Author Archive
Coma, Period Much More Than Periodically Good
- Editor rating:
- Premiere: September 02, 2009
- Length: 2-4 minutes per episode
- Schedule: Weekly
- Cast
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- Rob Delaney: Dan Humford
- Crew
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- Writer-Director: Rick Castaneda
- Links
Set entirely in the white-walled subconscious of comatose accident victim Dan Humford (Rob Delaney), Coma, Period creates a surreal comic fantasy world populated by magicians, naked women, mysterious doors with bad things behind them, and candy bars. Humford wanders around his own mind, alternately bored, terrified and perplexed by what he finds there. The result, fueled by Delaney’s pitch-perfect and exuberant performance, is a satisfying blend of dark humor and goofy whimsy — a fusion often attempted in web video that’s rarely done as well as it is here.
In fact, few things in web video are done as well as they are in Coma, Period. Produced by Lead Balloon, the in-house original content arm of freelance hybrid media studio Psychic Bunny, and shot entirely on greenscreen with a Panasonic HVX200, the series shows the creative savviness and tech pedigree of writer-director Rick Castaneda and Psychic Bunny partners Doug Spice, Asa Shumskas-Tait and Jesse Vigil at every turn. And that’s really what’s noteworthy: It’s not just that Delaney’s performance is so great, or the production values are so professional or that the comedy works so well. All of those things are true, but a lot of series have good actors or funny writers or good use of greenscreen – ”or” being the operative word. What Coma, Period does, delightfully, is bring “and” into the equation. It has the technical proficiency to make you believe you’re really watching a guy in an endless white room, writing that goes beyond the obvious jokes inherent to the premise, and a lead actor who’s so great at both voiceover and physical acting that you may be a couple of episodes in before you realize you haven’t seen him speak on camera.
Julian Smith on Being the First to Sing the Praises of the iPhone 3Gs
There’s a long list of YouTubers poking fun at tech and social media, but with February’s viral hit 25 Things I Hate About Facebook, Julian Smith proved he’s one of the few doing it well. (So well, in fact, that he was invited to film a sequel vid at the Facebook offices.) Smith, who just turned 22, launched his YouTube channel last year with the subscribe-or-he-dies series Kidnapped, and now boasts more than 17,000 subscribers. Recently, with Got my Mac on with iPhone 3Gs, Smith took timeliness to a whole new level, getting the slick music vid up less than 48 hours after the phone was released.
NTV got in touch with Smith to discuss YouTube fame and how he managed to make “cut, copy, paste” into such a catchy lyric, so quickly.
NTV: Tell us about how you found your way to online video.
Smith: I was raised in a musical family; I grew up writing, singing and playing. When I was about 12, I started making goofy videos with my friends. By the time I was 15 I was doing freelance video full-time. (ed. note: Smith was homeschooled and balanced video work around his studies.) In September (of 2008), in hopes of building an audience and working my way into feature films, I started a YouTube channel and began weekly comedy sketches.
The Book of Jer3miah: Not Just for Mormons Anymore
- Editor rating:
Truth be told, what your average online video fan knows about Mormonism is probably about enough to fill an episode of South Park. So a web series produced at Brigham Young University, based on themes from the Book of Mormon, and aimed at Latter-Day Saint audiences doesn’t exactly sound ripe with mainstream crossover potential. But The Book of Jer3miah, a tight, suspenseful little series wrapping up its first season today, may just have what it takes to get web audiences to utter the words “Mormon conspiracy thriller” without a touch of irony.
The series follows college student Jeremiah Whitney as he is charged with the protection of a mysterious box. Jeremiah has long had “feelings” — messages from, well, God (here is where secular audiences have to take a leap of faith, no pun intended). Turns out Jeremiah is a very special guy indeed, and that box is about to cause him a world of trouble. Soon, very bad things start happening to people close to him, he finds out his parents have lied to him his whole life, and some pretty violent dudes start chasing him, all dressed in black and wearing fancy Bluetooths and such. Throw in an aggressively sexy female reporter (baddie alert!), a sweetly naive love interest, and those pesky voices, and Jeremiah has a lot on his plate. Read more of this story
The Onfronts: The Good, the Meh, and the AWESOME
- Editor rating:
This week Tilzy.tv brought us the first annual Onfronts, a presentation of what the year ahead has to offer in online video. Like the oldteevee upfronts from which they get their name, the Onfronts are a way for content providers to show potential advertisers just where their money could be going, and just how many eyeballs could be taking a gander at those logos. Of course, we here at NewTeeVee Station aren’t looking to invest big bucks for big traffic; we just wanna see all the previews and judge which will be the most squee-worthy.
It’s a noble calling, really. And we do it all for you. So here’s what’s coming up.
What looks good:
New seasons of old favorites. The promo for Prom Queen: The Homecoming was full of quick cuts and short on plot points, but, much like actual prom queens, the series doesn’t need details to get us to show up. They have us at Prom Queen. Likewise, new seasons of The Legend of Neil and Wainy Days seem like they’re going to bring more of the quirky fun that hooked viewers in the first place.
Life After Lisa Makes Slow but Promising Start
- Editor rating:
In fact, the above is an extreme oversimplification of Life After Lisa, an intriguing little mystery series which, yes, happens to be set at a Baltimore college in the ’80s — but, thanks to writer/producer Elena Moscatt (Jamie’s Way) and director Palmer Enfield, blissfully avoids slamming the audience over the head with a glut of decade-centric cliches. In the first episode, freshman and aspiring reporter Jessie Beaumont arrives at her new dorm and notices that she’s being watched from afar by a mysterious girl. This is Kapria, who we learn via flashback was good friends with Lisa, the deceased titular former occupant of Jessie’s dorm room.
