One of these things is not like the other.

Take the new Clash of the Titans. Enjoy the epic battles. Have fun with it.



Then compare with the original from 1981.



I'm just not sure this is the same franchise.

It's Elementary: How Sherlock Goes Beyond Victorian

And no, this isn't your momma's Sherlock. There may be spoilers. Watch out.

I'd contend, however, with Ken Levine that in actual fact, Sherlock Holmes was a James Bond of his time. Doyle even meta-texted his own critics at the time:

"And yet," said [Holmes], smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records.

The problem is that to be a James Bond in the Victorian period wasn't entirely to be the man who blew stuff up. Nor was he, in many ways, the guy who got the girl. The sensationalism at the time lent itself to letting emotions fly and quite literally spitting in the face of the authorities.

In fact, there might even have been flagrant lack of etiquette that Holmes displayed that was part of his charm.

Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allan Poe (the true instigator of the contemporary detective novel, quoth that raven) - Sherlock Holmes was damned near Bond-ian in his approach.

And the storylines - hypnotists, crazed madmen with delusions of grandeur, faked deaths and women of intrigue. It's got everything required for a huge blockbuster event, but was set in a different period.

Now, with six writers in question, the film was obviously under some scrutiny and pain to be written with modern audiences in mind. Which may be why we lost the cocaine habit (nasty drugs) but gained boxing (an abhorrently base sport at the time) and gambling in its stead.

But Watson was ever the faithful - and feisty - sidekick to Holmes, and was a soldier to top it all even in the novels. It was later British adaptations to screen that created the portly rather less than the original stories had. The fact that Law's "Hotson" was so willing to get his hands dirty is, in truth, perhaps more accurate to the genre.

But this Holmes plays to the sensationalism of today - ostensibly with the historical stylings of the Victorian period, playing more steampunk than, perhaps, intended. The story structure itself plays out as a novel from Doyle - albeit with a bit more gun play - and the ending was perfectly bang on for a sensationalized Victorian story.

There was no better I could ask for a genre I adore in a movie of this ilk, and to be honest, it was a perfect example of how an adaptation can be both true to the original and somewhat transcend to be something more.

The Question of the Year: Why not Team Bella?

Salon has a brilliant article up that not only explains Twilight to those that were a little lost as to why Twilight hit teen girls the way it does.

Sick of hearing about "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" yet? Me too! But you know who's not? Teenaged girls. They're still eating up the story of Bella Swan alternating between listless moping and dangerous thrill-seeking -- plus occasional flirting with the werewolf next door -- in the absence of her emotionally abusive vampire boyfriend.

Sounds... brilliant. Or not. This seems to be the question so many lost in the world of Twilight aren't getting - if the girl is acting a fool, what are the women, young girls and teens adhering to?

Educator Rachel Simmons chimed in for a few thoughts on the film, and book franchise, and why it works

"I think the Bella Swan character is so appealing because, from what I can see, she's stripped down to the core emotions an adolescent girl feels: excluded, lovestruck, and misunderstood. In adolescence things are experienced in extremes; it's either yes or no, black or white. It's difficult to find the gray or the nuance. The fact that Bella experiences things in such extremes -- she has to give up her soul, he'll kill himself if she's dead -- lights up a girl like a Christmas tree... developmentally speaking, that is."

But one thing that Twilight does well - ignoring the blatant underlying messaging about the "evils" of premarital sex if you might - is ignoring the plight of the Queen Bee, or Mean Girls.

"They've been told that being empowered is about shopping, looking sexy and being catty. In 'New Moon,' you don't see a single kid texting and there is barely a sassy remark. The 'Twilight' saga ends up being a refuge from the 'mean girl' behavior that girls supposedly love to pay to watch."

Which begs the question of why it can't be a deep, long lasting and perhaps more empowering message at the end of the day - journalist Harding questions why it can't be Heathers - but if you examine other teen/tween book-to-film adapt Harry Potter the deeper questions may not be answered any more cleanly.

