A hybrid of late-nite comedy, soap opera, and even a little actual news reporting, Goodnight Burbank is one of the web's most established original series. In this episode, original cast member Susan Jones returns to visit little sister Kelly, tech correspondent Dane Rivers tries out some material on the makeup girl, and Gordon may be dead of a heart attack. Just another day at our favorite local news broadcast.

Creator and star Hayden Black began Goodnight Burbank in January 2006 when a friend offered him access to a green screen: "I dusted off the idea because it was the easiest, quickest, cheapest thing to do." Although every episode uses real headlines as set-up for jokes and fodder for discussion, Black is careful to make sure that the majority of the topics discussed are "evergreen": "From the get go, the idea was to question the press/media and its motives - and there's no easier way of doing that then to break through the smoke and mirrors of a glossy newscast and see what's REALLY being talked about."

GNB benefits from Black's connections within the comedy world -- initially casting actors he met through an improv class at Upright Citizens Brigade, he went on to assemble a large ensemble of actors with impressive credits. His latest coup is Rich Fulcher of the British comedy series The Mighty Boosh, who plays tech correspondent Dane Rivers; Fulcher actually approached Black about making an appearance and Black jumped at the chance. "I couldn't be happier. He's back in the UK shooting the third season of Boosh, but he's coming back to the US for a while in September and we'll make sure to shoot a bunch more segments with him."

Rivers's segments give Goodnight Burbank a chance to plug other web series, a practice which Black says is purely altruistic. "Last year at the podcast expo, I realized there were two ways of building an audience: one, screaming "Look at me!" to the mainstream media and two, taking the audience that exists online and letting them know about other shows. So I told some people I was going to put my money where my mouth was and start doing a segment that (in GNB's inimitable fashion) promoted them. I never did it to have other people promote me in return. I did it to promote online media -- in the spirit of brotherhood. Or sisterhood, depending on if I'm wearing a dress that day."

-Liz Miller

Permanent markers may look all fun and colorful and stuff, but in the wrong hands and noses, they can be a dangerous drug. In this clever, well-acted parody of A&E's "Intervention" -- in which people confront their darkest demons and seek redemption -- actor-writer-director Mike Rose lampoons the serious documentary format of such earnest self-help shows, providing a hilarious look at Jeff, a marker-sniffing addict and the friends and families who want to save him.

Originally from addiction-central Orange County, Rose, 28, currently resides in Studio City, CA. He studied improvisation and sketch comedy at The Groundlings for many years and performed there regularly as a member of the Sunday Company. In keeping with his background, "Stop It" features a combination of improvised and scripted material.

"I basically write a skeleton of how the episode will go, locations, character breakdowns, what will be said and by who," he explains. "But then we do a lot of improv and based on that I might direct the scene in a particular direction."

Rose and his team have already produced an equally funny second episode of "Stop It," about a chronic crank caller.

-Anthony Kaufman

This dry take on a not-so-hot app captures perfectly the tone of self-promoting software "demos," while invoking the Facebook generation's childhood memories of the classic graphics program. Inspired by "the beauty and limitations of the MS Paint program," comedy sketch team FreeLoveForum create a fond memorial to obsolete technology -- that isn't afraid to mock its failings.

The six members of FreeLoveForum (Jeremy Beiler, Paul Dorfman, Jared Gramstrup, Gabe Gronli, Dieter Klipstein, and Anne Johnson) began working together in high school, when they united to start a cable-access sketch comedy show. Afterwards, they continued to collaborate sporadically until after college, when they reunited full-time. Based in New York, the team has produced multiple stage shows and an independent TV pilot, with individual members producing videos for The New York Times and The Colbert Report.

"Paint" was inspired by the very software used to create it: group member Jeremy Beiler liked the tone of the videos Apple had produced to promote the new Final Cut Studio, and thought it would be great to apply that same treatment to a more archaic program. Says group member Gabe Gronli: "Paint seemed to be the perfect counterpoint to the overly sleek, shiny and efficient world of the apple promos." Each character was created through on-set experimentation with accents and dialogue; the only thing uniting them being a single pair of glasses, worn by every actor featured.

