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Chris McCaleb of Big Fantastic
Vuguru: http://Vuguru.com/ | Prom Queen: promqueen.tv | Ellegirl: http://www.ellegirl.com/ |
Former Disney CEO
Michael Eisner
built his career trying to identify and shape hit movies and TV shows. Now he's at it again, this time on the Internet.
His investment firm, The Tornante Co., will announce today the formation of a studio, Vuguru, that will acquire and develop slickly written, produced and acted Web video.
Vuguru also today will unveil its first show: a serialized mystery called Prom Queen that will roll out over 80 days beginning April 2 with daily installments lasting 90 seconds. It's co-produced with production company Big Fantastic, in a deal brokered by United Talent Agency.
"There's a new distribution platform that's going to be ubiquitous, and that's clearly broadband," Eisner says. While sites that feature user-generated video, such as YouTube, "won the short-term sprint" to reach audiences, he says, "Winning the marathon will be professionally produced, emotionally driven story content."
People will have several options to keep up with Prom Queen, billed as "a blend of love, gossip and betrayal" in the two months leading up to a high school prom.
Episodes will run on the studio's Vuguru.com and on a show site, promqueen.tv. Other content on that site will include forums and blogs.
The series also will be on Ellegirl.com, which is a Prom Queen sponsor. In addition, it will be on YouTube and Veoh, a sharing site with DVD-like quality in which Eisner has a interest.
The company is working out arrangements to put it on wireless and handheld video devices.
Ads will run before and after each segment, which also will include product placements. Initial sponsors include Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful juices and Teleflora florists.
But it remains tough to find friends for Web productions on Madison Avenue.
"It's very frightening for a large advertiser to say, 'Where are the (viewer) numbers?' And there aren't any numbers yet because it's brand new," says writer-director Chris McCaleb of Big Fantastic. "This is the Wild West."
Some advertisers also fear a backlash if their brands appear with video that may offend some of their customers.
Eisner says that's good news for his studio.
"Vuguru will have certain standards," he says. "Promqueen.tv will be PG-13 or less aggressive. Advertisers will know that this is not a place where they will be embarrassed."
Prom Queen has cost far less than a TV show or movie, but Eisner would say only, "It's not inexpensive. Also, we're making up our own rules as we go along."
Big Fantastic spent about $50,000 for 80 episodes of a previous show, Sam Has 7 Friends, which Vuguru has bought.
"We pulled so many favors. People were working at incredible 'friend' rates," McCaleb says. "We made no money at all, which stops being fun when you can't eat or pay rent. Prom Queen is substantially more than (Sam's cost) -- definitely more than double."
He says viewers won't find 90 seconds too short to become engaged in each episode.
"When you're sitting there (at the PC), it's like dog years," McCaleb says. "There are so many options. So everyone really has 90 seconds."
Eisner also expects the series to open a lot of people's eyes to the business potential of professional Internet entertainment.
"When this show goes on, we'll be inundated with ideas,"
he says. "We won't have to look for them. They'll be looking for us."
Eisner creates studio for online content
By Carly Mayberry
March 13, 2007
Michael Eisner is launching an independent studio that will produce and distribute original content for the Web and digital platforms.
Dubbed Vuguru, the studio will focus on story-driven projects designed to be consumed on multiple platforms. The venture will be backed by the former Walt Disney Co. chairman's investment firm, the Tornante Co.
"In the past few years, the development of exciting and innovative digital-media platforms and technologies has outpaced the creation of truly great content," Eisner said. "Vuguru will produce and showcase original and third-party content in all genres and formats to meet the new demands of the evolving media landscape."
News of Vuguru's first production
-- a scripted, serialized mystery titled "Prom Queen"-- also was unveiled Monday.
Told over 80 90-second episodes, the show's shortform segments are geared toward early adopters of digital content and designed with advertising opportunities on digital platforms in mind.
A significant distribution push accompanies Vuguru's first effort with "Queen," being produced with the independent production team of Big Fantastic -- a deal brokered by UTA's newly formed online division.
