media and technology company that “represents independent web publishers and their communities” released their findings in part to garner attention for its 12 brand new online video channels “offering TV-style programming on a wide range of subjects, from food to fashion, celebrity gossip to gardening, health to How To.”
This all sounds kinda like another online video company’s recent announcement of a lot of brand new online video channels, except that Burst will be aggregating video programming from partners like Reuters, Howcast, CelebTV, GeoBeats, and TVGuide, into channels and distributing those channels to content appropriate partner sites like FashionGoneRouge.com and ProfessorsHouse.com instead of creating original programming.
by Joshua Cohen on November 3rd, 2011
Jun Group is a self-proclaimed “premier social video company and the partner of choice for Fortune 500 brands, major entertainment companies, and media agencies” when those Fortune 500 Brands, major entertainment companies, and media agencies need an entity that can “guarantee millions of user-initiated video views on social networks, mobile devices, and YouTube.”
So, what does that mean? Let’s say you’re a household brand name that created a shiny online video with your Madison Avenue advertising agency and are now looking to distribute that video across social media networks with the intent to increase the number of fans on your Facebook page. Jun Group is one of the myriad companies you or your Madison Avenue advertising agency may call in order to help you (by way of their analytics and expertise) in the distribution of your video to ensure it has the desired effect.
So, how does Jun Group differentiate itself from the other myriad companies that kinda sorta do the same thing? By a lot of idiosyncratic and more macro ways, I’m sure. But for the purposes of this article Jun Group differentiates itself by accumulating and interpreting a healthy amount of social video research and translating that social video research into a sort of visually appealing infographic that makes for a great piece of marketing material.
Jun Group compiled data from a sample of more than 13 million user-initiated video views of “social video campaigns created for Fortune 500 brands across a number of vertical categories” between January 1, 2011 and September 30, 2011. Here are some highlights of their findings:
by Joshua Cohen on November 3rd, 2011
Kenny Mayne is no newcomer to the web series world. The collegiate quarterback and almost-30-year veteran of professional sports broadcasting with a penchant for ponies, dry wit, and deadpan delivery starred in the 2008 ESPN original web series Mayne Street, where he played an exaggerated version of himself in a kind of This is Sportscenter campaign come to caricatured life.
If you didn’t catch Mayne in his eponymous scripted program, you should. Once you’re done with the three-season, 30-or-so-episode show, then be sure to tune into Mayne’s eponymous unscripted program / new vehicle for his special brand of monotoned humor.
Kenny Mayne’s Wilder World of Sports is the latest branded original web series from ESPN. Sponsred by JC Penny’s Van Huesen clothing line for the athletics-oriented male, the program documents Mayne’s travels to exotic locales (including Ireland, England, Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand, and Thailand).
Each installment features a brief message from Mayne expounding the benefits of shopping at the 22nd largest chain of retail stores in the US before running highlighting of our sometimes sardonic but always approachable host playing the sports, and interacting with the sporting denizens of his destination of the week. That includes everything from stick fights in Zulu dress in South Africa, to meeting Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho and evangelizing American football in Brazil, to playing Netball in New Zealand, and a lot of other things you did and didn’t know existed in between.
by Joshua Cohen on November 2nd, 2011
Sure, you may be familiar with Ford’s Bold Moves, the first foray into the world of original web series from a major player of the American automotive industry released way back in 2006 that was half authentic documentary of what goes on under the hood of a struggling domestic car manufacturer and half cloying ploy for sympathy from a struggling domestic car manufacturer.
But have you watched a Ford web series lately? If not, check out technology guru and online video personality Amber Mac’s branded program for Canada’s The Globe and Mail dubbed On the Road. You’ll see not much has changed in five years.
It’s not that the program attempts to tug at any emotional connection you may have to American manufacturing or the Ford brand. The storyline follows the script of your standard advertisement for motor vehicles. The camera pans along the Ford Focus’ sexy curves and zooms in on its innovative features, not executives and union workers fighting to resurrect a company in order to keep trying to live the American dream. And it’s not that the web series isn’t shot well. It’s pretty to look at and Amber’s more than a competent host. She takes you on a tour of things interesting in and around Toronto while highlighting those sexy curves and innovative features of that Focus.
What hasn’t changed is that both of these branded web series for Ford feel a lot like staid advertisements and less like something more interesting than staid advertisements. The same goes for much of online motor vehicle-branded entertainment. There are a few exceptions, for sure (and a great example from Ford Europe that shows how you can make a fantastic and interactive original branded web series), but it seems to be difficult for automotive companies to create something on the web that’s more than “Let’s shoot videos of and around the car!” and “Let’s have them shoot the videos from inside the car!”