On the appeal of the short, Gronli says, "It's hard to tell exactly who's responding to the video. It's definitely been linked on a fair amount of tech blogs and online communities, so I think it probably has a certain appeal to tech people. But, then again, since everyone is viewing it online, the whole audience already has some familiarity with computers and probably the Paint program, since it's so ubiquitous. We've all used Paint. It's not a bad little program. We really have no ill will towards [it]. Like all programs, it's inanimate and has never harmed us."

-Liz Miller

If Back to the Future met The Fast and the Furious met Asian Extreme action, it might look something like the wildly inventive, exuberantly nonsensical Overdrift, a crazy concoction from the Duncan Brothers, Los Angeles-based filmmakers who originally hail from Seattle.

With swinging cameras, fast cuts, creative effects and a mashed-up plot involving everything from "drift racing" and paleontology to cross-dimensional travel and the bond of two brothers, Overdrift feels like Hollywood conventions hopped up on acid and made on a shoestring budget.

Overdrift was inspired by a Japanese anime TV series called "Initial D" as well as "Channel 101 and its many creators and our own inability to take anything seriously," Ian and Brant write via email, as well as Sickanimation.com's Marc M., "dinosaurs, beards, Werner Herzog, and Koreans."

"We go over story and major plot points, all the scenes and the general flow of things," the Duncan brothers explain about their improvisational process, "but specific dialogue is kinda hashed out when we are shooting. We certainly value the benefit of a good script, but these kind of things can be done on the fly."

Ian Duncan, 24, graduated from USC film school, while Brant, 22, got a filmmaking degree from San Francisco State University. "We basically spent all of our money at school, so now we can't afford to do anything else," they say. "We're scrappers and would rather pull the trigger on a gun in our mouths then stop making movies."

While the dynamic duo are content working on their own projects (check out previous wacky D.I.Y. wonders such as the sci-fi cyberpunk "Burn/N.E.N.E.R" and the buddy-cop action-thriller "The Deepening"), they have "bigger projects on the horizon," they say. And we'll be watching out for them.

-Anthony Kaufman

Welcome to the world of Dudes in Bed, where if you're a straight man, any topic is fair game as long as your pants are off. In this first episode of the ongoing web series, Dan Bialek and guest stars Ryan O'Neill and Jeff Danis sprawl across a queen-sized bed (beloning to Bialek's girlfriend Amanda) and discuss Jeff's recent haircut. It's not quite as gay as it sounds. Well. Maybe.

Dan Bialek held any number of odd jobs, including covering city council meetings for the Hermosa Beach Easy Reader and interviewing extreme sports stars for ESPN (the hardest part of which, he says, was "asking them to stop smoking pot so we could interview them on camera"). But five years ago, Dan began his career in the world of stand-up comedy, starting as The Comedy Store's doorman and eventually working his way up to regular performance and hosting gigs at the legendary club.

When asked to develop a comedy series for NBC Universal's Dot Comedy.com, Bialek turned to the Internet for inspiration, and realized what was popular: naked people. Specifically, naked girls. "When I was looking around, it seemed like every show had a half-naked girl or a girl in a bikini hosting it," Bialek says, "but nothing with guys. So I thought it would be funny to shift the paradigm the other way, by having guys sitting around talking guy stuff."

What constitutes guy stuff? "Not what you'd think. I mean, I don't know anything about sports. When guys get together, they usually end up talking about their dads, because everyone has a story about their dad doing something crazy. Like, my dad chased the school bully with a hammer in his Corvette. Ryan's dad illegally raised a falcon in Indiana." The only topics that haven't come up so far are sex or pornography, because "with three guys in their underwear on a girl's bed, it gets way too weird way too quickly." Bialek observes that while at first the guys find the situation a bit uncomfortable, eventually everyone relaxes. "It's kind of like hanging out in a jacuzzi. The first five minutes are really strange, then everyone gets used to the water and it's fine."

