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Оглавление1 WHAT IS A WEBISODE?
Simply put, a webisode is an episode of a television series designed for distribution over the Internet. It can be comedy like Boys Will Be Girls or its companion series, Girls Will Be Boys, or compelling drama like The Bannen Way. It can be live action or animated (see John Woo’s Seven Brothers), fiction or reality-based (see Start Something, a social media documentary series presented by the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization). It can be a high-budget, intricately filmed sci-fi extravaganza with dazzling special effects like Sanctuary, which cost $4.3 million or approximately $32,000 per minute, one of the most ambitious projects to date designed for direct release over the Internet (which later became a cable TV series on the Syfy channel). Or it can be as low-tech as a static webcam shot in front of a convenient and free background like your own bedroom. It can be made purely for entertainment purposes, or it can be branded entertainment or “advertainment,” like dozens of web series now produced by Fortune 500 companies including Kraft, Toyota, and Anheuser-Busch who hope that a little entertainment will go a long way toward getting you to buy their cream cheese, Camrys, and Bud. And the length can be whatever you choose, from a quick joke (check out the incredibly clever 5-second films on YouTube) to however long you can hold the audience’s attention.
The key word is series. A webisode (or web episode) is an individual installment of an ongoing premise with recurring characters. A single, stand-alone short video — say of the hilarious things your cat did after she lapped up your Jack Daniels on the rocks — is NOT a webisode. Neither is that brilliant spoof of Sex and the City you shot at your grandmother’s retirement home — unless you shot a series of short Sex and the City spoofs with grandma and her horny pals, in which case we should take the Jack Daniels away from you and your grandma and give it back to your cat.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SHORT EPISODIC VIDEO ON THE WEB
In the Mel Brooks movie History of the World Part I, Moses (played by Brooks) descends from a mountaintop lugging three stone tablets chiseled with 15 commandments from God — until Moses trips and drops one of the holy tablets, shattering it beyond recognition. Having promised 15 commandments, he covers by swiftly declaring, “I bring you ten, ten commandments.” Five sacred commandments smashed into a pile of rubble just like that. Who knows what wisdom was lost? Maybe the missing commandments said things like “Thou shalt not wear spandex after age 40” or “Covet not thy neighbor’s iPad2, for he is a tech dunce and uses it only to play Spider Solitaire.” Your guess is as good as mine. But whatever moral pearls turned to dust in that moment, I’m pretty sure one of the lost commandments was not “Thou shalt make TV shows only in increments of 30 or 60 minutes.”
Since the dawn of the television age in the 1940s, broadcasters have been prisoners of the clock, confined to airing shows on the hour and half hour so viewers would know when and where to find them. But the digital revolution and the Internet have changed all that. More and more, television and visual entertainment in general are part of an on-demand world rather than an on-the-hour one. Audiences can now watch what they want when they want, which, in turn, means that shows no longer have to be packaged in 30- or 60-minute installments.
It’s a revolution that has fed on itself. Free from the tyranny of the 30/60 paradigm, short-form video content in all shapes and sizes has exploded on the Web. Maybe a show is 2 minutes and 37 seconds long one time, maybe it runs 6 minutes and 41 seconds the next. Each episode can be however long it deserves to be.
Audiences, in turn, have responded by changing their viewing habits. Where you used to need at least half an hour to watch your favorite comedy, now you might be able to catch two or three episodes of it in less than 10 minutes. Office workers now schedule video breaks rather than coffee breaks, boosting their energy and outlook by guzzling down a few short comedy videos for free instead of a double espresso caramel latte for 5 bucks. Or maybe you choose to watch a few webisodes on the bus or the train on your smartphone or tablet.
Never before have viewers had so many choices. And never before have creators had so much latitude on the length and type of content they can make.
