Reel Pop

PrimeTimeRewind aggregates TV vids, blows

The latest venture from serial entrepreneur and online vid evangelist Jeff Pulver, PrimeTimeRewind aggregates online video feeds from the major television networks and presents them as choices on a rotating 3D cube -- like the Rubik's toy, and just as impossible to solve.

Using their mouse or keyboard controls, viewers rotate the cube horizontally to choose one of the six networks (Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, USA, and TNT) and vertically to choose among four genres (action, comedy, reality, and drama). And there's the first problem. A "cube" with 10 facets is not a cube. It's an Escher-like impossibility.

Once you've selected a show to watch, the cube gives you the choice of watching the vid, in which case you're taken to a second page where the latest video from that series plays. On the side of the screen, PrimeTimeRewind lets users post comments and rate each show.

PrimeTimeRewind's in alpha right now, so hopefully Pulver and crew will abandon the cube metaphor. But even looking past the bad UI, one has to wonder what the business model here is. Advertising? Around embeds of network content? Seems shaky at best, and completely at the mercy of the networks' decisions on how to publish their content.

Bebo launches interactive soap 'Sofia's Diary'

The latest vid series from AOL's newly acquired third-place social net Bebo, Sofia's Diary  -- originally a Portuguese mobile show from 2004 -- is a new, interactive teen soap-o-drama co-produced by Sony Pictures Television and Campbell Ryan.

The deets: 17-year-old Sofia, having caught her boyfriend smooching another gal, "blows up" the chemistry lab and is shipped by mom to London to live with dad, his wife, and their toddler son. Sofia consequently has a new school/new friends/new job, and she huffs herself between them powered by the limitless internal combustion flames of teen aggravation, her only expression a woe-is-me bershon.

"Diary" -- like Bebo series "Kate Modern," and the YouTube phenom lonelygirl15 which inspired them both -- works via fan interaction. When an episode's posted, a viewer poll asks multiple choice questions to determine what direction the show'll go next. I've only seen rough cuts of episodes one and four, which may suggest that the producers established set waypoints to guide the main action, and left the intervals up to choose your adventure-type choice.

Unlike its interactive reality show predecessors, "Diary" isn't filmed via handcam. The action's steady and shot prettily, and even when Sofia looks directly at the viewer and talks to the video recorder in her room, the film quality doesn't change. That's an interesting departure from form, suggesting that viewers have become accustomed enough to being spoken to / included in the action (to being the 4th wall, or to the 4th wall no existing) that they no longer need visual cues, e.g., the fish-eye lensing of a webcam.

Sofia's Diary | originally based on a Portuguese mobile show from 2004 | More on Bebo's tie-ups with Sony, Endemol

Review: 'The All for Nots'

The second offering from Eisner-helmed online media studio Vuguru, and the second series from the guys behind acclaimed vid series "The Burg", "The All for Nots" is the mockumentary-style tale of a Brooklyn band struggling with touring, girlfriends, and groupies.

The first episode (chopped into parts 1a, b, and c) introduces the band members: An oblivious pretty boy frontman, a brooding bassist, a shy female drummer, and a geeked out keyboardist, the latter wearing that familiar anti-MySpace tee "Tom is NOT my friend" (the band members all have profiles on Bebo, a choice that's the ironically rebellious equivalent of not being a joiner). We're also intro'd to a braying blonde groupie and a critical bassist from a band called Sea Monkey Do. Could the self-deprecating humor be. Any. More. Obvious.

Though proffering a derivative brand of "Spinal Tap"-like faux-reality humor -- awkward glances at the camera, hyperbolically flawed characters, pregnant silences -- the just-launched series is commendable for its achingly self-conscious hipster patois, e.g., episode 1C's critic: "They're not punk. They're not even rock. They're just suck. Balls for suck! No, wait, that's not it."

