Tongal jumped on board the MacGruber buzz bus this week at SXSW, launching a video contest for user-generated videos linked to the ROGUE Pictures film based on the popular SNL character “MacGruber.”

A panel of judges will then select five winning pitches that will be announced on tongal.com/macgruber on March 30 to move on to the next phase, which asks participants get to film and submit a 90-second video segment based on the top pitches. There is additional chance for prizes for watching and predicting the five winning video submissions. The grand prize for the top video is a ‘Hometown Screening’ of MacGruber as well as the five winning videos receiving cash prizes.

“We had been talking with Randall (Cox, EVP International Business and Corporate Development of Relativity Media) for a while about how to use Tongal as a social media platform to compliment Rogue releases,” said James DeJulio, co-founder and president of Tongal. “Especially if the campaign would result in user generated content. MacGruber was a perfect fit because of the overall level of awareness and enthusiasm for the character.”

The contest itself has numerous involvement opportunities for participation and eventual rewards. Phase one of the campaign asks participants to pitch a new MacGruber scene using one line of dialogue from the movie (from a list provided) in 250 text characters or less.

Just for fun, here is my entry:

(In slow motion): MacGruber removes his soiled shirt. His biceps are amazing. The Commander mouths, “wow”. MacGruber responds: “Every day is a workout when you have to carry around a 20 pound python in your jeans.”

(Note: I’m not actually entering the contest…it just seemed like a darn lot of fun and I couldn’t resist)

Tongal has more campaigns in the works. “We’re really excited that we’re launching a campaign with a prominent NBA franchise this week to create fan video mashups,” DeJulio revealed. “The winners, in addition to cash get two luxury suite tickets and their video played on the Jumbotron (at the famous arena this team calls home).”

Our platform and approach is really taking off,” he concluded. “We just launched out of beta at SXSW this week and had an incredible response. By breaking down the creation of this type of content into different stages, we’re allowing people of all skill sets a chance to participate, earn money, and ultimately it’s creating higher quality output. If you’re good at ideas, or if you’re good at video production, or even if you’re good at watching videos, you can use Tongal to make money and have fun.”

Inspired by the Playstation video game of the same name, Infamous shows us a world where everyday people have the regular occurance of having to deal with the fact that they are suddenly shooting lightning out of their body or hearing someone’s thoughts. A world where anyone can suddenly find themselves with superpowers and have the tough decision of whether to use their abilities for either good or evil…or sometimes a little of both. “[Co-creator] Greg [Washington] and I are both avid comic book readers,” said co-creator Joey Barto. “So, the story is kind of an extension of that. We love revenge stories, we love dark stories, we love anti-heroes, and this is a really great story about a very dark, dark anti-hero.”

Created by Barto, Washington, John Chambers, Harvard Taylor, and Travis Barth, produced by Newborn Productions and Cultivate Media Productions and shot locally in Shreveport, Louisiana, the series sets out to prove you can create high-quality, complex, and visually stimulating content outside of the heavily debated “Los Angeles Bubble”. Said Washington: “We have built a great relationship with two local studios here in Shreveport; Fairfield Studios and Crain Video, that have donated equipment and studio space for the production of Infamous.”

“Shooting in Louisiana, Shreveport in particular, gives us so many incredible options for backgrounds,” continued Washington. “Shreveport has passed for California, New York, New Orleans, Texas, and many other states because of its unique structure and setup. It is the perfect location for a production like ours with a very limited budget. And Southern hospitality has been extended above and beyond.”

The show is two episodes into its run and is quickly establishing an audience. “The sky is the limit as far as goals for the series,” explained Washington. “In our first week we were contacted by KoldCast TV to distribute our show on their network. Our fanbase is growing everyday, and other professionals we have met in the business are asking to help out any way that they can. Our production value has grown by leaps and bounds.”

“Our first season is twelve episodes, and we’re going to break it up into arcs,” continuted Barto. “Each set of three we’ll present to you with pretty much one full show. Kind of like a comic book back in the day.”

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Known as the last great race on the earth, the Iditarod is an 1150-mile sled dog race across the most dangerous and extreme terrain of Alaska. Fifty-eight year old Kathy Frederick is one of the oldest female rookie competitors to ever compete in this treacherous race and I, Leslie Morgan will be documenting her journey.

This is, in a nutshell, the premise for the unique documentary web series 1150 Project created by the one-woman producing dynamo Leslie Morgan. The series is literally unfolding right now, as Leslie follows Kathy currently racing in this year’s Iditarod. Tubefilter chatted via e-mail (as she is currently still in Alaska working on the series) with this inspiring creator to get the inside scoop on this truly once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Tubefilter: What was the inspiration behind this project? How did you and Kathy meet?

