Tubefilter News

Last night’s Los Angeles premiere of Easy to Assemble season 2 was everything you would expect in a sophomore debut—bigger, brasher and beaming. For the gawkers on Hollywood Blvd. peering onto the red carpet outside the Egyptian Theater, most probably thought they were scoping out a movie premiere as stars like Keanu Reeves, Kevin Pollack, Justine Bateman and Harry Shearer casually strolled past the check-in tables with cameras flashing.

The new season of the IKEA backed web series, which kicks off today, is a classic season long face-off. Picking up essentially were things left off last season, Illeana Douglas and Justine Bateman both still work at the Burbank IKEA store, playing themselves “in between acting jobs.” The rivalry of the two celeb employees squares off around the coveted Co-worker of the Year title, the retail equivalent of queen bee. It’s a 40 year-old’s Blair vs. Serena.

For the dozens of web video folks at the event, there was a underlying buzz that Hollywood is starting to take notice. It had that blend of celebrity, both online and off, last seen at the Streamy Awards. The fusion on the red carpet of web stars and traditional celebs kept the publicists extra busy, but ultimately scored the event a win in both camps. It was easy to forget this was a premiere for a web series.

Ask a Ninja creators Kent Nichols and Doug Sarine make more than just a cameo midway through the season, playing themselves and eventually making a special pro-Illeana video with the Ninja. Other cast members on hand at the premiere were Tom Arnold, Daryl Sabara, Sean Durrie, Cheri Oteri, Kent Nichols, Michael Irpino (who came in full costume), Todd Spahr and Rob Mailhouse.

The wacky guys behind Streamy-winning You Suck at Photoshop at the Big Fat Institute, Matt Bledsoe and Troy Hitch, are at it again. This time they are expanding beyond their twisted photoshop tutorial featuring our favorite professor with serious personal problems, Donnie Hoyle, creating a whole “fake” online university, Big Fat University.

According to Matt Bledsoe, Big Fat University site just launched in “alpha beta kappa” mode September 24th, 2009. The site launches initially with three schools, a Design Institute, a Music Academy, and a School of Filmmaking, with hopes of launching more in the future.

The idea came to them when they had learned that actual design professors were using their web series as an alternative to the standard boring photoshop exercises, Bledsoe commented, “We began hearing stories about design professors using our videos as a way to keep students awake during class.” It’s a really interesting angle and could lead the way in a new form of “edutainment.” As the site progresses, they will be rolling out materials to go with each “course” and other bonus features, possibly for pay.

There’s a lot of news to digest here, so let’s start with the highlights:

Keanu Reeves is starring in a web series.
It’s called Spärhusen and is actually a spin-off of IKEA-backed Easy to Assemble.
It’s part of a 7-show slate of web series from My Damn Channel premiering October 8, 2009.
You know the medium is growing up when we get news of not only another A-lister headlining a web series, but the fact that it’s a spinoff of another web series. Keanu Reeves is starring in Spärhusen, a spinoff series about fictional Swedish rock band of the same name that despite oozing musical talent, never quite hit the ABBA level. It actually came out of an episode of Easy to Assemble from last season.

For the first season, Spärhusen is basically a Behind the Music look at the “in-studio tensions” from the recording sessions of the band’s 1972 single “Apples & Fish.” Reeves stars as “famed” Swedish record producer Vorste Fierron who apparently can’t get along with the band’s long-time manager Björn Epstein (Wallace Langham) over a fish. On top of the series, they are actually putting out a real-life album from the band, dubbed “The Best of Spärhusen,” set for release later this fall.

Illeana Douglas, the star and creator of Easy to Assemble, co-created Sparhusen along with fellow stars Rob Mailhouse and Todd Spahr. CJP Digital, the same firm behind newly-renewed The Temp Life, started working with Easy to Assemble for season 2, and brought the two-pack of series to My Damn Channel who won out after a little bidding war.

The new season, “Co-Worker of the Year” adds SNL vets like Cheri Oteri, Tim Meadows to the cast.

Wainy Days, Horrible People, You Suck at Photoshop, — New York-based My Damn Channel is on a roll. The brainchild of founder and CEO, Rob Barnett, a veteran TV exec who spent more than eleven years as a programming exec at MTV and VH1 and time as president of Programming for CBS Radio. Rob has worked with some damn talented people like Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Corolla, and countless others, and now Sam Seder.

On April 20, Sam Seder’s original web series Pilot Season premieres on My Damn Channel. The show originally aired in 2004 on the now defunct Trio network. We talked to Rob Barnett to find how Pilot Season is being repackaged from the original six episodes into a thirty episode web series and we grilled him for details about running a damn good new media platform.

You Suck at Photoshop creators Matt Bledsoe and Troy Hitch have struck gold (literally) a second time with the launch of their newest series, Agency of Record, which can be found on both My Damn Channel and Adobe.tv. The series, which launched November 21st, stars Bledsoe andHitch, themselves veterans of the advertising world, in the roles of Dave and Rick, farcical caricatures of agency ACDs (Associate Creative Directors for those not in the know) who lead their team to near disaster in the show’s first episode. Chock-full of industry jargon, and co-starring comedian Briana Hansen in the role of starry-eyed interactive designer Sierra, Agency of Record plays up the ludicrous stereotypes associated with the cadre of characters that inhabit the hallowed halls of your typical agency.

While the show pays homage to industry luminary David Olgivy through the guise of WTF Worldwide’s Bernie Olglethorpe, a ridiculously out-of-touch boss who holds meetings in Second Life and enforces impossible deadlines (twenty concepts for a creative campaign by tomorrow morning!), it also pays him the ultimate compliment by heeding his best advice word-for-word: “A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” And that is precisely what Bledsoe and Hitch have done.

This week we’re highlighting three shows that caught the staff’s eye this week: Puppy Love, Horrible People, and Defenders of Stan.

Over 200 participants packed the James Cagney Board room of SAG’s Hollywood branch to hear from a panel of industry professionals which included David Burns, producer of Dr. Horribles Sing-Along Blog, A.D. Miles, creator-star of Horrible People, Melissa Hunter and Jenn Crohn, producers and stars of Let’s Get Laid, and Hollywood Web Television Meetup co-organizer Tyler Malin, founder of Secret Fun Time.

Each week, the staff at Tubefilter News gets together and picks shows that we think you should check out.
This week’s picks:
Roommating

Roommating follows the story of Joel and Erin, two roommates who met on Craigslist and have a common appreciation of judging people and Vietnamese food. We got a chance to talk to Joel a few [...]