by Marc Hustvedt on March 8th, 2010
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]
by Marc Hustvedt on December 9th, 2009
Web series and web video bits worth clicking today:
Paramount Digital Entertainment’s debut web series drama Circle of Ei8ht released the season finale today (above) on MySpace. The studio hasn’t been shy about promoting the series using TV ad spots and even massive billboards to drive viewers online. [MySpace, DreadCentral]
Compulsions has broken the 100k views mark in just its second week of its exclusive run on web video site Dailymotion (which is promoting the series heavily, and yes, even on Tubefilter). Episode 6 “Ripen” debuted today with the final two of the season bowing this week. [Dailymotion]
YouTube announced today at Le Web Conference in Paris that it’s lauching an international sports channel with more than 2000 licensed sports videos called “Sports Hub.” To promote it and other licensed TV content, YouTube launched its first traditional press and outdoor ad campaign in the UK with the slogan: “YouTube’s got TV”. [Telegraph]
Felicia Day, creator-star of hit World of Warcraft inspired web series The Guild will be presenting at Spike TV’s Video Game Awards this Saturday night at 8PM ET on Spike. [Spike TV]
The Future of Dating? CBS web series The Tomorrow Show with Mo Rocca sent its correspondent Shira Lazar to explore one of her favorite topics—dating. [CBSnews.com]
A Comicbook Orange dropped its own season finale (below) today, wrapping up their fourth season from creator-host Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan. The finale spotlights Brian Wood, creator of some of the best women characters in comics. There’s also a well placed Star Wars reference at the end. Our clearly biased favorite episode of the season is Jane Espenson talking Streamy. [A Comicbook Orange]
by Marc Hustvedt on December 2nd, 2009
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.
by Joshua Cohen on November 30th, 2009
The problem with dance movies isn’t the dancing. Everyone enjoys watching unrealistically attractive teen and twentysomethings manipulate and contort their bodies in unbelievable ways to hip-hop driven beats. And I mean everyone. I’m no anthropologist, but I’d say humans have a universal, positive association with cutting a rug. Dance, after all, is the world’s oldest art form, and after thousands of years of being an integral part of our culture, it’s fun to watch people do it well. YouTube proves my point.
The problem with dance movies is the storyline. The exposition generally sucks. It’s difficult to pay attention to or care about plot developments so hackneyed they’re fodder for a Wayans flick. Watching outsiders or underdogs endure life-changing experiences – the death of a close family member, the attainment of a love interest, a montage – is unbearable when all we want to do is see them step up, bring it on, or stomp the yard.
The solution to dance movies is Jon M. Chu’s The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (aka The LXD). The web series from Agility Studios and the director of Step Up 2: The Streets borrows a few moves from sci-fi television and applies it to the dance genre. The storyline follows “heroes and villains with amazing powers of dance, that band together in rival factions, with an epic back-story and mythology woven around how the various dance styles in the hip-hop world came to be.”
Sounds awesome, right? Paramount Digital Entertainment thinks so, too. The development and distribution subsidiary of Paramount Pictures just closed a deal with Chu and Agility to distribute The LXD.
by Marc Hustvedt on October 27th, 2009
On the surface the Circle of Ei8ht premiere today on MySpace is just another cool looking web series with an exclusive distribution deal. Behind the scenes however, stands one of the most complex digital entertainment deals we’ve seen yet, with no fewer than six companies—MySpace, Paramount Digital, Milchan/Van Eyssen, Mountain Dew, Adobe, and even Blockbuster making the show’s official press release. There’s even a few more, William Morris Endeavor and Endemol that had a hand as well. We dedicated some serious pixel time in August to breaking down this well-oiled conference call machine of a project in our Anatomy of a Deal feature.
The business of this whole thing aside, it’s now time to figure out the big question that actually matters for viewers—is this thing any good? First, there’s the plot setup, which is horror flick ready with a spooky downtown LA loft building full of overly attractive twentysomething artists. There’s a new girl—(isn’t there always?)—a spunky young woman named Jessica (Austin Highsmith) who moves into The Dante as the impressively shot series begins.
DJ Qualls, the most recognizable of the cast from his Road Trip breakout, plays a nosy, handicam sporting neighbor working on a documentary on the place. (We can’t help but notice his similarity to another downtown LA loft set web series, Woke Up Dead, with Josh Gad as Jon Heder’s Zi8-obsessed roommate.) And internet references are a plenty, with another neighbor, India (Natashia Williams) having made a name as a web series star hosting “a political talk show in her panties.”
Everyone in the building, except our protag Jessica, seems to be hinting at what exactly is going on with the building and share an oddly clairvoyant awareness of things. Her potential love interest, a beefy nice guy Evan (Ryan Doom) who seems pulled right off the set of The Lake, appears to be Jessica’s best shot at some answers to this mystery. As viewers, we’re unsure why exactly Jessica would have moved into this beatnik joint sight unseen, but somehow it seems like she didn’t have a choice in the matter.
by Marc Hustvedt on October 15th, 2009
Paramount Digital’s Circle of Ei8ht just released a trailer on MySpace, setting up for the online premiere of the series on October 27. We took an in-depth look at the myriad of moving pieces that brought this project together in our Anatomy of a Deal feature on Circle of Ei8ht back in August.
The supernatural series stars stars Austin Highsmith as Jessica, a newcomer to the City of Angels, who just moved into a loft on the eighth floor of a spooky downtown building called The Dante. It sounds something like a haunted Melrose Place, with her neighbors all being twenty-something good looking bohemians. Naturally, there are some gruesome deaths going down in this place and for some reason Jessica takes it upon herself, and her beefy neighbor Evan (Ryan Doom) to solve them. Joining her on the cast are Road Trip’s skinny man DJ Quall, Katie Lowes, Natashia Williams, Josh Kelly and John Bishop.
The show’s site on MySpace is custom built, and promises several levels of interaction with the story—hidden clues, mobile content, an online game and, most interestingly, a whole subplot where the audience directly controls the fate of the characters. “Find the clues, unlock the mystery and choose wisely… or people will die,” says the show’s tag line.
by Tamara Krinsky on August 13th, 2009
Keith Quinn, Paramount Digital Entertainment Senior VP of Creative Development and Production, is a big fan of LOST and lightweight ARGs. So it’s not a big surprise that the new web series coming out of PDE is a supernatural thriller that incorporates interactive gaming elements…along with a heck of a lot of Mountain Dew. The brand has signed on as a sponsor for the series, and will be tightly integrated into both the storytelling and gaming experience. Circle of 8 will debut in October exclusively on MySpace and a mobile partner, followed by distribution via a variety of outlets and formats.
As web television continues to develop, one of the key questions for show creators is cracking the mystery of how the business actually works. Where do deals originate, how does one get a sponsor on board and how does web video generate revenue? Though Circle of 8 is a show with a lot of suspense, I was able to get Quinn and Mountain Dew Director of Marketing Marisol Tamaro to spill some of the secrets about the anatomy of this deal.
