Tubefilter News

Lazy Sunday has to be credited as one of the breakout viral videos that launched YouTube into a household name. (Ironically, it’s not actually on YouTube any more – just Hulu) The SNL Digital Short was one of the first from Lonely Island crew after Andy Samberg joined the cast back in 2006. Last night in a reprise of the hit video, Samberg and Chris Parnell performed a live version of Lazy Sunday (above) with The Roots on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. [LateNightWithJimmyFallon.com]

The Legend of Neil has been greenlit for a third season from Atom.com, according to tweets from creator Sandeep Parikh. Atom won’t officially confirm this, but we’re pretty sure this is a go. The Streamy-nominated series has been Atom’s most successful original web series for the past two years. [Twitter]

Auditude announced an advertising agreement with Dailymotion today, saying that they will now power the Paris-based video site’s catalog of more than 12 million videos. The technology from Auditude will support advanced video ad formats, enhance content targeting, enable multi-party demand and manage business rules and sales rights Dailymotion’s hundreds of licensed content partners. [Press Release]

I’m Dating a Porn Star, a new adult comedy web series pilot debuted this week from Crossroads Films, the creators of critically acclaimed Old Friends. It stars Old Friends‘ Tim Curcio and is shot by OF’s Matt Cady. For now, producer David Title is looking for some fan support in terms of views, as “it was deemed a bit too dirty for traditional distributors.” [blip.tv]

Anyone But Me continues to rack up award nominations, this time in Canada with 3 nominations in TVGuide.ca’s Soap Opera Spirit Awards and another 4 noms in Time After Time/Soap World Awards. This adds to the series three Streamy Award nominations including Best Female Actor nod for Rachel Hip-Flores. Episode 5 of the indie drama was just released today (see below). [Anyone But Me]

Academy voters had their hands full this year in pairing down some 2,000 web shows submitted from fans in over 100 different countries. Voters weren’t shy in acknowledging the international fare with nominated series coming from Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, France, Canada and The United States. The official nominees for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards were announced this morning in a live streamed internet broadcast led by CBSNews.com’s Shira Lazar and theStream.tv’s Jim Festante.

Click here for the full list of Streamy Award nominees.

Whole Lotta Drama

While comedy series seemed to run the table last year thanks to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and The Guild, this time voters lauded a handful of dramas with multiple nominations. The Bannen Way led with seven nominations including Best Drama, Best Writing, Best Directing and Best Actor for co-creator and lead Mark Gantt. Gritty indie drama Compulsions also is in the Best Drama hunt, picking up four nominations. British crime drama Girl Number 9 earned five nominations and murder mystery Valemont picked up six. Australian drama OzGirl and Angel of Death are also up for Best Drama.

Comedy Powerhouses Return

Experience was rewarded in Best Comedy nominations. The Guild, which bowed its third season in 2009, proved it still has the mojo amongst the Academy which bestowed seven nominations this time around. The addition of a rival guild, led by a very well cast Wil Wheaton even landed a Best Guest star nod for the show. Its “cousin” series, The Legend of Neil has some solid support of its own, which may or may not have something to do with Sandeep Parikh having a hand in both shows. Easy to Assemble rolled out its sophomore season and Wainy Days its third. Even web comedian-turned-movie-star Zach Galifianikis has two years of Between Two Ferns under his belt.

What’s New?

Comedy can be an acquired taste. And looking at the Best Comedy category, none of the nominated series were new on the block in 2009. So with the addition of Best New Web Series into the mix—or as some like to call it, the category-that-can’t-be-won-by-The-Guild—upstart comedies like Odd Jobs and Old Friends were able to pick up nominations. Personally, I like this category. And for the most part the Academy used it to take notice of what popped onto the scene last year. But following the drama trend this year, three dramas made it into this final five—The Bannen Way, Girl Number 9 and Craig Brewer’s debut season of indie music docu-series $5 Cover.

Co-Stars Square Off

Meanwhile on the acting front, the Season 2 rivalry between Easy to Assemble co-stars Justine Bateman and Illeana Douglas spilled over into the Best Female Actor in a Comedy category, with both actresses notching enough votes to face off against each other. Still, they face off against last year’s winner in this category, The Guild’s Felicia Day, who returns for the second straight year along with Web Therapy star Lisa Kudrow. Joanna Cassidy, from the indie comedy Sex Ed, rounds out the nominees with her performance as acerbic college sex professor.