But truly - perhaps the question lay almost entirely in the marketing - why not Team Bella?

Top 10's: Canadian Style from the Decade Past

No, I'm not going to bore everyone with details of poutine joy from the post-2000 (though Toronto has had their own influx of poutineries this year); however, the 2000 have had a bit of an up and down on Canadian TV and, dare I say it, films from the last decade.

Also, I'm going to admit now that there's a reason I stick with writing - numbers never were my strong suit.

FILM

This has to be the decade of teh gay. Films like Mambo Italiano, C.R.A.Z.Y, and Breakfast with Scot made splashes (some larger than others) around the festival scene, and even beyond.

More seriously, films like One Week, A History of Violence, and Bon Cop, Bad Cop gained a foot of the sensational and oh-right-Canadian-films-can-sell-tickets to them.

Then the cult fans got on board - beginning in the 2000s, Canada got international and national word of mouth for films like Ginger Snaps, Fido, and one-room play Pontypool.

Docs abounded, unsurprisingly. Edgy (to the industry) RiP: A Remix Manifesto had some national waves. A little more play to the Corporation and Sharkwater. And, the famous for many reasons, Shake Hands with the Devil.

And Hard Candy gets its "honourary" mention in the trying-so-hard to be Canadian.

TV

I'll say it because no one else will. I loved JPod. Yeah, it had it's problems, sure it's wildly viewed as a failure, and nope sure didn't get many viewers, but if only it were half an hour shorter. But I still loved it - wacky hijinks and all.

Heart filled comedic dramas seemed to be kicking the floor all over the place in the last half of the decade. Being Erica. Heartland. Less Than Kind - all of them caught an audience (even if the audience kept having to move).

That said, procedurals kept their place of prominence in the back half of the decade.Regenesis,
Murdoch Mysteries and Durham County all got significant play over the last couple of years.

Flashpoint, of course, having its own unique trajectory has to be included in a list like this - if only for the springboard for Canadian TV to American airwaves.

And last, but not least, the teen/tween insurgence of the last ten years. No one can forget "edgy"
Edgemont in the teen scene. Then there's Life With Derek. Laugh it up, kids, but this show just keeps going.


Reboot Sorry, that's nostalgia talking.

More scripts than a barrel of monkeys!

Friend of blog Scott Albert suggested a great site to all of those looking to find TV scripts - those oh so hard to find entities that get squirreled away to various harddrives.

The scripts can be found here, and Lee Thomson is the man that puts it all together.

No dice: The History Boys

No correct guesses on last week's awesome stage-to-broadway-to-film adaptation by Alan Bennett.



By the by - Samuel Barnett (Desperate Romantics, Beautiful People) and Russell Tovey (Being Human) seem to have taken over British small screens.

Guess the Classic: UK R Us

This one is a personal favourite, and marks one of the few adaptation from play-to-film that has little changeover.

Format: (initial) Publicly Funded Theatre

Format: (secondary) Broadway

Format: (tertiary) Film

Time Period: 2000s

Neat-o factoid: Entire first run cast made it to the film version

Neat-o factoid #2: Two of the actors seem to be running roughshod through every BBC program kicking around.

Keywords are Your Friend: Or How to SEO Optimize

You can learn a lot from your keyword searches off of analytics or, that handy dandy wordpress thing.

I, for instance, apparently have a severe hate on for all things vampire and new. The biggest hits I get are from people looking up such wonderfully quaint items like vampire diaries suck and twilight sucks.

That, or I have issues with slinkies. Not entirely sure beyond that.

But the thing about google that's pretty easy to comprehend is that your SEO (search engine optimization, for those playing at home) or keywords to find your site through google aren't that difficult.

All you have to do is type the same thing over, and over, and over again and eventually - well, hung dang you're top of the google list.

Try a little experiment, if you might. Type in something nonsensical like:
The shambling undead sparkle at midnight

Type in it in seven times.

