Keep in mind, you can’t actually watch some of these web series yet. While one has already released an episode or two, the others highlighted here have nothing but publicity photos and teasers available.

But if you keep checking back, maybe you’ll be the cool kid who sees the new webisodes first! You know, if that’s your thing.

Leap Year (episodes airing now)
Have you been laid off? Do you want to watch a web series about layoffs happening to other people? Of course you do!
In Leap Year, the five main characters don’t sit around and moan while collecting unemployment like normal, sane laid-off people. Nope, they start businesses and then enter a contest for $500,000. The money is promised to them by “a mysterious stranger with an exorbitant amount of money” who somehow has access to their office.
OK, so it’s not the most realistic depictions of unemployment. Still, the series, written by Yuri and Vlad Baranovsky and sponsored by Hiscox Insurance, is kind of entertaining. Also, I’m jealous about the money. If nothing else, Craig Bierko is in it!

LoveMakers (episodes maybe coming soon)
Check out the trailer for this potential web series: http://lovemakers.tv

Look familiar at all? It’s the same creators as Leap Year. Only this one’s about a dating service that provides way more assistance to clients than most.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the preview trailer is all that exists. There hasn’t been any recent mention of the series happening. And the main people involved are off doing Leap Year.
Too bad. The trailer is cool, and this is supposed to be a web series with 30-minute episodes, a much-needed variety.
Maybe it will turn up someday!

Do any of these new web series look interesting to you? What do you think could make the series a success? Leave a comment below with your opinions!

Critic’s Notebook: Web TV is just waiting to click

Online television has yet to catch on like the traditional format, but it’s just barely getting started and hubs like Hulu, Crackle and Koldcast point to a wide-open future.

By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
June 26, 2011

Kiefer Sutherland, the star of “24,” and John Hurt, the eminent British thespian, recently joined forces, playing opposite each other in “The Confession,” a sort of short feature about a hit man and a priest. I say “sort of” because “The Confession” was created specifically to go online, in installments — there are 10 of them, averaging about seven minutes each; they ran from the end of March to the beginning of May on the video-streaming website Hulu. So it is a sort of television series as well, though one whose entire season lasts in the aggregate not much more than an hour…

Nevertheless, as improving varieties of streaming media become an increasingly popular way to watch what once could be seen only on an actual television set or in a theater, distribution points such as Hulu have begun to act as networks or studios. (Hulu, which has just been up for sale, is actually owned in common by several of them.) Sony Pictures’ Crackle has some of the Web’s flashier offerings, including “The Bannen Way,” with its wiseguy con-man hero, stylish split screens and hot-girl assassins; “Angel of Death,” penned by comic-book writer Ed Brubaker, with Zoe Bell (“Tarantino’s #1 stunt woman”) as a hired killer who acquires the compulsion to kill her old masters; and the sci-fi “Trenches,” picked up from Disney’s now-defunct Stage 9 Digital, which sports impressive “Battlestar Galactica” special effects. All have completed their single seasons but remain available for download in the timelessness of the Web.

Will ‘LoveMakers’ be the First 30-Minute Web Series Hit?

A half hour web show. It’s a simple premise. It makes sense. You don’t want to sit down after a long day at work and watch four minutes of something. You want to relax and engage in a passive entertainment experience that at most requires your active participation in scrolling to the next episode and hitting play once every 22 minutes.

And the reason I say a 30-minute web show makes sense isn’t simply intuition supported by hypothetical, anecdotal evidence. Hard facts show online video consumers seem to be ready for a half hour web show, too.

Lunch time used to be web TV primetime, but in the past two years peak online video viewing hours have shifted from Noon – 3PM to 8PM – 11PM. Viral videos and uber-short-form web series haven’t gone out of vogue, it’s more that a combination of technology, content quality, and exposure to the medium has made consumers more comfortable watching web TV at home than during their lunch breaks or when they should be working on TPS reports.

But even if the market’s ready for it, executing a half hour web show is the tough part. You need a premise with long enough legs that it can sustain a full season of 30-minute episodes, a killer cast, a web savvy production company, and a talented crew that can create something that looks at least as good as what you can find on Hulu, but for a fraction of the cost.

LoveMakers just might be able to pull it off.

Suite 7 – Review

Good in Bed – directed by MARK GANTT written by SUSAN MILLER starring EDDIE MCCLINTOCK & JAIME MURRAY

You might not expect a Web series produced as a promotional tool for the Better Sleep Council to be very interesting, but “Suite 7” at MyLifetime.com is worth checking out. The free-standing episodes — the sixth of seven goes up on Friday — all revolve around the same bed, situated in the hotel suite of the title.