Compared to Vuguru's first series, "Prom Queen," the meta-twee is a little more involved -- the band was "discovered" by a real-world indie rock critic (who also cameo'd in episode 2) and they're a "real" band that's touring the states. It's a good gimmick, an accolade which pretty much sums up the rest of the show, too.
"The All for Nots" | Vuguru

Review: 'Wingmen'

A mockumentary from a quintet of Austin, Texas-based amateur comedians, "Wingmen" follows  the travails of Jordan, Zach, and Aaron, the feckless co-hosts of radio talk show "Wingmen: Your Source for Dating and Relationship Advice." When Aaron's girlfriend dumps him on air, his subsequent cuss-laden tirade gets the show canceled and fined by the FCC for indecency. After threatening the station manager with violence, the trio decide to make ends meet by founding an online dating service. The show suffers from obvious kinks, e.g., a documentarian who doesn't know why he's filming but also thinks the doc will make his career, and banter that lapses into pace-shattering redundancies. But occasional one-liners and conversations are strong enough to keep the momentum, as with wheelchair-bound ladies' man Zach's on-air advice "you never know if it's going to be a bad baby or not, it's a 50-50 shot, maybe you made the world a worse place by giving birth." "Wingmen" was recently nominated as a finalist at the SXSW Greenlight Awards.
Wingmen | The Greenlight Awards

MobLogic's odd logic

UPDATE: Full review here.

The second news comedy (newscom?) program from the guys behind WallStrip, just-launched MobLogic's a CBS-owned 3 min. daily vid covering news, politics, and pop culture (Tiffany network's Mini-Me?). Lindsay Campbell, also nee Wallstrip, hosts, discusses the aforementioned range of topics (e.g., superdelegates, Super Tuesday, Fidel Castro) via man-on-the-street interviews -- quoting Campbell: "of the people, for the people, by a big ol' media corporation." Editing's snappy, snark's tempered by professional delivery, but efficacy of the format's in question: Are jaywalking-esque comments from randoms a good use of time? Does the media need another general interest newscom? Why not combine snark with investigative reporting? Or at least a more specific topic, i.e., like WallStrip? Review in the paper next week.
MobLogic | WallStrip

'Conquering Demons'

The latest video offering from "I'm big in Ireland" social net Bebo*, "Conquering Demons" is the behind-the-scenes daily vlog component of a same-named and in-progress snowboarding docu. Filmed entirely in the French Alps, the docu, by first-time Italian filmmaker Carlo Mancini, is investigating the "psychology of fear" in extreme sportsmen by interviewing athletes before and after performances (i.e., "tell me about your mother's ... basejumping?"). Meanwhile the vlog -- by professional snowboarding filmmakers Project Lockdown -- will capture the on-slopes action, the docu-making process,  and connect with fans through Bebo. A psych-out pincer move, with the athletes exposed to both docu-making and vlog-making in the same go. Sponsored by Oakley.
Conquering Demons

* Bebo's home to popular show Kate Modern, and will soon launch a new series called Sofia's Diary. Also, Bebo's big in Ireland.

Review: DanceJam

The comeback cornerpiece of Stanley Kirk Burrell, aka the typewriter-toe'd MC Hammer, DanceJam's a fancy-footed vid share site stocked with Step Up/Stomp the Yard/You Got Served hopefuls. Unlike most vid sites, Jam's both entertaining and didactic: You can watch battles, where viewers pref one dancer over the other, or browse video examples and lessons by dance type, e.g., hyphie, chicken noodle soup, buckin, and tuttin (inexplicably, no Humpty Dance or its risque cousin, "The Burger King Bathroom"). At its core, Jam's a competition -- users profile up, upload videos, and win accolades, fans and votes. While that process is similar to almost every other vidshare site, Jam's balletic specificity -- and the site's almost unquestionably good design and spare use of Flash -- set it apart from its peers.
DanceJam

The problem(s) with ABC's 'Squeegees'

My full review of ABC's new online-only show "Squeegees" -- the first show from the new Disney digital production unit, Stage 9 -- will appear tomorrow in THR. I'll link it up when it's live. But for now I wanted to post a little more about something I didn't get to cover much in the review, i.e., why networks need to produce videos that appeal to more specific cohorts, instead of regurgitating network fare intended for a broad audience.

To make "Squeegees," ABC hired Handsome Donkey, an online comedy troupe that garnered some praise last year for their frat boy-ish comedy videos. Take a look at their vids. Le Montage: a spoof on movie montages and their inevitable feel good endings. Photograph: A spoof on a Nickelback song, and horrendous music video filmmaking techniques. Bad Candy: on ill-conceived confections. These are all highly specific, mostly guy-oriented vids. Dude humor for dudes.