Leslie Morgan: I have been interested in finding a documentary project about someone living out a dream, Lemonade: The Movie and David Lynch’s The Interview Project inspired this web series. I met Kathy online after a mutual friend told me about her and her website. When I saw she needed a volunteer for three months to help her out managing her household I thought I could help her, but I also wanted to document her journey. I have been interested in producing a web based project for some time and thought rather than taking months to try and make a feature why not try to film and edit in Alaska, posting episodes as I go.

Tubefilter: Had you had experience in dog sled racing before this?

LM: I had never experienced dog sled racing before. Initially what I was interested in exploring was an older female single woman taking on this type of physical challenge and why. It wasn’t until I was here and in the project that I came to really understand the world of a dog musher.

Tubefilter: What was the biggest challenge you had to face producing the series?

LM: There were a few challenges. Financing I think is always a challenge, which is why I set up a paypal account on the site as well as an Indiegogo page to help get donors to contribute so I could actually go. The other challenge is having lived in Los Angeles for seven years I am not accustomed to snow and negative temperatures so the environment was definitely a challenge as is being a one woman show on it. I take the footage, edit it, upload it, manage the site, promote it etc. It’s obviously a lot easier when you have a team, even a small team of people behind you to help with even some mundane tasks.

Tubefilter: How are you integrating traditional web series episodes and a livestreaming component?

LM: I essentially wanted to do a live broadcast with Kathy every Tuesday night so people who were following the episodes and the site could ask questions about the dogs, how Kathy was feeling etc. So I got a Ustream channel. I wanted a way to involve the audience directly and I felt utilizing a live broadcast could make the audience feel more a part of everything. Plus I am a firm believer that involving the audience on every level just helps grow the project. The idea of making your audience a part of the project instead of simply a passive bystander has been important to me since working in radio and music where we would have street teams go out and promote shows or bands. I think film, tv and especially those involved in new media have a great opportunity to integrate their audience so that they become an active part of the whole process.

Tubefilter: What’s next for this project?

LM: Well first: finishing it. So far I have 9 episodes up and my goal is to finish out with about 20, but I may do more. I guess if people want to keep watching I will keep the project going. I would love to eventually create a feature compiling the webisodes along with additional footage that you did not get to see. Also a really amazing part of the Iditarod is the teacher training portion. I have connected to a few teachers who use the Iditarod as part of their curriculum and may be interested in using my content in their classrooms, which is really incredible to me. I would love to continue to build from this project and the idea of being able to potentially go into classrooms and speaking about the project and having kids start to create their own projects could be the next extension of this particular project.

Tubefilter: Do you have any other web projects in the works?

LM: I have several ideas of web series I would love to do, one involves true stories of women facing challenges, two others are narrative. Ideally I just want to continue to creating and producing web content whether it be for myself or another company. If anyone needs a content producer let me know! I’ll need a job after this adventure ends at the end of the month!

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The Annoying Orange

Are you high or 14 years old? Do you live in the suburbs? It’s completely fucking absurd – like, X-Files absurd – that this series has over 20 million hits. That must mean that Satan is on his way. This is the kind of thing that the movie Idiocracy predicted. This is pure, pure unfunny highly concentrated, in droplet form, just purely nonsensical riffing from an Annoying Orange. It’s either high concept art or it’s just plain terrible. It made me want to drink alone on a balcony overlooking the city, listening to sad bastard music, wondering “Is this all there is in life? This?” and then keep drinking scotch. It was F. Scott Fitzgerald levels of ambivalence to humanity after watching this one, folks. This was terrible.

Wiener & Wiener

Do you want to know something? I was at the grocery store and found a thing called a Grapple. It’s an apple that’s been crossbred with a grape. It’s not bad. Anyway, Weiner and Weiner is a lot like the Grapple, because it’s not bad but it’s completely strange and I have no idea what to make of it. It’s good? Bad? I don’t like it? Maybe I do? It doesn’t make any sense except it kind of does? It’s like Urban Outfitters: The Show. Not only do all the actors and actresses look like they work there, but there’s a definite and palpable feeling of the decision to forgo plot for style points.

The Basement

Actiiiiiing! This is totally the college kids, right? This is totally This Crazy Idea For A Web Series And Then We Did It, isn’t it? This succeeds for being a live action Scooby Doo ghost story with some swearing. It’s not bad after you watch a few episodes in a row, and works best when watched all together. It’s pretty neat, I have to admit.

