Tubefilter News

Filmmaker John Woo has teamed up with Machinima to adapt his graphic novel Seven Brothers into an animated online series.

Woo, who is known for his Hong Kong action films Hard-Boiled and The Killer, and American films Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2, will be premiering the first four episodes of Seven Brothers exclusively on Machinima’s YouTube channel.

The series is written by Garth Ennis (Preacher), drawn by Jeevan J. Kang (Spider Man: India) and produced in association with Liquid Comics and Tiger Hill Entertainment.

“For me, working in comics is quite comfortable – it’s like the ultimate storyboard. The original Seven Brothers graphic novel, and this new animated comic book series, takes the seed of an idea I had about famous Chinese folklore to a whole new level. It creates a modern, global story, and an art form that is unique and yet, clearly, a brother to the film medium,” Woo said.

“We at Machinima are excited to partner with the Liquid team and world-class action directors like John Woo,” said Allen DeBevoise, Chairman and CEO of Machinima. “Because of the strong overlap between the worlds of video gaming and comics, Machinima was the natural distribution outlet for this high-octane animated series.”

Seven Brothers tells the story of how, six hundred years ago, long before history’s great explorers stole the credit for their feats, mighty Chinese treasure fleets set sail to reach every continent. These voyages of discovery left behind an evil legacy and a plot by a powerful Chinese sorcerer to dominate the world. Now, in modern day Los Angeles, an ancient prophecy must be fulfilled and seven men, with nothing in common but their destinies, must face the Son of Hell to save the world.

Blip.tv has raised another $6 million according to an SEC filing yesterday.

According to the filing, Blip sold a little over half of its $11 million offering for what would be its Series D round. According to TechCrunch, this was an inside round by Blip.tv’s existing investors, Bain Capital and Canaan Partners, which brings the company’s total raise to $24 million.

This past year Blip successfully redesigned itself as a destination site in May, poached top YouTube talent in a deal with the Collective Digital Studio, and just last week debuted a new logo. Although Blip has been making strides as a destination site, the bulk of its traffic is a part of a multi-tier strategy that earns over 300 million video plays each month.

The influx of cash coincides with the recent departure of CEO Mike Hudak, following fellow Co-Founders Dina Kaplan and Charles Hope. COO Steve Brookstein has taken over day-to-day CEO responsibilities while the company’s board of directors searches for a new leader.

Recently, Blip commissioned the largest research study on online video watching habits whose key findings have serious implications for the future of primetime entertainment viewing—both online and on television.

Speaking of international hip-hop superstars with web series, Kanye West is the subject of an online original program brought to you by the subscription-based online entertainment startup with a name that’s clever at first, but a little less so each time you hear it.

VoyR is providing you with an all-access, behind-the-scenes pass to Yeezy and Jay-Z’s concert tour that’s promoting their much hyped about collaborative album Watch the Throne. For the low price of viewing a few stylized Jeep commercials and $4.99 per month, you can catch a “video document of all the actual work that goes into living life at Kanye’s level.” As the description continues, “It’s not about models and bottles. It’s about working hard, from the moment the sun rises, until you just can’t push your body any further.”

That may sound like your usual, let’s-entice-you-to-watch-this-super-exclusive-behind-the-scenes-footage marketing speak, but the difference with VoyR is the content is actually good.

The company released and/or let leak a handful of installments from its Watch the Throne series. Like anything involving Kanye at its core, the program is sexy, highly designed but ostensibly raw, contains a helluva lot more gravitas than your average behind-the-scenes series about a world famous musician, and is fun to watch. It offers a glimpse into the thought, business, and artistic processes of West, his collaborators, and entourage, and comes replete with concert footage and captions so viewers can be sure to witness the kind of live show Kanye puts on and follow along at home.

Any fan of Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. (aka Lil Wayne), his punch-line peppered raps, ESPN The Magazine and/or Around the Horn knows the Grammy Award-winning hip-hop superstar loves him some sports.

Lil Wayne’s had a column in Entertainment and Sports Programming Network’s online version of its print publication since 2008 and talked sports shop with notable writers Michael Smith and Woody Paige courtesy of Tony Reali back in early 2009. When Wayne began a temporary eight-month stay at Rikers Island in early 2010 courtesy of pleading guilty to a gun possession charge, he passed the time by blogging about sports.

Now, Lil Wayne is putting that passion for professional athletics, a recent penchant for odd behavior, and a seeming want to not rap into video form. He released Weezy’s Sports Corner on December 24 with producer/friend Derick G.

The program features the Young Money president on a couch, surrounded by paraphernalia of the only publicly owned non-profit corporation in the NFL (aka the Green Bay Packers), talking about the NBA, skateboarding, and every major athletic competition in betwen.

“Sports only,” says Wayne in the premiere. “This will be an unscripted show, unrehearsed show. I’ll talk about whatever I want to talk about. I’ll talk freely. If I have guests, they can talk freely, and they can speak about whatever they want to speak about.”