In January, Veoh Networks -- the Internet television broadcasting system of which Eisner serves as a board member -- teamed with UTA for the creation of a branded online channel dedicated to identifying talent and showcasing content produced by UTA clients.
While episodes of "Queen" will be available on the
studio's Vuguru.com, promqueen.tv, YouTube and Veoh, they also will be
accessible through show sponsor Ellegirl.com.
Vuguru: http://Vuguru.com/
| Prom Queen: promqueen.tv | Ellegirl:
http://www.ellegirl.com/
|
Big Fantastic
THE BIG PICTURE PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
Hollywood is seeing fans pull a power play
PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
January 23, 2007
HOLLYWOOD has always been full of Cinderella stories, so it wasn't exactly a shock to see Jennifer Hudson go from singing on a Disney cruise ship to showing up in a Vera Wang dress at the Golden Globes last week, where she took home a best supporting actress trophy. Now she's a shoo-in to wake up this morning with an Oscar nomination, quite a turnaround for someone who was ignominiously booted off "American Idol," with Simon Cowell telling her she was "out of her league."
If Hudson goes on to win a best supporting actress Oscar, it will be another landmark moment in the breakdown between our pop culture's major and minor leagues. If anything bridges the chasm between amateur and professional, between crass and class, it would be a performer bouncing from the raucous populism of "American Idol" to the solemn elitism of the Academy Awards.
Seen through the prism of what's happening on the Internet,
"American Idol" is a classic example of user-generated content, being at
its heart an event propelled by nonprofessional talent and a rabidly involved
audience that has more of the shared community feeling of a Web phenomenon
than a TV show.
Whether it's Hudson, lonelygirl15 or Jade Goody, the
foul-mouthed ex-nurse who, thanks to her antics on "Celebrity Big Brother,"
is just as celebrated in England as Posh Spice, celebrity has been rudely
down-marketed and democratized.
As Aaron Sorkin so eloquently put it the other day, complaining about the blogger influence on media coverage of his "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" TV drama: "We live in the age of amateurs."
Sorkin may spend much of his show exploring the conflict between artists like himself and soulless media conglomerates, but in the new era of You Stardom, Sorkin and GE are in the same leaky boat. Just as the music industry saw its business crumble before its eyes as kids began sharing songs from unauthorized downloading services, media behemoths are scrambling to protect their content as it migrates to YouTube.com and other fan-driven video sites.
"Ultimately these big media companies are all wrestling with the same thing — the power is being taken out of their hands," says Jordan Levin, the onetime WB network chief who now helps run Generate, a production and management firm active in Internet projects. "This is an industry that for its entire history has imposed its model on consumers. They've always said, 'We'll tell you when you'll watch our TV show or see our movie.' But that's fundamentally changing. The whole structure of people who control content is being supplanted by the content users themselves."
For Web junkies like me, YouTube is a TV network unto itself. If I missed Bill O'Reilly's visit to "The Colbert Report," I can watch it on YouTube. It doesn't matter if I'm looking for something as frivolous as the cartoon rap "George Washington" or something as weighty as "Undercover Mosque," a riveting new documentary on Britain's Channel 4 about the radicalization of mosques in England. No one limits my choices. YouTube's content is shaped by enthusiasts, not a network programmer who thinks a clip would be a lot more relatable to women over 30 if only it had a likable next-door neighbor in it.
If you're running an old-school media company, it doesn't take a weatherman to see where the wind's blowing. In England last week, an unsigned band scored a Top 40 hit for the first time, all of its sales from digital downloads, mostly to kids using mobile phones. "We've got to get the creativity to stand up against user-created content, because that's what people are watching at my house," MGM chief Harry Sloan told Variety last fall. Describing his 17-year-old son's viewing habits, Sloan said that while the TV was on behind him, "he's got two screens in front of him, one connected to friends and the other to play World of Warcraft."
