Shows & Stars — GigaOM

Shows & Stars

This weekend, the stars will all be out to celebrate the 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony, which will be broadcast on ABC beginning at Sunday, March 7 at 8pm EST/5pm Pacific. And while this year’s Oscars ceremony won’t be streamed live online, there … Read More »

Some unofficial requirements of the film noir genre: Dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, murder, voiceover, and a dude smoking a cigarette. And the indie series The Steps, written, directed and starring Dylan Kussman, gets to all four of these within the first minute of the first … Read More »

 
 

The Escapist video game culture site has had no shortage of interesting web video content over the last few years — but the bulk of it has been created by the Canadian (and clever) sketch group Loading Ready Run. However, their third annual Film Festival … Read More »

Last night, the newest OK Go video to spread around the web had an unconventional premiere — rather than bowing big in front of a stadium of fans, or broadcastin on MTV2, the newest take on This Too Shall Pass was shown first at last … Read More »

Behind a tall, white gate on a quiet Beverly Hills cul-de-sac, a private mansion is about to become anything but. Starting tomorrow, when the live-streaming of 19 Entertainment’s If I Can Dream begins on Hulu, 56 cameras will be broadcasting the adventures of five … Read More »

Well, the Streamy nominations are out, and it’s a beautiful morning for Crackle (whose series Angel of Death and The Bannen Way dominated the Drama categories) and ICM (per agent George Ruiz’s Twitter, its clients received 23 nominations. But taking a step back, what … Read More »

This isn’t one of our typical Where to Watch posts, because the answer for where to watch is here! Today at 9:30 PM PST, the Streamy Awards will announce ten of the nominees for this year’s awards live via Ustream. Check it out … Read More »

Here’s the pitch: A show that’s like David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, with slightly bumbling, wacky characters and an unconventional approach to the murder-mystery format. A unique voice, but no big stars. No wonder 15 Gigs decided to put it on the Internet first. Directed, co-written … Read More »

As a fan of the reality series Top Chef (I like beautiful food and people with tattoos cursing each other out, so sue me), I often wonder what happens to the contestants after their time on the show, especially those who get close to claiming the … Read More »

In indie series Chick, superheroes really exist — at least, they seem to exist, though no one demonstrates much in the way of actual superpowers. So Lisa (Kai Ṣoremekun, who also writes, directs, and produces) is dealing with the discovery that her boyfriend has … Read More »

No American Idol contestant enters the game without a past — the lucky ones just hope that it won’t get them disqualified, as with Frenchie Davis in 2003 for a topless photo shoot, and this year’s Chris Golightly, who had a previous recording contract … Read More »

For any creator out there, the following question must be a scary one: What do you do when you no longer work for the company that owns the rights to the show you created? For Woody Tondorf, it’s been a way of life since December … Read More »

More Must Reads

Not the first site to get a TV deal, and probably not the last, Funny or Die is the latest online studio attempting to finding the secret of transferring short-form comedy to OldTeeVee. OldTeeVees with HBO subscriptions, anyway — Funny or Die Presents, … Read More »

The Bannen Way, produced and distributed by the digital arm of Sony Entertainment, has already proven itself as a bit of a lightning rod for controversy. And when Crackle told us that the crime noir web series had racked up 8.4 million … Read More »

If you were to break down the entirety of scripted web video into two categories — shows about jobs that stink, and shows that aren’t about jobs that stink — you’d probably have a lot more of the former than the latter. Everyone spends a … Read More »

UPDATED We’re usually not much into celebrity gossip, but we have to admit that Tiger Woods’ rapid descent from golf stardom to yellow press fodder has been fascinating, if only for the fact that it seemed much more like a bad TV … Read More »

A website founded by Will Ferrell, with a soon-to-premiere HBO series and no shortage of A-list cameos, can hardly be considered an outsider in most realms. But it appears that there’s one event they couldn’t penetrate: the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Not that that’s … Read More »

Early birds can tune into a 360-degree live stream of the Today Show this morning, making it possible to take a peek behind the scenes and see the whole set of the show, which is being broadcast from Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain this … Read More »

Before sitting down to watch the first three episodes of Shane Felux’s Trenches, which premiered today on Crackle.com, I took some time to lower my expectations. After all, I’ve been waiting to watch the special-effects-heavy series since July 2007 — it’d be easy … Read More »

Coming out against Valentine’s Day isn’t a very controversial position — the pressure that comes with the day is enough to make even the most content single person or couple skittish at the very least. Which is why today, the Friday before Valentine’s Day, is … Read More »

In July of 2007, while working for online video news site The Daily Reel, I interviewed director Shane Felux at the San Diego Comic-Con about Trenches, an exciting-sounding web series he’d just finished shooting for the ABC-owned Stage 9 Media. Trenches was an ambitious … Read More »

Recasting happens all the time — if it didn’t, then it would have been Eric Stolz, not Michael J. Fox, who rose to stardom thanks to the Back to the Future franchise. But when it happens in a project in progress, you can’t help … Read More »