The shambling undead sparkle at midnight
The shambling undead sparkle at midnight
The shambling undead sparkle at midnight
The shambling undead sparkle at midnight
The shambling undead sparkle at midnight
The shambling undead sparkle at midnight
The shambling undead sparkle at midnight

Then get your friends to do it. And see what happens. You might skyrocket to fame for something elegant and filled with verisimilitude.

Today's lesson was brought to you by the absolute wankery that is the letter V.

- -

Optimally, if you want to go for the out and out cheating model you could just add in random bits of text like The shambling undead sparkle at midnight and then just add a layer of subliminal AND non-noticeable SEO-upping in one go.

Cancelled Before its Time?

TV.com is running an article today about "10" shows cancelled before their time.

And while a good chunk of the fourteen shows they chose are on my own top lists - and many other writers. However, I think it's most telling on their number four on the list:

Despite winning Satellite Awards, Saturn Awards, and Teen Choice Awards, this adolescent-angled Law and Order never earned very high ratings

And while it may rankle that Survivor was beating out an awesomeshowthathassuchagreatserialarc, there's a reason it was thrown out.

While "Who wouldn't want to watch Lee Pace ... and pie?" seems like, hell, probably was the point of the show, there was issues there.



And even after watching all of episodes, I'm still not sure I can follow the rules in place.

Really, though, most of these shows had enough time to sit out and get a chance. What about the pain of losing Carnivale to an endless non-answer?

Guess the Classic: Rabid Youth

Format: Film

Time Period: 90s

Audience: Teen

Actual Audience: Music Fans

Premise: Corporate take overs ain't got nothing on these rag tag retail kids - and their leader, too, of course.

Neat Factoid: Everything in this film happens in 24 hours.

Luke I am Your... - Webseries Wanders with Chad Vader

the question most people are asking the Blame Society really is how they took something that could be essentially one note:



Like Chad Vader. And then make an entire series out of it. Though it might be stated that a webseries can be made - simply - from one tiny hook.

And, to be honest, there's not much that's hookier than Chad Vader.

When developing the series what were some of the biggest issues you faced?


We really wanted the show to have legs and not be a one-note sketch. Our biggest challenge was to find a hook to the series that went beyond the "Darth Vader in a grocery store" premise. The hook ended up being that we had to give Chad Vader a distinct and unique personality and surround him with similarly interesting characters. So what drew the audience in was the world we created, rather than the fish-out-of-water premise and the Star Wars references.

The other biggest challenge was, of course, trying to do something with quality production values with no budget. We were fortunate enough to assemble a cast and crew of talented and enthusiastic people who were willing to create the show with us, and the show looks and sounds great as a result.

How much in advance to shooting was everything written?

Everything is scripted out in advance, though there are quite a few lines that get improvised on the set and we often end up incorporating those into the final cut of the episodes. Also, as a director, I'm a big fan of little imperfections in line readings, so we will often take flubbed lines or weirdly paraphrased takes and use those. Often those "mistakes" make a scene seem more real and interesting.

We like improv and spontaneity, but we always have a tight script and organized shot list to fall back on.

Was the season arc-ed out before hand, or was it an episode-to-episode basis?

Kind of both. We knew a few key plot points that were going to happen, but mostly we would only script one or two episodes ahead. Midway through the series we had a pretty well mapped-out season arc, but we ended up discarding it a few episodes later because we had come up with some new ideas that we liked better, so I think we work better writing from episode to episode rather than figuring out the big picture all at once. It ends up being more organic.

What were some of the things you’ve learned since the pilot episode?

We used to do tons of takes -- take after take after take. I think we're more confident now and are able to relax and say "ok, we got it" and move on. It allows us to move faster on set and it makes editing easier. Sometimes we'll only do one take -- no safety. When you know something is good, you can just move on and not make a fuss about it.

There's a hundred little tricks and terms and things that we've learned over the years. We didn't go to school for this and we've never had any formal training, so making Chad Vader has been the best and most fun film school that anyone could go to.


What was the production schedule like? What were some of the snags that were found?