Now watch "Squeegees." It's about as basic as sitcoms come. Instead of riffing on cultural themes, the show uses gag humor. Naked dudes hanging from straps. Stupid dude eating glass. This is lowest common denominator fare, made to appeal to a general ABC audience.

That's what I don't understand. Why treat online video like TV? Why create something meant to appeal to a broad spectrum, when what the Web does best is coddle small(ish) groups of devoted viewers. If ABC wants to push boundaries -- and don't tell me that hookup in the office scene was a boundary pusher, 'cause it was laughable -- then they should identify specific parts of their larger demo and appeal directly to them.

In its rush to copy the success of short form online videos, ABC has only managed to copy the format of the videos. That's the wrong tack to take. The real value is in the content.

P.S. The intro to the show reminds me of that crappy video Ben Stiller made from Winona's tapes in "Reality Bites." Just sayin. Fail.

Model Dating: Hawaii

From the scribes behind MENSA-level TV gems "The Simple Life" and "The Tom Green Show," this ripe.tv schwing-a-thon promises to hook-up average joes with professional hotties. Launched yesterday, "Model Dating: Hawaii" (what, no Hoboken?) consists of three six-minute clips: An intro vid, explaining the premise; a second vid re-explaining the premise in Chinglish; and a third vid that tells you how to apply for a date. Visuals-wise, it's bikini'd T&A shots looped together -- like a 1-900 dating service commercial, without the promise of talking to someone who really shares your interests. Worse: each vid is bookended with commercials -- a 15-second preroll and a two-minute postroll. The resulting user-experience is so egregiously bad that it's hard to consider the show as anything other than ad-laden, pandering smut. Which of course means, on the Internet, it'll do just fine.
Model Dating: Hawaii

AtheneWins

A faux-reality series from a Belgian pro gamer, AtheneWins is a rambling, in-joke-rife vlog about a World of Warcraft player's oversexed lifestyle. Starring Athene, "number one best Paladin in the world", his bird-chested and shirtless friend Furious, and a gorgeous, apparently mute girlfriend known only as The Bitch, the vlog -- which is the #63 most subscribed YouTube channel -- purports to edify viewers on the getting of game both in-world and out. Hence the thumbnails of a scantily-clad The Bitch, and associated video titles, e.g., "How to Get a Horny Bitch" and "Taming a Horny Bitch". But click through and, instead of finding pimp pedagogy, you get Athene waxing poetic on nature-vs-nurture psychology, the fighting style of hobos, Internet memes, and his mother's advice.

While the series has moments of hilarity, it's not exactly accessible unless you're a gamer familiar with MMORPG ling or willing to delve into the earliest vids to understand the show's backstory. And yet as far as views go, the series is wildly successful. This is probably because it takes advantage of three key strategies: Use a hot girl (in this case, hilariously mute), make riotous claims about a passionate niche community (in this case, gamers), and spam your videos (in this case, on every site possible). The result's a views-getting combination of titillation, aggravation, and entertainment.

AtheneWins on YouTube | AtheneWins on MySpace | AtheneWins' DVD, Wrath of the L33t King

Barackula

The latest electo-tainment vid lampooning slash celebrating (lampoon-a-brating?) the great white-ish hope, Barackula's a rock horror musical depicting a young Harvard Law School Obama, who must battle a secret society of vampires to save his immortal soul. Which is cool, in a shoulda-seen-that-coming, blaxpoitation-still-has-legs, wait-where's-Sam-Jackson kind of way. Which is probably a testament to a wacked out mediascape, in which self-de-suffragettes like Obama Girl are rump-tastical media darlings. If someone could please produce an Obama movie involving pirates (Bargh!ack, Matey?) -- or maybe a spoof novel, called The Audacity of a Third Book -- I think we'd have the allegorical bases covered.