Time for truth-telling: I suspect a big part of why I like Gay’s Anatomy is that the indie web series created by Karina Mangu-Ward and Bobby Hodgson isn’t just a Grey’s Anatomy spoof. But it also helps that the decidedly NSFW medical comedy features … Read More »

When it comes to creating sketch comedy and spoofs for web video, the guys at Landline TV are relative newbies, having only been working together since August 2008. But since that time they’ve become a dominant force in creating incredibly topical yet notably creative … Read More »

Great production value, a cinematic style and leggy brunettes in short skirts go a long way in the online video world, and Sony/Crackle’s The Bannen Way has been taking those elements to the limit over the last six weeks. From its early debut … Read More »

White dude rap and prank war experts College Humor might not come immediately to mind when brainstorming altruism in the online video world. Yet today the comedy hub, using the Firstgiving fundraising service, launched LOLaid Haiti Relief, an online fundraiser benefiting Read More »

Those in search of some extra whimsy in their day could do much worse than checking out The Ballad of Mary and Ernie, a strange yet occasionally charming mash-up of Unforgiven and the first chapter of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The five-part original … Read More »

Making fun of reality TV is low-hanging fruit, and indie web series The Videomakers, written and directed by Walter J. Gottlieb, doesn’t make much effort to change that. Shot in Silver Spring, Maryland, the show focuses on a team of morally-dubious producers who strive … Read More »

Kevin Nalty, better known in the online video world as Nalts, published the second edition of his free e-book “How to Get Popular on YouTube Without Any Talent” a few days ago. Nalty, whose videos have … Read More »

When you consider that much of the TV audience spends the other 364 days of the year trying to minimize its exposure to advertising on TV, the hoopla over Super Bowl commercials is a bit strange. However, this year there’s the promise of summer … Read More »

Serving more as meditations on a theme than an episodic adventure, Downsized is a sometimes moving portrait of humanity dealing with the consequences of tough economic times. It’s tempting to classify the series as a production of the recession, but there’s a timeless quality … Read More »

You might make the argument that the web doesn’t need another talk show of any sort — there are plenty of personalities, from the more traditional form used by Bob Kushell to that of DIGGnation and other direct-address series. But there’s always room for … Read More »

When U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, the most recent legal conflict over California’s 2008 proposition to ban gay marriage, would be broadcast on YouTube, gay rights activists weren’t exactly enthusiastic, as they were hoping that the Prop 8 trial would … Read More »

The network that Diggnation built had a great 2009, according to a release from todayRevision3 delivered over 1.5 billion minutes of video to its viewers while growing revenue by 30 percent. (No wonder they felt confident enough to offer Conan … Read More »

Tonight comes the premiere of Lost‘s final season on ABC, and while the mysteries of the island have remained pretty well-concealed, the actual episode hasn’t been as lucky. Last week, the first five minutes of the episode leaked online, and yesterday (thanks to an … Read More »

There’s no question: The Grammys were the biggest online event of the last couple of days. There were 135,000 Grammy-related tweets by midnight Sunday night, according to new data from Trendrr, and the music awards show was subject to thousands of news stories and … Read More »

Right from the beginning, the web series Playing Dead has one major obstacle to overcome. Dead Like Me, the 2003 Showtime series created by Bryan Fuller, already exists, and over two seasons it did a pretty thorough job of chronicling the lives of … Read More »

Watching Conan O’Brien’s final Tonight Show last Friday got me thinking about the ritual of ending one’s day with late-night television, a way many of us no longer consume media thanks to digital options — especially those in the 18-34 demographic, the most eroded … Read More »

When approaching tough, controversial topics like that of terrorism, it’s important to convey some sense of accuracy — and if you’re attempting to make a comedy, it’s also helpful to be funny. So that’s two strikes, right there, against Living With the Infidels. Created … Read More »

Its characters may live in a state of emotional turmoil, but life has been good for teen ensemble drama Anyone But Me since its second season premiere on Blip.tv. The show has racked up a total of 2.2 million views across all of … Read More »

One of the biggest talking points coming out of Obama’s State of the Union address tonight has nothing to do with the President’s agenda for the year — instead, the chatter currently threatening to overwhelm any serious discussion of national issues is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews … Read More »

To describe a series as “cute” might come off as demeaning or patronizing, especially when it’s a relationship-focused series featuring a female protagonist. But it’s hard to resist applying the term to Chaos Theory, the New York-based episodic tale of Jess (Lauren Cook), whose … Read More »

The lonelygirl15 web series franchise has always drawn its success from its fans. But ever since its original creators changed their focus to branded content over original, that has literally been the case thanks to The Show is Yours project, which allowed members of … Read More »

Despite all the niche topics web video has explored since its inception, I thought we’d have a little longer before the arrival of a scripted show revolving around abortion. But, with a release timed around the 37th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade court … Read More »

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