The Streamys 2010: What can we expect tonight?

Felicia Day accepts (one of) her Streamy Award in 2009

They say you always remember your first time...

...and I certainly remember the First Streamys. It was a dark and stormy nig....er, no, that's not quite right. It was a highly exciting night. No one was sure of what to expect. Who would be there? Who would win? Who would scream the loudest if the live stream didn't work?

Sandeep Parikh and Felicia Day kick off the action in 2009

Breathlessly waiting

Like many people gathered on Twitter and WatchTheGuild chat room, I anxiously waited for the live feed to finally start. After a couple of small hiccups we were thrust right into the heart of the Streamys. Felicia Day and Sandeep Parikh set the ball in motion and the awards came thick and fast. For a great summary read this article from Tubefilter. It was an uplifting evening.

Jane Espenson (we are not worthy) tells us that BSG is like chopped liver in her 2009 Streamys acceptance speech

So many winners, a few surprises and lots of hard work rewarded. It's a bit of a blur but I managed to remember enough about it to cobble together a blog post. So what will we see this year?

Joss Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen accept the Dr Horrible Streamy in 2009

Vanity Fair gives us a taste
Surprisingly (to me, anyway), the only place I've seen any real hint of what's going to happen on the night has been in this article. No real spoilers except that Keanu Reeves will be there....and no word if NPH will sneak along just for the heck of it (we can hope).

Neil Patrick Harris thrills at the Streamys 2009 with tales of Nathan Fillion's junk

Submit to a night of web history
There will be winners and losers but we can all share in the experience of seeing the future of web entertainment blossoming before our very eyes. The red carpet pre-show starts at 3:30 PST and the ceremony itself starts at 5:30 PST. Make sure you are locked onto http://www.streamys.org/ to be a part of history and I'll see you there (and on Twitter)! I'll be adding pictures from the ceremony on my Flickr account as quickly as they will upload.

The Guild looked fabulous last year but....

Who hopes that The Guild will show up in their Avatar costumes?!?

Streamy Awards: Vote in the Audience Choice Award!

Sean Becker, Sandeep Parikh and Felicia Day from The Guild accepting an award at the 2009 Streamys

Daily Voting - Make It Count!
The ten finalists for the Audience Choice in the 2010 Streamy Awards have been announced by Nick Thune (from "Nick's Big Show"):



"Check out the video above to see Nick’s lighthearted riff on the 10 web TV shows with some of the largest fan bases. And here’s a list of the finalists:

• • Agents of Cracked – http://www.cracked.com/video_18099_the-end-beginning.html
• • Anyone But Me – http://www.anyonebutmeseries.com/
• • Dorm Life: Semester 2 – http://www.dorm-life.com
• • Elevator – http://www.youtube.com/user/ElevatorShow
• • Noob – http://www.noob-tv.com
• • Star-ving -http://crackle.com/c/Star-ving
• • The Guild – http://www.watchtheguild.com
• • Legend of Neil – http://effinfunny.com/legend-of-neil
• • The Totally Rad Show – http://revision3.com/trs
• • The Young Turks – http://www.theyoungturks.com/
• 
  

Congratulations to the Streamys Audience Choice Award Nominees and many thanks to Nick Thune. Now it’s time to get voting!"

The above links to the webseries were broken on the streamys site this morning and there were a couple of other glitches, too (including a big audio delay on The Guild video). I commented on the website and I got a response from Josh Cohen within 5 minutes thanking me for letting them know and assuring me he was working on them all now. That's what I call good customer service - well done, Streamys!

Make sure you vote every day for the webseries you want to see get the Award! Yesterday there was a competition on The Streamys Facebook page where people could list who they thought would be nominated. The prize was tickets to the Streamys. The only ones I guessed were The Guild and Legend of Neil....

Red Carpet Hosts
There is also a competition to be a Red Carpet host for The Streamys. I didn't bother to do a video because the rules said you had to be a US resident. There is some confusion about that. @streamysaward  posted this last night after some discussion on twitter about it:

http://twitter.com/streamyawards/status/10838099528

But the official rules on the gotcast.com website say otherwise:

http://twitter.com/worldofhiglet/status/10881910494

I'll let you know if we see any further clarification. And also if Higlet is going to do a video....

Don't forget to vote in The Streamys - every day until Jan 15th 2010

Remember how exciting The Streamys were last year?
How awesome it was to watch them LIVE on the Internet while tweeting with your friends from around the world? How magnificent all the stars looked and how gratifying it was to see the people who had worked so hard receive the recognition they deserved? It was a blockbuster of a night and the post I did after was a glimpse of the highlights I remembered.


Felicia Day makes my night
Along with the fact that The Guild and Felicia won so many awards (yay!), the stand-out memory for me was the speech that Felicia made. It was short, passionate and moving. And here it is:





When I've received rejection letters from agents I often think of this speech. It helps me send out the next batch of letters.


VOTE NOW!
I'm not going to lie to you. The voting system for The Streamys is not a quick-click-and-you're-done affair. I've just voted for all the people from The Guild and it took about 12 minutes. But once you get in your stride it's not too bad. And the organisers are going to look at the voting again for nest year. But for now you need to know that you can vote every day until Jan 15th and every vote counts towards making the People's Choice shortlists - so keep voting!

Who to vote for?
I'm not going to tell you that. I'm sure you have favourite series. If you are  Guild fan and you want to vote for everyone you can then a list of names is here. And @jennipowell has a whole set of suggestions on her blog. And Tubefilter always has lots of links and information about all kinds of webseries. So go on - vote!

