Tubefilter News

Break a Leg is a web series about creating a television show called Groomates, which is a sitcom about three ex-grooms living with their two ex-wives. Wordplay! Brothers Yuri and Vlad Baranovsky released Break a Leg online in late 2007, and it’s bizarro Hollywood stylings, murder mystery hook, Arrested Development sensibility, and excellent use of a laugh machine quickly made it one of the web’s first breakout hits. Unfortunately, the Arrested Development comparision goes beyond the show’s sense of humor.

Despite widespread critical acclaim, Break a Leg was never able to garner big money sponsorships and its YouTube viewcounts equated to little cash. At least that’s what happened when the show aired in the US. Perhaps it’ll garner good reviews and fame and fortune in Italy.

Happy Little Guillotine Films, the production company behind Break a Leg, recently announced a deal with Fox Channels Italy that will bring the web series overseas. Fox Channels Italy is set to “broadcast the show on their linear mobile TV channels, over mobile digital terrestrial television and online (linear and on demand) on www.floptv.tv.”

It’s not everyday that a major television network buys, translates, and distributes an independent web series to an international audience, so I caught up with Yuri and asked him for more information on the deal.

Tubefilter: How’d the Break a Leg – Fox Channels Italy deal happen?

Yuri Baranovsky: We were contacted by FOX Italy. They were huge fans of the show and their digital department was just sort of starting up. FOX uses FOX Italy as a testing ground for a lot of their new programs and Floptv.tv was, at the time, their first foray into online video and even now is, as far as I know, FOX’s only actual online destination point for FOX-related materials.

The Iceman Chronicles is the latest web series from Fox’s online production company 15Gigs. On paper, the premise will sound familiar to anyone who has seen a CBS drama, or the promo for one during football games: Man gets killed in an unusual way. Local law enforcement solves murder, unusually.

Thankfully, we don’t watch shows on paper.

While The Iceman Chronicles focuses around a murder, it’s mostly a comedy. And a funny one. Yes there is some suspense and mystery, but none of that outweighs the quirk of the show. Chronicles is set in the small, eccentric town of Blythe, Arizona where the coroner is also the veterinarian, and the cop at the scene of the murder can’t stop herself from having laughing fits.

The first episode begins with the murder of Saul Miller. He enters his home and, after a veiled exchange, gets stabbed to death with an icicle by, presumably, the Iceman himself. It is a well crafted scene – gripping, tense – but what stands out most is that it’s funny. Like when Saul tells his eventual maker that he’s been to the movies, but after a quick glance at his black eye in the mirror he backtracks to add, “an action movie.”

Enter Russell Coldpalm, an acerbic Joel Fleischman type. Russell is the somewhat clear eyed protagonist of Chronicles. Generally on point when not otherwise distracted by hooking up with the attractive local news reporter Barbie Pedderson. The town seems to rely on him to solve the heinous crime committed, especially the incompetent police department led by a Chief who is a functional alcoholic.

Twenty-five year old Jarrett Larson moved to Los Angeles to make it as a superhero-monkey cartoonist. For the moment, things are not going well. His Halo-intolerant girlfriend / sugar momma just dumped him, and he’s moved into an ominous, illegal commercial rental in a sketchy part of town with just a few boxes and his pug, Cheese. He still has his friends, of course (particularly his fellow Halo-playing teammates), and his sunny and bounding disposition is essentially intact.

But Jarrett’s voice-over tell us he has dreams of putting his cartoon character, Space Monkey, on the pajama pants of every kid in America by the age of 27. So, for the time being, he’s facing a mountain of feces (which may have been fired from his Space Monkey’s ‘feces canon’).

And so begins Singledom, an online series from the ‘stealth’ web TV outlet of Fox Television Studios, 15 Gigs. Singledom embraces a few flourishes of the experimental that you’d expect from a relatively new player in the digital content game. Unfortunately, it starts to feel ordinary once you realize it’s the confused twentysomething progeny of Sex andthe City and Superbad.

It’s not just that Jarrett and his core group of friends (two guys and a girl) banter at a table for four (albeit at a ‘rotisserie chicken-n-donuts’ joint vs. a SOHO brasserie), or that he and his buddies frequently engage in sex-related talk, or that the action plays out on top of a soundtrack all too reminiscent of Friends. It’s more that the creators have opted to take the well-worn path of introspective, post-collegiate man/woman/child making his/her way in a metropolis steaming with possibilities and disappointments.