We start shooting at 9:00 PM when the store closes and we usually shoot until about 2 or 3 AM. Shooting an episode takes about 2 nights, but if there are lots of special effects or different locations, it can take longer.

What kind of crew do you use to make a webisode?

We have a director, an AD, a DP, a boom operator, 2-3 grips, and sometimes a line producer on set. It's a pretty big crew for the web, but we usually have a lot to get through in a night and we don't want to shoot until 5 in the morning, so a bigger crew helps us move fast and get everything done, while making sure the shots look good and we get the takes that we need.

What does the web exist as for you?

I think the web is where the new talent is -- the people who aren't in the industry, so they aren't playing by industry rules, and as a result they're coming up with great, original stuff. We've been pitching TV and film ideas ever since we started Chad Vader, and it's a slow, slow process with little forward momentum. We're still plugging away at that, but it's good to still have the internet where we can be our own bosses, be creative and make things happen.

Monetization? How does it work for you?

Definitely. More and more you can monetize your videos based on views, and by doing product placement. We're making a living off of it!

Thanks to both Matt and Aaron from the BlameSociety for taking a bit of a breather to go over their process.

As ever, keep on the look out for the next couple of interviews in the series.

Guess the Classic: Breakin' Detectives

It must be stated that the ever-willing-to-save the day Denis McGrath did get the Breaker High reference those weeks back.

But no one, apparently, was willing to believe that Zac Efron would be playing Johnny Quest in a 2010 adaptation of the beloved cartoon.

Which, to be honest, I don't really expect anyone would buy, because at 22 he's hardly looking 12.

One thing that might be looked at, though, is the increasing "reality-plays" of the old cartoons.

Scooby Doo, of course, being a prime example.

The question of remakes/adaptations is hardly new - but the consistent, and often of middling success - begs the question of why. Indeed, other favourite from the time, The Jetsons is on its own path for Live Action remake.

And, inevitably, the characters age up, and the topics seem to be a bit more lighthearted with all the obsession with End-times stories that seem to have developed a fervent main-stream audience with the media attention over death plagues.

But, with all that said and done, the live-action teen show seems to have aged down since the likes of Canadian classics like Breaker High or Student Bodies - with all the Hannah Montanas and Jonas of the Disney franchises.

UR doin it Rite: ARG it up

One thing that the good folks at NextMedia were talking about were ARGs.

Fun. Fancy free. Get to do some neat storytelling with them.

But what are they really?

The good folks at Xenophile just releasedLove Letters to the Future - with a live event component coming across the world between Dec. 9 - 12 to go with the Climate Change Conference happening in Copenhagen.

And to bring it back to some of the discussions from NextMedia I think I need to go back to a TV format for a moment - with Late Night with Jimmie Fallon.

Gavin Purcell, a supervising producer over at Late Night with Jimmy, offered up a few key components to new media that seem to be getting missed.

• Your audience wants to interact with you
• Sometimes what you do online doesn't play for TV
• Get your talent on board
• Have someone who wants to communicate
• Be genuine
  
• Forget corporate "machines"

This concept of "de-robotizing" was caught by a number of speakers at the event, but is key to marketing on the internet now.

If one looks at the character twitter accounts for shows for teens, like Nathan from Misfits - there's that little thrill of communicating with rather than just watching. And the fans that are wanting that extra bit - the ones that flocked to Jimmy Fallon at the same time for his interaction with audience both on and off camera - crave that.

Arguments can be made that these are the 2 percent crowds. But your 2 percent audiences should be a target - with specialized broadcasts (and huge late night competition for Jimmy) having an audience that's there starts to count.

The success of the Fallon model is attributed to a variety of things - it was a relaunch - which helps, but they had a set date, a set thing they were aiming for, and they honestly listened to audience feedback to make things better.

You have an audience that feel they're accomplishing something? They'll be right there with you, all the way through.

Now, that's not a full audience number - granted - but you get five devout fans hooked, they hook you up to their peers. That's the power of social networking. Of social TV-Internet hybrids.

