Hey, Swamblers.

Sarah Kuhn of Backstage magazine -- a huge trade magazine in LA and NY -- wrote us into an article about new media. It's fairly long with a lot of quotes from me, so, get some java and enjoy.

And thanks again, Sarah, for including us!

Ryan is the creator-performer behind one of YouTube's most popular breakout characters: a tough, teenage, Latina video blogger called Little Loca. Her videos, which feature Loca delivering rants on everything from teen pregnancy to bad haircuts, have attracted attention from Internet junkies, media outlets, and talent representatives alike. "I think [the Internet] is definitely opening up the world for creative individuals to showcase their talents," she says.

More and more, Hollywood seems to be using the online world in its quest for performers, while popular video-sharing sites such as YouTube make it possible for actors to broadcast their work to a global audience. "I think there are whole divisions at ICM that just scour new media," says Liam Sullivan, who has found YouTube success thanks to the music videos in which he appears as snarky Valley girl Kelly. "They're looking for talent online. A headshot and résumé isn't going to get you a meeting most times, but if you're in an office setting and someone says, 'Dude, you've got to see this,' and then you see it, and it's hilarious, you're like, 'Who is that guy? I want to know about him.' And if I'm an agent, maybe I want to sign him."

Yuri Baranovsky, one of the stars and creators of the hit online sitcom Break a Leg, notes that the Internet makes it easier than ever for actors to break through. "If you really have talent and you can make something of your own, you have the potential to make it popular," he says. "It's all in your hands. It's pretty cool; it really gives actors a lot more power than they had before, and it helps people who are really talented get out there. Definitely [the Internet] is giving a lot of opportunities to actors."



Ryan's world opened up the day she decided to make a fateful purchase: a computer. "At the time, I could barely work my own cell phone," she remembers, chuckling. "I was like, 'I guess I have to get a computer, because everybody has computers, everybody emails.' That's what I was noticing in the breakdowns—a lot of them [are posted on] the Internet now. So I got a computer, and I randomly found YouTube, and I was addicted."

Ryan enjoyed watching bits from TV shows on the site, but it was the multitude of homemade clips from real people around the world that piqued her interest. When she discovered an editing system on her computer, she decided to borrow her then-boyfriend's camera and try her hand at making, starring in, and sharing her own movies.

She started by crafting silent short films but eventually segued into something a little different: video blogging, also known as "vlogging." Rather than vlogging as herself, Ryan created a fictional persona, Little Loca, a character who blossomed out of her childhood experiences hanging with "the real Little Locas."

The videos she started posting a year and a half ago provoked an immediate response. "People were writing me like, 'I love you so much; you're so tough,' " recalls Ryan, who is still shocked that fans initially thought Loca was a real person. "Little girls were like, 'I want to be like you.' I was like, 'Whoa. I'm going to have to be very consistent with it, because people really like it.' I was really communicating with the community."

Slowly, Ryan and Loca started to attract industry attention as well. As the video blogs gained more viewers, writers from various websites began asking for interviews. The New Yorker ran a piece on her. Actor Crispin Glover sent her a fan letter and eventually appeared in one of her videos. A literary agent at the Agency Group contacted Ryan, professing to be a fan. The agency eventually signed her and introduced her to her current manager, Katie Rhodes at Untitled Entertainment. "It's crazy when you go from not having any representation to people calling you," Ryan marvels. "And old agencies that I had met with that told me no before started calling."

The YouTube videos also landed Ryan a bona fide television gig. When casting director Michelle Metzner was looking for personalities to host the CW's fall series Online Nation, she contacted Ryan through MySpace, telling her that the show's producers were big fans of her videos. "She actually had me make my audition tape as Little Loca," says Ryan. "Then she wrote me and was like, '[The producers] want to meet you in real life. Can you come in as yourself and audition?' " Ryan nabbed one of four co-host spots.