Copy & Pastry

This show grew on me after a few episodes. It’s actually pretty fucking funny – highlighting a very oblique sense of humor… which you don’t see in web shows very much. When this show is good it reaches a very watchable mix of Kids In The Hall and Napoleon Dynamite. When it’s bad, it still better than most comedy web shows. It even sort of looks like a super low budgeted HBO comedy series. Whatever they’re doing right here they’re doing right across the board, and I’ll have to admit that despite the horribly punny name (Copy & Pastry? Really?) this is a very weird and funny show.

THIS WEEKS MUSTARD: Copy & Pastry

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Included in President Obama’s commencement address at Note Dame University last year was a desire to find ways to communicate about a workable solution to the problem of unintended pregnancies. A Southern California-based independent media company called Yellow Line Studios wanted to help give that desire a voice. And so they created Bump+.

Using the device of a fictional reality show, Bump+ follows the stories of three women, all in their first four weeks of pregnancy, as they weigh the pros and cons of continuing to full term. Denise is almost a child herself, though this is her third pregnancy with signs they were results of domestic abuse, Hailey is a sorority girl who seems to care more about what being on the show can do for her than her pregnancy, and Katie is facing the tough decision of what to tell her husband when he returns from Iraq…because the father isn’t him.

Launched on the eve of the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the show has been releasing 2 episodes a week since February 1st, all the while fostering an open and honest communication with and between its audience. Though the production itself is clearly not trying to present itself as a true documentary, the comments show a sincere desire to communicate with the fictional women involved and in the end, the audience influences the final decisions of the women. Several alternate endings were shot and however the story is lead, the project intends to follow-through with it. One of the women may decide to keep their baby while another opts for abortion…one may choose an entirely different option altogether.

Depending on how the series actually turns out (the final episode of season 1 is scheduled to launch on March 15th), the series could be seen as glorifying the abortion issue. Hopefully, it will be clear that it wasn’t the wishes of the production itself to take any particular stance on either side of the debate, but to allow an audience the opportunity to talk out all the sides together, as well as share personal stories people have faced when it comes to pregnancy and parenthood. It’s an issue almost everyone will face at one point in their lives and the format of a place online paired with a visual story to embody the discussion is a unique one that can hopefully be utilized in the future on a wide range of issues.

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Illeana Douglas may be quite the name in web series circles now, especially after landing six Streamy nominations for her popular comedy Easy to Assemble, which just wrapped its second season earlier this year. It even spawned a spinoff series Sparhüsen, which nabbed its own Streamy nod. But aside from those two, the Emmy-nominated TV and film actress has yet to venture into a web series where she isn’t the one calling the shots. Looks like that’s about to change.

Douglas just wrapped shooting a two-episode guest starring arc on Spherion-sponsored office comedy The Temp Life in New York this week, playing cold hearted CEO Eve Randall. Also shooting a guest spot this week is Taryn Southern who reprises her gumpy midwest IT tech Nancy Roder for a few more episodes.

This isn’t the first we’ve written about the bi-coastal casting moves on The Temp Life this season, which have seen notable web series standouts like Sandeep Parikh (The Guild), Thom Woodley (The Burg) and Rachel Risen (The Hayley Project) coming on board to bolster the show’s cred and fanbase. To give an idea of numbers, it took two years for the series to reach 1 million views, while its latest season—its fourth—has just passed 2 million.

The connection between Easy to Assemble isn’t hard to piece together. Temp Life creator Wilson Cleveland—who also plays the former temp agency boss Nick ‘Trouble’ Chiapetta—heads up CJP Digital Media the web arm of Manhattan-based marketing firm CJP Communications. Easy to Assemble teamed up with CJP for its latest season with Cleveland’s team helping score a suite of new distribution deals for the show including The Hotel Network and a lucrative one with My Damn Channel.

As for the brand backing the series, they’ve taken notice to the uptick in views and higher profile names attached. The 60-year old staffing firm which employs more than 160,000 people worldwide loves the online buzz the Hollywood and web talent brings to its less-than-glamorous core business.

“We have had incredibly talented people involved with The Temp Life this year, and we are honored to have Illeana Douglas helping us end this season on the highest of notes,” said Melissa Waldon, Spherion’s Senior Social Media Strategist.

Ironically, it even has its Streamy nomination this year for best branded web series, pitting it square up against IKEA and Douglas’ Easy to Assemble along with Altoids-backed Brainstorm, Topps’ Back on Topps and Lexus’ Parts Art. The season finale episodes of The Temp Life will premiere online next month, April 5 and 26.