For the male comedians, Zach Galifianakis picked up his first Streamy nomination after a solid year delivering his trademark awkward low-fi interviews with celebrities in Between Two Ferns. The Guild’s Sandeep Parikh scored his second Streamy nomination for this category, which ended up going to Neil Patrick Harris last year. Amir Blumenfeld also picked up a second Best Actor nomination for his half of popular comedy Jake and Amir. CTRL’s cubicle hero Tony Hale and Wainy Days eponymous creator-star David Wain make up the rest of this heated race.

Actors in the Best Female Drama hunt were all first-timers with all five coming from web series that debuted in 2009. Rachael Hip-Flores’ touching performance in indie drama Anyone But Me won over Academy voters as did Tatyana Ali’s freshman season of Buppies. Sophie Tilson dazzled as Sadie in OzGirl much like Zoe Bell in Angel of Death and Crystal Chappell in web soap Venice.

Picking up a not so shabby four nominations was Auto-Tune the News, which is up for Best News or Politics Web Series, Best Editing, Best Experimental and Best Original Music in a Web Series for The Gregory Brothers—Evan, Andrew, Sarah and Michael Gregory. Canadian steampunk drama Riese and Anyone But Me joined in the four-nominations club.

Riese has inked a deal with Fireworks, a division of ContentFilms, to distribute the steampunk-infused drama web series. Fireworks is the same firm that is distributing MTV New Media’s (and Electric Farm’s) Valemont as well as Endemol UK’s sci-fi series Kirill for international television. They also released much-awaited Chapter 2 online this week (above). New cast members in this season include Ryan Robbins (Sanctuary), Emilie Ullerup (Sanctuary), Alessandro Juliani (Battlestar Gallactica) and Allison Mack (Smallville). [Riese]

Ex-Conan O’Brien staff writer Aaron Bleyaert is in fact developing his own web show with fellow axed Tonight Show staffers, but it won’t be affiliated with Conan or his former show, despite what TMZ might say. [Screenology, BAM! BAM! BAM!]

Live video streaming site UStream scored $75 million in additional capital in their latest investment round by Softbank Corp, Japan’s third-largest mobile operator. The cash will be used to grow the service internationally in mobile-heavy countries like Japan, China, Korea and India. [Bloomberg]

The Indie Soap Awards honored some online dramas when winners were announced online last night. While we’re not sure what exactly constitutes a soap anymore, there were some impressive web originals who came out with honors. Anyone But Me took down 4 awards including best writing for Susan Miller and Tina Cesa Ward. Craig Frank and Taryn O’Neill scored best acting awards for Compulsions, which also netted a total of 4 awards. BET.com’s Buppies took two awards, and Diary of a Single Mom (below) won best indie soap. Also honored: Chick, Venice, Anacostia and Seeking Simone. [We Love Soaps]

American Idol co-creator Simon Fuller is prepping a reality web/TV hybrid series with Hulu called If I Can Dream, which will follow three aspiring actors, a model and a musician trying to make it in Hollywood. Hulu will stream new episodes each week exclusively on its site when it launches in early 2010. MySpace, Pepsi and Clear Channel are also involved in the project. [THR, NewTeeVee]

Break Media, which owns popular video site Break.com along with a slew of other male-focused sites, announced a partnership with VOD platform Clearleap via the Clearleap’s Content Marketplace, making selected videos and web series available to cable and IPTV providers for their VOD offerings. [Break Media Blog]

Anyone But Me launched the much awaited second season to their web drama, with the help of promos from celebs Zachary Quinto, Liza Weil and Eric Stoltz. The season’s opening ep “The Real Thing” (below) see Vivian and friends dealing with a day of “unexpected encounters” in New York. [AnyoneButMeSeries.com]

Ashton Kutcher’s cancelled CW show The Beautiful Life: TBL has found new life online, as Katalyst has scored HP as a sponsor and released the rest of the season on YouTube. There were only five episodes done (and two aired) when it got the axe, but Katalyst plans to air all five. “What we feel like we’re doing is creating, in some ways, an industry first,” Kutcher told Reuters. “A show that couldn’t find its legs on television, we believe can find its legs on the Web.” [MTV.com]

The Legend of Neil, the gamer comedy web series from creator Sandeep Parikh and Atom.com, is making the web syndication rounds with Season 2 scoring a front page skin on Dailymotion this week as part of their Zelda movie Hero of Time promotion. [Dailymotion]

