All Articles Tagged "webisodes"
Our 5 Favorite Episodes of Awkward Black Girl
Photo courtesy of orijinculture.com
After another lengthy wait–I don’t even remember when episode 11 premiered, but I’m pretty sure it was a month ago–”The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl” is back! Sadly, it’s back to debut the season finale of the popular web series, which has had us rolling on the floor laughing, singing the random song, “Booty Shawts,” and coming to terms with our own awkwardness. Director/writer/editor Issa Rae’s web series has garnered a huge following, and we hope to see it back very, VERY soon (just not on television). So to celebrate the season finale premiering tonight, we wanted to take a look back at some of our favorite ABG episodes in all their awkward glory. Be sure to tell us your faves! “Drop dat beat Cece!”
Black Filmmakers & TV Producers Taking Creative Control Through the Web
Web series producer Al Thompson gets loose.
Instead of waiting for Hollywood’s permission — and dollars — these artists are giving themselves the green light to produce their own online series.
When filmmaker and actress Hannelore Williams decided it was time to put her many talents to use and make ‘Queen Hussy,’ a coming-of-age film that would hopefully open doors, she enlisted her fellow NYU film school alum Pete Chatmon. She and Chatmon, who had previously directed Zoe Saldana in the movie ‘Premium,’ went to sunny Los Angeles earlier this year – but not to pitch the project to movie studios. They went to Hollywood to shoot an original web series.
Leaving behind “development hell” – an industry term for having your project wait in the wings for an executive to approve it – black producers like these are instead using unique web-based projects to “green light” themselves. The implications are profound. They are building audiences, sharpening their skills and finding their voices.
Off the set, Chatmon runs Double 7 Images, a full-service multimedia company that helps small and large businesses build their brands online. When Williams and Chatmon wrap production on ‘Queen Hussy,’ they will promote the series through his company. Their goal, he tells The Atlanta Post, is to “get eyeballs” or large numbers of viewers. “The web is less a place where you end up and more a place you can design content for. It is not a wasteland of cute kitten videos. If [a content producer] is smart, you can position your work for fully-customized web delivery.”
For black content producers, the potential to reach audiences via the web grows daily. The 2010 Pew Internet & American Life report “Teens and Mobile Phones” notes that African-American teens are accessing the web by mobile phone at twice the rate of their white peers. Across all races, roughly a third of teens use their mobile phones to share videos and go online. With these shifts, diverse populations of users will expect Internet content to reflect their interests.
Awkward+Black+Girl = Awesome
(The Root) — Remember the first day of school? Sweating through your gym uniform waiting to get picked for kick ball? Walking into a bustling lunchroom with a tray full of Tater Tots and a heart filled with hope? Back then you knew the meaning of “awkward” before you even knew how to spell it. Too bad you didn’t also know Issa Rae. Rae — writer, director and star of the popular Web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl — has made it her hilarious mission to capture the angst of awkward girls (black or otherwise) everywhere — thoseawwwwkward moments that carried over from middle school to the mid-20s. ”I wanted to tell this story and I thought, ‘If I don’t start it myself, I’ll never get it done,’ ” Rae, 26, told The Root. “We’re not all ugly. We’re not all desperate. We’re just normal, awkward girls trying to find ourselves.” Rae plays J, the passive-aggressive diet-pill pusher who hates confrontation, despite thinking that all her co-workers “are pretty much the worst people in life.” She writes violent rap lyrics as a coping mechanism and is truly, madly, secretly in love with her co-worker Fred.
Sony’s Bet on Sticking With Web Shows
(New York Times) — At first Hollywood raced to make original Web programming. NBC Universal trumpeted a site called DotComedy; the Walt Disney Company created a digital studio called Stage 9; and Time Warner backed SuperDeluxe, another comedy site.