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This isn’t your average “I ripped Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” off YouTube (rickroll) and then mixed in some clips of Captain Picard saying “make it so” on a loop” mashup. Contagion explores a world in which Jack Bauer is investigating the murder of Bella Swan by Blade while tying to get Mulder and Scully to help him before the Resident Evil zombies attack…but they do, leaving him no choice but to go pick up the Winchester brothers from Supernatural.

And it actually looks really, really good.

Created by Canadian television director and editor Ray Holycross, the series originally began as a way for him to hone his editing skills in his spare time. He had planned to release an episode each week for 2 months, beginning in December. And just in case anyone tries to call foul on the fact that he’s using copywritten material, Holycross makes sure to post information on Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 on the series YouTube account, also stating, “I do NOT make any money on this. Copyright is to the rightful owners, and this was for fun and not to make any money or profit at all.”

Unfortunately, Holycross had to take a hiatus after episode 3. However, to make it up to those chomping at the bit for more, he recently released a teaser trailer (below) for the final three parts of the series, each running 10 minutes, slated to be released at the end of March.

What will happen in this 30 minutes of the ultimate geekerific television and movie universe showdown? Will Blade take down Bauer before the zombies do? Will the Winchester brothers end up in a love triangle with Scully? Will anyone care that Edward Cullen was killed in the first 30 seconds of episode 1? Tune in March 29th to find out.

The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers lit up the Oscars stage last night (above) on ABC with a medley of all of the Best Original Music nominees. Talk about a killer (and free) promo for their upcoming web series The LXD from director Jon M Chu. Check out Madd Chadd’s legendary robot skills in the UP section of the routine. [YouTube]

The Guild’s creator-star Felicia Day is going to star in a SyFy Channel Saturday Original Movie where she will portray “a werewolf-hunting descendant of Little Red Riding Hood.” “In the action-packed Red, Red (Day) brings her fiancé home, where he meets the family and learns about their business – hunting werewolves.” The movie, set to debut in 2011 on SyFy also stars Kavan Smith (Stargate Atlantis) and Stephen McHattie (Watchmen). [Bloody Disgusting]

DigiVenture is hosting a Women in Digital event tonight in Los Angeles hosted by Joanne Griffith that will feature a panel representing audio, visual and print media professionals, including: Carmen Dixon, former ABC producer and creator of the blog Allaboutrace.com, Zadi Diaz, founder of the web TV series, Epic Fu, and Shani Byard-Ngunjiri, founder of Media Message Ed. The free event will be held at Otis College of Art and Design on Monday March 8th from 7-9pm and parking is free. [DigiVenture.org]

Funny or Die tapped director Ron Howard to rope together the best SNL prexys from the past few decades in a Presidential Reunion video (below) that already broke 2.5 million views on in under a week on site. Darrell Hammond stars as Bill Clinton, Jim Carrey as Reagan, Dan Aykroyd as Dick Cheney, Fred Armisen as Barack Obama, Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford, Dana Carvey as Poppy Bush, Will Ferrell as George W. and Maya Rudolph as Michelle Obama. The video is part 1 of three in the series. [Funny or Die, MainStreetBrigade]

Got something for Quick Clicks? Shoot them over to tips[at]tubefilter.tv

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Back in November, a video collaboration between wildly popular vlogger Shane Dawson and web comedy originators The Fine Brothers hit YouTube. Within a week, it had gathered a whopping 2 million views. The video (above) was a parody of the Canadian teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation, which would explain some of the success in terms of targeting a large and passionate audience. But what was interesting about the popularity of this video was the fact that it is over 10 minutes long and was actually viewed more often than the source material it was spoofing.

This weekend, a second video parody is going to hit the internet. Titled Girls Gone Wild On Degrassi, a sneak peek of the video (below) reveals that the collaborators are going to kick it up a notch…by actually including a member of the Degrassi cast, Lauren Collins, who plays the girl girls love to hate, Paige. On how she became a part of this installment, Collins said: “It’s all thanks to the Twitterverse! I received a ton of @’s about Shane’s first Degrassi video so I had to check it out! I thought it was hilarious. Dirty, vulgar and slightly inappropriate…sure. But that’s what made it so much fun. Jokes aside…what impressed me the most was the amount of detail that went into the writing. I knew that Shane and the Fine Brothers were huge fans and really appreciated the show. So I tweeted Shane and we kept in touch from there. I happened to be in LA while they were shooting Part 2, which worked out nicely.”

