UNboxd Media has lined up several name actors for its upcoming Web original Suite 7. The series, a weekly anthology featuring seven different couples each staying in the same hotel suite at different times, features Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes, Gilmore Girls), Shannen Doherty (Beverly Hills, 90210), Illeana Douglas and Craig Bierko.
Suite 7 is the latest sign that entertainment industry talent is increasingly taking to branded entertainment. The show was developed by branded entertainment studio, Unboxd Media.
The Temp Life began as a "cost-effective" way to boost brand recognition and became a bona fide phenomenon. At the start of its most charming season, the charming weekly comedy series had notched roughly 18 million views.
Ms. Douglas, who views Web video as a new outlet for artists like herself, said Ikea gave her great autonomy, asking her only to keep the content family-friendly. This summer, she is recruiting a second sponsor, shooting a third season of the show and planning a tour. She would still like to see “Easy to Assemble” end up on television, but she is satisfied that she has built a franchise on her own, online.
Cleveland wears many hats as a producer of numerous web series, including The Webventures of Justin & Aldenand The Temp Life, in which he also stars. Below, he discusses web video’s trouble with discoverability, his secret crush on Clicker.com and the difficulties that come with producing branded content.
Here's some of part 2 of Wilson's 'Webventures' interview for PinkRaygun.com. Read the full interview here.
Continuing our exclusive interview with Wilson Cleveland, webseries veteran and producer of The Webventures of Justin & Alden. Here Wilson talks about the Streamys themselves and gives some advice for aspiring web creators:
PRG: What would your advice be to aspiring webseries creators – what should they be doing to get their webseries noticed?
WC: I could go on forever with this question but here are my top 4 pieces of advice:
- Make the show you want to make because there’s an audience for everything.
- Know the audience you’re making your series for, find out where they hang out online: what blogs they read, what blogs they write, what videos they watch, who they follow on Twitter, what they Like on Facebook, etc. Then start talking to them about your show.
- Syndicate your show to every video site that makes sense to your audience. Not sure what those are? Use sites like Compete and Quantcast to get the demographics but if nothing else, YouTube and Blip.tv are musts.
- Email a link to your show to Tubefilter and NewTeeVee. A write-up on one or both let’s your fellow creators know you’ve arrived and once you’re on the community’s radar, you’ll find we’re a very supportive bunch.
PRG: Talk has turned to how LA-centric webseries appear to be since most webseries seem to come out of LA. Do you think that is inevitable and will it continue in the future?
WC: I live in New York, home of My Damn Channel and NextNewNetworks, among others so I’m not totally sold on the idea that most web series come out of L.A; which is not to say I believe web series ONLY come out of those two cities. Web series come from anywhere and everywhere, which is what makes the medium so exciting and interesting. Anyone But Me, Auto-Tune The News, Wainy Days, The Hayley Project, The Temp Life, The ‘Burg, Key of Awesome, Rocketboom, Vendr.TV are all New York-based web series, so we can still represent!
Webventures features almost everyone currently worth talking about in the space. The five episodes ruthlessly parody major web series like The Guild and The Bannen Way. An almost countless number of web video stars appear over the course of the often very, very funny series.
By Higlet; Read All of Part One Here at PinkRaygun.com
Excerpt:
In case you didn’t know, the season finale premiered last week with shocking and hilarious revelations, Felicia Day, Ninjas and live/dead presidents. Webventures has broken new ground in several ways, not least the sheer amount of webseries stars they managed to cram into the five episodes. I’m not sure there is a complete list of all the stars and cameos anywhere but if there were, it would be full of awesome. And be immensely long.
PRG: Apart from the stars, Justin and Alden – who are, by the way, very arresting as the central “manlationship” of the show – you have some huge names as guests. What was it like working with so many different stars?
WC: It was like being on the most epic Love Boat episode EVER! I’m either friends, or had worked with most of theWebventures cast as an actor, producer or marketer so Sandeep (who is also a Webventures producer) and I cast everyone directly. Taryn Southern, Sandeep, David Nett and Illeana are some of my favorite people and have all guest-starred on The Temp Life; I also work closely with Illeana on Easy to Assemble, which is how I know Doug Sarine. Milo’s a good friend and one of the funniest dudes on the planet next to Tony Janning. Diggnation and Lonelygirl15 are solely responsible for inspiring me to get into web TV 4 years ago so I had to have Alex Albrecht and Jessica Rose in the show. Robin Thorsen is beyond delightful. I got to shoot my Webventures cameo with Felicia and have since tried to figure out how to make sure that goes on my tombstone. You just cant not adore her, but more than that I respect the Hell out of what she’s accomplished with her career to get to where she is. She’s amazing. As for working with Shannen Doherty, that’s an item I can officially cross off my bucket list. You’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger Shannen Doherty fan than me. I’m talking YEARS, like Little House on the Prairie years. Heathers is an all-time favorite and Brenda Walsh is my co-pilot.