Web series and web video bits worth clicking today:
Julia Allison, host of NonSociety’s TMIWeekly, gives dating and sexual courtship advice on College Humor’s The Crucial Man series (above) to scruffy host Jon Gabrus, who is trying to figure out how to be a gentleman. [College Humor]

Grass Roots, the political comedy on KoldCast TV (below) has scored a distribution deal with The Huffington Post. The site has featured a few political series before like Get Your War On and Swift Kids For Truth. “It sparked our interest because it’s both funny and political, which is the goal of our comedy page,” said Alex Leo Sr. Editor at HuffPo. [Huffington Post]

Babelgum announced they have added another comic strip series, Over the Hedge, has joined its comedy channel adding to other exclusive series like Dilbert and The New Yorker cartoons, also from animation distributor RingTales. Four brief (30-second) episodes of the strip that spawned a Dreamworks film of the same name, are up now on the site. [Babelgum]

Indy Mogul’s The Reel Good Show host Bobby Miller proves he isn’t just a snarky film buff, but also a credible indie filmmaker as his film Tub was picked as an official selection for this winter’s Sundance Film Festival. Also on the list is Tubefilter writer Lindsay Stidham’s film Douchebag, which she penned. [Sundance press release, NextNewNetworks]

Casey McKinnon, host of A Comicbook Orange, guest stars as evil nemesis ‘Kalm’ in episode 6—the season finale— of sci-fi comedy Hurtling Through Space at an Alarming Rate (aka much easier to say, HTSAAAR) today on Babelgum (below). [Babelgum]

Web drama Anyone But Me, from creators Susan Miller and Tina Cesa Ward is prepping for its December 15th premiere of its sophomore season. The series hosted a premiere screening of the new season last night in New York and is rolling out promo videos like Gilmore Girls’ bad girl Liza Weil jonesing for more ABM, and Heroes’ Zacahry Quinto who calls the show “an addiction.” [Emailed]

Ed. Note: This guest article is written by Rochelle Dancel, an independent content producer from London, England, and the Associate Producer of Canadian web series, B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye.

I’ve been wanting to write a series of how-to tips based on our experience of making, B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye, so we started reminiscing about what we wish we’d known before we’d started making our website. Having had the pleasure of connecting with many other web series producers online, I was curious, and asked them the same question, “What do you wish you’d known before you started making your web series?”

1. “Sometimes, angry people are just hungry.”
Rosemary Rowe and Renee Olbert, Co-Creators of Seeking Simone

There’s a continuing argument about web programming– if shows should be tailored to the web, or if web series are simply a trial run for television. In the ocean of content out there, sometimes watching a product produced by a hand with experience is the greatest joy irregardless, even if the show doesn’t quite fit into either category.

Strike.TV’s Anyone But Me has the makings of a mainstream show, but tackles issues some network programmers may not want to touch with a ten foot pole. The show embraces touchy issues such as dealing with post-9/11 consequences, racism, and discovering your sexuality all while also dealing with being a teenager. The themes are handled deftly by pro writer-producers Susan Miller (thirtysomething, The L Word) and Tina Cesa Ward. Tubefilter caught up with the pair to get the scoop on all the Anyone But Me drama.

We hope everyone has had an exciting and restful holiday. Now it’s 2009—a brand new year to show the world what we can do with web television. 2008 will be a tough act to follow. There were so many great shows last year, and the nominations for The Streamys are pouring in. If you aren’t already pumped, take a look at Marc Hustvedt’s call to arms and get going! This week we have some inspiring picks for you. MoCap, LLC, is going to Spike TV, and We Need Girlfriends is being developed into a pilot for network television. What are you waiting for? Get out there and make the next sitebuster!

MoCap, LLC
The little-viewed but hilarious series about a budget motion capture studio that “does the mo cap that no one else will do” just announced a deal with Spike TV. With their most popular video on YouTube receiving a meager 17,755 views, and others ranging from a hundred to a few thousand, it goes to show that quality, and not necessarily quantity, is what counts.

We Need Girlfriends
When recent college graduates Tom (Partick Cohen), Henry (Seth Kirschner), and Rod (Evan Bass) all get dumped simultaneously by their girlfriends, they must venture out into the complex world of the New York City dating scene. Hofstra University graduates Angel Acevedo, Brian Amyot and Steven Tsapelas, who produce the show as Ragtag Productions, are developing the show into a pilot for Sony and CBS.

Anyone But Me
Tina Cesa Ward and L Word and Thirtysometing writer Susan Miller