Which brings back to the concept of the ARG. With a bit of background on the subject it's fairly easy to see where things are going with the live!event, and how that drags people back into the topic at hand. A fun - and edutainable way - to look at climate change.

And the "prize" here - much like Simon's tweets - is the possibility of 'net fame later, and a chance to be part of an event. It's a secret handshake for those in the game, and counts as a way to inspire, quickly, to the end of following things.

Jimmy's interaction with audience got them a webby, but also gave them an audience that may not have been there before. A slew of young guys watch the show now, were instrumental in the building of the show (in their minds), and are now devout audience to a medium that is - supposedly - dead to them.

Makes you think what a little interaction can get you.

Guess the Classic

Time Period: 60s. 90s.

Type: TV

Audience: Kids.

Premise: A kid, his dad, and his dad's buddy beat on bad guys. Later they add a female because...then girls would watch more?

Neat Factiod: Apparently Zac Efron's getting in on the rejig action here.

Webseries Wanders: Scott Albert and GopherX

Scott Albert is a Canadian webseries creator (and TV writer, but hey, apparently to the new kids these day it doesn't matter where you watch anymore - thanks NextMedia) who has a website.

GopherX is an entertainment network, including pioneering series Team Leader.



Scott's doin' it right in Toronto, and I had a chance to briefly catch up with him - to discuss the show last week. Scott went right into the nitty gritty of their process, so if you'd like to ask him anything else, feel free to contact him direct from one their site!

First of all, thanks so much for giving me a chance to talk about something I am very passionate about – making series (whether web or otherwise). It’s nice to chat about this stuff to someone who gets it. The gals at my favourite coffee shop (Broadview Espresso) will be relieved to get a break from my ramblings!

As a bit of a background, I’m a co-founder of GopherX.net, a small production company dedicated to making, distributing and promoting original short form content. My partner is Christopher Guest – but not the Christopher Guest from Spinal Tap and Best in Show. Christopher and I have been making short form series since about 2003, when RSS was first raising its head and iTunes was brand new. (Remember that, kids?) Since then we’ve made 4 series, and we’re currently in post-production on our 5th and in prep on two more (which doesn’t count the ones we’re dreaming about!) It doesn’t seem like much, 4 series over seven years, but when you consider we’re entirely self-financed and, working with micro-budgets, we’re been able to break even in our production costs, I’m pretty proud of what we’ve done and the stories we’ve told. And yes, some day we will reach the promised land of paying ourselves to do it!

Okay, on with the interrogation… I mean interview!

When developing the series, what were some of the biggest issues you faced?

Well, that’s a simple question with tons of ways to answer it. It comes down to two things, the creative and the money. Three if you count the money. We have always tried to start with an idea that we can do within the means we have available to us, and as we’ve become more experienced we try to factor in how much we can make off of it. The more we do it, the more we know ahead of time what sorts of challenges we’re likely to face. We leapt into “The Retired Porn Producer’s Guide To…” without any concept of what we were doing, except to try to make it as easy as possible to animate. Team Leader was a massive learning curve, we were in a constant state of putting out fires instead of looking ahead, and we had crazy expectations for how much money we were going to make on the show. Going into our latest, Job Review with a Vampire, we applied everything we had learned to make the shoot as smooth as possible, and we largely succeeded. In fact, it is going so smooth I kinda don’t know what to do with myself!

But we’re talking about development. The actual idea, right? Once you have locked down a doable concept, then the process isn’t any different whether you’re writing a movie or a book or a comic book. You just try to take a strong idea, execute it to the best of your abilities, and then keep trying to plus it. We have an expression, “Better is always better.” Which means we’re always willing to try anything that might improve the end product.

But there’s very rarely any issues outside of money at this point. On one project we wanted to work with a specific, very talented actor. His agent demanded payment that amounted to an actual, reasonable living wage. The fool. So most problems are problems like that.

What was the process like?

