“Indie TV”: Is the Television Format a Logical Next Step for Web Series Creators?
There are valid arguments that a web series should not be just a short TV show. I personally think it depends on the story you’re telling, but utilizing the web’s inherent interactivity in serialized web video is a proven component of building an engaged audience with online content.
Whether you argue that a web series should or shouldn’t be like TV, I don’t have a single argument why web series creators can’t use their skills to make an actual TV show. As with music videos in the 80’s and 90’s, web series provide an excellent training ground to hone skills used in longer form traditional film and television. With long form content being developed in house by Hulu, Netflix, and others, I felt the timing was right to test those waters. The result is the assemblage of a team of some serious web series heavy hitters to create DRIFTER.
The latest addition to OMFGeek’s content slate, Drifter is a half-hour, television format sci-fi pilot shooting in July.
When I founded OMFGeek in October of 2010, I didn’t intend to be a television production company. Our focus is and has been on web original content. There is, however, a portion of the industry moving towards long form content and when I thought about it, it’s a logical step for the industry.
It’s far too early to say where Drifter will ultimately live. The pilot will make the rounds, and we will pitch it to traditional and broadband networks alike. However, the TV format itself has advantages and I’ve always believed the episode length restrictions on web series were completely arbitrary. Short form is a web tradition mostly because of technological limitations to web video that no longer apply (and haven’t since the mass adoption of streaming video and broadband connections). The second limitation is audience expectation, which have been evolving (no one expects a Simpsons episode to be 2 minutes long just because it’s on Hulu instead of Fox). The third limitation is budgetary, and that’s where I think this project is on the bleeding edge of the curve in the industry financing experimentation Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon (for a start) are developing.
Premium quality, TV format projects are easier to monetize online than their shorter brethren, create a better sense of audience familiarity, and for the creator, having the extra time to let the story develop can be crucial.
Plus, let’s face it: while there are web series with 6 or 7 episode seasons to be proud of, traditional TV can look at those and say “Great! We do your entire season every week, 24 times a year”. The web series is an unformed, variable, and undefined user experience that more often than not leaves our engaged audiences feeling like they had a snack, not a meal.
Not every web series can or should exist in a television format, but that doesn’t mean none of them can, or that it’s not a natural format for web-born creators to work in. We’ve all grown up on 30- and 60-minute programming, and those stories have an ebb and flow and language tied to those run times that feels very natural after years of exposure to them. Whether Drifter ultimately ends up on TV or online, it will become (along with Hayden Black’s Goodnight Burbank and Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith’s Pioneer One) among the first shows by web creators to consider the standardized TV format and ask, “why not?”
Click here for more information on Drifter and the multi-award winning creative team behind it.
This is why Barrett’s awesome. That, and he got reblogged by Wil Wheaton last week. Next thing you know, some restaurant will be naming a menu item after him.
Netflix To Enter Original Programming With Mega Deal For David Fincher-Kevin Spacey Series ‘House Of Cards’ – Deadline.com
Video streaming juggernaut Netflix is becoming an original programming player. In what is probably the biggest gamble in its 14-year history, I hear Netflix has outbid several major cable networks, including HBO and AMC, for Media Rights Capital’s drama series House of Cards, executive produced and directed by David Fincher and exec produced by and starring Kevin Spacey.
Negotiations are still going on, but I hear Netflix landed the drama project by offering a staggering commitment of two seasons, or 26 episodes. Given that the price tag for a high-end drama is in the $4 million-$6 million an episode range and that a launch of a big original series commands tens of millions of dollars for promotion, the deal is believed to be worth more than $100 million and could change the way people consume TV shows.
via kthread
Netflix is playing with a Queen while everyone else timidly moves Pawns across the board. ReelSEO’s take on this is here: http://www.reelseo.com/mastered-distribution-netflix-produce-content/
