This week, Liz Shannon Miller puts Wilson through New TeeVee's 5 Questions: 

Cleveland wears many hats as a producer of numerous web series, including The Webventures of Justin & Alden and 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.

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I think Google TV will make this a more mainstream habit (all being relative) and it will be interesting to see where these numbers net out in 6-8 months time. 

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!

Read the full interview here.

How The Webventures of Justin & Alden Survived the Streamy Awards
By Liz Shannon Miller

Excerpt: The Webventures of Justin and Alden 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, but do so with the guidance of some of the best comedic talent in web content today, thanks to direction by The Guild‘s Sean Becker and writing by Legend of Neil‘s Tony Janning and Sandeep Parikh. An almost countless number of web video stars appear over the course of the often very, very funny series.

Just one problem: The entire series was constructed around the Streamy Awards, with major plot points actually filmed at the event (including an onstage interruption captured during the live broadcast). The decision to do this, however, was made without realizing how badly things might go at the actual show. So I asked Cleveland a few questions via email about the architecture of the series and how Trident reacted to the execution of the awards (including the truth behind the rumors that Trident tried to get its sponsorship money back afterwards). An edited version of our conversation follows:

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 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.

Read All of Part One Here

By Killian
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You have a lot of Web-celeb talent associated with the series – how did everyone get attached? Was that a difficult feat?

Wilson Cleveland: Whenever I work with a brand that’s investing in Web TV, I want to include people on the project who are making Web TV worthy of investment. I’m either friends, or have worked with a lot of these people as an actor, producer or marketer so, between my buddy Sandeep and I, we made a lot of calls and sent a lot of emails and we feel lucky and grateful everyone wanted to do the show. I think if we were shooting “Webventures” at any time other than the week before The Streamys, it would have been very difficult to assemble this many Web TV celebs in a single series.

What prompted you to team up with Trident? What was that process like?

Wilson Cleveland: Horizon Media actually brought in CJP to produce “Webventures” for their clients at Trident. We’d met the team from Horizon last summer at Tubefilter’s Onfronts Event for brands and content creators and we’d been discussing partnering on a project ever since.

How do you integrate a product like Trident gum into a web series without it coming off like a commercial? Or does it? What was your angle?

Wilson Cleveland: “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 genius of Sandeep and Tony’s script is, they’ve established this world that’s so ridiculous, so funny, that making the gum itself anything less than a main character throughout the series would be more obvious that if we were trying to keep the branding subtle. You can’t sneak a product placement in a scene where the first President of the United States is siphoning gas out of a beat-up Nissan like it’s no big deal; and that’s why this series works so well.

By Marc Hustvedt

Full Story

Excerpt: 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 if that’s not enough, Easy to Assemble producers Illeana Douglas and Dominik Rausch came on board to produce. CJP Digital’s Wilson Cleveland was the primary producer overseeing the production and orchestrating the sponsorship deal.

Appearing in the series: Alex Albrecht (Diggnation), Wilson Cleveland (The Temp Life), Felicia Day (The Guild), Zadi Diaz (Epic Fu), Shannen Doherty (Beverly Hills, 90210), Illeana Douglas (Easy to Assemble), Mark Gantt (The Bannen Way), Tony Janning (The Legend of Neil), Sandeep Parikh (The Guild), Jessica Rose (lonelygirl15), Douglas Sarine (Ask a Ninja), Randy Sklar (Back on Topps), Taryn Southern (Sorority Forever), Robin Thorsen (The Guild), Milo Ventimiglia (Ultradome, Heroes) and David Wain (Wainy Days).

By Andrew Hampp

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Excerpt: 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, Facebook, YouTube and other key web and video-on-demand platforms. The series is produced by CJP Digital Media's Wilson Cleveland, "The Guild" star Sandeep Parikh, and Illeana Douglas and Dominik Rausch of "Easy to Assemble," and is executed by Trident's media agency, Horizon Media.

The scripted web series follows struggling actors Justin Tyler and Alden Ford on a quest across Los Angeles to get their unproduced web script in the hands of the right star. Along the way they run into a series of name talent among the Streamy set, including Alex Albrecht ("Diggnation"), Felicia Day ("Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog"), Ms. Douglas, Mark Gantt ("The Bannen Way"), Jessica Rose (aka Lonelygirl15), Taryn Southern ("Sorority Forever") and David Wain ("Wainy Days.") There's even a pair of cameos from Shannen Doherty ("Beverly Hills 90210") and Milo Ventimiglia ("Heroes.")

Still, the threshold for racking up earned video views and impressions on the web is getting higher, thanks in part to the series' producers Ms. Douglas and Mr. Rausch, whose "Easy to Assemble" racked up 9 million views in its second season, a third of which came from Ikea fan sites. CJP's Mr. Cleveland led the blogger outreach for "Assemble," and has adopted a similar strategy to market his own series "The Temp Life," sponsored by recruitment agency Spherion, by engaging online communities of actual temps and part-time workers.

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.

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