Could it be that NYU is on the cusp of a potentially booming Web Series industry? It certainly seems that way.

This past Tuesday night Craig DiFolco, the creative mind behind iChannel, came and spoke to my Producing Essentials class about new media. He told us about the best web series and about the emerging web series industry that is slowly but surely becoming profitable.

Here are some of the best web shows, many of which have NYUers involved.

1. iChannel is a web series that was posted on YouTube in November 2006. The cult hit is described as “a guy wakes up in his apartment to realize his life is being filmed across the world wide web.” Michael Izquierdo, the main actor who plays “I,” is a NYU acting alum. Craig describes it as “The Truman Show” for the web.

2. The Burg, whose tag line is “who says gentrification isn’t funny?,” was a cult web series hit that went on to be acquired by Michael Eisner’s (the former Disney CEO) recent web production venture, Vuguru Studios. The Burg picked up on the sentiment of “only in the Burg can a CEO’s son cry out against capitalism, while living off his parents’ trust fund” that we know all the NYU hipsters can relate to. Johnny North, a director for the series, got his degree from Tisch, Cristina Wolf, the director of photography, is currently an NYU grad student, and Jessica Trajos, the costume designer, got her MFA from lady violet. What’s especially cool about this project is the “Bands” tab on the site that promotes the music featured in the vids and accurately shows how important the music scene is in The Burg subculture.

3. Craig showed the class Long Distance Relationship, which was by far my favorite clip of the night. First of all, those of us who have been in a LDR are going to laugh (and cringe) over their accurate mockumenting of the torturous experience. LDR looks at Sam and Samantha, a high school couple of eleven months, who were pulled apart by college.  Season one premiered last fall and each clip was 3-5 minutes. Here is ep one:

4. Besides the NYU web series Under The Arch , there is a new NYU web series that is set to premier November 19th. Rob Mor, a senior in my Producing Essentials class, who stars and produces the new series, entitled Ryan and Collin, showed us his trailer after Craig finished speaking. Their simple and fun logline is, “2 roommates are coming all over the place.” Watch the trailer, which we’ve embedded below, and let us know what you think. I thought it was very funny, very clever and very to the point of what many male NYUers want their lives to be.

5. O-Cast is a series that just premiered on October 26th, and the co-creators Bryan Dechart and Anne Richmond are both recent NYU grads. The show is “a mockumentary created by the twelve Olympian Gods of Greek mythology to broadcast their new lives as 20-something New Yorkers.” The first ep was funny and clever and is unlike the others in that they have a large cast and production team (many of whom went to NYU).