Felicia Day: Evil warder or troubled genius?

Sean Becker (l) in happier times at The Streamy Awards (more pics)

Fears are growing for Sean Becker today

I returned from my self-imposed exile in England yesterday. After breaking the story about Sean Becker's shock firing from The Guild and the shocking follow-up, pressure became too much and I needed to get away from the constant media attention. Plus I wanted to make sure Felicia couldn't send one of her hired goons around (she knows where I live). It was great to meet up with family and friends and we all had a wonderful time and I even managed to put Ominbus 6 of "Turning Left at Albuquerque", my audiobook podcast, up. But while I was gone matters have moved on and I can stay silent no longer!

Sean Becker - still fired?

In a desperate bid to find out whether he still had a job, Sean published another video. This contains scenes that might not be suitable for viewers of a sensitive disposition:

Ms Day was not impressed with the first video he did so one can only imagine how this one was received!

The Guild Season 3 is wrapped

Joyous news for all fans of The Guild, of course - a real cause for celebration. Ms Day blogged about the wondrous event:

"....Now…post production. Ack! Director Sean Becker will be rushing to get a cut of Episode 1 ready for our Comicon Panel (July 24th from 10:30am-11:30am in room 5AB!) and the whole cast will be there. It’s going to be an amazing panel, I assure you....Ok, off to punch [redacted] in the face"

Felicia has a habit of keeping Sean under house arrest while he is editing The Guild. She shockingly confessed this to me during an interview I did with her last year:

A quick check on Sean's Twitter stream confirms the worst:

3 months?!? Sounds like Felicia is planning to keep Sean under wraps until Season 3 has been released!!!

What can be done?

It's unclear what, if anything, can be done for Sean. His Facebook picture has been updated:

It shows him forced to interact with a TV screen in a desperate attempt to simulate real-life contact. Whether this is a result of being in captivity or his crippling lack of social graces, we might never know. For now, we can only pray Felicia is not force-feeding him jellybeans again...

More news as it happens!

The 1st Annual Streamy Awards - Web Series’ Coming Out Party

"Saturday night, Hollywood and online collided and created a beautiful child in the 1st Annual Streamy Awards. Held at the historic Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles, the awards celebrated some of the top talents in the web series industry (which, I think we can now call it an ‘industry’).." Tabitha Smith tells us why it was such an important event.

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Feedburner has gone wobbly

I'm not sure when
But it appears that Feedburner is having issues with my blog after months of behaving. This is a plain post to see if it'll work ok. The last two posts I did, about The Streamys and the Evil League of Evil Processing Office scripts haven't come up properly but I'm seeing if this plain old quick one will help because I have no intentions I trying to fix the code of it's many, MANY errors. I haven't got the patience at the moment! I'm wondering if it's putting pics at the top that's doing it....

Have a good Sunday :)

Streamy Awards: Official Nominees Announced!

"Today we announce the official nominees for the 1st Annual Streamy Awards. Where else can you get a heated race between Lisa Kudrow and Felicia Day, or Rosario Dawson and Jessica Rose, or how about Tay Zonday and Eva Longoria Parker? Get ready for March 26th because that's when you can vote on your favorite from the 10 top submitted webseries..."

Amongst the Official Nominees already revealed are many familiar names - and The Guild and Doctor Horrible have made a very strong showing. Which is no surprise! :)

Get ready to vote on Monday......!

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Nominate The Guild creators at The Streamy Awards!

Remember The Streamys?

The biggest major New Media Blogs: Tubefilter, NewTeeVee and Tilzy.tv have created a new Awards show The Streamy Awards especially for webseries. Ever since I first watched 'The Guild' last year I've been a convert to webseries. The writing, acting and production is all top rate. Now here's your chance to nominate the show and it's creators in The Streamy Awards. Vote now!

WatchTheGuild.com posted this reminder today that there was still time to get your nominations in:

"The deadline for nominations is midnight Jan 23rd (Friday). If you could spare a moment, we’d love for you to go to Streamys.org consider us in the following categories:

Best Comedy Web Series: The Guild

Best Directing for a Comedy Web Series: Sean Becker

Best Writing for a Comedy Web Series: Felicia Day

Best Male Actor in a Comedy Web Series: Sandeep Parikh, Jeff Lewis or Vincent Caso (Zaboo, Vork or Bladezz)

Best Female Actor in a Comedy Web Series: Felicia Day, Robin Thorsen or Amy Okuda (Codex, Clara or Tink)

Best Ensemble Cast in a Web Series: The Guild

Best Guest Star in a Web Series: Fernando Chien (Wade Wei, the Stunt Guy)

Best Editing: Sean Becker

Best Cinematography: John Schmidt

Best Art Direction: Leah Mann

Best Visual Effects: Doug Luberts

Best Animation: Matthew Brackney (for the Season 2 credits)

Best Original Music: Don Schiff (Theme) Eanan Patterson (Season 2 Scoring)

We know it’s a lot, but every single person contributed their amazing talent to this season, so if you have the time, please vote for us! :) We appreciate it so much."

They have my nominations!

Who else could you nominate?

In order to qualify for nomination the webseries has to be (from The Streamys website):

"Any original production produced for broadband distribution with at least three (3) episodes released in the 2008 calendar year can qualify for consideration. The show must also be easily viewed and available online, either via a major video sharing site or unique URL."

So, there are plenty of other webseries you might consider nominating - like Doctor Horrible and With The Angels. Are there any other webseries you are nominating?

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