The International Academy of Web Television nominated my web series A Comicbook Orange for three IAWTV Awards!

• Best Hosted (Taped) Web Series – A Comicbook Orange
• Best Host (Taped) – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Writing (Non-Fiction) – Rudy Jahchan, A Comicbook Orange

We’re all really grateful to the voting members of the IAWTV and I’m looking forward to getting all dressed up and attending the ceremony at CES in Las Vegas! For those who followed my dress exploits before the last big award show I received a nomination for, you’ll be happy/sad to find out I already bought a dress this time!

Be sure to check out the full list of nominees. As a Trekkie, I’m happy to see the amazing Jeri Ryan nominated for Best Female Performance (Drama) for her work on Mortal Kombat: Legacy. Similarly, I’m also relieved to see I’m not in the same category as her. ;) Congrats, Jeri, I hope to see you at the ceremony!

The award ceremony will take place on January 12th, 2012 and will be live-streamed online. I’ll remind you closer to the date and link to the stream from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and my blog.

After producers Paula Rhodes and Stephanie Thorpe showed a teaser at Wondercon last week, we’ve got a lot of great coverage everywhere from io9 to BoingBoing! In fact, Attack of the Show will be doing a segment about it today on G4!!!

I hope you enjoy the above “trailer” we all made with lots of love and respect to the ElfQuest comic series. We had an amazing time making it and would do it again in a heartbeat. Thanks to Paula and Stephanie for all their hard work… I still can’t believe Paula made most of those costumes BY HAND!!!

Please share and enjoy! ;)

Remember when vampires and zombies were the big thing and everyone was wondering what’s next? A lot of people thought werewolves would get big, and some even jokingly predicted mummies, but a couple of weeks ago we wrapped on our ElfQuest fan trailer shoot and a few days later my friend Felicia Day announced her next web series, Dragon Age: Redemption, in which she plays a badass knife-wielding elf!

I was never a huge elf enthusiast, but as a former Pixie (a Brownie in the Girl Guides, to be precise), and a girl obsessed with fairies after reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream in grade 8, I have to say that I’m pretty excited about the whole thing.

Our ElfQuest fan trailer should be online in early April, so until then be sure to check out all the great behind the scenes photos on Facebook and Flickr. I’ve also heard that G4TV‘s Attack of the Show will be showing some behind the scenes footage and interviews on an upcoming show, so I’ll try to keep you updated on that.

And for other elven awesomeness, check out Felicia’s Dragon Age: Redemption photos on Flickr and her behind the scenes interview that aired on X-Play last week. The web series is set to launch in August.

So, whether it’s our upward pointing ElfQuest ears, or Felicia’s backfacing Dragon Age ears, prepare yourself for the impending Elfpocalypse!

As you know, I’m going to be acting in a fan funded Elfquest fan film produced by lovely web vixens Paula Rhodes and Stephanie Thorpe. There is still some equipment on their wish list and if you have any of the items listed below and are willing to lend them to us over the weekend of February 11-13, please email Paula to let us know!

The wishlist:

• 1 Ton Grip Package
• (2) 4×4 Diffusion Frames (250/Opal)
• (4) 4×4 Solid Floppy
• 1200 HMI Par
• 400 Joker w/Chimera
• 400 Slimverter
• (4) 30 Volt Batteries
• 1k 407
• 1k Variac
• (2) Combo Stands
• (3) Baby Stands
• (1) Primi Stand
• Suitcase Generator
• (10) 50′ Stingers
• Wardrobe rack
• 3 or 4 Walkies
• Monitor for 7D plus connecting cable

If you don’t have the equipment, but know people who might… please help us spread the news! Feel free to share this link or click the retweet/Like buttons above!

Help us make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself. Go here to vote for A Comicbook Orange. It would mean a lot to me and my crew… we do this out of passion, not money, so winning an award would be icing on the cake.

