Burning Man meets VidCon in Funny or Die's go90 series 'Tween Fest'
LOS ANGELES -- What would happen if Burning Man and VidCon merged into one festival?
That's the premise behind Funny or Die's latest series Tween Fest, developed from a popular Upgrade Citizens Brigade (UCB) sketch show in Los Angeles. (Mashable debuts an exclusive clip of the latest episode above).
"When we wrote Tween Fest as a live show, we never intended for it to be anything more than that," co-creators and UCB-ers Nick Ciarelli and Brad Evans told Mashable in an email interview. "We just wanted to make a sketch show starring our friend Drew Tarver, but the show wound up going well."
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It went so well, in fact, that Funny or Die's Mike Farah and Joe Ferrell saw the live show, met with with the duo and immediately greenlit a series.
The show, which launched on Verizon's go90 platform on Aug. 3, is eight episodes. While it's on a mobile-first platform, Ciarelli and Evans said the goal was to tell one continuous story.
It follows digital stars who are headlining a festival sponsored by a massive energy drink corporation. It stars Tarver, Joey King, Jane Lynch, SNL's Chris Parnell, and Pitch Perfect's John Michael Higgins.
Among the funny one-liners:
"No I don't do pranks, I do social experiments."
"It's important for me a YouTube pimple popper like me can branch out into music."
"That Venmo star got a book deal?"
Ciarelli and Evans said they were inspired by the "insane garbage on the internet" that they like to watch.
"We’re fascinated by how people manage to make careers as social media personalities, especially when what they’re doing is innately limited, like vape tricks or social experiments or impressions of Family Guy characters," they said. "But these people will probably be more powerful than us in five years anyway, so we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot right now."
Saba was a Los Angeles-based reporter who covers all things digital entertainment, including YouTube, streaming services and digital influencers. Prior to that, she spent two years at the Los Angeles Times covering entertainment for the Calendar and Company Town sections. Saba grew up in Santa Monica and graduated from Boston University with a B.S. in journalism and B.A. in political science. When not reporting, she is usually binge watching shows online or looking for new coffee shops to frequent.
