Fifteen Aspiring Young Filmmakers Will Have Their Work Featured on National TV – Deadline April 20, 2009
In response to the phenomenally successful first round of qubopics premieres, qubo, the TV and online entertainment service for children and families, will again select user-generated short animated films to debut on national TV. Between now and April 30, 2009, aspiring young filmmakers can create mini animated movies at qubo.com using the innovative storytelling web application called ZIMMER TWINS. Fifteen films will be selected by qubo to be professionally adapted into fully animated mini movies and screened on national TV this summer on qubo Channel as well as on qubo’s broadcast blocks on NBC, ION Television and Telemundo.
Launched on qubo.com in the fall of 2007, the Zimmer Twins, Edgar and Eva, are animated characters featured in interactive cartoons that kids can create from scratch, modify and share with their friends in a rich, safe web environment. The ZIMMER TWINS section on qubo.com includes storytelling tools, pre-made animated clips and simple editing instructions that tap into kids’ inherent love of stories. The clips and storytelling prompts explore classic kid themes like science, animals, magic and adventure. The animation interface is designed around the basic elements of sentence structure, and reinforces reading, grammar, and writing techniques. After creating their stories, users can post and share their creations and even vote for their favorite user-created submissions online. In 2007, the ZIMMER TWINS won the International Interactive Emmy® Award.
Last fall, nearly 25,000 children logged in to qubo.com to create nearly 50,000 qubopic ZIMMER TWINS films. Qubo selected twelve stellar user-generated animations to be adapted into professionally animated films, converting them into high-resolution video with broadcast quality color, music and sound effects. Qubo also enlisted actors to record the character voices and narration created by the filmmakers in their text bubble script. The qubopics were broadcast on qubo Channel and on qubo’s broadcast blocks between December 2008 and February 2009.
Since the first round of qubopic ZIMMER TWINS film began premiering on qubo, the number of films and users has virtually doubled. An additional 66,000 ZIMMER TWINS films have been created on qubo.com in the past few months with more than 110,000 original user-generated animated films now posted on qubo’s site. The number of registered users has more than doubled since December to reach more than 53,000! Beyond driving a huge influx of traffic to qubo.com, another measure of the qubopic initiative’s success are the feature stories that were garnered for the twelve young filmmakers among their local media.
“We were thrilled with the response to our first round of qubopic premieres and can’t think of a better way to honor and thank our viewers than by launching a second effort,” said Rick Rodriguez, president and general manager, qubo. “We are proud to showcase the creativity of these talented children on our air. The ZIMMER TWINS helps reinforce qubo’s mission of engaging children’s minds while promoting reading and literacy.” ZIMMER TWINS is created by zinc Roe design, a company that specializes in advanced flash development and new media projects for children and youth. The property is licensed to qubo by Bejuba! Entertainment Inc.