In truth, short-form episodic film series have been around since well before the days of television, some even coming during the silent movie era. Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton all created one-reelers, popular early predecessors to today’s web series shot on film and exhibited in theaters across the country right alongside the newsreel and the feature presentation. In the animated realm, the Looney Tunes shorts come to mind. But the equipment and processing necessary to make even a 2-minute film back then were so expensive that only professionals could afford to make these shorts. And even if an amateur had the funds and imagination to produce a clever short film, distribution was controlled by the major Hollywood studios, which also owned the theaters and had no intention of allowing the competition to cut into their lucrative monopoly.
The advent of lightweight and affordable video cameras by the early 1980s made it possible for millions to shoot their own videos. But most of these home videos were unedited, handheld footage of family vacations or children’s birthday parties, usually narrated by your dad or Uncle Johnny: “Here we are at little Billy’s second birthday party. Here’s Billy eating cake. Here he is opening his presents. And here’s little Billy pulling down his pants and relieving himself in the garden.” As much as you (and, years later, big Billy) wish Dad had done a little judicious editing, that equipment was still bulky and prohibitively expensive during the first home video era. And distribution venues remained unavailable to those outside the media power elite.
The digital and Internet revolution of the 1990s changed all this. Suddenly, you didn’t need a $100,000 flatbed machine to edit your video. Your average home computer could handle the task. Video cameras were cheaper than ever, required no more technical expertise than a flashlight, and were increasingly capable of producing a high-quality video image. Best of all, high-speed broad-band connections meant that inexpensive and easy distribution on the Web was just a mouse-click away for millions of amateur video enthusiasts.
However, there was still one small problem for amateur video makers dying to show the world their wares: How would the audience know where to find your video on the Internet?
Enter YouTube. Founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of the Silicon Valley firm PayPal, the website had a simple but powerful concept: Users could post and view any type of video, professional or amateur, on this one-stop shopping site. It was like one giant short-video multiplex, and anyone in the world could hop from theater to theater for free, without ever leaving the comfort of their own laptop.
The first YouTube video was posted on April 23, 2005. It was called “Me at the Zoo” — no explanation of content necessary — and ran all of nineteen seconds. You can view it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw. By November, the site had 200,000 viewers watching 2 million short videos per day, even though the site was still in its experimental beta phase.
December 15, 2005 marked YouTube’s official debut. Within a month users were watching an astonishing 25 million videos per day. By July 2006, that number topped 100 million, with 65,000 new videos being uploaded daily. As of early 2013, YouTube had a mind-boggling 800 million unique users per month watching more than 4 billion hours of video during each month.
Though much of the early content was either clips from ordinary broadcast and cable television or amateur silliness like teenagers lip-syncing to pop songs, the popularity of the site and promise of a ready audience opened the Internet floodgates for well-crafted content in episodic form. Among the early webisode hits launched on YouTube was lonelygirl15, a serialized webcam confessional of a lonely teenage girl. Though the series was presented as if the title character made the videos herself, it was soon revealed that lonelygirl15 was not an authentic teenage video diary but a carefully scripted show starring an actress named Jessica Rose created by aspiring filmmakers who saw this new Internet venue as a way to make a name for themselves in the film business. Despite the deception and the fact that the public soon knew it was all professionally scripted, the series remained popular on YouTube and led to the creation of another series in a similar webcam diary format called KateModern.
Another early web series success was Sam Has 7 Friends, created by a group that called themselves Big Fantastic. These aspiring video makers saw the world of short-form Internet TV not as a stepping stone to other film opportunities but an art form to be mastered in and of itself. Sam Has 7 Friends premiered on YouTube, Revver, iTunes, and its own website on August 28, 2006. It hooked viewers with the simple slogan, “Samantha Breslow has 7 friends. On December 15, 2006, one of them will kill her.” Each of the 80 episodes brought Samantha one day closer to death. It was compelling Internet television, a serialized thriller with new material and clues made available a bit at a time day by day, and its audience grew steadily as word spread.
