Tubefilter News

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.

There’s probably no bigger hot button issue right now in the web series world than view counts. After exposing MySpace’s paid auto-plays (which were being reported as regular views) on their BFF series, we received numerous comments and emails on the subject. Emotions ran high on this as creators with decent views cried foul to cheaters trying to pass off paid impressions as actual intent-driven views. We listened to you and we’re going to be taking a deeper look at the issue on Tubefilter News, including examples of those who are actually getting real viewers without cheating.

Panelists on the gabby digital media conference circuit love to spew phrases like ‘go to where your audience is’, and even we have written on the benefits of finding your audience. There aren’t however many examples to point to of those who have actually done that effectively. The Guild still stands as one of the best at connecting with a thriving World of Warcraft fanbase, though even its success with that group wasn’t accidental. Creator Felicia Day is well known for her tireless commitment to outreach and connecting with new fans of the show.

When IKEA-backed Easy to Assemble launched its sophomore season a few weeks back, along with its closely-tied spin-off Sparhüsen, it came with a red carpet premiere well-attended by the show’s recognizable cast. But early fanfare can fade, and the proof of actual success is, as they say, in the pudding. In this case, that means how many people are actually watching the show.

Easy to Assemble often gets lumped in with pure branded entertainment fare, with most people thinking it came straight off a whiteboard at IKEA’s ad agency. But the series is actually entirely independently owned by its creator-star, Illeana Douglas. Douglas in fact first rolled the concept of celebrities working retail with her Illeanarama: Supermarket of the Stars web series on YouTube back in late 2006. Douglas then pitched the scripted series in early 2008 to IKEA, who loved the idea of having Douglas and her offbeat friends—Justine Bateman, Tom Arnold, Ed Begley Jr., Jane Lynch, Jeff Goldblum, Kevin Pollak—working at the company’s Burbank store.

After some modest success of the first season, IKEA agreed to sponsor a second season, this time with an increased production budget and the addition of new cast members like Cheri Oteri, Tim Meadows and Ricki Lake. Then came news of a secret spin-off show about a fictional Swedish rock band named Sparhüsen, and the casting of film star Keanu Reeves. For the new season, Douglas teamed up with Wilson Cleveland at CJP Digital to help with marketing and distribution of the shows, whom she had met prepping for the OnFrontsNYC event in June.

Last night’s Los Angeles premiere of Easy to Assemble season 2 was everything you would expect in a sophomore debut—bigger, brasher and beaming. For the gawkers on Hollywood Blvd. peering onto the red carpet outside the Egyptian Theater, most probably thought they were scoping out a movie premiere as stars like Keanu Reeves, Kevin Pollack, Justine Bateman and Harry Shearer casually strolled past the check-in tables with cameras flashing.

The new season of the IKEA backed web series, which kicks off today, is a classic season long face-off. Picking up essentially were things left off last season, Illeana Douglas and Justine Bateman both still work at the Burbank IKEA store, playing themselves “in between acting jobs.” The rivalry of the two celeb employees squares off around the coveted Co-worker of the Year title, the retail equivalent of queen bee. It’s a 40 year-old’s Blair vs. Serena.

For the dozens of web video folks at the event, there was a underlying buzz that Hollywood is starting to take notice. It had that blend of celebrity, both online and off, last seen at the Streamy Awards. The fusion on the red carpet of web stars and traditional celebs kept the publicists extra busy, but ultimately scored the event a win in both camps. It was easy to forget this was a premiere for a web series.

Ask a Ninja creators Kent Nichols and Doug Sarine make more than just a cameo midway through the season, playing themselves and eventually making a special pro-Illeana video with the Ninja. Other cast members on hand at the premiere were Tom Arnold, Daryl Sabara, Sean Durrie, Cheri Oteri, Kent Nichols, Michael Irpino (who came in full costume), Todd Spahr and Rob Mailhouse.

There’s a lot of news to digest here, so let’s start with the highlights:

Keanu Reeves is starring in a web series.
It’s called Spärhusen and is actually a spin-off of IKEA-backed Easy to Assemble.
It’s part of a 7-show slate of web series from My Damn Channel premiering October 8, 2009.
You know the medium is growing up when we get news of not only another A-lister headlining a web series, but the fact that it’s a spinoff of another web series. Keanu Reeves is starring in Spärhusen, a spinoff series about fictional Swedish rock band of the same name that despite oozing musical talent, never quite hit the ABBA level. It actually came out of an episode of Easy to Assemble from last season.

For the first season, Spärhusen is basically a Behind the Music look at the “in-studio tensions” from the recording sessions of the band’s 1972 single “Apples & Fish.” Reeves stars as “famed” Swedish record producer Vorste Fierron who apparently can’t get along with the band’s long-time manager Björn Epstein (Wallace Langham) over a fish. On top of the series, they are actually putting out a real-life album from the band, dubbed “The Best of Spärhusen,” set for release later this fall.

Illeana Douglas, the star and creator of Easy to Assemble, co-created Sparhusen along with fellow stars Rob Mailhouse and Todd Spahr. CJP Digital, the same firm behind newly-renewed The Temp Life, started working with Easy to Assemble for season 2, and brought the two-pack of series to My Damn Channel who won out after a little bidding war.

The new season, “Co-Worker of the Year” adds SNL vets like Cheri Oteri, Tim Meadows to the cast.