The Fine Brothers (whose fourth edition of their “Spoilers” series premiered this week in preparation for the Oscars this Sunday), always having strong, well-developed opinions on the New Media space as a whole, feels that the implications of their fan-generated content has great potential. “We think it is one of the few case studies of the power of web video that is often overlooked by traditional media, as well as the new media community itself. View counts have been de-valued in the space due to views being either non existent for most shows, full of fraud, or just flat out bought. It’s the elephant in the room. No one wants to talk about views, and those who boast them can’t transparently back them up, but Shane Dawson can, as can we with our own content. This is a situation where a top YouTube star with a real sustained fanbase and viewership does indeed have the power to make content that rivals television numbers- and beyond that, grab the attention of everyone from the executive producer of Degrassi to getting a cast member to join the cast. There is no money here in terms of the production itself, a 2 person crew (both of us), no company, no big press roll out or marketing budget…it’s a true brand, a true star, and true viewership with the kind of power that can change the way people look at the web space. We feel these Degrassi spoofs have done just that, and there is a bright future for companies that are smart enough to work with the right people that have proven they understand web video and can prove they can get the eyeballs to build a sustainable business model off of.”

“Also we want to give Degrassi some huge thanks and appreciation for completely embracing what we are doing,” the Brothers continued. “Many shows could learn a thing or two about the value and power of the web, and it’s amazing to see the show supporting us. As fans, we can’t even express how good it feels to know we can actually give back to people who have brought so much entertainment to us. And talk about surreal when you then have the actress in person, right there reading lines you wrote. If that’s not what being a web creator is all about, we don’t know what is!”

And there is still more to come from this pairing. “I would love to continue working with the Fine Brothers,” 2010 Streamy Award-nominated Dawson said. “I know we are both obsessed with the show Saved By The Bell so I think that should be our next project. Playing Zack Morris has been a dream of mine since I was 5. If only I could be as cool as him…one could dream. As far as other projects outside of YouTube, television has always been the goal and we are taking all the steps to get there. It may take some time but when it happens I know it will be amazing. There needs to be more wigs and cross dressing on television and I think I can make that happen!”

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POV
This College Humor series pretty aptly reminds me of college, high school and sort of every waking moment of every major meeting i’ve ever been in. Bravo, good sirs. Tada. College Humor is sort of the Scottie Pippen of bro humor. It’s might not pull Michael Jordan numbers but still deserves to be on the cover of the metaphorical box of Wheaties.

ZOMBIEZ!
This is remarkably well filmed – with huge overtones of Sin City and Natural Born Killers. It’s very well cast and clearly a lot of effort was put into this, and whoever worked on it should do more hopefully with a larger budget. It’s far from perfect – it’s very, very clearly a somewhat knowingly cheeseball B-movie homage which normally I wouldn’t have a problem with – it’s just that I’d really like to see them do something totally original or dare I say it a little more serious.

Interviews 50 Cents
When I first saw this I thought it was an interview of rapper 50 Cent. It’s totally not. Boy, was I mistaken. It’s a pretty interesting idea for a talk show, filmed just using a table and two chairs at (what appears to be) various county fairs. Basically, people sit down, get paid 50 cents, and tell a story. It’s a great concept and filmed really, really well. My problem with it is also what I think makes the show so interesting: that the episodes are a lot like having to sit through someone elses story, no matter how interesting. While some of the stories are truly captivating, others feel like the exact feeling of being stuck listening to someone talk on and on at a party. The Garrison Keiller lookalike guy that they’re talking to (who seems to also have Hannibal Lector as a fashion inspiration) doesn’t say much to interrupt them or, you know, interview them, and as a result you’re left with these sometimes transcendent, sometimes rambling personal stories. Regardless, I’ll have to admit this is quite a great series to watch. It’s interesting, and holds a lot of potential, if anything to document some every day life.

Condition:Human
… And then there’s something like this, which comes off as exactl something you’d see on the ScyFy (how do they spell it now?) Channel. It’s not bad, it’s just rather boring and feels like a video game that I can’t play, just watch. It’s very (very!) well shot and acted and at its best really does come off like Cowboy Bebop or Blade Runner, but at its worst comes off like generic anime or sometimes a futuristic Lifetime movie. Perhaps I’m just not a Sci-Fi person. Perhaps it’s just that I can’t get over the fact that the actor they picked as the creator of the robots looks astoundingly like the asian Guy Fieri. Perhaps I’m having a hard time believing any of it let alone the relationships between any of the characters which I think is a fault of the editing. Perhaps it’s the fact that I once saw a stripper in Chicago named Keoko (one of the characters names) and I kept wondering when 50 Cen’t “In Da Club” was going to start. Anyway, I tried to like this, I just found this a little too high on style and lot too less on substance.

THIS WEEKS MUSTARD:
I really, really enjoyed Zombiez, but I’m going to have to go with Interviews 50 Cents.

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