Suddenly, amateur and professional content exploded across the Web. The webisode revolution was on, and it was televised over the Internet. YouTube had become the fourth most popular Internet site in the world and an integral part of the public’s daily vocabulary, like Google or texting. Those under 30, especially, were so comfortable with capturing, editing, and posting video online that millions now thought they could create videos as easily as they could send e-mail.
The public hunger to consume short video was not lost on the professional world. If millions of eyeballs were leaving broadcast television in favor of short video on the Internet, then Hollywood, the networks, and the rest of the global media establishment wanted to find a way to recapture those valuable eyeballs.
Global media giant Sony Pictures Entertainment jumped in, creating a site called Grouper (later known as Crackle) that billed itself as “a multiplatform video entertainment network and studio that distributes the hottest emerging talent on the Web and beyond.” By 2013 the site featured original web series right alongside much of Sony’s library of traditional sitcoms, dramas, and feature films, a testament to the growing reality that today’s audience, especially the younger part of it, makes fewer distinctions between movies, TV, and the Internet. If something is entertaining and compelling, they’ll watch it. If not, they won’t.
Disney launched Stage 9 Digital Media, a division dedicated to generating original online-only content. It debuted with a series called Squeegees, about window washers, created by a Los Angeles group known as Handsome Donkey.
Traditional broadcast networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC, which at first cursed Internet video as the enemy (just as the major movie studios had cursed broadcast television as the enemy in the early days of TV), quickly realized Internet video was here to stay, and they needed to be part of it. They made full episodes of their shows available online and soon discovered that rather than decreasing their overall audience, Internet availability of series expanded their reach. They also created original short-form webisodes for shows like The Office and 24.
Established filmmakers loved the creative spirit of Internet video and dove into the webisode pool as well (though they stuck to using their real names instead of cool monikers like Big Fantastic and Handsome Donkey). Oscar-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Big Lebowski) committed to produce short features for 60Frames, a company run by former UTA Online head Brent Weinstein with an ambitious production slate. Charlie’s Angels director McG was hired by Warner Bros. to create a series called Sorority Forever for The WB. Will Ferrell and other established stars contribute Internet videos to a site called Funny or Die. Successful writer, producer, and director Jerry Zucker (Airplane!, The Naked Gun movie series, Ghost) went so far as to form a new company, National Banana, with a soundstage and postproduction facilities and staff dedicated to creating online content.
Though A-list players were storming the Internet video world in droves, Hollywood also recognized that this new form demanded a new reservoir of creative inspiration and energy. Major Hollywood talent agencies like Creative Artists Agency and UTA formed divisions dedicated to finding new Internet talent, both in front of and behind the camera. These new agency divisions also sought to develop online opportunities for established mainstream clients who wanted to work in this exciting new realm.
Suddenly, once-obscure guerilla video artists like the Big Fantastic were in hot demand. Well-financed media mogul Michael Eisner, former CEO of the Walt Disney company, hired Big Fantastic to create a web series called Prom Queen, which became a major hit racking up over 20 million views in short order. Eisner then upped the ante and hired Big Fantastic to shoot 50 two-minute episodes of Foreign Body, a medical thriller tied to the launch of a book by the same name by best-selling author Robin Cook.
Today, nearly every major media player has made at least some commitment to create original web content ranging from low-budget experimentation all the way to Netflix financing two seasons of the hour-long drama House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright and released directly via the Internet.
For advertisers, who had long relied on television to provide the precious eyeballs they needed, the new Internet video culture presented a variety of problems. Not only were fewer people watching network television, but those who did were armed with digital video recorders and other devices that allowed them to skip the commercials. Advertisers quickly realized they needed to take the lemons they’d been handed and somehow make lemonade. Rather than merely placing the same old ads in this new entertainment arena, advertisers seized the opportunity and made new short-form content of their own that married their sales message to entertainment. Consumer giant Unilever promoted its new spray bottle version of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter through webisodes of a series called Sprays of Her Life, a parody of soap operas with the slogan, “Romance. Passion. Deception. Vegetables. Watch things heat up when the refrigerator lights go down!” Anheuser-Busch ponied up $30 million to create Bud.tv, a video site that promoted brands like Budweiser not only through product ads but by hosting original, nonadvertising entertainment content aimed at their target audience produced by Internet-eager talent like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
In the old network television advertising paradigm, advertisers looked for shows whose audience included the advertiser’s target consumer group and bought 30-second spots on the show, hoping against the odds that the audience would stick around for the commercial message instead of muting the set, raiding the fridge, or taking a bathroom break. But in this new, short-form Internet video world, advertisers could design the entertainment to appeal to their consumers and embed their advertising message seamlessly into the entertainment itself.
