Joey Primiani | Pioneering the New Internet Revolution

YouTube fame is now the startup for some real talent. It is now a breeding ground for talent agencies including record to film. Now that I’ve caught the movie industry bug, I take a look at these once average YouTube users, and dive into what they are doing now.

LisaNova

LisaNova, one of the top 15 most subscribed Directors on YouTubers, has recently scored a TV contract to be on the cast of MADtv. After being rejected in 2003 from the MADtv tryouts, Lisa LisaNova decided to take in matters into her own hands, and boy did it paid off. LisaNova, will started the show on Saturday, February 17th. Definitely check out her videos, her comedic standpoint/timing is very unique and hilarious.

Brookers

Carson Daly has signed Brooke “Brookers” Brodack to a talent/development deal, making the 20-year-old the first talent to emerge, in an official capacity, from the online service. Via his Carson Daly Prods. banner, Daly will work with Brodack on content for TV, Internet and mobile outlets.

“The Internet has become a new platform for identifying emerging artists such as Brookers. I hope to give her the opportunity to expose her talent on a much larger scale,” he said. While Brodack isn’t the first talent to surface from the Web — MTV star Andy Milonakis got his start with online video sketches — hers is one of the first deals struck based on YouTube popularity.

“Several things immediately caught my eye watching her videos. She’s got a fresh point of view, considerable directing skills and a great sense of music and how to use it. There is potential for Webisodes, mobile series and definitely a great TV show here. She’ll be an exciting package to present to networks,” Daly said.

BaratsandBereta

In what’s becoming a familiar story, YouTube favorites Joe Bereta and Luke Barats have signed a comedy deal with NBC. The six-figure contract will enable the pair to develop low-cost sitcoms and sketches. The 23 year-olds are students at Gonzaga University and won a film festival in their college town of Spokane, Washington last year – many of their YouTube clips have generated more than 1 million views. The contract will run for a year, with the option of a second year – additionally, the deal gives the network first refusal on TV appearances.

David Lehre

After creating “Myspace: The Movie” a little over a year ago, David Lehre is one of the ground-breakers in viral videos on the net. Reaction to the film can quite plainly be seen in the fact that it has become an Internet phenomenon almost overnight; indeed, more than 10 parodies of the movie were posted the same day.

Reaction has extended beyond the social networking sites and into the mainstream media including mentions in Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times. The world-wide attention that the video received earned the video’s creator, David Lehre, the opportunity to develop a pilot for Fox Television. More recently, he landed the role in an Ashton Kutcher Look-Alike part in the movie “Epic Movie”.

Therefore, I cannot stress the immense amount of opportunity sites such as YouTube, hold on the industry today. So remember readers, if you have something good, bad, crazy, anything POST IT UP – you never know, it might attract some very influential people.

What an amazing day! I am on a new movie called “Sydney White” staring Amanda Bynes, Sara Paxton (Disney Channel Legend), and Matt Long (Star of the new movie Ghost Rider). I play a college Fraternity brother at SAU, Student Government member, and an extra. We had a long 12 hour shoot day, it is a great experience to see the amount of work that goes into a motion picture. The description of the movie seems like it will be a very funny teen movie:

This modern retelling of the classic fairytale follows a beautiful college freshman as she pledges her late mother’s once dignified sorority. But after discovering that today’s sisterhood is not what it used to be, Sydney finds her new home away from home with seven outcasts. With the help of her socially challenged new friends, Sydney will take on the reigning campus queen to attempt to transform the school’s misguided social hierarchy. Written by Morgan Creek Productions – Thanks to IMDB

It is currently being shot in Winter Park and on the UCF campus at the abandoned PKA house. I will keep you guys updated (please subscribe to the feed) for more information.

BigCartel.com

Until now, shopping cart services have been designed for people trying to be the next “Internet Superstore”. Thousands of useless features, shitty designs, impossible to use – assuming you were even able to get it setup in the first place. Ugh… no thanks.

Because of this, people with simpler needs like bands, designers and crafters turned to PayPal Buy Now buttons. While much easier to use, these also have their downside. You need to do all the code yourself, maintaining your store is tedious and time consuming and the shopping process is clunky by going back and forth with PayPal.

Big Cartel provides a simple solution to this problem. Our stores are beautifully designed, have only the features you’ll actually use, and best of all, they only take a few minutes to setup. Even faster than a Buy Now button!

Thousands of people have created Big Cartel stores to sell their merch, music, art and everything else. We’re still very young and constantly evolving to make sure we stay awesome, simple, punk rock and exactly what our customers need.

Pros:

• Free Store features Product Inventory Listing, Attach multiple images to items, Customize the CSS source, and track website Statistics.
• Integrates seamlessly with an existing Paypal account.
• Management Administrator Panel is very easy to navigate.
• Focuses on an Indie audience, specializing in Band merchandise, Music Record Labels, Clothing Apparel, Artists, etc.
• The development team is constantly updating features, adding features, and fixing bugs. Very interactive with audience feedback to constantly improve the experience.
• Can setup a full functioning store within 15 minutes.

Cons:

• Temporary downtimes.
• Currently there is no way to implement this into an existing site, must leave the bigcartel name in subdirectory. Although most users use domain forwarding to the store, ex: indiestore.com would transfer to indiestore.bigcartel.com.
• The template is restrictive to the basic layout.

Featured Stores:

CafePress.com

CafePress.com is an online marketplace that offers sellers complete e-commerce services to independently create and sell a wide variety of products, and offers buyers unique merchandise across virtually every topic. Launched in 1999, CafePress.com has empowered individuals, organizations and businesses to create, buy and sell customized merchandise online using the company’s unique print-on-demand and e-commerce services. Today, CafePress.com is a growing network of over

2.5 million members who have unleashed their creativity to transform their artwork and ideas into unique gifts and new revenue streams.

MerchDirect.com

MerchDirect realizes that two of the most important parts of successful merchandise are good design and quality products. Just as a band spends time mixing a record until it sounds right, we spend time working together with our clients to make sure that their merch looks right. We see our clients merchandise as an extension of who they are and what they are about.

Our full service art department can design your complete product line or take your concepts and prepare them for press. All separations, film production and digitizing for our client’s projects are done in-house to ensure that the final product is exactly what our client is looking for.

MerchDirect is not a “middle man” between artists and other merchandise companies. All of our design, manufacturing, printing, sales, warehousing, and distribution are run out of our 20,000 sq ft facilities located in Bellmore, NY.

If you have any suggestions or recommendations shoot me a comment!

It has been a goal of mine to have a personal blog for sometime. My name is Joey Primiani and I am a student at the University of Central Florida studying Computer Science and Digital Media. I have always been passionate about technology, computers, graphic arts, photography, gadgets and gizmos, television production, digital production, internet entrepreneurship, and ecommerce startups. I am on the Internet and Interactive Systems track which includes web develeopment/design. There is nothing else I rather be doing, I honestly love it here in Orlando, it is an amazing place to showcase creativity and enthusiasm.

Along with others who tie in technology and art we are creating a new breed of an internet community, one who embraces “web 2.0” collaboration to feed the growing internet machine. I am a firm believer that the future is not in software or hardware in the conventional sense, but one that is constantly being developed and evolving online. Through script language such as xml, rss, ajax, and ruby combined with designers skills with css, every user is a developer. This is creating a new form of the internet revolution, which I am honored to help pioneer.

I hope you enjoy the content and variety that will be provided. I will do my best to share and expose this underground technology and the immense effects it has on our culture today. Enjoy!