What the council’s money has bought is the participation of recognizable performers like Milo Ventimiglia (“Heroes”) as a skeptical best man and Illeana Douglas as an actress on location debating whether to have sex with her co-star. (Mr. Ventimiglia also directed his episode, while Ms. Douglas wrote hers.) Best, so far, is the more sober, 11-minute “Good in Bed,” starring Jaime Murray (“Dexter”) and Eddie McClintock (“Warehouse 13”) as a divorcing couple brought together, for a moment at least, by that magical bed. (YES… THIS IS ONE OF THE EPISODES I DIRECTED!)

The NATPE trade show is for the second year recognizing digital contributions to the content biz, honoring a handful of companies and personalities at its upcoming confab in Miami.

AOL, IKEA, the LXD, Control TV and Gary Vaynerchuk will be recognized as “Content Innovators” on the last day of the market Jan. 26.

The so-called Digital Luminary Awards will be handed out in partnership with Tubefilter.

NATPE president-CEO Rick Feldman said Wednesday the awards acknowledge “the innovative people and companies who serve as catalysts for the digital content revolution.”

Recipients will be feted during a reception hosted by Mark Gantt of the Bannen Way at the confab’s central location, the Fontainebleau Resort. The 5 pm event will also be streamed live on the NATPE website.

PODCAST FROM AMERICA: EPISODE 5 WITH MARK GANTT

Welcome to the Christmas episode of PODCAST FROM AMERICA, with my special guest Mark Gantt, a talented actor/writer/producer/director, who I was lucky enough to speak to at the beginning of October. You can listen to the show via iTunes by clicking this link.

I’ve been following Mark’s career with interest since I met him on the set of Sony’s The Bannen Way, just over a year ago. He and his Bannen co-creator, Jesse Warren, were on day 18 of a 19-day shoot at the Lacy Street Studios in east LA, filming their ground-breaking high-production value web series, about a gangster who wants to go straight.

I blogged at the time that ‘Hollywood’s future was in Bannen’s hands‘, and after the series scored more than 14 million hits, and went on to be sold as a feature on DVD, I think they ably demonstrated that well-produced, original web shows can have clout. Their model is very new, but proves that there is another viable way that talented actors, producers and directors, who might otherwise not get the chance, can showcase their talents.

Mark’s now an authority on making shows on the web, and runs a kick-ass course on the subject – find out more at www.ganttworkshops.com.

He also has a host of projects coming up, including the episode of Suite 7 that he directed, starring Eddie McClintock and Jaime Murray, which is out now.

NOVEMBER 30, 2010
I’ve mentioned this in a couple different interviews but wanted to expand on it a bit in a new unit of time. I think it was mid 2005, I sat down with my mentor and teacher, Milton Katselas to discuss my decision to QUIT acting. I was very frustrated. I wasn’t enjoying acting, the business mostly, but it affected my desire to improve my craft in class. So I was going to tell Milton that I wanted to quit acting and pursue directing. I sat across from him in his incredible house and pleaded my case, “I don’t enjoy acting anymore. I love directing. I realize when I assist you Milton, I’m watching you as a director, seeing how you discover what the scene’s about, work with the actors and tell a story. When I watch a movie, I’m thinking as a director, as a filmmaker, not as an actor studying their choices. I am a director!” I sat back in my chair, I felt good about what I just spewed.  Sitting next to me, was Art Cohan, the Senior Stage Manager of the Beverly Hills Playhouse, Milton’s right hand and one of my best friends. I looked over to him for reassurance as Milton began writing on his notepad in broad strokes. He wrote the words ACTOR and DIRECTOR and drew a line between them.  He turned the pad to me and said, “You have to make a decision today, ACTOR or DIRECTOR… you can only do one… which?”

Without hesitation I pointed to DIRECTOR… “did he not just hear my case just now??”  I was thinking. He turned the pad around and circled ACTOR and DIRECTOR and at the bottom wrote the word “BOTH”. He turned it around one more time and showed it to me. He said, “YOU… can do BOTH. But you have to give a hundred percent to the acting or you’ll never succeed as a director. You have to confront what’s blocking you in your acting or it will block you as a director.  You need the skills as an actor, you need to kill that and then you’ll be able to do both… with success.“