Though the show has since been canceled, Ryan is encouraged that she managed to land the job in the first place. "I learned so much working on set, and I feel a little more established for some reason," she notes. "It's like, 'Yeah, been there, done that, booked a show, had it canceled, yada yada yada.' "

Making Internet videos has also ignited other creative passions in the actor. "Directing myself in my own little things that I do, I absolutely love it," she says. "Eventually I would like to write and have my own television show. Acting is where my passion is, but I really want to venture out and make the most of my talents."



Sullivan, an actor-comedian who has appeared on TV in 8 Simple Rules and Gilmore Girls, was making videos long before the existence of YouTube. The only places one could view these funny, surreal sketches, however, were in his live act, A Liam Show, and on his website.

Last year a couple of fans took the videos from his site and posted them on YouTube, exposing Sullivan to a much larger audience. One character in particular—a bespectacled, overly dramatic, blond Valley girl named Kelly—became especially popular. The video for Kelly's hilariously hypnotic song "Shoes" (sample lyric: "These shoes rule/These shoes suck") was passed around to countless email in-boxes.

To promote Kelly, Sullivan created a MySpace account for the character. "Some people found her on there, and I got all these comments and messages," Sullivan says. "I was adding, like, 500 friends a day at one point. It was getting ridiculous. I said, 'Okay, now I know that this is really popular.' It was awesome. I started getting offers to come play at clubs as Kelly."

Sullivan also gained a high-profile fan early on. After spotting a robot costume on a flier in an L.A. coffeehouse, he called the listed number and asked if he could use the costume in the "Shoes" video. When the video was complete, Sullivan sent it to the robot costume's owner, who showed it to his wife, comedian-actor Margaret Cho. "She blogged about it," he recalls. "Then she invited me to do her live show as Kelly, doing a couple of songs. I was like, 'Hell yeah.'" Currently Sullivan is performing Off-Broadway with Cho's successful burlesque-themed variety show, The Sensuous Woman.

Before becoming a YouTube sensation, Sullivan was "a normal actor, just scrounging for parts" and performing sketch comedy around Los Angeles. He was also part of the comedy group Drama 3/4 Productions and experienced something of an epiphany thanks to advice from fellow members. "They're really the ones that inspired me to make my own movies," he says. "They were like, 'Oh yeah, you just get a camera and go.' When I started writing and directing, suddenly I had a lot more control over the stuff I could do, because no one's going to cast me as, say, a teenage girl except myself."

Indeed, Sullivan says he doesn't connect with a lot of the standard TV parts out there. Creating his own characters and putting them on the Internet has proven to be the best showcase for his talents. "I'm a really weird person," he admits. "So playing, like, a nice guy on some TV show—I never really clicked with any of those characters. The only characters I ever clicked with in the audition room were fringe freaks—guys on the outside who are just out-of-this-world kind of characters."

As with Ryan's, Sullivan's YouTube success led to media attention and offers of representation. He's been featured in Los Angeles Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and the Chicago Tribune, to name a few. "I met with agents who had found me on YouTube," he says. "It was such a role reversal, because just a year prior, I didn't have representation, so I had been sending out pictures and résumés to my dream agencies and not getting any response. Fast-forward a year, they're all calling me." Ultimately he signed with William Morris and Bill Silva Management—the same team that reps Cho.

As for his alter ego, Kelly now has two more oft-viewed music videos, "Text Message Breakup" and "Let Me Borrow That Top." Her songs have sold well on iTunes, where "Shoes" has been among the top 10 comedy downloads since it debuted, and enthusiastic fans sport T-shirts with some of her favorite sayings—"Betch," for example, which is the way Kelly pronounces "bitch." She recently made appearances on VH1's I Hate My 30s, an off-kilter sitcom put together by the members of Drama 3/4 Productions. "[VH1] didn't really know about Kelly," says Sullivan, who was already a regular on the show. "We had to convince them to put Kelly in an episode. Then when they realized she was popular, [they said], 'Let's put more Kelly in!' And they made a promo with just Kelly in it, and they indirectly asked me to promote it on YouTube. I thought that was funny, because they're a huge network, and they have all kinds of resources, and they're asking me in my little apartment to promote the show. I thought that was a real indication of the shift that's going on with new media."