They’re all pretty much the same. Christopher and I knock ideas around, working with any collaborators. On Team Leader there were four of us, including my very talented co-writer, Josh Budd. At some point we can’t put of writing any longer, so the scripts are pounded out. I tend to work fast, and at the end of the day we’re only dealing with 30 to 40 scripts pages, so we usually get a rough draft of the entire series inside of a week.

Depending on how serialized it is, we may “break” the series, which means rough out the story beats for the entire series or season. For “Job Review with a Vampire,” our latest comedy, it was very episodic so I just wrote to a bit of a formula and tried to make myself laugh. With “Tights and Fights 2: Ashes” (in development) we had a writers room of around 8 of us and we talked our way through 181 episodes. It took us four months, I think. The whole thing’s gonna be 10 hours long! But that’s a different beast than the usual stuff we do.

Then we work with a director to further shape it and cast it. Often the hardest part is finding a suitable location for free.

How much in advance of shooting was everything written?

My first love is always the writing. (I like seeing the thing get made too, but that’s so much work!) So we usually don’t think about production until we have at least rough drafts. The lead time varies between writing and shooting, but it is usually two months if not more. Again, very little work on anything else starts until we’re happy with the scripts.

Were the seasons arced out beforehand, or was it done on an episode to episode basis?

We’ve done both. But in cases where I’m working alone, unless I get really stuck I generally just write, and then see what we’ve got. For “The Retired Producer’s Guide To…” they were written months and months apart. “Tights and Fights” is almost a stream of consciousness. “Team Leader” and now “Tights and Fights 2: Ashes,” because they are written with other people, there’s a lot more work put into where the story’s going. The more people involved, the more it needs to be talked through to try to get everyone pulling in the same direction.

But whichever method you choose, there’s always the stage where you go back, look at what you’ve got, and rework things to make sense now that you know where you’re going to end up.

What are some of the things you have learned since the pilot episode?

That’s a tough one. We’ve learned tons since we started, but what you’re asking is; what did we discover about the series between the first episode and writing the last? We don’t do ongoing series, all of our stuff is written and then shot together. So we don’t have the luxury of tweaking or improving things based on what’s happening on the floor. By the time things are seen by our audience, the show has been finished for so long that it seems like an old war story. “I remember when the shooting started. It were in Ought Six, it were…” The only show where we did have that kind of experience was “The Retired Porn Producer’s Guide To…” but I can’t say we were self-aware enough to change the way we approached the writing. Certainly Christopher learned tons about what worked and what didn’t in the animation.

At the end of the day, it is all about instinct. At least for me. Not everything we’ve done has come out exactly the way we pictured it, and there are definitely some jokes and gags and moments that I fought for and they fell flat on their face. At the end of the day, a good writer or storyteller in any medium is always struggling to improve, but I feel like if you get too introspective about it you’ll never get anything done. So with each script I try to be a little more funny, a little more clear, a little more of a connection with the audience, but I don’t intellectualize that process. Maybe I should. :)

What were the snags that you found?

We’ve had all kinds of experiences, and honestly none of the answers to that question will be as interesting as you probably hope.

Animation and live action are very different, so I’ll stick with live action. We shoot weekends – we have day jobs too! Each show is unique. “Team Leader” took three weekends (and we shot like crazy! 20 pages a day!) The latest, “Job Review with a Vampire” was from a Thursday overnight (it was shot in a working office) and then Friday overnight, and Saturday and Sunday. We shot about 7 or 8 pages a day. The show was designed to be mostly in one location – the Boss’ office. We went in and prepped the set Wednesday night, started shooting after hours on Thursday, went until 2 AM or something. Some of us worked the next day. Then we shot Friday until 2 AM. Saturday and Sunday we were able to start earlier, so we finished at more reasonable times of 10 or 11. It was set up so that we did 4 episodes the first two nights, and then over the weekend we did one last episode in that office and we shot what we called “The Break Out Scenes.” Each episode had a short flashback to an incident, to get us out of the office for a moment. (Our director, Andrew Honor, came up with that idea and it was a good one. Very funny stuff came out of it! Better is always better!) And then we had one episode set in a boardroom… and then we were done. It kinda went as smooth as you could hope for.

