Logo's NewNowNext Awards close out the current year by highlighting the artists and projects on the verge of pop culture dominance. (And Logo has had some prior success at spotting winners! For example, Lady Gaga made her TV debut at the very first NNN Awards ceremony in 2008 and Josh Hutcherson was honored well before his Hunger Games breakout.) This year, emerging pop artist Betty Who will make her first television award show debut and the night will also feature appearances from Laverne Cox, Charli XCX, Meghan Trainor, Nick Jonas, A Great Big World, Tyler Oakley and Lance Bass.

The show will air live Sunday, December 7, at 8pm EST on Logo TV and MTV.

Online voting is open and will remain so through December 2nd, so visit LogoTV to support your favorite NNN Award candidates. To inspire you, introduce you to the nominees... and possibly sway your vote!... we asked our writers here at TheBacklot to take a look at the fan-voted Television, Film and Music categories and pick their favorite nominee in each. What follows below is a consensus opinion from our staff-- a sort of 2014 NNN Awards dream ticket from TheBacklot!

Disagree with our picks? Let us know in the comments who you'd like to see win instead.

Television

Best New Television Series

Nominees:

Broad City

How To Get Away With Murder

Looking

Outlander

Transparent

TheBacklot pick: Transparent

While How To Get Away with Murder and Looking each have vocal supporters here at TheBacklot, surprisingly it was the lesser known Amazon original series Transparent that garnered the most votes from our staff.

Jeffrey Tambor stars as transgender Mort/Maura Pfefferman, and the show's first season focuses on Maura's public emergence and coming out to Mort's grown (and seriously flawed) children played by Jay Duplass, Gabby Hoffman and Amy Landecker.

The show is really notable for its thoughtful exploration of the trans experience and that might be due to creator Jill Soloway's "transfirmative action program" which favored the hiring of transgender cast and crew over non-transgender candidates. The result: over 80 trans people were involved in the production either as cast, crew or extras.

But even for viewers not particularly drawn to trans stories, Transparent is touching and sometimes side-splittingly funny-- the perfect candidate for binge viewing. In fact, the ten short episodes of the first season can easily be thought of as a five hour movie-- one you'll be anxiously awaiting the sequel to. Fortunately, Amazon has already commissioned a second series to be released sometime in 2015.

If you haven't yet seen Transparent we highly recommend it. Amazon has even made the first episode available for free to give viewers a chance to sample the show. Check it out!

Go vote for Best New Television Series

Best New Television Actor

Nominees:

Jay Duplass, Transparent

Jonathan Groff, Looking

Thomas Middleditch, Silicon Valley

Pedro Pascal, Game of Thrones

Justin Theroux, The Leftovers

TheBacklot pick: Jonathan Groff, Looking

Pedro Pascal got some support for his charismatic turn as Oberyn Martell on Game of Thrones-- and one jokester even cast a vote for Justin Theroux's freeballin' sweatpants basket in The Leftovers-- but ultimately the most staff votes went to out gay actor Jonathan Groff for his lead role in the HBO series Looking. We've been a fan Groff's ever since his turn on Glee as Jesse St. James. He's primarily been known as a stage performer, but Looking makes him a full on TV star. He'll be back on HBO Sunday nights when Looking returns for Season 2 on January 11th.

Go vote for Best New Television Actor

Best New Television Actress

Nominees:

Ilana Glazer, Broad City

Gaby Hoffmann, Transparent

Molly Parker, House of Cards

Katie Stevens, Faking It

Lorraine Toussaint, Orange is the New Black

TheBacklot pick: Gaby Hoffmann, Transparent

She's come a long way since booking illegal flights as the scene-stealing little girl in Sleepless in Seattle. Hoffman grew up to be a fearless actress with memorable recent roles in Girls and Louie, but she's doing her best work yet on Transparent where she plays Ali Pfefferman, the totally f*cked up youngest daughter of transgender Mort/Maura. The role requires Hoffman go to places few actresses outside of adult films must venture... and she goes there with gusto. Two words: "Spit Roasting."

 Go vote for Best New Television Actress

Best New Television Personality

Nominees:

Pete Davidson, Saturday Night Live

Bianca Del Rio, RuPaul’s Drag Race

John Oliver, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

Gwen Stefani, The Voice

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

TheBacklot pick: Bianco Del Rio, RuPaul's Drag Race

What, did you think we were going to pick Neil deGrasse Tyson? The new queen of mean stole our hearts this past season on Drag Race. We predict a big future for her--- in and out of makeup.

Go vote for Best New Television Personality

Film

Best Motion Picture By a New Filmmaker

Nominees:

Dear White People, Justin Simien

The Fault in Our Stars, Josh Boone

Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn

Snowpiercer, Bong Joon-ho

The Theory of Everything, James Marsh

TheBacklot pick: Snowpiercer, Bong Joon-ho

Hold up, Guardians of the Galaxy's James Gunn is a new filmmaker? The nominating committee must not have seen his hilariously icky Slither (2006) or his low rent superhero movie Super (2010). We think this award category might need an asterisk to make it clear we're talking about new or existing filmmakers who took a big step up in visibility this year.

This may come as a shock, but we're not voting for Guardians-- even though we fully expect that Marvel blockbuster to win. After all, it happens to be one of the biggest films of the year-- grossing 770 million worldwide to date.

