Tag: lonelygirl15 (Page 1 of 3)

Lonelygirl16? Here’s What You Might Have Missed

June 17, 2016 / Michael Andersen

whatever-happened-to-lonelygirl15

Ten years ago, Bree Avery started vlogging on a relatively new social platform called YouTube. To celebrate that milestone, a new video was uploaded to her channel yesterday. So, let’s try something a little different. Watch Bree’s first video blog. Got it? Great. Now watch the most recent upload to the channel.

Confused about how a girl making funny faces at the camera could evolve into some sort of cult indoctrination video? That’s perfectly understandable…this anniversary video wasn’t really designed for people with limited exposure to the lonelygirl15 universe. So here’s a brief initiation into one of YouTube’s earliest phenomenons.

Lonelygirl15: Bree’s not real…or is she?

Lonelygirl15 started so innocently. As a geeky, home-schooled teen with overbearing parents, Bree turned to YouTube with the help of her friend Daniel. Most of her early videos were opportunities to talk about her studies, complain about her parents, or just have some wholesome, pointless fun with her boy who was also a friend. Par for the course for the early days of the video sharing site, although the YouTube Community quickly pointed out that the quality of Bree’s videos were suspiciously high for a teen vlogger, and the two teens often seemed to offer more candor to the camera than each other.

More than anything else, lonelygirl15 is remembered for this blurring between the lines of fiction and reality. As the channel rose to be the most-subscribed channel on YouTube at the time. During this heady time of uncertainty, the author John Green wrote a blog entry about the situation, positing that

[Bree] gives viewers a sense that the story might be really real, and that we can uncover its really realness by paying close attention. It gives us a compelling reason to focus intently on the work…books, with few exceptions, cannot mimic this kind of realishness.

Green goes on to note that he hopes the realishness of these projects do not replace the written word since “I’m not good in front of the camera. Text is my only solid medium, and I need it to hang around.” Four months later, John and his brother Hank created the vlogbrothers YouTube account.

Four months after the channel launched, fans tracked down conclusive evidence that lonelygirl15 was a fictional project. The Guardian did an exceptional job of explaining how determined fans unmasked the show’s creators in a recent retrospective piece.

But while this is where the story ends for lonelygirl15 as a pop culture phenomenon, it also marks where the show’s actual story begins.

The Lonelygirl15 Universe Returns 01/11/10 With LG15: Outbreak

January 10, 2010 / Michael Andersen

lg15outbreak It’s been over three years since a young girl named Bree started posting YouTube videos under the lonelygirl15 username. The webseries has since released three seasons and spawnedÂ a number ofÂ spin-offs both domestically and internationally. The latest addition to EQAL’s Lonelygirl15 franchise, LG15: Outbreak, premieres tomorrow at LG15.com/OutbreakÂ and will be showcased on theÂ lonelygirl15 Youtube channel. EQAL selected Outbreak from a number of pilot submissions for its second The Show Is Yours contest (TSIY). Outbreak will run for eight weeks, with new content released every weekday.

EQAL offered TSIY as an opportunity for fans of the show to add to the lonelygirl15 canon, leveraging the company’s distribution networks. LG15: The Last was the first series produced as a result of TSIY. For the first iteration of the contest, EQAL provided the winning team with $2,500 to help with production costs. For its second iteration, EQAL sweetened the pot, offering $5,000 for the rights to the show, agreeing to split the net profits from the show.Â Additionally, Glenn Rubenstein, the creator of the OpAphid alternate reality game, agreed to offer some assistance to the winning production team.

The Lonelygirl15 series built its community around interaction and puzzlesolving, so fans of alternate reality games should look closely at the first few episodes. Earlier today, the show’s executive producer Austin McConnell linked to an image on twitter with a string of binary code promoting tomorrow’s launch.Â McConnellÂ will be producing the series through his company,Â Tempest Pictures.

Click Here for breaking news from LG15Today on Outbreak.
Click Here to watch Outbreak‘s TSIY2 pilot.

Harperâ€™s Globe â€“ TV never looked so deadly

March 26, 2009 / Nicko Demeter

harpersisland An islandâ€™s quiet life is rocked by a brutal murder — that is the beginning of the story behind Harperâ€™s Island, the new TV series by CBS set to air starting on April 9th. But even before the series premiere, the curious among us can already immerse themselves into the narrative by participating in the “social show” that has been built to promote the show, and we have news from the team at EQAL as to what we can expect from both Harper’s Island and its multimedia counterpart.

The proverbial rabbit hole, or starting point, is found at the web site harpersglobe.com. Designed as the islandâ€™s news resource, it introduces the players to Robin, a college student that was recently hired under mysterious circumstances to be the paperâ€™s community manager and archivist. Working diligently, she posts videos of her progress which is when things get weird. As she starts to unravel the mystery of the islandâ€™s past (in full view of all the players, no less), a new character is introduced that has seemingly sinister intentions, drastically changing the atmosphere of the community.

Once the TV show airs, the players will advance further into the story and the mystery surrounding it. CBS is tight lipped about the projectâ€™s details, other than promising that the players/viewers will not only watch but also help catch the real killer. It’s possible that this is why people are encouraged to setup their profile once they sign up on Harperâ€™s Globe — the social networking features may help players to interact with the characters of the ARG/TV show.