Mary Matthews wants to celebrate the New Year with you. Virtually.

For the fourth year running, the old school video blogger (behind online video classics like 39 Second Single), internet collaborator (who orchestrated the web’s largest slow dramatic clap), and Transport Workers Union of America’s Interactive Media Producer/Director (responsible for projects like The Worst Governor Ever Award) wants you to snap a photo of whatever it is you’re doing wherever you are on New Year’s Eve and send it to her at mcmpressATgmailDOTcom by 5PM EST Sunday, January 1. Matthews will then compile the results into a well-edited, collaborative photo montage with an accompanying song that’s at once both nostalgic and inspiring.

The cooperative “virtual Times Square” is called Project Midnight. You can check out the final product from NYE 2009 through 2011 on the official webpage. They’re good.

“It began as an organic way to spend midnight with all of my family and friends spread out across the country,” Matthews told me over e-mail. “The idea of all of us being in one place – a video – together to kick off a new year really appealed to me. I opened it up to total stangers via Facebook and Twitter as well and its grown each year.”

Evan Shapiro runs IFC, a consistent, smart television favorite delivering killer original comedy n’ more. He recently wrote a piece in Huffington Post called The Death of Television.

Evan’s article created a good amount of dialogue online. TV’s death is a premature pronouncement. But the angst and passion that led so many of us online has created a mass sea of choice.

The tech magic beneath our fingertips continues to give the audience awesome tools to become smarter and more in charge than ever before about finding what they want. But there’s a Babel-effect in play now creating a deafening din. Imagine walking into an ice cream store that featured 31 million flavors and trying to honor the choice you’re about to make.

If Gil Scott-Heron were still here, I’d ask if he believed “the revolution” must now be programmed.

Audiences need more effective ways to make viewing choices a few notches easier than the current randommania which pushes some of the best content too far away from finding the audience it deserves.

In early 2012, My Damn Channel will launch our new partnership with YouTube to create, produce and distribute more of the best original comedy we can bring from talent we love. Many of our artists are looking for a safe haven from the constraints put on their art in the old system. We’re going to use some of the old TV rules to help their new work get the best launch pad online. Daily and weekly LIVE hosted programming will bring the topical relevance and audience interaction that TV always provided, but passive online viewing sometimes lacks.

Making a Twitter account, a Tumblr blog, or a coffee table book with a single premise that’s easy to execute multiple times is difficult but doable. Turning that Twitter account, Tumblr blog, or coffee table book into a live-action television or web series can be more challenging. What works when confined to the real estate of 140 characters or a small caption, doesn’t easily translate when given the wide expanse of longer forms of entertainment. That’s especially true for one-liners. You Might Be a Redneck jokes have laid a strong foundation for at least one comedian’s career, but they haven’t been the basis for any major motion pictures or television programs.

The creators of Shit Girls Say know this. And that’s why they’re trying to mix their web series up.

The first two installments of Toronto-based filmmakers Graydon Sheppard and Kyle Humphrey’s Twitter-turned-online-original about terribly ordinary things humans without a Y chromosome are prone to communicate feature cuts of Sheppard doing his best Kids-in-the-Hall-in-women’s-clothes impression while reciting banal expressions poached from pages of his tweets. They’re great.

The third installment features Sheppard in two scenarios at a bar with twinsie Juliette Lewis. The pair fight about who’s the bestest and talk at each other for a few. It good, too, but it’s gotten almost double the amount of dislikes on YouTube as Episode 2 with nearly 1/15th the amount of likes, which means fans don’t dig it nearly as much as the originals.

There’s no question that online video has made great strides in 2011. Online video sites enjoyed record viewership and more ambitious programs than ever originated on the Web, garnering the kind of national media attention historically reserved for network TV.

In its most recent Video Metrix report, comScore reported that during the month of November, 83 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content, or an average of 20.5 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 40.9 billion videos—a figure that speaks volumes to the prevalence of online video and the growing opportunities that lay ahead for both content creators and advertisers.

This shift in consumer behavior and the emergence of short-form digital programming has enabled the development of innovative, talent-driven digital content such as DBG’s The Confession starring Kiefer Sutherland and Christopher Kubasik’s Booth at the End—not to mention the announcement that Netflix is bringing original episodes of Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards to the service.

With that in mind, we think there will be two major trends likely to bubble up in 2012.

The Web Will Be Programmed

The discovery of online video in 2012 will undergo a significant transformation. Instead of forcing consumers to search large-scale video platforms and portals, top video publishers will roll out channel strategies to make video discovery easier. As this paradigm shift occurs, I believe channel loyalty will develop, benefiting both the consumer and the publishers.

Given YouTube’s recent announcement of the creation of 100 online video channels featuring original programming, it certainly will be an exciting 2012. As the web is programmed, there may very well be a shift from the current “click-it-when-you-see-it” mentality to a more purposeful viewing behavior.