Suddenly the Internet was no longer the arch enemy of Fortune 500 advertisers; it was their new best friend. Advertisers were making entertaining commercials hoping they’d go viral on the Internet. Take, for instance, the wonderfully entertaining Old Spice deodorant commercials featuring hunky actor Isaiah Mustafa as “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The first ones were made for traditional, pay-for-your-ad-time TV. Then Procter & Gamble had a better idea. People loved the commercials, so why not make more just for the Internet! Along with re-viewings of the original TV ads, these Old Spice spots have now received nearly 100 million views on YouTube, and the spots have been forwarded over and over again via social media like Facebook, all without Procter & Gamble spending a dime for airtime.
It’s a brave new world for everyone, Hollywood hotshots and newcomers alike. We all sense that something big is coming, and coming soon. Nobody knows exactly what the Internet video future will look like, but everyone wants to be a part of it.
WHAT’S OUT THERE NOW, AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL
Trying to catalog every web series on the Net is a bit like trying to count the popcorn kernels in the big bin at the multiplex. You’ll never get the job done because fresh new nuggets pop out of the machine faster than you can count. Seventy-two hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Before I finish typing this sentence, someone, somewhere, will post a new Internet-based TV series. On the Internet, time is measured not in months or years but in nanoseconds. Even when you bring two people together who are professional experts in the web video field, it’s likely that each will know about dozens of high-quality web series the other has never heard of.
Daunting as the task may be, as an aspiring content creator it’s vital that you survey the territory to get a basic sense of the existing landscape and scope of offerings. Start with the video segments of Internet giants such as YouTube, Yahoo! Video, AOL Video, MSN Video, and Facebook. Then explore sites featuring proprietary, professionally created content like Crackle and Funny or Die. Finally, surf a variety of video hosting sites that feature user-generated content, like Vimeo. You’ll have to wade through a sludge pile of things that don’t appeal to you, but you’ll also be inspired by some of what you see and find some favorite new short-form shows.
Here is a list of some of the leading video-sharing websites:
YouTube. The numbers say it all: 72 hours of video uploaded every minute, billions of videos viewed per day, 800 million unique viewers per month, billions of videos per week monetized locally.
Metacafe. A top site that bills itself as having “more exclusive, original and curated premium video content than any other entertainment site.”
Google Video. They own YouTube, the 800-pound gorilla, but Google Video adds another 400 pounds of video chest-beating power.
Dailymotion. The site attracts 106 million unique monthly visitors by offering advanced technology and high-quality video to users and content creators alike.
Yahoo! Video. In addition to the usual boatload of amateur videos, the site includes Yahoo! Originals, high-quality, professionally created content.
Blip. Their mission is to help people discover the best in original web series and to help web series producers make a sustainable living; they distribute videos on websites including YouTube, Facebook, and iTunes and to home TV sets via Roku, Google TV, Verizon FiOS, and others. Blip shares all ad revenue with producers on a 50/50 basis.
Vimeo. Wired magazine calls it “the thinking person’s YouTube.” With a fresh batch of tech improvements and countless accolades from the tech press, Vimeo is a premiere destination for content creators.
Another way to educate yourself about the world of web series is to check out the work of those considered to be the best in the field by their peers. Here is a list of nominees for the 2013 Streamy Awards, which touts itself as “the first and most prestigious awards ceremony devoted to honoring excellence in original web television programming and those who create it.”
