April 30, 2009

By Scott Thill

A raunchy web comedy about an indie motion-capture studio? Wait, this show got sold to a TV network? In this economy?

“Hell yeah,” said Chris DeLuca, co-executive producer, co-creator and co-star of MoCap, LLC, an online spoof that got picked up by Spike for a run of six half-hour segments.

“That’s why we’re enjoying this experience as much as we can right now,” he told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. “Any minute some kid will graduate from the 8th grade, get a phone with a cool camera in it, upload a video he made to his Mac and in a week, he’ll either be my boss or my replacement.”

DeLuca is less worried about MoCap, LLC, a mockumentary about workplace shenanigans at a low-rent mo-cap company that produces action footage for videogames. There’s plenty of gutter humor and scenes of “motion-capture artists” in tight-fitting blue suits covered in white balls, filming stunts in front of a green screen.

The show, which started out online, made its cable debut on Spike last week, providing yet another illustration of the internet’s power to level the playing field in the entertainment industry.

“In theory, the web-to-TV model can totally revolutionize the system by which TV shows are developed,” he said. “If you can make what amounts to a mini-pilot, put it on the web, and see if people like it, then you can avoid things like Cop Rock <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Rock> and a Knight Rider remake. Mankind will benefit.”

DeLuca talked about MoCap, LLC’s inspiration, its gamer roots and the internet-to-web model for peddling cheap laughs in a struggling economic environment.

Wired.com: A comedy about motion-capture drones trying to get ahead <http://mocapllc.com/about> in casual gaming? That’s nerdy.

Frank DeLuca: Don’t tell these guys they’re nerdy. These dudes are artists, the bridge between gamer and game!

Wired.com: Duly noted. What’s the history?

DeLuca: MoCap was really born at the 2006 Spike Video Game Awards, where, while playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Saint’s Row, we asked the simple question: “Who the hell does the mo-cap for the guy who’s hit in the head with a tire iron?” It can’t be Peyton Manning, right? There’s gotta be some poor son-of-a-bitch who must record the delicate ballet that is being carjacked.

Wired.com: How did you make the jump from the web to Spike?

DeLuca: Spike was a no-brainer. They do the Video Game Awards, so we knew that gamers are an audience they were interested in. But they also had a relaxed atmosphere where we could do silly, stupid stuff. I mean, we pitched the show to PBS — they were not into it.

Wired.com: The show’s introduction is a casual game from hell.

DeLuca: You’re referring to our animated open, created by Mark Salisbury, who’s a great animator. That open actually refers to the game the MoCap guys are creating themselves, called “Drunk Bunnies,” which tells the story of a group of bunnies who get a hold of some alcohol and then wreak havoc. Because of the alcohol, they reproduce even faster than usual and overwhelm the planet, so it’s up to you to defeat them. The MoCap guys work on this game from time to time, and they’re convinced it will make them rich. I won’t give away what happens, but they don’t get rich.

Wired.com: You also goof on the economy in the show. Are you worried about this for your own show? What kind of deal is Spike offering?

DeLuca: We poured every penny into the production of the show: All 175 of them. Actually, the budget for the show was insanely low. It was the type of show that, if it was outsourced it, it would have been sent it back with a note reading, “Don’t insult us! This is a sweatshop, not a charity!”

But obviously the economy right now is just an awful mess. We make jokes about it through the run of the show because the firm is always on the brink of bankruptcy due to how bad they are at mo-cap. Plus, it’s something that people like me are dealing with in their lives. Yes, my show has a fat dude in a tight blue suit and a hot intern who’s often in a bikini for no good reason, but also we manage to make some smart, somewhat topical jokes here and there.

Editor’s review by Liz Shannon Miller

Moving from the web to TV can be a daunting task — just ask the guys at CollegeHumor. After all, mo’ money can truly mean mo’ problems, especially when you have to kowtow to censors and studio heads, increase the run time of episodes by 300 percent, and produce each episode knowing that the fickle viewing public could get you canceled faster than Michael Phelp’s butterfly stroke.