Plus, it’s all accompanied by a fluffy voice-over. Don’t get me wrong, voice-overs can make a lot of sense for web video. They provide an opportunity to bring viewers up to speed within a limited time frame. But in Singledom, the added explanations dilutes the edgier elements of the series. The show loses some of its bite.

Singledom is created by Jonathan London, a young,accomplished film and commercial director and host of Geekscape. I suspect Fox TV must have had some say in the web series’ production,but for the sake of argument, let’s just say that London had total creative control. Who then, is the target audience? Gamers? No onscreen (game) play to speak of and the storyline doesn’t center around what happens when online addicts navigate real world relationships. Tweens? It’s a little too sexual.Folks in their twenties? Eh. It’s a little too immature. The more one tries to parse the question, the more it seems to be about portfolio-building for 15 Gigs and the director, and not much else.

Wowzas. We’ve been hot on Jon M. Chu’s upcoming dance-laden web series The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers for a while now, but this is getting to a new level. The group appeared tonight on FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance, and blew away the competition. These guys are AMAZING. Seriously, watch the clip above from the show. (right now)

We’re starting to think this could be the first truly international blockbuster web series. And now that Paramount Digital has jumped on board with Agility Studios for a major online distribution push, it just might get there.

No Special effects. No Wires. Real People, Real powers.

We call this project THE LXD.

“The LXD allows us to evolve how we tell stories using dance while creating a platform for the best dancers in the world to do what they do best,” said Jon M. Chu. “For the past year, my team and I have been locked in a room secretly building a project that combines music, dance, story telling, sport and interactive media.”

The dance segment above was choreographed by Harry Shum, Christopher Scott, and Galen Hooks, all of whom are members of The LXD.

The latest addition to a long line of new media forays backed by major media compaines is Fox Television Studio’s 15 Gigs, which recently sponsored a coveted prize at the New York Television Festival. While covering the festival, I had a chance to sit down and chat with two of 15 Gigs’ executives, Ilsa Berg, Director of Programming and Rachel Webber, Director of Digital Strategy and Development. We wanted to know what exactly they are planning to succeed in a space still looking for its go-to model.

Portfolio Approach

Fox Television Studios, Fox’s cable production arm, best known for edgy shows like The Shield and Burn Notice, is taking a different approach to creating a new media branch with 15 Gigs. “[We're] not in the business of creating a destination site” proclaimed Webber, such as Sony’s Crackle, perhaps to avoid competing with parent-backed Hulu. Also, they are not strictly sticking to branded entertainment like NBC’s Digital Studio. They are looking more towards a diversified portfolio strategy, and as a company under Fox’s cable production arm, they are expecting to launch some of their web series to cable television. Don’t get the idea that they are trying to produce TV content squished into a YouTube box either, like ABC/Disney’s failed attempt, Stage 9. While their series thus far have not completely leveraged the internet’s key difference from TV, interactivity, the series they have put out have been compelling and have explored new formats. A few examples from their current slate:

Tease, a dramedy set in a strip club, definitely something not necessarily fit for TV.
The Iceman Chronicles is an absurd thriller who-done-it in the vein of Twin Peaks
The Skinny: Fat Free News, a satirical pop culture news show with many scripted moments featuring two comically vapid hosts.
When Ninjas Attack is a scripted mock-game show in the vein of G4’s Ninja Warrior, only a little more ridiculous

So it’s September 10th and Seth MacFarlane’s long anticipated 50-episode animated series, Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, has hit the web today. The Burger King-backed series has been talked up quite a bit for using Google Adsense to push the show out to its target young male demo, but finally we get to see some actual [...]

One week to go till dancing Stewie & friends hit the banner ad circuit. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane just posted a sneak peek for his Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, which premieres September 10 at sethcomedy.com. The 50-episode series created quite a stir when it announced its unique distribution plans with Google’s AdSense platform, placing [...]

Seth McFarlane, best known as the creator of Fox’s Family Guy franchise, has announced September 10th as the debut of his first episodic web project, the animated Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. The 50-episode series garnered a hefty amount of attention when it was announced due to its unique distribution plans with Google’s AdSense platform. The [...]