Best Drama Series
Lauren
Anyone but Me
The Booth at the End
Runaways
Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
Best Comedy Series
Burning Love
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Smosh
MyMusic
PrisonPals
Best Action or Sci-Fi Series
H+ The Digital Series
Dr0ne
Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
Bite Me
Clutch
Best Animated Series
Electric City
Dinosaur Office
Dick Figures
Oishi High School Battle
Red vs. Blue
Best Writing: Comedy
Felicia Day, The Guild
Peter Shukoff aka Nice Peter, Lloyd Ahlquist aka EpicLLOYD, Epic Rap Battles of History
Spencer Grove, The Annoying Orange
Bernie Su, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Benny Fine, Rafi Fine, and Team, MyMusic
Best Writing: Drama
Christopher Kubasik, The Booth at the End
Susan Miller and Tina Cesa Ward, Anyone but Me
Todd and Aaron Helbing, Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
Vlad Baranovsky and Yuri Baranovsky, Leap Year
Tony Valenzuela, Black Box TV
Best Direction
Mike Diva, Mike Diva Presents
Benny Fine and Rafi Fine, MyMusic
Jon Avnet, Jan
Drew Daywalt, Black Box TV
Stewart Hendler, H+ The Digital Series
Best Ensemble Cast
Burning Love
Cybergeddon
Epic Meal Time
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Video Game High School
Best Male Performance: Drama
Xander Berkeley, The Booth at the End
Ben Samuel, Battleground
Jackson Rathbone, Aim High
Olivier Martinez, Cybergeddon
Tom Green, Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
Best Female Performance: Drama
Rachael Hip-Flores, Anyone but Me
Troian Bellisario, Lauren
Alison Haislip, Battleground
Anna Popplewell, Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
Missy Peregrym, Cybergeddon
Nonfiction or Reality Series
Kids React
K-Town
Shaytards
Ultimate Surprises
California On
Best Branded Entertainment Series
Chasing with Steve Aoki
CliffsNotes Films
Cybergeddon
Leap Year
Stories of Inclusive Innovation
Best First-Person Series
The Flog
iJustine
The Philip DeFranco Show
Ryan Higa
Daily Grace
Best News and Culture Series
The Philip DeFranco Show
SourceFed
Larry King Now
The Young Turks
Vice News
Best Production Design
Kasra Farahani, Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
Rachel Myers, Video Game High School
Andres Cubillan, H+ The Digital Series
Lindsey Stirling, Lindsey Stirling
Greg Aronowitz and Alynne Schripsema, MyMusic
Best Cinematography
Sean Stiegemeier, Dr0ne
Nick Schrunk, Red Bull Moments
Brett Pawlak, H+ The Digital Series
Brett Pawlak, Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
Benjamin Kantor, Husbands
Best Male Performance: Comedy
Ken Marino, Burning Love
Amir Blumenfeld, Jake and Amir
Jeff Lewis, The Jeff Lewis 5 Minute Comedy Hour
Brad Bell, Husbands
Ryan Welsh, Bite Me
Best Female Performance: Comedy
Hannah Hart, My Drunk Kitchen
Kristen Bell, Burning Love
Alessandra Torresani, Husbands
Ashley Clements, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Julia Cho, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Best DIY or How-To Series
Do It, Gurl
FPSRussia
Lauren Conrad’s Crafty Creations
Masterclass
Common Man Cocktails
Best Music Series
Epic Rap Battles of History
AOL Sessions
Songify This; Songify the News
Decoded
VEVO Go Shows
Best International Series
Live in Chelsea
Travel Story
MxM: Mexico around the World
Visto Bueno
PrisonPals
Best Editing
Nathan Zellner, Red vs. Blue
Blake Calhoun, Continuum
Michael Louis Hill, Halo 4: Forward unto Dawn
Butcher Editorial, David Henegar, Ray Daniels, Daybreak
Benny Fine, Rafi Fine, and Team, MyMusic
Best Visual Effects
Oliver Hotz and Matthew A. Rubin, Dr0ne
Clayton D’Mello and John Godfrey, Bite Me
David Ebner, 10,000 Days
William Hyler, MyMusic
Tim Kendall, Book Club
You could also check out the websites of festivals like LAWEBFEST or the New York Television Festival to see the work they have chosen to honor.