But fortunately, Worldwide Biggie’s MoCap LLC seems to be doing well creatively at its new home on Spike TV. A behind-the-scenes look at a fictitious motion-capture company, the show is really a showcase for extreme personalities engaging in strange behavior — the kind of comedy that works best if it’s written well. Thankfully, due to creator Chris DeLuca, it does.

In its TV incarnation, MoCap still leans heavily on the fauxumentary format that Chris Albrecht called cliché back in January 2008 <http://newteevee.com/2008/01/10/mocap-captures-the-funny/> . And the rest of the show’s staples report in for duty: video game jokes, hot chicks, and a twisted bent to its humor that just barely avoids being offensive. It’s the skewed humor that won me over in the first episode of the web series. I knew it was wrong to laugh when Jeff was forced to act out scenes from the game Secret Cutting, but I just couldn’t stop.

And because it airs after midnight on basic cable, MoCap in its television incarnation operates under incredibly lax, though occasionally arbitrary, standards and practices. “Sh–” is heard frequently, but a pun riffing off the word “becoming” gets bleeped out. The bleeping’s not such a big deal, though; lines like “I’m pretty sure he considers Chris Hanson a c—blocker” still manage to play.

The reason MoCap works no matter what format it’s in is that the show has such a clear voice — and a clear understanding of its audience — that there was little need to adjust it. And because each episode can be easily structured around the creation of a new game, the creators have literally the entire world of video games to draw upon for inspiration. Just based on the aisles at Best Buy alone, that leaves them with a lot of material.

I won’t deny that in the TV episode I watched, Total Mo’clipse of the Heart, things started to get a little repetitive — Claire snarks about Frank miserable home life, Frank calls Claire a crazy cat lady while making Kendall act out the role of his disgruntled wife, Kendall abuses Jeff for daring to find her attractive. But I only started noticing that around 20 minutes in, and given that the show originally ran in five minute installments, that’s not bad.

MoCap could stand a little more plot escalation over the course of an episode, but otherwise the show manages to remain true to itself in a brand-new medium. Which is good, because what it is is funny.

The 6th annual 2008 Spike TV Video Game Awards ceremony aired live on Spike TV on December 14, 2008, hosted by funny man actor Jack Black and featuring a bevy of stars from the world of video games, Hollywood and music - including Weezer, 50 Cent, LL Cool J, All American Rejects.

Or click http://www.spike.com/event/vga/

Posted: Wed., Nov. 26, 2008, 12:00pm PT

ALBIE HECHT KEEPS AN EYE ON WEB

Spike TV founder balances new and old media

By DADE HAYES

Although he has held fairly traditional exec jobs for traditional media companies, Albie Hecht has always kept an eye on the Web.

It helped shape the marketing strategy at Spike, which he helped found and run, and fueled the 1990s march to kiddie dominance of his previous home, Nickelodeon.

Not long after leaving Spike in 2005, though, Hecht started thinking grander thoughts about Web content, about how to make it the main course and not just a side dish. The result: Worldwide Biggies, which bills itself as a digital entertainment studio.

It has become a restless hive since landing $9 million in startup funding in mid-2007 from a consortium including Graycroft Partners, Platform Equity and PrismVentureWorks. Hearst and NBC Universal are strategic investors. Worldwide Biggies, deliberately named after a bit of Variety slanguage, has offices in L.A. and on Gotham’s rapidly gentrifying Far West Side. It has generated several notable projects over the past year, including:

• “Star vs. Star,” a mashup of celebrity coverage and fantasy sports co-developed with Time Warner gossip blog TMZ;

• Worldwide Fido, a venue for online video of people’s dogs (a burgeoning market, as anyone who’s encountered YouTube’s skateboarding pooches can attest); a downloadable Web game derived from the Rob Reiner pic “The Princess Bride”;

• “Mo-Cap LLC,” a Web series spoofing the creators of motion-capture f/x; and

• a new season of hit Nickelodeon series “The Naked Bros. Band.”