“Webventures” has ninjas, vampires, superheroes, time travel, and George Washington as a principle character… so we’ve essentially eliminated subtlety and realism right off the bat like any smart, absurdest comedy does.
The web talent cameos aren’t just in front of the camera, with Sean Becker, Streamy-winning director of The Guild, helming the series. Legend of Neil creators Tony Janning and Sandeep Parikh penned the script, and UNboxd's Wilson Cleveland was the primary producer overseeing the production and orchestrating the sponsorship deal.
Cadbury's Trident Layers®, is standing by its association with the ceremony, acting as the presenting sponsor of a Streamy-themed web series, "The Webventures of Justin & Alden," premiering Tuesday on My Damn Channel
THE HUFFINGTON POST, Best and Worst-Dressed Brands of SXSWi
Wilson Cleveland of CJP understands that "social" does not mean "informal," it means "open" and hilarious to watch. The distribution was brilliant. When I hear about projects like this, I get giddy, because it's obviously about making good for the client, but it's also about making great art that is great business.
The Irish Times, New Directions in Technology
A panel on Big Campaigns on Digital Dollars examined how Ikea and the television networks behind such shows as Gossip Girl and Heroes were seeking to get more bang from less bucks by way of viral videos and online campaigns. Sometimes, it came down to drawing in fans of the brand to get involved. “Ikea is like Apple, but with tables,” commented panellist Wilson Cleveland of CJP Digital Media about this approach.
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EXCERPT: 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 reprises her gumpy midwest IT tech Nancy Roder for a few more episodes.
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.
We were BEYOND thrilled when The Temp Life, Easy to Assemble and Sparhusen received a collective 8 nominations (two for Best Branded Entertainment Web Series) in the second-annual Streamy Awards, often referred to as the Web Television equivalent of the Emmys or Oscars. Nominees in 15 categories were selected from an initial 190,000 public submissions of over 2,000 shows from 130 countries so...you know, that's pretty awesome.
By Marc Hustvedt
EXCERPT: Streamy-winning director Blake Calhoun (Pink) has announced his latest web series project today, a sci-fi drama set in space called Continuum. The series will star Harper’s Globe and loneylgirl15 star Melanie Merkosky (left) as Reagen, a young woman who awakes on a space ship without any memory of what she is doing there. Her only companion on board is the ship’s computer, a female spin on 2001’s “Hal,” voiced by Taryn O’Neill (Compulsions, After Judgment). Also announced for the cast is Brad Hawkins (Pink) as Tipton.
Calhoun and co. are calling the project “a futuristic thriller in the noir-ish tradition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien.” Loud Pictures, Calhoun’s production company is producing along with Alternative Fuel, a multiplatform company he co-founded with Pink producer Mike Maden. Also producing is CJP Digital Media, with Wilson Cleveland involved on distribution and marketing of the series, as it does for The Fall of Kaden, IKEA-backed Easy to Assemble and Spherion-sponsored The Temp Life.
Read the Full Post Here
Original Web Series Created and Produced by 'Pink's' Blake Calhoun and Mike Maden Starts Shooting February 22nd
Director Blake Calhoun and longtime producing partner Mike Maden, the award-winning production team behind some of the Web's most cinematic original series including Pink, 88 Hits and TheWB.com's forthcoming Exposed, today announced principal photography on their next digital project, the sci-fi thriller series Continuum, will begin February 22nd in Dallas, Texas and Los Angeles and will release the first ten episodes this summer.
Created by Calhoun and Maden and produced & directed by Calhoun, Continuum is a futuristic thriller in the noir-ish tradition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien starring Melanie Merkosky (CBS/EQAL's Harper's Globe) as Raegen, a woman who mysteriously finds herself aboard a space ship with no memory of how she got there and at the mercy of the ship's computer, voiced by actress/producer Taryn O'Neill, best-known for breakout performances in Compulsions (for which she recently won the inaugural Indie Soap Award for Best Supporting Actress) and the post-apocalyptic After Judgment franchise. Brad Hawkins, veteran TV/film actor and costar of Pink, rounds out Continuum’s minimal cast as Tipton.
Continuum is being produced by Calhoun and Maden's Alternative Fuel and Loud Pictures production companies in association with CJP Digital Media, the production/distribution/promotion arm behind successful Web originals including Illeana Douglas's IKEA-branded comedy Easy to Assemble, Spherion-sponsored The Temp Life (which will feature O’Neill in the Feb 8 episode) and dark crime drama The Fall of Kaden. Calhoun and Maden are represented by United Talent Agency and managed by (CJP client) Generate.
Kicking off the evening, Kaden creators Matt Doubler and Adam Leiphart matched up with Blue Movies creator Scott Brown to show a surprise “For Your Consideration” video (above), poking fun at the precarious business of web series. They tapped the omnipresent Shira Lazar to ‘host’ the video which stars a smattering of each series’ lead actors. The screening theater was packed, with scant standing room space in the back.
Art and Applebees from Tape 6 on Vimeo.
