Tubefilter News

Fall Web TV Week is finally here! It kicks off tonight with the October edition of the Tubefilter Hollywood Web Television Meetup in Los Angeles at 7:00 PM. The night gets under way with a special sold-out “Going LIVE!” panel all about live streaming web series streamed LIVE at 7:20 on Stickam and right here on Tubefilter.

Going LIVE! Panel:

Hailey Bright, Co-Host, Coin-Op TV Live
Drew Baldwin, Producer, The Streamy Awards (and Tubefilter co-founder)
Brian Gramo, Founder, theStream.tv
Tyler Crowley, Exec. Producer, Mahalo Daily, This Week in Startups, Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show
Bismarck Lepe, Founder, Ooyala
Moderator: Marc Hustvedt, Editor-in-Chief, Tubefilter News

Spotted on the Meetup RSVP list…

Private High Musical’s Taryn Southern..The Guild’s Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Sandeep Parikh, Sean Becker and Kim Evey…The Bannen Way creators Mark Gantt and Jesse Warren….Blip.tv founders Mike Hudack and Dina Kaplan…lonelygirl15’s Jessica Rose and Yousef Abu-Taleb…Legend of Neil’s Tony Janning…The Crew’s Brett Register, Craig Frank, Angie Cole and Cathy Baron…EPIC-FU’s Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf….Prom Queen creators Chris McCaleb, Ryan Wise and Douglas Cheney…Saftey Geeks’ Dave Beeler and Tom Konkle…Coin-Op TV’s Robert Welkner and Hailey Bright…EQAL co-founders Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett…A Comicbook Orange’s Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan…The Fine Brothers…This Week in YouTube’s Lon Harris..Next New Networks’ co-founder Tim Shey…The Burg’s Matt Yaeger…Elevator’s Woody Tondorf…Harper’s Globe’s Melanie Merkosky…With the Angels’ Carly Jones….and many, many more!

The week started off with news that web network Revision3 is dipping its foot in the scripted side of the web series pool, snatching up Web Zeroes as its first scripted web series. PG Porn creator James Gunn returned with his latest web series, Humanzee, one that no doubt riles up the Jane Goodall set. It’s offensive, sure, a little too offensive for its original patrons XBox Live and Spike.com. But as web video evangelist Tim Street would say, it succeeds in stirring up those multiple emotions.

Sony’s zombie-com web series Woke Up Dead came out with early numbers yesterday, announcing that it had 1.4 million streams on Crackle.com in just ten days since its premiere. And yet-to-be-released Mercury Men is already getting people worked up in anticipation, releasing a behind the scenes look at the sci-fi series’ production design. It even had us speculating that it might be an early Streamy Awards favorite in that category.

Next week kicks off the fall version of Web Television Week, headlined by the Tubefilter Hollywood Web TV Meetup on Monday. We have been graciously thanking our sponsors—AMD, Ooyala, Sony Creative Software and Blip.tv—who really support the creative web series community that gets bigger every day.

Hey there web television fans—there’s a lot going on next week! Last Spring, before the Streamy Awards, we brought you a full week of web television events. This coming week, in celebration of the tremendous growth our industry has seen in the last six months, Tubefilter is proud to announce four days full of web television and digital entertainment related events from right here in Los Angeles.

The meetup is only four days away — and we’re getting excited. We can’t tell you all of the reasons why we’re jazzed, but we can tell you that we’ve got four of the coolest sponsors in Web Television helping us to make the meetup a night to remember. Not only are they throwing their support behind the content community, but they’re also giving away tons of really cool stuff! So, acquaint yourself with the sponsors who are making all of this possible, find out more about the cool stuff you could could walk away with at the end of the night, and discover a little more about our mystery Monday announcement.

Anyone else notice that there seem to be a lot more deals going on this month? We’re not calling this economy out of the crapper just yet, but Q4 has brought with it some nice reasons for optimism.

Kodak backed its first original web series (other than the Streamy Awards..), Woke Up Dead, which premiered this week on Crackle.com. The Jon Heder led zombie comedy is worth your time watching the first 5 episodes this weekend.

Netflix decided it has the distribution network and, why not start making its own web series too—signing 80’s film star Corey Feldman on for its first horror series, Splatter. Then Wednesday came the news that Babelgum snatched up sci-fi comedy The Crew for a second season, after previously being on online network KoldCast TV.

Illeana Douglas’ IKEA-backed indie web series, Easy to Assemble, kicked off its second season on Wednesday with a star-studded premiere that mixed web and traditional stars in a 500-strong launch party. Even Keanu Reeves was on hand, helping promote the show’s spinoff series Sparhüsen. Reeves said he is on board for more episodes which are planned to start shooting next month.

Last full week of September and first few days of fall are upon us. October is about to see a flurry of new web series launches though this past week didn’t exactly go light on the news front.

First off, you know we are suckers for good food, dare we even say foodies, so it warmed our hearts a little to learn that there’s now a web series network dedicated to pleasing our refined palates. Next New Networks launched its Hungry Nation network this week which VendrTV and Working Class Foodies kicking it off. What better than LA’s Twitter-pimping food truck @kogibbq to be the first featured episode?

The most discussed story of the week was clearly the news that Joss Whedon is building a digital studio that would produce four web series a year, one of which is going to be a sequel to multi-Streamy-winning Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

And our own Adam Wright was in Manhattan this week to cover the New York Television Festival and Advertisting Week, both of which had some mixed emotions on the convergence of TV and the internet. More news of out NYC, was that the guys behind You Suck at Photoshop have stepped it up a notch launching a whole Big Fat University of screencasted classes while also quietly rolling out their third season of their flagship series this week.

Let’s face it, summer is finally over. Those long days of daylight will now begin to slip away, the air will turn crisp, and before you know it your clock will “fall back” and you’ll find yourself wandering around in the dark at 6:00pm like some extra from I Am Legend. But fear not, you undead nightwalker! This October 19, we have a special treat for you: an extra special Tubefilter Hollywood Web Television Meetup! What could be a better kickoff for the first day of Digital Hollywood and the Prospective Membership Meeting of the International Academy of Web Television?

Tubefilter Hollywood Web Television Meetup is proud to present Going LIVE!, an in-depth look at what it takes to pull off a live television show on the web. With the proliferation of live content online—thanks to platforms like UStream, Justin.tv, Stickam, and Livestream, it’s no wonder so many web television creators are producing high-quality live content online. Live broadcasts are an event in themselves, which provide a level of interactivity, buzz, and community building that you just can’t get from on-demand programming. We’ve pulled together a group of leading innovators in the live web television in an event you don’t want to miss.

This was a week of some terrifying truths in the web series world. Like, say, YouTube star Fred is getting his own movie. And there’s was quite the discussion both online and off about MySpace buying views for its struggling BFF web series and then claiming it has “millions of viewers.” They aren’t the only ones, and several readers have sent us other examples worth a deeper look.

Speaking of views, online studio Next New Networks which says they have never paid for views, reported that they broke the 600 million view mark since its January 2007 launch. Crackle unveiled its slim-downed fall lineup this week and as expected Electric Farm’s Woke Up Dead is the frontrunner.