Despite the glut of preceding Obama vids -- the aforementioned OG, Will.I.Am's Yes We Can -- Barackula acquits itself as the most well-produced and entertaining electo-tainment yet. It's a little tortured, allegory-wise, i.e., I get it, I get it, the jazz-handed vampires are undead political functionaries subsisting off the blood of innocent voters, and Barack has to convince them to change. And politically, it's translucent -- Obama? Fighting evil incarnate? And Democrats are more nuanced than Republicans how? There's the irony, right. In the left's rhetorical battle against GWB's zero-sum, you're-either-with-us-or-against-us eschatology, Obama's elevated into an action hero. Or maybe a prophet. Jesus Christ, YouTube Star.

Barackula also represents the zenith, thus far, of political coattail meme media. That's not a bad thing: Pick a public figure, mashup his/her image with an entertaining motif, viral success. (It's worth noting, though, that Barackula's available on its own site, not as a YouTube vid).

All in, Barackula's a schlock-filled, highly-entertaining vid. It's actually more of a pilot than anything, with one 5-minute vid completed and online, with more to come (though the producers say they don't have a set schedule yet). If there's time in the electoral cycle, the series'll likely get picked up. And won't that be a happy President's Day.

Barackula.com

iReport

A forum for amateur news auteurs (n'auters?), itchy fingers upon their camphones, the just-launched iReport.com (covered pre-launch here) marks CNN's effort to make good on the much-ballyhooed, rarely realized promise of crowd-sourced journalism. It's not a new idea -- remember Backfence? Bayosphere? Bueller? -- but one given new purchase by CNN's imprimatur, not immodest financial backing, and the chance that every citizen will have a vaguely pro sports-esque shot at instant infotainment stardom.

The innards: Wouldbe journos/everymen create an account (screen name and phone number, "quick contact info so your story can be considered for CNN"), upload up to 100Mb of photos or video, and then choose an assignment from the drop-down menu, e.g., "Salute to troops", "Middle East beauty", "Young People who Rock", or "Stories from Second Life". What, no assignment called "Ow, My Balls?"

Financially, iReport makes a great deal of sense. As the news industry balkanizes over the Web, the pressure for mainstream news to embrace 24/7 terror or titillation -- does that sound pretentious? Sorry, I'll rephrase: most of CNN's "news" pieces blow (hi Sanjay!) -- incorporating feeds from unpaid, Cloverfield-like witnesses provides high-margin filler, allowing CNN to hire more people to man the bicycle pump inflating Lou Dobbs.

But seriously. iReport has potential. After they work out the kinks -- like, say, removing 6-month old videos from the home page -- iReport will surely draw legions of young viewers who spend less time watching the news channel, and more time viewing Pipeline feeds and refreshing CNN.com. I have no doubt that the hippest j-schools are, even now, creating courses around iReport. Can there be any doubt that CNN's next doe-eyed, lip-glossed, plat-blonde'd newscaster is out there right now, eagerly uploading her campics?
iReport.com

Yahoo Live

Yahoo Live
Glomming off the popularity of Ustream.tv and Justin.tv, Y! Live's a live-streaming platform that launched Feb. 6 for all-comers and egoists. From the FAQs: "Do you find yourself particularly attractive? Do you lipsync in your bedroom and actually sound good? Are you a narcissist? If so, then this service is for you." Visitors are encouraged by prominent links and graphics to start their own channel, though there are less visible links that list popular and recently live channels as well. Though the site had a big post-launch traffic day when RealNetworks' CEO Rob Glaser streamed an Obama rally, Y! Live is (admittedly) a very beta product that does little to differentiate itself from its competitors. Until they find direction -- or hell, add a pause button to the streams -- Y! Live looks like just another example of Yahoo's severely attenuated focus.
Y! Live | Y! Live blog

5 Awesome Geeks

5 Awesome Geeks
A smarmily-composed troupe cam show, 5AG stars a quintet of teen dweebs gabbing about ... not much. What grabbed me was the format -- i.e., each cammer vlogs an assigned day -- which 5AG shares with its predecessor and inspiration, 5 Awesome Gays. Though 5 Awesome Geeks only has five episodes under its belt, and 5 Awesome Gays hasn't posted anything but an intro clip, as syndication gimmicks go, both series are worth a look.
5 Awesome Geeks | 5 Awesome Gays