Row One Productions EARNS 2021 Webby Award Honoree
The 25th Annual Webby Award nominees were announced yesterday – and as you may expect from the title of this blog post – everyone’s favorite local production company in Austin, Texas has earned one of the TWO coveted spots as a Webby Award Honoree for their scripted show, Hosted, developed for HostGator.
They’re in good company too. The five videos nominated in the Scripted Branded Entertainment category star a host of celebs including Steve Carell and Mario Lopez, plus Gabrielle Dennis and Wade Allain-Marcus (from Insecure), and Courtney Sauls and Nia Jervier (from Dear White People). The other Webby Award Honoree features YouTuber, Carry Minati, who has an impressive 29.7 million subscribers. Not bad for a couple of guys in a garage.
In early 2020, HostGator hired Row One Productions to create a web series that both introduced their many features and tools to a new audience and helped their customers understand complicated website and internet topics. Soon after they landed the gig, however, the coronavirus pandemic hit, and the world shut down. Row One Productions—made up of Executive Producer Scott Rowan and Creative Director Mike Mitra—didn’t throw their (extremely well-washed) hands in the air though. Instead, the duo got clever and wrote, produced, directed, shot and hosted a series of videos in Scott Rowan’s garage.
“We finalized plans for the YouTube series to be a tongue-in-cheek play on ‘The Soup,’ with live audience banter and audible laughter. Usually, this sort of production would require studio space, but with the shutdown, studio space wasn’t a possibility. Enter Scott’s garage. We set up a green screen, sound blankets, three cameras for multi-cam viewing and a teleprompter. And because our clients were also quarantined, we created a virtual video village to ensure they had eyes and ears on the entire process and were able to give their feedback between takes.” – Mike Mitra, Creative Director at Row One Productions.
Hosted features Scott Rowan as the producer, writer, director and host, and Mike Mitra as the co-host and director of photography. These aren’t your grandma’s internet tutorial videos. Hilarious (and yes actually, truly useful) episodes include Top 5 WordPress Security Plug-Ins, How to Optimize Your SEO, How to Find Out Who Owns a Domain and Getting Started with Google Analytics, just to name a few. They break down hard-to-understand topics in a digestible, funny and helpful way, often using real-life HostGator experts and a whole lot of fictional characters like wrestlers, NASA employees and even a guy who LIVES IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER! Audience laughter is supplied by Scott and Mike’s (co-quarantine) significant others, and you may even see a dog or two walk into a scene as Scott’s dog-sons were also cast as audience members.
“For pivoting midstream and filming during a pandemic, I'd say we made some pretty kick*ss videos and have a flexible format to keep crankin' out more.” – Matthew H. Creative Director at HostGator.
Be sure to watch all episodes of Hosted on HostGator’s YouTube channel, get the behind-the-scenes scoop in this blog post and follow Row One Productions on Instagram and LinkedIn to keep up with their latest and greatest projects.