Not that Jessie knows any of this; she just knows that there’s a surly smoking girl watching her, and that someone has written STAY OUT in lipstick on her dorm room door. By episode two, she finds a similar message on her bathroom mirror, and she learns about Lisa, who died in a drunken car wreck the previous spring. But was her death really an accident? Read more of this story
Harper’s Island Premieres With a Little Help From Harper’s Globe
Harper’s Island, the 13-episode “mystery event,” debuts tonight on CBS, where it will spin a gory yarn about a wedding gone wrong in a town with a bloody past. Fans of companion web series Harper’s Globe are already four weeks ahead of the game, having familiarized themselves with the legend of John Wakefield, the madman who terrorized Harper’s Island seven years ago with a seemingly senseless killing spree.
The Harper’s Globe site — ostensibly the newly digitized home of the local newspaper of the same name — is full of articles about the Wakefield killings and their aftermath. (Just one example of the depth of content we loved in our NTVS review.) And everything old is new again on Harper’s Island, where the danger is supposedly a thing of the past…until Abby Mills (Elaine Cassidy), the groom’s best friend, returns home for the first time since her mother’s murder. Suddenly, characters are being offed left and right.
It’s a promise straight from the show’s marketing department that at least one character will be killed in every episode. The premiere — evocatively titled “Whap” — delivers on that promise big time. And things only get darker and gorier from there. But for a show with 25 characters and a dense backstory, the pleasant surprise here is not just film-quality chills, but the amount of information that’s delivered in the first hour.
Joss Whedon, Felicia Day and a Pile of Streamys
The first annual Streamy Awards ceremony, held last night in Los Angeles, was a star-studded and high-energy event. (Pictured here: our iPhone paparazzi shot of Neil Patrick Harris. Update: Below are nice photos from TheBuiBrothers.com. ) As Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog and The Guild were two of the evening’s biggest winners, it’s no surprise that Joss Whedon and Felicia Day provided two of the best and most memorable acceptance speeches.
Accepting the award for Best Female Actor in a Comedy Series for The Guild, series creator Day drew thunderous applause from the crowd when she said,
“As an actor, I want to thank all the casting directors and directors and producers who rejected me horribly. And never hired me. And didn’t like the way I looked… Because without them beating me down into the ground and making me depressed, I never would have picked up a pen and written my own thing and did it and gone around [all of them].”
Day went on to say, “I’m a square peg and I’ve been trying to fit into a round Hollywood hole for a very long time,” and said she hoped her success with The Guild would inspire others to create their own opportunities for their art.
Harper’s Globe Gives Interactive Thrills
- Editor rating:
- Premiere: March 18, 2009
- Schedule: Weekly
- Cast
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- Robin Matthews: Melanie Merkosky
- Crew
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- Executive Producer: Greg Goodfried
- Executive Producer: Miles Beckett
- Executive Producer: Matt Siegel
- Co-Producer: James Sterling
- Director: Tony Valenzuela
- Writer: Jennifer Yale
- Links
Harper’s Globe — produced by EQAL, the folks behind a modest little success called lonelygirl15 — is the story of Robin Matthews (the ridiculously adorable Melanie Merkosky), a recent college grad who gets a mysterious job offer to digitize the archives of Harper’s Globe, the local newspaper of Harper’s Island (where the death-at-a-destination-wedding show takes place). Robin’s also tasked with building a social network on the paper’s web site. As she scours old files, her attention is caught by a murder spree that devastated the island seven years ago. And the more she digs, the more dangerous things get. Already, a poster named Dangerous Wreck has uploaded a seriously creepy video, and that out-of-the-blue letter Robin received with the job offer is looking more and more suspicious.
What makes it a “social show?” It’s not so much a simple web series as a constantly interactive site with a social network and daily content updates, where in-show characters upload videos and blogs, and participants can comment, interact with characters, and upload their own content. Every Wednesday, a week’s worth of character content updates gets edited into a new episode — meaning that those following the mystery have a choice to either follow the updates as they unfold during the week, or get a web-show-packaged version weekly. Read more of this story
A Guide to World Public Figures in Online Video, From Pontiffs to Palaces
With everyone from the Pope to the Queen of England hanging up a shingle at YouTube, it’s safe to say that prominent world figures have realized that having a presence on the web is a good thing. But who is blazing an online video trail, and who is merely putting in an appearance? We took a world tour to visit leaders of various stripes — some high profile, some less so – to see how they tackle making newteevee.
The Traditionalists
The Queen of England and the Pope both tend to favor repackaged existing footage over original video. From Queen Elizabeth, there are speeches, public interest tidbits, and of course, the Changing of the Guard. Rounding out the content is an impressive amount of older footage, for those of us not old enough to have caught Her Majesty’s first televised broadcast back in 1957.
A Tangled Web: The Fine Brothers Comment on ABC’s Lost Untangled
Since January of 2008, online video creators The Fine Brothers have been producing a comedic sendup of Lost called Lost: What Will Happen Next? using the series’ own official action figures. Last week, ABC launched Lost Untangled, an comedic series of Lost recap videos … using the series’ own official action figures. Granted, “let’s put on a show with action figures” is a concept about as old as action figures themselves. Still, watching the Fine Brothers series and then watching Lost Untangled, it’s hard not to at least go “hmmm …” and that’s just what online video news sites, Lost fan blogs, and the Fine Bros. themselves have been saying over the last couple of days.
We have not yet been able to obtain a comment from ABC on the topic, but we spoke to Benny and Rafi Fine via instant messenger for a more detailed take.
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