The day isn't far away when some studio executive, instead of buying a bestseller, will acquire the rights to a Web thriller that's become a lonelygirl-style phenomenon. "The problem for us will be that people are going to create a movie character on the Web and they'll own the content — we'll end up just renting it," says Sony Pictures chief Amy Pascal. "We'll buy the movie rights, but they'll own everything else. We haven't bought anything from YouTube yet, but it's going to happen. Trust me, when 'lonelygirl' was happening, everyone was asking, 'Is that a movie?' "
Media companies aren't willing to sit back and watch their content — and, more important, the advertising their content attracts — migrate to Internet rivals. One of the worst-guarded secrets in recent months involves the efforts of News Corp. and NBC Universal to create a website to distribute TV clips as a way of attracting the advertising that is now going to YouTube and other sources.
In the past, networks have tried to squash YouTube's access to their clips. Before the relaunch of the Viacom-owned iFilm site last fall, lawyers had YouTube take down thousands of clips from popular Viacom-owned Comedy Central shows, hoping to steer fans to iFilm or Comedy Central's site. Yet the morning after O'Reilly visited "The Colbert Report," YouTube was full of clips of the appearance.
At a site like iFilm, which specializes in packaging topical mass media events, whether it's the new "Spider-Man 3" trailer or coverage of the Rosie-Trump feud, the hope is to attract viewers by offering a more streamlined experience than YouTube, which is often a chaotic jumble of clips. "We're betting that people do want a guide to help show them what's cool," says iTunes chief Blair Harrison. "But we want to allow our community to do that, so that it's indistinguishable whether the content that's elevated on our site is from our staff or our active audience members."
But will this audience want a new kind of entertainment? Will the art created on the Web have a different aesthetic than the kind of storytelling forms we watch on TV and film?
Internet enthusiasts think so.
United Talent Agency digital media chief Brent Weinstein, who heads UTA's groundbreaking unit devoted to scouting online talent, is convinced that the Web's interactivity will usher in a new kind of shared creativity.
"We'll see a form that will exist specifically on the Internet," he says.
"TV is very linear and passive. But because your computer can talk to other electronic devices, whether it's your mobile phone or your BlackBerry, it opens up a whole new world. And we'll see even more creative freedom, because these new platforms allow artists to bypass big media institutions and speak directly to consumers."
One of UTA's discoveries is a filmmaking collective called
Big Fantasticthat recently produced 80 episodes of a Web murder mystery called "Sam Has 7 Friends."
Designed as a video podcast that ran in 90-second daily installments last fall, it had an irresistible hook:
"Samantha Breslow had seven friends. On Dec. 15, one of them killed her."
In keeping with the ethos of the Web, the story is slyly voyeuristic, exploiting our inexhaustible fascination with other people's lives. We are cast as eavesdroppers in Breslow's life, seeing her avoid her ex-boyfriend and quarrel with her agent — her character, of course, being an actress.
The episodes are available on iTunes or at http://www.Samhas7friends.com |
The five members of Big Fantastic
all have Hollywood day jobs, but they clearly believe
in a Web-fueled form of storytelling.
"Short and sweet is the way to go,"
says Chris Hampel, who worked as Michael Mann's assistant
on "Collateral" and "Miami Vice."
"Five minutes can feel like an eternity on the Internet.
This was consciously geared for people who could watch the show in their office when they had 90 seconds between phone calls."
Hampel and his cohorts wrote for the medium, creating 90-second bits of drama.
"Whatever was the most emotional thing that happened to Sam that day, we focused on that," he says. "We saw this as a soap opera with someone dying in the end. But no one has the patience to watch a whole soap opera anymore, so we just cut out all the fat."
Even their website is designed so all the information is on one home page.
"Who wants to scroll?" says Hampel.
"It's a bona fide way to lose people."
Because their story unfolded on the Web, they received instant feedback from message boards. The strongest reaction was inspired by Willie, Sam's ex-boyfriend.
"People really loved him or hated him, so we wrote him into more episodes. Everything was immediate. We could shoot something one day and have it on the Net the next."
No one has yet stepped up to fund a new batch of shows, but the show's buzz earned the group meetings with various young studio executives.
"We think this is the year people start jumping in the pool," says Hampel. "But at most of our meetings, people said, 'Come back and see us in a year. I get it, but my boss doesn't.' "
Hampel and his buddies shouldn't worry. In Hollywood, big changes are afoot. And the bosses are always the last to know.
JOHN
LONGENECKER