Most projects begin online and then get extended into other areas, or vice versa. The company is going from four to six series a year to six to eight a year. Scalability is key — a case in point is a series of Web shorts called “Bigby,” about a pint-sized kid with a boundless fantasy life, that is adaptable to longer running times for TV or even a feature.

“The core concept is character-based intellectual property,” Hecht says. “We believe it should be born on the Web, imbued with multiplatform DNA and be able to go everywhere else.” It should be noted how fond the gregarious Hecht is of buzzwords and tech-speak — don’t get him going on “six modes of user engagement” — but he genuinely means every word of it.

“All the coolest people are creating online, right?” he continues. “And that’s also where the audience is. The average young person spends 21 hours a week online. Thirty percent of kids under three have a computer in their room. I mean, if Walt (Disney) were starting today, he’d start on the Web.”

“Naked Bros.,” a mockumentary revolving around a tween-aged rock band’s life at home and on the road, has thrived online since its 2007 debut on Nick. It preemed at the Hamptons Film Festival.

Film, although not at the center of Worldwide Biggies’ world, is a familiar medium for Hecht. While at Nick, where he oversaw franchises such as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Dora the Explorer,” he also branched out into movies, shepherding pics like “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” and “The Spiderwick Chronicles.”

Last year, he collected an Oscar nom for a completely different kind of film, “War/Dance,” a docu about children caught up in Uganda’s long-running civil war. The film came from Shine Global, the nonprofit arm of Worldwide Biggies that funnels 100% of revenues from its project toward charitable causes.

Hecht founded Shine Global with his wife, Susan, a health-education professor at New Jersey’s Kean U. (They live in Montclair, a popular industry nabe that’s an easy hop across the Hudson.)

A native of Queens and graduate of Francis Lewis High School just off the Long Island Expressway, Hecht went to Columbia U. and emerged into a newly cable-ready media world. After a DJ gig on the college radio station led to a career in the music biz, he expanded into TV production and helped build Nickelodeon, both as an outside producer and as an exec, when it was barely out of diapers itself.

Those early days at Nick, when kid content came naturally to Hecht given his two kids were in grade school at the time, were when he discovered the Web as a talent pool.

“Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius,” which launched as a Web series, then a bigscreen feature and then a TV series, came from the Web. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is a great place to find garage-band CGI,’ ” Hecht recalls.

Even in a grim economy, basic Web distribution economics, plus Worldwide Biggies’ multiple revenue streams (unit sales, sponsorships and licensing ride on top of the typical network pickup fees), offer some insulation from the downturn.

Now that he’s running a startup and viewing traditional media companies from a remove, the digimogul concludes, “They don’t have the talent or mode of thinking or speed to market to deliver the best on the Web.”
Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117996498.html

10/13/08

Spike TV has signed on to bring the vidgame biz-spoofing Web series “MoCap, LLC” to television.

Cabler has ordered six half-hour episodes of “MoCap” from digital production shop Worldwide Biggies and has skedded a January premiere.

Live-action comedy skein features an “Office”-esque faux-documentary look at a low-rent motion-capture studio. Existing as shorts — and associated interactive games — on the Mocapllc.com website, series has already drawn a loyal male-skewing aud.

“Looking at 10 episodes (on the Web) gives you a good idea of the style and creativity of it,” said Albie Hecht, CEO and founder of Worldwide Biggies. “You can see how it lives and breathes as opposed to what you’d get from reading a pilot script.”

It’s Worldwide Biggie’s second deal to adapt a Web series, with Nick at Nite previously signing on to develop “Worldwide Fido” into a TV show.

Guts: Do you have it? Because a classic Nickelodeon show is coming back, and Worldwide Biggies is producing! Yes, it’s the return of Guts, only now the whole family gets into the act with “My Family’s Got Guts.” Shooting on location in Orlando, Florida, families are competing against each other in the Guts Grand Prix, Free Run City, and the better than ever Ice Crag So watch out, because this fall Guts is coming back to Nickelodeon, and the whole family is playing!

Fido Awards from Worldwide Biggies on Vimeo.

For more info click here or here