News

Summer is winding down and you know what that means -- it's back to school time.

Hundreds of anxious students will leave their nests and begin their adulthood at universities. Their new-found freedom combined with a lack of a comfort zone can be equally exciting and terrifying. Can you feel the stress building yet?

Thankfully, we rounded up some useful tips (from teen college movies) to get them through freshmen year.

Dorm life:

1. Try your best to get along with your bizarre roommate. Draw up some rules or guidelines if needed. It'll make both your lives easier if you can keep it cordial.

2. Communal showers exist. Say goodbye to privacy until Thanksgiving break.

3. Dining halls are scary places ... food fights can happen. Always be on alert. You never want to be stuck in the cafeteria crossfire.

4. Speaking of dining halls, realize the food freedom available at your fingertips. Maintain...

This past Thursday over 250 of online video's top creators, producers, talent, executives, agents, distributors, and technologists packed into theStream.tv's Hollywood Studios for Tubefilter's Social Media Week La panel, Social Video On Steroids. This time around we pulled together a panel of social media experts with a focus on online video: Greg Goodfried, Founder and President of Eqal, which now builds influencer networks around celebrities and brands since its hit lonelygirl15 took YouTube by storm and and defined "viral series"; Garret Law, Co-Founder and COO of Attention Span Media, an audience development agency that created Dorm Life, the most watched series on Hulu, and supported Simon Fuller's If I Can Dream and Cjp' Digital's Leap Year; and Amber Buhl, Director of Sales at Klout, whose social influence metric is now included on the resumes of prospective job applicants. Our panelists highlighted best practices in social video marketing, discussing the...

Morgan Spurlock is hardly new to web shows, in fact the Oscar-nomiated filmmaker (Super Size Me) was one of the first to leap in, with his man-on-the-street competition series I Bet You Will way back in the choppy video days of 2000, that would eventually get picked up by MTV. Now the filmmaker returns to the internet—and its much improved bandwidth—for distribution of his latest project, A Day in the Life which premiered yesterday on Hulu. The series of half hour mini-docs, delivered in easily watchable 22-minutes episodes, with each one tackling a different notable personality over a 24 hour period. First up for Spurlock is Virgin founder/CEO—and poster-child for adventureous billionaires everywhere—Sir Richard Branson. May 25 and 26 of 2011 were the days in question—it’s really ’24 hours in the life’ but the chosen title was a little more catchy. The episode started off just like any of...

Being a startup entrepreneur is hard. First, you have to find and execute a great idea (or at least an idea). And second, you have to take care of all the businessy things that come along with creating and operating a company. Things like taxes, payroll, health insurance, incorporation documents, small business insurance, and other important minutia and mandatory idiosyncrasies that make the government make sure it’s okay with whatever it is you’re doing. But where’s a startup entrepreneur supposed to learn about and acquire all these stamps, documents, and seals of approval? I have no idea! Well, except if you’re a professional services startup with 10 employees or less. Then I have some idea where you can get small business insurance. You can go to Hiscox. The London Stock Exchange-listed insurance provider that specializes in niche areas of the insurance market (including art collections and kidnapping...

Web shows about food are becoming so common I think I’ve lost count—VendrTV, Food Star, Cooking with Nonna, 12-Second Cocktails—but scripted comedies about hard core foodies? Those were sadly missing until now. Thankfully one new series, Foodies, explores the conflicted machinations of a foodie culture emboldened by dozens of competition reality shows and celebrity chefs. The American foodie is the modern derivation of the post-war French culinary zealot that infiltrated kitchens of a newly prosperous middle class. Only now it has anexed itself farther from “Anyone Can Cook” and Julia Child, morphing instead into a refined form of geek in constant distrust of the mainstream palate. This of course leads to a yuppie one-upmanship that finds even the sanest amongst us heading to Williams-Sonoma insisting on Mauviel copper saute pans instead of (gasp) that copper core nonsense. Grant shot the project under the AFTRA new media contract,...

Fox International Channels has launched Single Dads, an original scripted comedy web series on Hulu created by and starring comedy duo Pete Karinen and Brian Sacca of Pete And Brian and NBC.com's Fcu: Fact Checkers Unit. Single Dads chronicles the misadventures of two single fathers struggling with the responsibility of having kids: The series features the characters Pete and Brian, who met when they’ve both got kicked out of a parenting class at the local Ymca. They quickly became best friends, bonding over the fact that they both have one-year-olds—Pete Jr. and Theodore—who they are raising without the help of their mothers. Each episode will show them tackling a new task, from changing nappies to going on a “playdate.” They always have the best intentions, but inevitably do something irresponsible or thoughtless. Attention Span Media, the group behind Streamy Award nominated college mockumentary Dorm Life, is...