WHY CREATE FOR THE NET?
The reasons to create series for the Internet, as opposed to creating for other film or video outlets, are nearly as varied as the Internet itself. But the reasons are all linked, in a sense, by one word: opportunity.
First and foremost, the Internet offers creative opportunity. Broadcast and cable television are limited by all sorts of factors. By necessity, they must appeal to a broad audience. Even if you could get a meeting with the head of a major broadcast network like CBS, she wouldn’t consider buying your idea unless she thought it would appeal to at least 10 million people, most of whom already watch CBS. The mandate to appeal to the widest possible audience is often why so much network television is bland or derivative. Cable has more freedom but is still restricted by the tastes of their core audience, the channel’s branding choices, potential advertiser objections, and government regulations, on and on. The Internet, on the other hand, allows you to create the kind of content you would want to watch and seek out an audience with similar taste. Whereas 2 million regular viewers would be considered a flop on a broadcast network, it would be a phenomenon on the Internet. Take, for example, the acclaimed Internet series Quarterlife. The groundbreaking series attracted a loyal audience on the Net and drew financial support from major advertisers like Toyota and Pepsi. But NBC gave the broadcast version of the series exactly one airing before yanking it and tossing it on the network TV reject pile.
Another form of creative opportunity that web series offer is the opportunity to create new forms of cross-platform storytelling. Take, for instance, the outstanding H+ from Warner Digital and executive producer Bryan Singer (director of X-Men). It consists of 48 four- to five-minute segments that collectively tell the story of the events before, during, and after an international calamity. Because the story jumps back and forth in time, it allowed the producers to assemble and reassemble the segments in different sequences for different platforms: one configuration on the Internet, another when the segments are grouped together to make a miniseries in foreign markets, and so on.
The Internet also offers financial opportunity. Most sites match advertisers with content and share the revenue stream generated by popular videos and web series with creators. Among the biggest success stories is Ray William Johnson, whose YouTube videos posted under the name RayWJ have attracted 1.5 billion views, netting him, according to the Wall Street Journal, a million dollars from YouTube’s ad revenue sharing plan and the sale of his merchandise. Although it is highly unlikely you’ll reach RayWJ’s millionaire status, it is entirely possible to take in enough ad money to pay for the ongoing production of your series. Moreover, video makers are invited to post their work at no charge, as opposed to most film and video festivals that charge an entry fee.
Another huge plus for webisodes is that they provide career opportunity. Many students in universities, community colleges, high schools, and even junior high schools are bursting with creative ideas and video talent. They are ready, willing, and able to make films today. But rare is the film studio or traditional media business willing to take a chance on unproven talent. The aspiring filmmaker, even one with a degree from a prestigious film school, usually finds he must start at the bottom, fetching coffee and running errands. It can easily be 10 years or more before you’ve paid your dues and earned the opportunity to do what you set out to do in the first place: make films. On the Internet, however, all that matters is your work. You create your series, make your webisodes, post them, and let the audience decide whether you’re ready to direct.
Career opportunities also abound for working film and video professionals who want to stretch their creative boundaries. Maybe you’re an assistant director, grip, gaffer, editor, or other worker in the film or television business who yearns to tell stories of your own but who will never be taken seriously as a potential writer or director because the industry has pigeonholed you as “crew” rather than “creative.” The Internet makes it possible for you to sidestep the narrow-minded gatekeepers of Hollywood by investing your time and energy in making your own film rather than toiling thanklessly on someone else’s vision. When you read the interviews with creators in Chapter Fifteen you’ll find three vivid examples of actors who created their own web series to promote their performing careers, only to find that it also opened up opportunities for them behind the camera (see Chapter Fifteen interviews with Courtney Zito, Jen Dawson, and Christine Lakin).
