We finally launched season 5 of A Comicbook Orange yesterday and it feels great! I’m dancing around my apartment today like a complete idiot. And, to make a day better, I also just got off the phone about something really exciting… so keep your fingers crossed for me

Also out this week is an interview that Rudy and I did with The Web Files. The interview turned out even better than I thought it would because of the awesome editing! Take a look:

And, lastly, thanks to Tubefilter for the blog post yesterday, and thanks to YouTube and Blip.tv for featuring our new episode! 2010 is off to a great start… XOXO

Today is the last day to nominate your picks for the Streamy Awards. Here is a quick list of categories we’re eligible for. If you’ve already nominated us, you can do it again today! The nominee with the most nominations in any category becomes a guaranteed finalist, so OM NOM NOM NOM!!!

• Best Hosted Web Series – A Comicbook Orange
• Best Web Series Host – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Guest Star in a Web Series – Casey McKinnon, Hurtling Through Space at an Alarming Rate
• Best Editing in a Web Series – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Art Direction in a Web Series – Josh Allard, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Visual Effects in a Web Series – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Original Music in a Web Series – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange (for my Dr. Horrible prequel song)

Thanks,
♥ Casey XOXO

Rudy Jahchan and Casey McKinnon re-create the Galacticast intro at the 2009 Streamy Awards. Photo courtesy of Kodak.

The 2009 Streamy Awards was the first awards show since the 2006 Vloggies to be devoted entirely to web video. As a result, it was a wonderful celebration of what I’ve been passionate about doing and advocating for the past 4+ years. Unfortunately, since my 2008 was spent relocating to Los Angeles and trying to get established, it was the ONLY year that we hadn’t made enough episodes of a web series to qualify for a nomination! Still, we watched contently as many of our good friends won for their shows. (We were probably most proud of our friends at Epic Fu who won for Best Hosted Web Series.)

2010 is going to be different. No longer are we in production limbo, we are back in full force.

The 2009 Streamys gave me the drive I needed to come back with a vengeance. Along with the support of my partner and co-writer Rudy Jahchan, the passion of our new director Josh Allard, the encouragement of our friend (and first Season 3 interviewee) Ben Templesmith, the assistance of Meltdown Comics for providing a location for our interviews, and our devoted A Comicbook Orange fans, I worked my little ass off to bring the show back.

And we did it all for free… because that’s how we roll.

So this year I ask you to please help keep us driven. If you love what we’ve been doing, please nominate us in as many categories of the Streamy Awards that we’re eligible to enter. Here’s a list:

• Best Hosted Web Series – A Comicbook Orange
• Best Web Series Host – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Guest Star in a Web Series – Casey McKinnon, Hurtling Through Space at an Alarming Rate
• Best Editing in a Web Series – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Art Direction in a Web Series – Josh Allard, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Visual Effects in a Web Series – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Original Music in a Web Series – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange (for my Dr. Horrible prequel song)

And thanks to all of you who encouraged us to bring A Comicbook Orange back. Friends, fans, comic connoisseurs… you are the reason we do what we do.

♥ Casey XOXO

…at an Alarming Rate. Link

My guest appearance on sci-fi comedy web series Hurtling Through Space at an Alarming Rate went up last month! Be sure to check it out, if you haven’t already. There could be a Streamy Award nomination for Best Guest Star in there somewhere…

I was really excited when creator Mike Davies suggested I play the role of Kalm. Not only am I a lover of old Trek, but I’ve even read The Eugenics Wars series that explained the rise and fall of Khan Noonien Singh (which I was critical of, but still quite enjoyed) and, as an actor, I was ecstatic to be stepping into Riccardo Montelban’s Shakespearean shoes.

My only disappointment was that I felt the final edits downplayed the lesbian undertones I was going for with the character. However, to their defense… the character wasn’t written with lesbian undertones in mind, that was just my creative interpretation. In fact, at one point we were even talking about having a lesbian kiss between me and Taryn O’Neill! I felt that after Mike Davies grabbed Hottie McHotterson to make out in the middle of the video game face off, Kalm’s naturally vengeful reaction would be to grab Taryn’s character and kiss her, therefore undermining Mike’s attempt to throw Kalm off. I even got the “ok” from my boyfriend Rudy… what a forward thinking man!

Unfortunately, we never shot the kiss and the lesbian flirty looks between me and Taryn O’Neill were pretty much cut out… but I can always hope that Mike’ll write it in a future episode… Right, Mike? Pretty please…?

And, for the record, I’m not the only one who wants more hot girl-on-girl action… here’s the IM chat I had with Rudy just after he showed the episode to his co-workers:

The struggle to get web series listed on IMDb is a long and epic one. Although our production company has 2/3 of our major web series titles already listed on the database as TV series (A Comicbook Orange and Galacticast), my own profile is still so barren that it makes me look like a n00b because I haven’t submitted other minor titles like work for hire hosting gigs, the miniseries we made for Next New Networks, guest starring roles I’ve done for other web series and video interviews people have done with me online.

At South by Southwest this past March, IMDb founder Col Needham said that a web series category will be added to the directory in the second or third quarter of this year (ie. anytime between April 1 – September 31). Unfortunately, I realized in early October that they still hadn’t made the change and I contacted Needham for a comment. On October 5, 2009 I wrote:

Hi Col!

Last time we spoke (SXSW last March) you said that labels for web series on IMDb should be pushed out in the 2nd or 3rd quarter. I just wanted to touch base and see if that’s gone through since I haven’t seen any changes to existing listings. Any updates on the subject that you can share?

Best,
Casey

I hadn’t heard back from him for a while and was starting to think the company was avoiding the issue, but on November 27, 2009 he replied as follows:

Hi Casey,

Sorry for the delayed reply … we’ve been finalizing our plans for 2010. Unfortunately circumstances changed following March and we have not yet been able to complete the work required to support web series. Much of the delay is because this area is incredibly complicated and affects a large number of IMDb software systems. We want to do this work properly to ensure that new title types of all kinds can be added more easily in future. The work has been rescheduled for 2010, but learning from past experience, we cannot be more specific on a launch date, sorry. In the meantime web series can continued to be added as if they were TV-series and will be converted over once they are properly supported.

Cheers,
Col

So, for the time being, I encourage all web series creators to go ahead and submit their show as a TV series. Let’s take over the site with our awesomeness… seriously. Here are a few pointers I’ve written down to help you get your show listed:

• Provide detailed credits of all the people who’ve worked on your series
• Include links to all of your show’s online profiles, especially fan pages and Twitter profile if you have a large audience of followers
• Link to all your major video upload sites, making sure to include sites that display high viewcounts
• Be sure to mention any public screenings or film festivals your videos have appeared in
• If you’ve received any mainstream press (newspapers, magazines, TV), provide a link to the article/segment online

No matter what you do, your title will probably not be accepted the first time. When they send you an email explaining why, wrack your brain, add more information and re-submit the title. Once the title has been added (and you may not get an email notification that it’s up), go ahead and add information on specific episodes… I’m planning to do this over the holidays

Hope this helps you. I also hope that IMDb follows through with their plan to add a web series category… this is a popular industry we’re in, and it ain’t “new” media anymore.