Archive for October 24th, 2006

Your First Look At “Sucks Less”!

October 24th @ 7:04 pm | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Kevin’s latest foray into webisodes, the “Sucks Less” project for mtvU.com, debuts THIS THURSDAY at their website — The 8 minute shorts will follow his mentoring a group of UCLA kids as they create the program. To lead into the show, Kevin’s posted a nice Myspace blog entry detailing how he became involved with the project, along with a couple promotional video clips to advertise the show. Here’s a few choice passages from his post today:
Naturally (or bizarrely, as some of my critics would point out), it’s in the School of Cinema and Television – a field I know a thing or two about (as I’ve watched many movies and TV shows). So, for the last month, I’ve been spearheading a class called “Sucks Less, with Kevin Smith”, in which we produce a weekly TV show entitled, ironically, “Sucks Less, with Kevin Smith”. It starts airing this Thursday on MtvU (the college-campus only arm of the Viacom-owned Music Television empire), as well as on MtvU.com and, in an uncharacteristic-for-me nod to what’s being called “new media”, also on the Amp’d Mobile Phone. This means we’re producing Episodes, Webisodes, and Mobisodes – which, while sounding ambitious as fuck, simply means we’re producing one show that airs on three different platforms. Eat your heart out, Dick Wolf.

…

If you dig the show, I can take very little credit: it was, from first to last, the students’ production (consequently, if you hate the show, I get to dodge that bullet as well).

As for being a teacher… well, that’s something I’ll be able to address more thoroughly once we’re done with the course (second week of December). But thus far? I’m digging it (though not nearly as much as I’m digging the cafeteria).

Here, you can take a peep at one of the “bumpers” that’ll be running on MtvU this week, once “Sucks Less” has gone into regular rotation.

And here, check out the “Sucks Less Success Story” – a bumper that Ben (one of the students) shot with Bodi and Dagmar (two of his classmates).

Check out the videos above courtesy YouTube, and of course Kevin’s blog entry HERE. We’ll remind you this Thursday, when you’ll be able to catch the first episode on the web or via your Amp’d Mobile phone.

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October 24th @ 7:03 pm | No Comments » | Scooped by Nate Slater, Paul Shuttleworth, Michael Dequina, Beatles999

  • It’s official: “Evening Harder” has indeed arrived a FULL MONTH EARLY in Australia! If you’re there and would like to send us a review of the disc, certainly let us know what you think — We still haven’t gotten a review copy from Sony to watch Stateside. We’re jealous!!! The disc arrives here on November 28th.
  • Kevin and other writers (such as Alan Moore and Stan Lee) wrote a series of extremly short (6 word!) stories for Wired magazine. Kevin’s entry:
Kirby had never eaten toes before.
– Kevin Smith
  • Kudos to the Weinstein Co., who will begin placing Anti-Smoking ads as public service announcements at the start of of the DVD releases of all their films. “Clerks II” will have the distinction of being the first release with the PSA on board. This from the press release:
The Weinstein Company is the first studio to proactively offer to embed a classic truth(R) campaign ad in one of its DVD releases, beginning with one of its most popular – Clerks II, scheduled for a Dec. 5 release – and we applaud them for it. Our hope is that this bold move sets a trend for future Weinstein Company DVD releases and with other key decision makers in Hollywood. It is a simple way to prevent thousands of youth from smoking, and can ultimately reduce the impact of tobacco addiction and premature death that accompany it.

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