We had a few questions about what might happen with the online experience once the television show debuts in two weeks, so we went straight to the source yesterday and got in touch with Miles Beckett, the co-founder and CEO at EQAL, who has partnered with the producers of Harper’s Island to create Harper’s Globe. Beckett had as many answers as we had questions, so hit the jump for all of the gritty details.

“Hooking Up” with Lonelygirl15’s Jessica Rose: Not Quite What I Anticipated

October 13, 2008 / Michael Andersen

Imagine, for a moment, half of your favorite YouTube stars going to the same college, obsessively using all your favorite social networking programs. It’s almost like some alternate reality where obsessively twittering, texting, Facebook stalking, and playing Halo is the epitome of coolness.

Apparently HBOlab has an active imagination, as they’ve gathered together Jessica Rose (Bree from lonelygirl15), Phil DeFranco (sxephil), and Kevin Wu (kevjumba) to produce Hooking Up, “a College Comedy Series about Relationships and Communications.”

Starting October 1st, “Hooking Up” commenced its ten episode run, with new episodes released weekly. HBOlab is showcasing the project at the American Film Institute’s DigiFest 2008, billing it as “a cross-platform alternate reality game” seeking to “explore how [an] online narrative series might integrate cross-platform promotions to build both intrigue and audience.” AFI’s Digital Content Lab is working with HBOlab on the production.

So far, the interactive and cross-media elements of “Hooking Up” are admittedly sparse. This may change after adding the characters to my social networking profiles, as the site claims you can “Become friends with your favorite HOOKING UP characters…and be part of the hidden story!” The Hooking Up homepage features “bask-book”, a social networking Facebook clone for the fictitious Bask University and its attendees that leads to MySpace and Facebook profiles, where the characters communicate (and miscommunicate) with each other. A post by Kevin Nalts implies that the series will expand to include access to e-mails between the two main characters. The site also provides links to bonus video content.

Lonelygirl15 sequel proves that resistance isn’t futile after all

August 28, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

LG15: Resistance logo

“The fountain of youth is real. It’s in the blood of innocent girls scattered across the world. They’re hunted, murdered, sucked dry of their precious lifesblood. We are The Resistance. We fight to protect and save these girls.” (from LG15: The Resistance)

When we first met Bree, the original lonely girl of YouTube fame, it was clear that there was more to the seemingly innocent girl than met the eye. After all, after only a handful of webisodes, clues tucked into them revealed Bree’s affinity for the occult, and exposed the darker reality hidden behind Bree’s seraphic surface. Now, two years later, the series continues down a path that is more Hannibal Lecter than High School Musical.

Yesterday afternoon, we received word that EQAL, the company behind LG15 and Kate Modern, is preparing a sequel to begin in September. For ARG fans, we have exclusive news that there is, indeed, an alternate reality game – now playing and full of surprises – preceding the launch of the debut video.

According to an inside source close to the project, the game includes assets that go beyond the online videos which have become a signature of the brand. In the mix are crowleycollection.com, lifesbloodlabs.com and verduspharma.com/press/, the latter of which outlines a legal battle between a pharmaceutical company and an experimental R&D sub-division gone rogue. Of the three, the one we connected with the LG15 mythology immediately was the Crowley Collection site, as it was the picture of occultist Aleister Crowley which began the speculation about the truth behind Bree.

As a bonus for our readers, we can reveal that entering the code 1103 at the Crowley site will yield information important to the game. This code was interlaced in fliers handed out at ComicCon and at various comic book stores, and has only been delivered to a handful of LG15 fans — we’re the first news site to reveal this code.

For those interested in following along until the new video series kicks off, there are a number of threads on the Lonelygirl15 forums, such as this thread, discussing how to get into crowleycollection.com, and this thread, which documents many of the developments of the last few weeks.

Lonelygirl15 producer to launch Scary City this week

August 24, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

Scary City logo As lonelygirl15 proved, the new age of storytelling is upon us, and according to a recent article, a web-based endeavor by one of its key production staff is going to be a very big deal. Earlier last week, Unfiction forums member jlr1001 posted a link to an article at ThugLifeArmy about Scary City, which will include two separate but interrelated editions of the series running in the US and Japan. The international effort doesn’t stop there, as there may be possible expansion into Korea, Israel, the UK, France, and Thailand.

The article points out the extravagant cost of the Scary City web site, which was designed by IMJ at a reported cost of $1.4 million, which may or may not be part of the overal project budget of $5.2 million. Another press release reveals details about casting, as videos will be released on August 26th describing he process of getting a part on the show.

Oh, and as for any alternate reality gaming elements, Yumiko Aoyagi (formerly the executive producer for lonelygirl15) reveals that the web site will “include interactive online Alternative Reality Games,” according to the ThugLifeArmy article. Wait… games with an S? That sounds intriguing, especially with the international elements involved — it could mean that a Japanese ARG could run concurrently with an English ARG, with intertwining plots or characters. As things start to kick off in two short days, we’ll keep our eyes and ears on Scary City.