Friday Vid Picks: Serials

Now that the Apple TV and other devices from Microsoft, TiVo and Netgear promise to move video from your laptop onto your living room set, the definition of ‘online video’ could begin to expand from the current craze for three-minute sketches and ‘wowee’ shorts, and longer form content and serials should start to come into their own. Even old media heavyweight Michael Eisner is optimistic, with his Vuguru soon to debut “Prom Queen.”

That’s good news for a number of NewTeeVee favorites such as Almost There, The ‘Burg, Cherub, Can We Do That and Sam Has 7 Friends — all of whom have or will have wrapped their first seasons shortly. We’d bet they can be convinced to come back with the promise of bigger audiences and, of course, funding.

But what about current running serials? Thankfully, popular shows like Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager are still churning out new episodes, with Episode Seven just released this week. Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda’s show has caught fire on YouTube, and has the kind of freewheeling, lovably amateurish feel that I find so refreshing about content produced for web audiences.

For all you non-haxxors, the title of Math Club’s web show “1337” is pronounced ‘leet,’ and is an adventure thriller about a group of young hackers out to do good. Think a geekier, less covertly politicized version of 24. Here’s the promo for the upcoming tenth episode, “BSOD.”

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Chasing Windmills is a fantastic serial drama that’s been around for years and is still turning out new episodes. It’s the brainchild of Cristina Cordova and Juan Antonio del Rosario out of the filmmaking hotbed of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Okay, maybe Minneapolis and “filmmaking hotbed” haven’t been included in the same sentence often, if ever, but chalk it up to the sea change of this whole decentralization of production and distribution. The latest episode features the fallout of an art prank gone horribly awry.

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More Midwestern excellence can be found at Human Dog Productions in Michigan, whom I’ve mentioned before as must-see NewTeeVee. Director Chris Weagel’s American King follows artist Garrett Lambert in a cuttingly honest documentary about contemporary life. The latest episode is part one of a (somewhat delayed) two-parter about Garrett’s relationship with automobiles.

With a tad more production value than Lonelygirl15, “I” is also both a show and an exploration of webcam culture that invites and involves the audience. The twelfth episode has already spawned a number of video responses from viewers in the two weeks since it was posted, and shows the kind of format-busting possibilities that the web has made possible.