Creative people in a variety of artistic pursuits are discovering the enormous power of the Internet to provide what might be called exposure opportunity. The Groundlings, a legendary Los Angeles improvisational theater troupe that has helped launch the careers of Lisa Kudrow, Will Ferrell, the late Phil Hartman, and others, has spent decades performing in their 99-seat theater. But after they shot the spoof David Blaine Street Magic in the alley behind their theater and posted it on YouTube, the video racked up 18 million plays. That’s the power of the Internet. If the Groundlings performed the sketch in their theater to sold-out audiences every night, it would take 181,818 performances or more than 6,000 years to reach an audience of 18 million. On the Internet, it happened in a matter of months and scored the group a contract to provide 50 webisodes for Sony’s Crackle site.
For screenwriters, the Internet offers what might be called craft improvement opportunity. The chance to see your work on screen, rather than just churning out spec scripts and never seeing them get made, helps developing writers get better — a lot better. It helps developing writers learn how to be more economical with story and dialogue, how to use the visual more fully, and how to truly write for the screen instead of merely for the page. Similarly, actors who have created their own web series all rave about how spending hour after hour in the editing room watching themselves (with their producer and director hat on) has informed and improved their acting tremendously.
On the Internet, with dozens of hosting sites open to all, there are no gatekeepers to tell you why you can’t do what you know you can and virtually no limits to the size of the audience you can reach if your work goes viral and becomes a phenomenon. If you make a great web series (and you market it well; see Chapter Thirteen), the audience will find it. To paraphrase the mysterious voice in the corn field in the film Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.”
In short, the Internet provides unlimited opportunity for anyone with the desire to create video content. In fact, the hunger for content is so voracious that the Internet is not just opening the doors of opportunity; it’s begging you to come in and make yourself at home. But you need a bit more than desire and an idea. You need the fortitude to follow through on that idea. And you need the craft and skills to turn that vague idea into a high-quality, polished pilot ready for digital distribution across the World Wide Web. Many have inspiration, but few have craft and know-how. That’s what the following chapters are about: helping you acquire those tools.
Are you ready? Good. Let’s begin.
FOR TEACHERS
If you taught creative writing, you’d surely insist that your students study the techniques of the masters as a foundation for their own creative work. Music, art, and film instructors also require their students to study outstanding works in the field, past and present. Short video is no different. Those who seek to be top creators should begin by studying the best work already done in the form. As an assignment in conjunction with Chapter One of this book, ask your students to watch three episodes of a current web series and write a short paper (two or three pages) analyzing the series.
For this analysis to be of depth and value, the student should not just casually surf the Net and stare blankly at a few videos but must think and write critically about the work she views. At Goddard College, where I obtained my MFA in creative writing, we were required to write weekly annotations, two- to three-page analyses of works of fiction, narrowly focused on a specific, noteworthy area of craft such as how the main character was introduced, or image motifs, or use of location as a character. The idea was to train us, as readers, to examine in detail the underlying techniques used by the writer in constructing the work.
For short-form Internet series, students could focus on aspects of craft such as compelling main characters, or economy of storytelling, or techniques used to maximize audience engagement. The students could also be asked to parse basic elements such as number of characters, genre, production value (low, average, or high), or length of episodes.
To help students understand the type of analysis and specifics you’re looking for, you might try an in-class analytical exercise first. Screen an episode or two of a web series, or maybe a pilot of a web series, then ask the students to say what the strengths and weaknesses of the series are. Force them to be more precise than “It’s funny” or “I just like it.” Force them to articulate and analyze the underlying architecture of what they’ve watched.
This assignment should be given not just during Week One but regularly throughout the semester. Students of music study other musicians as a regular part of their ongoing training. Aspiring webisode artists should be equally committed to the study of their form.
