At Thursday's afternoon keynote at VidCon, popular YouTube comedian Grace Helbig revealed the trailer for a brand-new transmedia webseries, #HeyUSA.
The show features Helbig and her Camp Takota costar and best friend, fellow YouTube comedian Mamrie Hart. Designed as a summer road trip for fans of the duo, #HeyUSA will allow fans to determine where Helbig and Hart go and what they go next as they visit various cities and towns across America. The series will premiere July 1.
In a press release, Helbig called the show "a modern-day, choose-your-own-adventure travel series." She added:
This show is so exciting and innovative. Not only do I get to travel the US with my best friend, I get to experience places and things I wouldn't have seen had it not been for the help of our audience. ... It's completely interactive so if it sucks it's not our fault! Perfect scenario!
The series will last eight weeks and rely heavily, as most transmedia series do, on multiple social platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. The first half of the series will essentially be short "near-real-time" clips of the duo broadcasting from their road trips. The second half will tell a more overarching narrative of the trip.
"On YouTube," Hart explained, "we're used to putting out content and then getting feedback from our audience. #HeyUSA will bridge that gap. We will be able to gear our trip to what the audience wants and when they want it."
#HeyUSA will air on the YouTube channel Astronauts Wanted, a transmedia youth content brand that seeks to enrich engagement between fans and creators. The series was created by Billy Parks and Nick Shore, who are executive producing with Ken Treusch of Bleecker Street Entertainment.
Helbig and Hart will also be continuing to update their respective channels. Helbig's channel currently has 1.8 million subscribers since she ended her longtime partnership with YouTube network My Damn Channel last year. Hart's channel, You Deserve A Drink, recently won her a book deal and currently has over half a million subscribers.
Photo by Maddie Cordoba courtesy of Astronauts Wanted