Bialek is excited for future episodes of "Dudes in Bed," which he says he can literally produce forever. "I've got a lot of extroverted stand-up comedy friends. So it's just a matter of luring them over to my house with pizza and beer and X-Box. Once they're there, I ask if they're wearing underwear or not -- and if they say yes, I'm like, 'guess what we're doing for the next 20 minutes?'"

-Liz Miller

A live-action Ratatouille with a romantic twist, Dan Brown's "Pierre: A Hole with a View" is a delightful, narrative short about the unrequited love between a French mouse and his gorgeous new human roommate. The Grand Jury Prize winner at the South by SouthWest Film Festival's recent online "SXSWclick" event, the 35mm film also won an Audience Award for best short at the recent 2007 Seattle International Film Festival.

Inspired by old Warner Bros. "Looney Tunes," Disney animated cartoons and Tex Avery shorts, "Pierre" is set in a nostalgic art-deco Parisian milieu, featuring high-gloss locations shot in Seattle. Brown won a Spotlight Award from the Independent Feature Project based on the screenplay, which amounted to free film, transfer, audio and camera equipment. With $20,000 raised from family and friends, Brown says he was "forced" to make the film.

Brown never went to film school, but he learned After Effects and motion graphics while at Seattle art school; and worked at design house Digital Kitchen for more than three years.

"Pierre" was a true labor of love, taking two years to complete. "Finding someone to do music, make a 3D mouse, and a free or nearly free voice actor to work on it, took some time and put me at their mercy to finish it," he admits. "You can't really enforce a timeline when someone is doing you a favor."

After the success of "Pierre" (two major awards + two free Macs, "no complaints from me," says Brown), he'd like to leap from motion graphics to a directing career. "I have a few scripts I'd love to turn into films," he says. He'd also like to turn a faux-trailer he made for SXSW's Grindhouse Trailer Competition into a feature film; it just so happens that Brown's trailer -- called "Maiden of Death" -- was one of the best of the bunch. The creme really does rise to the top.

-Anthony Kaufman

Whether David Wain or his followers are aware, it must be stated that Wain is probably one of the biggest influences on internet comedy. The Stella Shorts, of which he held a guiding technical hand, and his 2001 feature, Wet Hot American Summer set somewhat of a standard for the irrational, random and abstract humor that so many have attempted to duplicate. His return to online video, Wainy Days, part of the recently launched My Damn Channel, reflects all the inexplicable whatnot we expect from him, and even shows the kiddos a thing or two about web series development.

"I like that there are really no rules," Wain says of working in the web idiom, "and that you don't have to reach any specific running time. I also like the webisode idea - really enjoying telling an ongoing story." And with so few web series actually living up to their genre with a connective thread, he seems to be taking an original albeit traditional approach, although seemingly out of necessity. "I'm also in prep in L.A. for a movie I'm shooting, so haven't been able to do everything myself - so I've gotten some of the best writers and directors I know to shoot some Wainy Days pieces."

Running his episodes like a traditional TV series with various talent taking the reins is a new approach, and with ten episodes planned, it'll be exciting to find something dynamic each week. But as always with Wain's work, don't think too far ahead. "I like that there are not a lot of set conventions for webisodes - we're inventing the format as we go."

As much as Wain has been part of many collectives and collaborations, with Wainy Days we're finally getting a chance to see what Wain as an individual has brought to each of these. What remains are the random outbursts of filth, the more-than-anything-can-happen riffs on the conventions of Hollywood cheese, and surprisingly, the genuinely huggable characters with arcs, as bizarre as they can be. For his fans and followers, worry not, he promises much more lunacy, in the form of "cross dressing, sperm donating, street singing."

Happy to have him back online.