TheFABlife has been at 2010’s Austin City Limits all weekend catching as many bands as possible and hanging out at backstage interviews with our colleagues at VH1. We thought about writing a serious review of the music fest, but we aren’t exactly a serious music blog. So we decided to write about something that every living human being with half a pulse cares about. Who’s the hot? Here’s our list, counting down to #1. Lest you think we’re only about objectifying the fairer sex, check back later to see our list of Acl’s Hottest Indie Rock Boys. 10. Kim Schifino of Matt & Kim Sure, Kim Schifino has a great figure, a larger-than-life smile, bright eyes, and taut arms from years of banging on the drums. But what really makes Kim sexy is that nobody gets a party started like Matt & Kim, because they both put 100 percent into...

Happy Monday folks! I spent some time with my 3D glasses on this weekend, so either way you cut it - ironically or unironically - I'm part of Resident Evil's box office win this weekend. It was also a weekend for festivals of fall, farmers markets and a surprising amount of fur and faux-fur being sold on the streets of New York. It seems odd to me that someone would buy any sort of fur off the street, but I guess that's where you have to get it these days. I'm tempted to discuss my friend Rachel Paton who used to send me dead things through the mail, but that's be a digression we can't afford this week... Dark Tower's mammoth deal got left out of my Things this week, as did True Blood, because I've done my best to keep this post under 4,000 words (sorry about last week,...

Calico Works, in association with Attention Span Media (the group behind Streamy Awards nominated Dorm Life and Simon Fuller's If I Can Dream) premiered the long-awaited original web series The Clinic on Hulu today. The series may provide some humorous insight to those having trouble making sense of Proposition 19 on November's California ballot. Related News:‘The Clinic’ Pilot Coming, Trailer Smoking...

Ten episodes into the web’s first dance epic, we’re still really just at the beginning of the story of The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (The Lxd). Just over a month ago this thing debuted as Hulu’s first major dramatic web series, and weekly episodes (or chapters as they like to call them) would bring us the fictional origin stories of these formerly-underground hip hop dance styles. So now we take a little pause in the story, a moment to breathe and catch up on some of those other web series we’ve been meaning to watch. But with Season 2 already shot and slated to return early this fall, and Season 3 in the works, we won’t have long to wait. The latest episode (above) stars Christopher Scott—who is also one of the show’s choreographers—as Copeland, a lighting fast street tapper who we meet through...

The nominees for the 2010 Streamys were announced today. The Streamys celebrate online television programming and this year they have a fantastic line up of nominees. Last year was the Streamys debut year and the winners included high profile shows such as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and the exceptional Battlestar Galactica web series The Face of the Enemy.

This year there is even more competition with some really interesting content now being released on the web rather than through more traditional media routes. Two of my favourites from this year’s nominee list are the excellent Interview Project which is presented by davidlynch.com and the slightly flawed but thoroughly enjoyable Angel of Death, created by Ed Brubaker and starring Zoe Bell, which also received a DVD release last year.

The awards ceremony takes place on April 11th 2010 and the full list of nominees is listed below with handy links...

Has it been a year already? Submissions for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards opened today, honoring the best web television of 2009 in thirty-five different categories. Winners are determined in a hybrid of public submissions from the online community and peer voting by the International Academy of Web Television (Iawtv). Eligible shows up for consideration must have been released online at least three episodes during the 2009 calendar year. Many of last year's Streamy winners and nominees continued to thrive in 2009 with shows like The Guild, Dorm Life, Epic Fu and Tiki Bar TV all reaching new heights of viewership. But one thing is for certain, last year's multi-Streamy-winning Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog won't be back to compete this time around. (Unless they sneak out that long-rumored sequel in the next two weeks!) What's new this year? 12 new award categories have been added, based on community feedback from last year and the...

Dorm Life, the awkwardly absurd college life comedy web series released its first ever DVD today, Dorm Life: Semester One (Amazon.com Exclusive). The mockumentary series remains Hulu's most watched web original, aside from last year's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. While its heartbreaking two-part season finale came out back in July, the Streamy-nominated web series from indie production house Attention Span Media continued to grow in popularity. The deftly original students of “5 South” span the spectrum of characters—the overly excited, fun-loving Steph (Jessie Gaskell), the self-conscious bully Ra, Marshall (Brian C. Singleton), the frustrated, pretentious artist (Pancho Morris), average-guy Mike (Chris W. Smith). The DVD is being put out by New Video, the same distributor that picked up The Guild Seasons 1 & 2 for DVD as well as Dr. Horrible. What to expect from the $19.95 DVD: The jam-packed 118-minute Dorm Life: Semester 1 DVD consists of 20 five-to-six-minute episodes that perfectly...

The Temp Life has kind of flown under the radar in terms of branded web series successes, but ever since it first convinced a blue-chip sponsor to back the web comedy back in mid 2006, it has trekked on steadily delivering for both audience and sponsor. At first glance it portends to be another blah-blah office comedy, but the concept is actually pretty novel, given the show's sponsor, real-life recruiting and staffing company Spherion. Take a comical look at small off-brand temp agencies, well known to job-hopping New Yorkers, and show what could happen if you don't end up with one of the big boys like Spherion. The fictional agency, Commodity Staffing, carves out its niche as the dredges of temp jobs—think changing crusty urinal cakes and 24/7 lifecasting of a stuck-up socialite. Streamy-nominated writer Yuri Baranovsky (Break a Leg) has been hired to write the new episodes and The Hayley Project...

