Tubefilter News

Illeana Douglas may be quite the name in web series circles now, especially after landing six Streamy nominations for her popular comedy Easy to Assemble, which just wrapped its second season earlier this year. It even spawned a spinoff series Sparhüsen, which nabbed its own Streamy nod. But aside from those two, the Emmy-nominated TV and film actress has yet to venture into a web series where she isn’t the one calling the shots. Looks like that’s about to change.

Douglas just wrapped shooting a two-episode guest starring arc on Spherion-sponsored office comedy The Temp Life in New York this week, playing cold hearted CEO Eve Randall. Also shooting a guest spot this week is Taryn Southern who brings back her gumpy midwest IT tech Nancy Roder for a few more episodes.

This isn’t the first we’ve written about the casting moves on The Temp Life this season, which have seen notable web series standouts like Sandeep Parikh (The Guild), Thom Woodley (The Burg) and Rachel Risen (The Hayley Project) coming on board to bolster the show’s cred and fanbase. To give an idea of numbers, it took two years for the series to reach 1 million views, while its latest season—its fourth—has just passed 2 million.

The connection between Easy to Assemble isn’t hard to piece together. Temp Life creator Wilson Cleveland—who also plays the former temp agency boss Nick ‘Trouble’ Chiapetta—heads up CJP Digital Media the web arm of Manhattan-based marketing firm CJP Communications. Easy to Assemble teamed up with CJP for its latest season with Cleveland’s team helping score a suite of new distribution deals for the show including The Hotel Network and a lucrative one with My Damn Channel.

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.

Not since the Streamy Awards have we seen this many web series stars in one place. Ok not really, but with the fourth season of The Temp Life, the Spherion-backed comedy about life inside a dreadful NY temp agency kicking off today, the cast is loaded up with notable web series stars.

The casting moves are signs this four-year old web show is growing up with the medium in which it plays. Call it Web TV’s version of keiretsu. Creator Wilson Cleveland, CJP Communications’ Head of Digital Media, built the show back in 2006 for the firm’s client Spherion. Incidentally, Cleveland also stars in the The Temp Life, as Nick “Trouble” Chiapetta, the once-CEO of Commodity Staffing, the shoddy agency. This new season picks up with some major changes once Chiapetta returns to office after a 33-week AWOL.

Notable guest (web) stars:
Thom Woodley — co-creator and star of All’s Faire, The ‘Burg and Vuguru’s The All-for-Nots.
Taryn Southern — creator/star of Private High Musical, and star of Sorority Forever, Woke Up Dead and the recent Wrong Hole video with DJ Lubel
Chris Murray — co-creator/star of Hedge Fund
Rachel Risen — star of The Hayley Project
David Nett — co-creator/star of GOLD
Sandeep Parikh — star of The Guild, creator of The Legend of Neil
Angela Espinosa — co-creator/star of Groupthink
Wendy Rosoff — co-creator/star of Groupthink

Behind the camera, more web series regulars were enlisted. The Hayley Project co-directors Andrew Park and Jato Smith were tapped to shoot the new episodes, with Streamy-nominated Break a Leg creator Yuri Baranovsky writing them alongside Cleveland.

It’s a little more than just stunt casting for some press hits, with the shows themselves actually woven into the storylines. Hedge Fund’s Claude S. Dutchy, LLC hedge fund is the entity that’s taken over Commodity Staffing now, and Murray plays his character from that series. Groupthink’s Espinosa and Rosoff make an appearance as their office comedy’s quirky characters later this season. And Taryn Southern sure didn’t play it safe with a straight cameo, opting instead to go with an anomalously odd character for her guest bit in one of the show’s “online resumes.” (See below)

The Temp Life has kind of flown under the radar in terms of branded web series successes, but ever since it first convinced a blue-chip sponsor to back the web comedy back in mid 2006, it has trekked on steadily delivering for both audience and sponsor.

At first glance it portends to be another blah-blah office comedy, but the concept is actually pretty novel, given the show’s sponsor, real-life recruiting and staffing company Spherion. Take a comical look at small off-brand temp agencies, well known to job-hopping New Yorkers, and show what could happen if you don’t end up with one of the big boys like Spherion. The fictional agency, Commodity Staffing, carves out its niche as the dredges of temp jobs—think changing crusty urinal cakes and 24/7 lifecasting of a stuck-up socialite.

Streamy-nominated writer Yuri Baranovsky (Break a Leg) has been hired to write the new episodes and The Hayley Project’s creators Andrew Park and Jato Smith will be at the helm. There’s even word that Hayley Project star Rachel Risen (also Streamy-nominated) will guest star in the new season.