Right now, awards shows are NMR’s bread & butter. We live or die based on the baskets of muffins and pastries sent to us by nominees hoping to curry our favor (well, we should live or die by this! Start sending baskets, nominees!). Okay, really we expend a lot of ink during these months, covering the goings-on of many of the more popular web-based award shows. And of all the web-based award shows, none is more prolific than the Webbys, who, in their 17th year, just released their list of latest nominees today.
Unfortunately, there is a niggling problem that taints awards shows. And that problem is the seeming need to have “celebrity winners.” See, awards shows want legitimacy, but they also want press. And press follows celebrity. So frequently, awards seem to get tilted in the direction of the celebrities even if the celebrity project is not necessarily the most deserving.
I propose a test! I am going to highlight (in blue) all the Webby’s nominees I think are going to win. In particular, I will select most every nominee in which a celebrity’s name precedes the series, i.e. “Tom Hanks’ Electric City” (or one I know to have a strong celebrity presence/hipster cache like “Burning Love”). Some of these shows I’ve seen, some of these I haven’t yet. I will revisit this list after the Webbys air on May 21st and see how I’ve fared. Feel free to print this list and follow along.
Also, make sure you vote for the Webby’s “People’s Voice” Audience Awards by April 25th!
Best Comedy Longform or Series
Burning Love
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
Neil’s Puppet Dreams
Clueless Gamer with Conan O’Brien
Bad Lip Reading
Best Drama
Chasing The Hill
The Beauty Inside
The Walking Dead Cold Storage Webisodes
Tom Hanks’ Electric City
Cuckoo (The Full Series)
Best Reality
Hope Stories – Personal accounts of recovery from drug & alcohol addiction.
Kids React
OAK Reverse Robberies
Life Interrupted
Failure Club
Best Web Personality/Host
PBS Idea Channel
Woman v. Workout
7 Minutes in Heaven
Chris Hardwick’s All Star Celebrity Bowling
Fresh Off The Boat with Eddie
Best Individual Performance
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
Charlize Theron Gets Hacked
Jean Dujardin’s Villain Auditions
Burning Love
Lena Dunham for Obama for America: “First Time”
Animation
The Polar Bears Movie
Princess
Dumb Ways to Die
Pitchfork’s Frames
WILLSHAKE
Comedy: Individual Short or Episode
THE NFL: A Bad Lip Reading
Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends
Bar Refaeli’s Sex Tape Kickstarter
Wire: The Musical
Real Actors Read Yelp
Variety
Amoeba Music’s What’s In My Bag?
Fandango presents “The Frontrunners,” hosted by Dave Karger
Metaphysical Milkshake
Serious Jibber Jabber with Conan O’Brien
Cambridge Nights
Video Channels and Networks – Entertainment
Crackle
Music Choice Primed: A$AP Rocky
Nerdist Channel
Pitchfork TV
The Creators Project
Video Channels and Networks – News & Information
HuffPost Live
NMA.tv (Taiwanese Animations)
ReutersTV
New York Times Video
The Young Turks
Video Channels and Networks – Variety
THNKR
TED
Henry Review
SoulPancake
The Switch
Best Writing
Hashtag Killer
Burning Love
Presidential Clippings
Adirondack
The Walking Dead Cold Storage Webisodes
Best Editing
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
MERCEDES YOU DRIVE
H+ The Digital Series
In Practice: David Byrne And St. Vincent
PBS Idea Channel
How To & DIY
CNET How To
Spaces
iVillage’s “My Best Idea”
How I use GoPro To Shoot Documentaries
MANSOME
Documentary Series
FOCUS FORWARD Short Films, Big Ideas
ESPN 30 For 30 Short Film Series
Death penalty on trial
A Day in the Life
Here at Home
Video Networks / Channels – How To / DIY
Creativebug
DailyCandy How-To Video Channel
TRESemme Style Studio
HGTV Remodels’ House Counselor
Stan Winston School of Character Arts
Best Use of Interactive Video
Hello, Again: Beck 360º Experience.
Bear 71
Clouds Over Cuba
Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek
The Trip
News & Politics: Individual Episode
9/11 Memorial Offers Quiet Amid New York Chaos, Designer Michael Arad Says
Road Trip: What Does Boston Think of Mitt Romney
Former Hostage Shane Bauer Returns to Solitary
Megafires: The New Normal In The American Southwest
The Mexican Mormon War
News & Politics: Series
The silent rooms – after the July 22 terrorist attack in Norway
On Location
Bill Maher Overtime
Pop Up Politics: Beyond The Speeches
VICE News
Branded Entertainment Long Form
K-Swiss Blades by Kenny Powers
The Polar Bears Movie
Project Re: Brief, The Documentary
The Beauty Inside
Red Bull Kluge
Branded Entertainment Scripted
Move On
Departure Date
New York Writes Itself/The Chairman
The Beauty Inside
FCU: Fact Checkers
Branded Entertainment Short Form
Project Re: Brief, Re-imagining Coca-Cola “Hilltop”
Muhammad Ali – Word
Red Bull Stratos
Bodyform :: ‘The Truth’
Speed of Light, aka The World’s Tiniest Police Chase
Branded Entertainment Unscripted
Our Food. Your Questions.
Etsy’s “Handmade Portraits” Series
Google+ Stories: Virtual Photo Walks
Tundra Endeavour “The Ultimate Journey”
Inside Breaking Bad
Sports
BBC Olympics
Pulse
Kenny Mayneâs Wider World of Sports: Season 2
More than a club: FC Barcelona and Catalonia’s road to independence
Paddling Blind
Technology
The Engadget Show
“At night you won’t switch on the ceiling lamp. You’ll switch on the window”
The Power and the Pitfalls of Big Data
GE paper
Decoding cyberspace: A new domain of war
Travel & Adventure
Up to Speed
A Beautiful Waste
The Dime Traveler – Great Ape Escape
The Vagabond Project
UNIQUE
Documentary: Individual Episode
Out for Change
America The Gutted
The Roper
Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin
The Unseen Bean
Best Events & Live Casts
GRAMMY Live
TED
NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert Platform
Red Bull Stratos
BMW Tate Live: Performance Room
Video Remixes/Mashups
So Disrespectful
Film v Music
Fists of Fusian
Mister Rogers Remixed: Garden of Your Mind
‘Fenton’ 4GEE Remaster
Viral
Nightfall
Cat-Friend vs Dog-Friend
Textually Active
Grandmas Watch Kardashian Sex Tape
Dumb Ways to Die
Experimental & Weird
Fresh Prince: Google Translated
Corridor Digital’s The Glitch
THE LAST GOODBYE
Found Photos: The 1930s In Full Color
The Carp and The Seagull
Music
BjÓ§rk – Mutual Core
Field Recordings
Pitchfork’s Modest Mouse: The Lonesome Crowded West
Sound and Vision
Sigur Ros “Fjogur Piano”
Public Service & Activism
Bear 71
A woman’s nightmare
Greenpeace – Support Sustainable Fishermen
Shocking Animal Cruelty at Tyson Foods Supplier
Follow the Frog
Video Channels and Networks – Public Service & Activism
Ça finit là (It ends now)
Creative cowboy films
GED Pep Talks
The Uncultured Project
The Human Rights Channel: Curated by WITNESS, Powered by Storyful, Hosted on YouTube
(Thanks to Video Ink for compiling the nominees into proper list form)
[…] you still need proof, check out Harley Morenstein of Epic Meal Time doing his best Obi Wan to Jesse Heiman (the kid who made out with Bar Refaeli in that GoDaddy commercial) for that above teaser I told you […]