It started as a clever riff on Quarterlife, Marshall Herskovitz's popular web series-turned-short-lived-nbc drama, but somewhere along the line, 2/8 Life gathered up its own set of fans. The charming comedy of a group of twentysomethings, led by vlogger Angela Curtis (Nellie Barnett) in search for meaning in a hyper-connected world, returned for its second season on Hulu last week. Matt Vascellaro created the series which was developed as an original property for the Independent Comedy Network (Icn.TV). While Icn has pretty much been dormant this year, with several key members taking off for other ventures, it still technically owns 2/8 Life, which remains the site's most popular series. That didn't stop Vascellaro and his team from dusting of the second season which he says they shot over a year and half ago. I caught up with Vascellaro and asked about the choice to continue the series and the long...

It’s been a long day. 8 hours with a headset strapped to your face, pissed off people on the line, and one sexually suggestive caller doesn’t help matters much. As if things couldn’t get worse, someone stopped the countdown clock on the microwave mid-way through your oh-so-delicious penne pasta leftover from last night. Telemarketers, "tracking specialists," "sales associates," whatever you call them, they’re people too, with long days and tough bosses just like the rest of us. That’s the basis of a new comedy web series released by Rwp Productions from Austin, Texas titled Call Center, a mockumentary about an overnight shipping company. The series, created by Reagan Peterson, Galen Carter-Jeffrey, and Barbara Clark, tries to give us a hilarious look at who sits on the other end of the phone. According to information sent by Clark to us, the series will run 13 episodes. Each episode...

Hulu's hit webbie "Dorm Life" is a mockumentary series created by former and current students of UCLA that follows the fictional lives of the inhabitants of the college dorm floor 5 South. The webbie took the 2008 Webby Honoree for Best Writing and Comedy. All good things must come to an end, and in the season finale of Dorm Life, that statement holds true. Watch as the gang reminisces about the past year, and move forward in new chapters of their lives. Some big changes are in store for everyone.well, except for Marshall.

I'm usually not one to get sentimental, but I think I cried five times during the Dorm Life: Season 2 Finale which premiered today on Hulu. The Streamy Award nominated web series, which we have also confirmed is also ranked as the most popular web series on Hulu, is a comedic mockumentary following the lives of several college students thrown together on the same dorm floor. The two-part season finale, which takes place during the last days of school before summer, provides the perfect setting to resolve the rich character development which sets this series apart from the otherwise played-out Office-style format. Full of mischief, adventures, rivalries and romance, Dorm Life offers and insider's view of the rocky and often awkward road to adulthood. The ten students of "5 South" span the spectrum of characters—we have the overly excited, fun-loving Steph (Jessie Gaskell), the self-conscious bully Ra Marshall (Brian C. Singleton), the frustrated,...

In more news of web series second seasons, Poor Paul returned today kicking off its sophomore run with web television network KoldCast TV, which signed the series before its first season last fall, once again backing the outlandish roommate comedy. Zack Bennett is back as the eponymous Paul with daytime star Kevin G. Schmidt (The Young and the Restless) and Disney Channel regular Samantha Droke (Suite Life of Zack & Cody) returning as the scene-stealing co-stars. The Disney connection was actually played up in the publicity for the show as we were told that Schmidt and Droke are both starring in another upcoming Disney TV movie, The Princess Protection Program. Who knew? The only change on the cast was the role of Paul's roommate Clyde, which is being taken over by Wes Whitworth. Stoner comedian Guillermo Diaz (Weeds, Half Baked) is one of the slew of guest stars announced along with Mandy Jiroux,...

Winter Break seems so short during college; after all, it's only a month. Winter Break for Attention Span Media's Dorm Life fans, however, has been going on for much, much longer. We last caught up with the Dorm Life crew (creators Jessie Gaskell, Jim Brandon, and Brian Singelton) in late October to discover exactly what went into the making of the most popular web series on Hulu.com and we haven't heard much from them since. So we're glad to announce that, finally, you can shed your internships, ditch your friends, promise to call your parents every day, and move back into Dorm Life Season 2. As it turns out, the show has inked a deal with MySpace, so you'll be able to catch all the Season 2 episodes on MySpace Video's (fka MySpaceTV) Dorm Life page two days before they show up on any other video websites. The first episode is scheduled to debut this Saturday,...

After a nine-month hiatus, on March 2 the undergrads of Dorm Life are set to return from the longest Winter break ever. The mockumentary, produced by La-based Attention Span Media (Sock Tube, Lakeman), premiered in February of 2008 and documents the lives of the inhabitants of dormitory 5-South through the lenses of a documentary camera crew and the students’ webcams. Old fans of the series will not be disappointed with the new season - er, semester. The gang returns with the confidence and maturity (though that may not be the best adjective) you’d expect from a web series that’s become the all-time most popular web show on Hulu (yes, they even beat out Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible). While the first season rarely brought in characters outside the core group, the new episodes bring a few unfamiliar faces, which is always akin to new underpants - kinda funny feelin’ until...