-Spencer Somers

The concept for this short seems like a sure-fire studio pitch. Sometime in the near future, technology has become so evolved that it has become possible to edit, copy, paste, and cut events from reality. The possibilities are endless, especially in matters of the heart. Case in point this scenario, in which a lovestruck dude tries -- and tries again -- to convince a girl to take the plunge from friendship to something more.

Directed by Kiyjong Kim, edit>love is a sweet, clever story of geek love that takes full of advantage of its $200 budget. What it lacks in crisp dialogue and pacing, it more than makes up for in its technical and the fact that its premise is a true comedy gem.

Kim, who still holds down a day job as a graphic designer, came up with the idea after learning that Intel and Atomfilms would be sponsoring contest for stories that had a "magic wand" theme. "I had been playing around with the idea of a guy interacting with computer interface elements for a while, so I thought I could use that idea for the contest," says Kim." My initial ideas were darker though, like one version had the girl becoming more corrupted and pixelated as he tried to alter her. In the end I decided to go with a lighter tone."

Kim's explains edit>love's creative, no-budget brand of CGI as follows: "I did some preliminary tests where I made paper mouse cursors of different sizes and took still pictures of myself holding them. Then I sized them and added the computer interface to make sure the mouse and also the text would be big enough to be legible when seen at the small size of most web videos. I definitely wanted to test before I started shooting so I didn't waste time. Once I saw that it could work, I built the interface in Photoshop, and then composited in After Effects."

He clearly knows his subject material. Is it any surprise that he ended up winning the contest?

You ever wonder about the poor, unloved children that dispense soda cans from vending machines or live inside the office copier, working hard for you every day? This under-reported issue comes into stark light in Jonathan van Tulleken's brilliantly dry comic faux-PSA short.

Shot in only seven hours, the film was made as a cinematography exercise at Columbia University's Graduate Film program, and was inspired by wise words from the filmmaker's father. He was "always telling me to say 'thank you' to ticket machines in parking lots," says van Tulleken, a 26-year-old British-Canadian who currently resides in New York. "This was because, as he rightly claimed, there were small lonely men inside who worked all bloody day without any gratitude."

Van Tulleken roped in veteran actor Kevin Spacey to do the voice over "after I had sent him the script knowing that he was in New York performing on Broadway and that he is a huge supporter of aspiring actors and directors," says van Tulleken. Without a recording studio, he ended up taping Spacey simply using a boom mic attached to a DVX100 camera and then later removing the background noise with the help of sound mixer Jesse Ehardt.

As an Oxford University undergraduate in Psychology and Philosophy, van Tulleken directed and acted in plays and co-directed and co-produced the popular short live-action/animation, "The Unsteady Chough," based on a poem by Monty Python's Terry Jones. Currently, Van Tulleken is diligently focused on "building up a reel of extremely short comedy pieces that attempt to combine humor along with highly polished images," he says. Apparently, the hard work is paying off. One of his latest shorts "Bumblebee" was recently accepted into the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.

With "Hairspray" big at the box office, campy musicals are back in style. And Mike Sobo’s candy-colored 1950s-set musical comedy about the forbidden love between a butcher and a vegetarian seems like it couldn't have arrived at a more perfect time.

Sobo's thesis film at New York University, "Bye Bye Burger" was a multi-student collaboration: His brother Dan Sobo wrote and composed the hilarious musical numbers ("take one dead cow/slice him up from his tail to his brow/clear out the cud and throw out the entrails and rain of blood/you get beef") and Preston Spurlock co-wrote the witty script and animated sequences. The entire film – short-listed for a Student Academy Award -- runs 22-minutes long, but Sobo and his team at Greencard Pictures realized they should break it up into shorter installments in order to explore alternative forms of distribution. We have the first installment here; subsequent webisodes are also now live at their REELEDin page.

"Up until recently, it seemed that the only way to get a short film out there was to go through the traditional, festival route," says Greencard Pictures' Emily Wiedemann, "but we wanted to utilize the web for distribution to a more immediate audience. By making it episodic, we were able to keep with the general practices of today's online media watcher."