Although he doesn't have an agent or a network deal, Baranovsky has already achieved many a budding television star's dream: He co-writes, directs, and plays the lead in a hit sitcom. The show, Break a Leg, is the brainchild of Baranovsky and his elder brother, Vlad, and it's only available on the Internet—at least for now.

The Baranovsky brothers created the show for a contest put on by the cable network FX. "They wanted you to make a five-minute sitcom," says Yuri. "We didn't win or anything, but we somehow gathered a pretty big fan base. The contest had its own message board, and basically, everyone was like, 'Oh, Break a Leg's gonna win.' We were really surprised; we did not expect that at all. Once we didn't win, people were emailing us saying, 'We're going to email FX and tell them you should have won!' People were really passionate about it, and they were really into it—and after five minutes only."

The fan response encouraged the brothers to make more episodes of Break a Leg, which chronicles the showbiz adventures of David Penn (played by Yuri), a writer struggling to make his first sitcom. The show has a distinctively dark edge and takes some of its tonal cues from such series as Arrested Development and The Office. "We wanted to satire [Hollywood]," says Yuri. "We're not industry insiders by any means, so the idea was to create our own world where we could just make up whatever the hell we want. What's funny is we get comments like, 'You guys must be part of the industry, because this is dead-on.' "

Break a Leg eventually attracted the attention of For Your Imagination, an online video programming company that signed on to manage, produce, and market the show. Baranovsky says he's noticed the series's audience growing with each episode. "When we did the pilot and it was a 30-minute episode, we were really surprised people were watching it," he says. "Episode 2, people were like, 'This is ahead of its time, because it's longer than two-minute videos.' With Episode 3, people are watching because Internet TV's now kind of the big news."

Little by little, Baranovsky notes, he and the other folks behind the show are gaining more clout. "When we had auditions for anything before, it was always us kind of being apologetic about wasting people's time," he says. "But now we feel like, 'Okay, we're also helping you, because you're being exposed to a pretty large audience.' "

Like Ryan and Sullivan, Baranovsky thinks the Internet is becoming a legitimate way of attracting industry attention. "I think every network now has its own department that's watching the Internet," he says. "I still haven't seen a full show get on TV yet. I'm waiting for it to be, 'This show's going directly to Showtime.' I think when that happens, it will really open the doors—and I think it's going to happen really soon to someone. Hopefully us."

Though all these actors would like to make it in other mediums, they agree that they'll never abandon the Internet. "Who knows what [the Internet's] going to be in five or 10 years?" says Sullivan. "It could be the whole new way of getting your entertainment. I'd like to stay online and keep making fun, stupid, silly videos."

Adds Baranovsky, "It reaches such a mass audience. It's crazy; we have people who like us in Australia. And it's so interactive—the fans will instant-message me and ask me about things. We really talk to them a lot, and I wouldn't want to lose that."

Ryan considers making videos to be akin to therapy. "It's lonely to live here in Los Angeles, and I don't feel lonely after I post a video," she says. "I'm getting comments, and people are talking to me and responding. When I'm frustrated and I make a video, I completely forget about whatever was bothering me. I get so zoned out in my editing or in trying to achieve whatever look I'm trying to get for the video. It makes me feel alive again."

Indeed, upon hearing of Online Nation's cancellation, Ryan posted a humorous video message to fans called "The Unemployment Line." "I did just want to make this video and thank all the people that tuned in and all the people that have supported me through all this," she says in the video. "And I promise that's not the last you're gonna see of Stevie Ryan."

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Thanks, guys. Looking forward to your contest entries.

-Yuri