The biggest problem is getting people to help out, either for no money or for very little, who know what they’re doing. It’s easy to decide to get all volunteers, but I promise you when the camera starts to roll you’re going to realize why movie crews get paid so well. You’re putting a lot of time and effort into this… why have a camera operator or a sound recorder who’s learning as they go? It just makes it that much tougher to get distributors and other industry types to take you seriously, and bad production work can take your audience (who watch multi-million dollar movies and complain about the effects) right out of the story. No one watching really cares how little money you had to make it. They either like it or they don’t.

Even harder for “Job Review with a Vampire” was getting background performers to come out for eight hours, for free, until 2 in the morning. We had a couple of good friends who were there for the whole thing, and there’s a couple of episodes where it looks like they’re the only ones in the whole office… which they were!

One thing we tried which seemed to work pretty well is we had lunch before we started shooting, as opposed to taking an hour break in the middle of things. It wouldn’t work for every situation, but it worked okay for us. We had a good meal, chatted, and then worked until it was done.

Oh, here’s my biggest piece of advice about production… feed your crew! Don’t get cheap ass pizzas or sandwiches. Catering is often the single biggest line item on our miniscule budget.

How long are your shooting days?

I jumped the gun and answered that one already, but I’ll address our philosophy behind shooting days here.

The short answer is until it is done. The long answer is, if you come in prepared and have a strong plan and good crew, there’s no reason to be doing 18 hour days. I’ve been on short films that tried to cram way too much into a day. And then you’re shooting scenes and everyone’s tired, your actors are pushing themselves to reach their performances, you’re either bringing in another meal or people are dropping out from hunger. Volunteers are going home. Cast members are waiting five hours to go into front of the camera. All because you thought you could shoot 15 pages with four location moves inside 12 hours.

Sure, Hollywood movies go long all the time. When they have to, they shoot 18 hour days, often the last day is super long. But that’s why unions get overtime. It is super expensive to the producer to keep shooting after 12 hours. Poorly planned shoots, using volunteers or people paid a flat, often don’t have overtime, so producers and directors feel they can just keep shooting on and on. Your end result suffers, and we’re all about the end result. Your goal shouldn’t be to simply get it done. You gotta keep an eye on making sure people are gonna like it when you show it to them, months down the road.

We plan a day that, if everything goes right, it’ll take 8 or 10 hours. Then you have a little time to adjust if things go wrong. If you plan a day with everything crammed in for 12 hours… you’re dead in the water and you might as well not show up on set.

What kind of crew do you need to do a webseries?

That’s a good question, because it raises an important question that rarely gets asked. What do you intend to get out of the series? If all you want to do is put it up on Youtube, gain some experience, and whoever likes it, likes it, then you don’t need anyone. Design it around a single locked off shot and there you go. If, like us, you actually want to sell it and make your costs back… well, there’s a minimum you need to make it look professional. And trust me, I do mean minimum. We do without all kinds of crew positions which are vital, but you can ‘get by’ without them. When we did “Job Review with a Vampire” we struggled to keep the crew as small as we could, and I think we ended up with around 10, not including the actors or extras. I think we were between 15 and 20 on any given night. One of the things that people don’t think about is; where are people going to sit down while the filming is going on? You can’t have 8 people crouched behind a counter all night, trying not to be seen.

If you want it to look anything like a mainstream product, like a TV show, you need a D.P./camera op, sound recorder (who knows what they’re doing!), grip, electric, hair/make-up, Art Director/set dresser, an Assistant Director, a production co-ordinator (or at least someone who’s not on set to do that kind of role) PA’s to pitch in, and the more people you have on the grip/electric crew, the better. Camera assistants are nice, especially if you want to have any hope of properly slating each take. That’s on top of a director and the actors. And then a producer (hopefully), an editor, sound editor, music composer. If you can get a lawyer to help for free, take it. That’s kind of the minimum if you want to do it right. And shoot it on high def. Do whatever you have to shoot it high def.