And thanks to those of you who’ve already voted for us. I see your replies and encouragement on Twitter and Facebook, and it fills my heart with happiness, rainbows and whuffie. ;)

If you haven’t seen an episode of A Comicbook Orange before, below is probably my favorite episode of 2010. It features an interview with Rick Remender, one of my favorite writers (read XXXombies if you haven’t already!), and an adorable skit making fun of how incredibly late Captain America: Reborn issues have been.

I’ve also uploaded some photos from the con on Flickr.

Plus this:

Equals this:

Thanks to Daniel Logan for being silly with me…

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

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

Lack-of-script critiques aside, all the leading web video reporters have been going ape-shit at the $500 CAD budget that creators Purchase Brothers reportedly spent on the production (Story links: Tubefilter, NewTeeVee, Tim Street). Obviously this sounds impressive, but there’s a LOT of factors that we all need to keep in perspective.

Rudy and I have often boasted that we made Galacticast for $0, or for the price of pizza*! (Har har…) But the reality of the situation is that we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars purchasing equipment, costumes, props, etc. over the years… without paying countless friends/actors who’ve worked for, at most, pizza.

*Note: The road to professionalism is lined with pizza.

Over time, Rudy and I have become well-versed in the real cost of producing professional scripted web series and, let me tell you, it’s much more than $500 CAD/video. In fact, in a blog post made last year, Kent Nichols explains how it costs $6000 USD to make one episode of Ask A Ninja. The Purchase Brothers admit that they count costumes and guns as the bulk of the budget, so here’s a list of people that probably worked on the production without getting paid**:

• Actors/Friends/Crew – I’m guessing there were at least 4 of them
• Editor – Experienced, but unpaid
• Cameraman – Again, experienced but unpaid
• CGI animator – Has obviously been working A LOT of hours on this
• Voice actors – To provide voiceover (walky-talky scene)

**Note: A lot of these people probably wore a lot of hats to make this video… which is fine. But, considering the video was shot “last year”, think about how many unpaid hours they’ve put into it.

Next is a list of important expenses that were not included in the budget***:

• Travel – They flew from Toronto to Seattle for the shoot. If they had at least 4 cast/crew, the travel probably cost at least $2000
• HD Camera – Probably originally cost about $5000
• Boom mic – Not to mention the boom operator
• Computer with editing, modeling and SFX software

***Purchase Brothers admitted in an interview that they already owned the equipment, so it wasn’t included in the budget. Makes sense, but I’m curious if they initially paid for the equipment out of pocket like Rudy and I did on Galacticast. Also, they’re still not taking into account the cost of travel, why is that? Even if they own their own airplane, they still have to pay for the gas.

Just so we’re clear… I’m not saying that this insanely-low budget is a bad thing, I just want everyone to be clear that this was an amateur production made by professionals. And, as such, we can’t all budget our videos to be $500… so going ape-shit over how low the budget was is completely premature.

Even when Rudy and I were in full season of Galacticast and weren’t paying ourselves or our actors a dime, we still had to pay our lawyer (who looked over countless contacts we received for licensing deals), our accountant (because once we started making money, we had to manage our company taxes), and our HD camera loan (plus insurance). We also had other big expenses like buying lights, a green screen (and stand), laptops, editing and SFX software, costumes, props, catering, promotional material, etc. That certainly brought our budget higher than $500/episode without paying anyone who actually WORKED on the videos (writer, director, actors, editor(s), producers, etc.).

At this point in our business, we’re looking into the details of hiring REAL actors… as even our best friends in Los Angeles are union members. One thing we’ve learned in our research has been that even if you want to make a video for free without any union actors, the State of California has their own law… it’s called minimum wage. And if you expect everyone to work for free, you may get in trouble if the State finds out.

At this point, You: “Casey, why are you getting so down on this?”

The reason is simple, Me: “Sure, you can say your budget is super cheap… but remember that it’s only cheap because you’re not paying anyone or taking all expenses into account. When someone comes along offering you x-amount for licensing or buying your content outright, you’d better know what your REAL budget is… otherwise, you could be agreeing to a contract paying end’s meat, or less.“