Sure, Guardians was great fun, but we want to draw your attention to some of the lesser known gems in this category, like the brilliant racial satire Dear White People or our consensus pick, Snowpiercer by director Bong Joon-ho. Bong was already an acclaimed filmmaker in his native Korea, but Snowpiercer is his English language debut. The movie is based on a French graphic novel and imagines a violent class struggle between rich and poor passengers on a high speed train rattling through a barren icy landscape -- that last human survivors in a frozen dystopian future. Bong landed a star-studded cast including Octavia Spencer, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and Ed Harris and he got some amazing performances out of them. Chris Evans has the lead though and, freed from his Captain America costume, he does possibly the best work of his career.

Snowpiercer is now available on Netflix, iTunes and Amazon. Check it out.

Go vote for Best Motion Picture by a New Filmmaker

Best New Screenwriter

Nominees:

Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

Craig Johnson (with Mark Heyman), The Skeleton Twins

Gillian Robespierre, Obvious Child

Ira Sachs & Mauricio Zacharias, Love Is Strange

Justin Simien, Dear White People

TheBacklot pick: Justin Simien, Dear White People

Gay African-american writer/director Justin Simien might be best known for his satirical Twitter handle @Dear White People, but the movie Dear White People isn't based on the Twitter feed. Instead it's inspired by Simien's earlier experiences at a predominantly white liberal arts college. Simien wrote the script, then launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $25,000 to finance production, presenting it with the following tagline: "Remember when black movies didn’t necessarily star a dude in a fat suit and a wig?" No wonder he wound up getting almost double what he asked for in crowdfunding.

People have been just as enthusiastic about Simian's completed film. It won raves at both The San Francisco International Film Festival and Sundance and has grossed nearly four million after one month in limited release. Impressive for a low budget indie film!

The film isn't out on VOD or DVD yet, but make sure and catch it when you can!

Go vote for Best New Screenwriter

Best New Film Actor

Nominees:

Ellar Coltrane, Boyhood

Ansel Elgort, The Fault In Our Stars

Dylan O’Brien, The Maze Runner

Chris Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy

Miles Teller, Whiplash

TheBacklot pick: Dylan O’Brien, The Maze Runner

Look at that, our boy is on the big screen! We're feeling kind of proprietary about Dylan O'Brien because from the very start of MTV's Teen Wolf we identified him as the breakout star (and of course slash fans couldn't get enough of him as one half of "Sterek.") Let's face it, O'Brien steals every scene he's in, so it's no wonder that he landed the lead in a big YA franchise film. Our prediction: The Maze Runner isn't a fluke. Dylan O'Brien is going to become a major movie star.

Go vote for Best New Film Actor

Best New Film Actress

Nominees:

Carrie Coon, Gone Girl

Natalie Dormer, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Belle

Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl

Jenny Slate, Obvious Child

TheBacklot pick: Carrie Coon, Gone Girl

Shocker, right? Instead of Rosamund Pike who had the showy lead role as the wife in Gone Girl, we're going with Carrie Coon, who played Ben Affleck's supportive but exasperated sister.

Truthfully, she gets our vote not just for Gone Girl, but also for her heartbreaking role on The Leftovers as a woman who must come to grips with the sudden disappearance of her husband and children. Her characters in these two projects are wildly different but Coon is brilliant in both. We think it's time she graduated from supporting roles to leading lady, hence our vote.

Go vote for Best New Film Actress

Music

Best New Musician (Male)

The Nominees:

Hozier

Nick Jonas

John Newman

Paolo Nutini

Sam Smith

TheBacklot pick: Sam Smith

Cutie Nick Jonas' shameless flirting with us notwithstanding, there is really only one possible choice in this category. Smith's album In the Lonely Hour is on heavy rotation at our house -- and should be at yours. And his flawless live performance at MTV's 2014 VMAs left no doubt that this gay blue-eyed soul singer has the pipes and the chops to rule the airwaves for years to come.

Go vote for Best New Male Musician

Best New Musician (Female)

The Nominees:

Iggy Azalea

Charli XCX

Mary Lambert

Meghan Trainor

Betty Who

TheBacklot pick: Mary Lambert

Madonna tried to steal her thunder by crashing that "Same Love" performance at the Grammys, but the star of that gorgeous song-- a modern gay rights anthem-- will forever be Ms. Lambert. Thank goodness Macklemore & Ryan Lewis introduced this Seattle-based artist to the world. And Lambert showed she's worthy of all the attention with this year's solo effort, Heart on My Sleeve. Who knew Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl" could be so beautifully reinvigorated?

 Go vote for Best New Female Musician

Best New Music Group

The Nominees:

A Great Big World

Bastille

Bleachers

Disclosure

Pentatonix

TheBacklot pick: A Great Big World

If you're not already familiar with singing songwriting duo Ian Axel and Chad Vaccarino you surely know their ubiquitous hit "Say Something" that's been featured on American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance and The Voice, where they performed it live with a refreshingly restrained Christina Aguilera.

The pair also performed live at Logo's 2014 Trailblazer Awards, a particularly meaningful event for Vaccarino because he had just come out as gay himself.

A Great Big World will be taking the stage to perform at the 2014 NewNowNext Awards-- we think they should take home an award as well!

Go vote for Best New Music Group

Watch the 2014 NewNowNext Awards on Sunday, December 7, at 8pm EST on Logo TV and MTV.