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.

Web series and web video bits from around the internets worth clicking today:

Shorewood vs. Shorecrest High School (WA)A Glee-inspired but YouTube-perfect lip-synced battle unfolding on YouTube. It stated with Shorecrest HS’s Trent Mitchell’s video production class doing a spot-on rendition of Outkast’s ‘Hey Ya!” (above) that has already hit 100k views. This week rival high school Shorewood one upped their neighbors with a reverse lip sync (also above). [Seattle PI]

Virgin America just added an original “Best of the Web” section to it RED in-flight systems, featuring popular web series shown on those glamorous seat-back touchscreens on all its domestic flights. Also known as: Revision3 and TED Talks join the mile-high club! [Virgin]

The U.S. Coast Guard needs a little help picking the winner of their “Best Coast Guard Video of 2009,” and put out a call for action to pick one of the 11 finalists. The final 11 are a tribute to the Coast Guard’s 11 statutory missions, and worth a look on their YouTube channel. [US Coast Guard]

Drama Queenz returned for its second season today. The popular New York-set LGBT comedy web series stars Broadway regulars Dane Joseph (Aida), Kristen-Alexzander Griffith (Rent), and Troy Valjean Rucker (Jesus Christ Superstar) as three actors on the less than perfect path to Broadway stardom. [Dramaqueenz.com]

The DiGiTS Show has been on a tear on YouTube this past month, cranking out over 4.6 million views, which is more than even Fred racked up this month. The sleazy euro-gigolo has taken a brief hiatus until January promising “a crap ton more episodes.” In the meantime, they put out their “Holiday Card” today (below). [YouTube]

The Crew is on hiatus too, but that didn’t stop creator Brett Register from putting out a special “musical montage” Christmas episode of their own today (below). [Babelgum]

Babelgum has been on a web series roundup of late, and these guys are moving fast. With news coming just two weeks ago of indie sci-fi series The Crew jumping ship to the online network as its news home for season 2, a fresh new batch of sci-fi series have followed suit. Today Babelgum announced three new original series, several of which are helmed by some web series notables, to make up the bulk of the sci-fi/horror comedy channel.

Launching today is a new series from Goodnight Burbank creator Hayden Black—no not The Cabonauts, which we’re still waiting on—but a hastily assembled paranormal comedy The Occulterers. The “interactive comedy and horror series” stars Black as one of his inventive characters, Hervé Villechez, this time part of a four-person Transylvanian ghost hunting crew.

Black’s new series took just two weeks from concept to production, and that includes inking the deal with Babelgum. “It’s been an exhilarating experience; from pitching it on a Monday, writing it over 2 days, to shooting it the next week,” said Black over email. “I still think it’s far better than it has any right to be.”

For casting, Black tapped a pair of Buffy vets in James C. Leary (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and indie web series Lost Angeles) and Camden Toy. Also on board on the hunt are Ellen Sandweiss (Strike.TV’s Dangerous Women, The Evil Dead) and Amy Kline (I <3 Vampires).

Michael Davies, the Streamy-nominted director of After Judgment, has a series of his own in the lineup. Hurtling Through Space at an Alarming Rate! stars Davies alongside TheStream.tv’s Live from the Future host Stuart Paap. The “golf and game-obsessed, popculture buffs” are literally hurtling through space, in their apartment, in an absurd comedy somewhere between Hitchhiker’s Guide and Up. The Captain Films team just wrapped shooting up in Vancouver and the series is set for November 2 online debut.

We knew we hadn’t seen the last of the engine room on the US Azureas when things left in a black hole cliffhanger this past spring. Sci-fi comedy web series The Crew is coming back for a second season next week after singing an exclusive deal with online video site Babelgum.

For creator Brett Register, who had been using the hiatus from the show to roll out a number of short experimental web series like Craig and the Werewolf, he said he is excited to be able to pay his talent and crew this time around.

“We were indeed able to pay everyone who worked on the show this season, which was amazing as the tagline when producing season one was, ‘don’t worry about money, we’ll all get paid in season two,’” quipped Register. “Who knew that’d turn out to be true!”

While it’s not exactly TV-level money going around, it is in fact a step up in terms of production budgets and actors’ salaries. The indie mockumentary series had previously camped out with online network KoldCast TV before signing the larger money deal, reportedly in the mid-five figures, with Babelgum for the twelve-episode new season.

For Season 2, the full original cast will be returning, including Craig Frank, Philip Bache, Ariel Lazarus and Register himself. As with most web series on their second go-round, some new notables have joined the cast, like former lonelygirl15 star Jessica Rose, and a slew of web names as guest stars—Robin Thorsen (The Guild), Benny Fine (The Fine Brothers), Tom Konkle (Safety Geeks: SVI) and Payman Benz (Awkward Pictures). Register’s longtime cohort Tim Riese is back as DP of the green screen comedy.

Summer hiatus. To some people these two words mean kicking back, slowing down and catching up on long lost sleep. To others, it means it’s time to get busy.

For Brett Register, creator-star of sci-fi web series The Crew, we’re going to say it’s the latter. With one episode left to come in The Crew’s 15-episode season, Register teased out the first episode (above) of Lost & Found today, hinting at what is expected to be a busy summer. Featuring fellow Crew star Craig Frank (Private High Musical) along with web series vet Katy Stoll (Prom Queen, Couples, Private High Musical) and Register himself, Lost & Found is the first of a handful of short web series coming out from the newly formed creative team, Absolute Disaster.

The five-person ensemble, a mix of actors and technical talent includes Register, Stoll, Frank and actor Haley Mancini (Prom Queen, Weeds, Mad Men) with The Crew’s Tim Riese coming on board as director of photography for all projects.

What happens when you take the mockumentary style and workplace camaraderie of The Office and transplant it on a spaceship? It improves, according to Brett Register, creator of the green-screen heavy sci-fi web comedy series, The Crew. “I’m very much under the impression that any story is immediately better if it’s taking place in space, no matter what the circumstance.”

Register originally came to LA to become a television writer. After a strike-shortened stint with Nickelodeon and a couple of creativity-starved years on NBC’s The Biggest Loser, he finally decided he needed an outlet for his ideas. An avid fan of several emerging web series, he was confident in his the ability to produce a quality show for the internet on a shoestring budget. With a cast and crew of talented friends, including DP-Associate producer Timothy Riese and sound man Matthew Warner,

Strike.TV has signed a content distribution and revenue sharing deal with YouTube and Joost, allowing the WGA writers-backed video portal to extend its reach for its more than forty original web series. Long-awaited launch now set for October 28th.