And be very, very careful if you plan to have people fill more than one role. The last thing you want is to be sitting around waiting to shoot because your camera operator is making sandwiches for lunch or your sound recorder is lighting the next scene. On paper it seems like it could work, but it never does. The goal is have people waiting to be needed, not the entire production waiting for one person to be ready to shoot.

Again, that’s not to say you can’t do something simpler if that’s what you want. We did “Tights and Fights” with me as the writer/director/performer; a D.P./camera op, Christopher as a producer/sound recorder/editor, and an Art Director/Wardrobe designer. And I’m very proud of that show. People on Youtube like it. But we’ll never, ever sell it to broadcast.

So be very clear to yourself at the outset what your goals are.

What the best way to kick start a webseries into the vast, vast space of the internet?

In a word – promotion.

There’s no golden ticket to getting people to see your work. Most producers (even the big boys) assume that simply launching it and putting out the word will get enough people to see your show. Not so. Think about how many ads you are bombarded with when the new TV season starts, or when the latest blockbuster is about to come out. The day we see bus shelter ads for a new web only series is the day that internet based content has arrived.

Until then, it’s a lot of work. Social networking can work – if you keep at it day after day for a year. What works best, like old media, is having an advertising budget. We like ads that say, “Free Funny Videos.” People who click on that ad are people who want to watch funny videos for free, and get what they were promised. How do we make money off those people? Well… that’s a whole other conversation, isn’t it?

And then we could have a whole other, other conversation about making it engaging and relevant.

To get a sponsor or not get a sponsor?

As an independent producer, your chances of attracting a sponsor before you go into production are slim. Do you really want to wait until you can convince some big corporate entity (worried about its public image) to associate itself with your dream project? The trend right now in sponsored projects is branded content, which means that your series is essentially an ad, with all the expectations on the part of the client that go along with it. While I’m not adverse to money, and I would love to do a branded series if only to have a larger budget to play with, you better be ready for the shit sandwich. You want their bread, you gotta eat their shit, too.

You want to simply tell a good story, go out and do it. Don’t wait for someone to hand you money.

Some series are used as a “back door pilot” – what’s your feeling on webseries as TV-lite.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and here’s where I’m at right now – a good webseries does not make a good TV series. They’re simply too different. Which is not to say the core idea of a webseries can’t be developed into a good TV series. That’s another process all together. But if you shoot 6 or 8 episodes with a dream of getting a million fans, cutting it together as a pilot, and selling it to one of the big boys as a network or cable series, you’re in for a world of hurt. I’m not saying it can’t be done and it’ll never happen, I’m just saying it’s such a long shot that it’s not really a very good plan.

And there’s this too… when I see a web series that has money behind it, but I get the feeling that what they’re really trying to do is to sell it as a TV series, I feel used. They don’t really care about me, only using me to get noticed by someone with money. It’s like someone dating you to get to your hotter friend. It leaves me feeling gross.

And the biggest question that everyone has been asking – monetization. Is it possible?

Again (like many of my answers) it depends on what you mean. Is it possible to make money doing web content? Absolutely. People do it all the time. Look at Heavy.com. Is it possible to build a long term business around producing original, short form web series? Not today it is not.

I could write on this topic for pages and pages. Essentially, my question to people is – is that all you care about? If it is, don’t get into a creative industry. For writers and other creative professionals, there’s no short road to making money doing what you love, whether you’re doing web series or feature films. Look at Joss Whedon’s family tree sometime – he comes from a family of successful screen writers. It took generations of work to get him the opportunities to launch his career as early and as confidently as he did. (Whether you like his writing or not.)

Creative industries have always been a balance between making art and making (or spending) money. HBO has ‘better’ shows, NBC makes way more money (yes, even now). What we tend to forget is that even massive audiences for online stuff is a tiny fraction of what broadcasters expect to get. Sure, Youtube gets whatever billion visits, and Facebook has people coming back 12 times an hour, but we’re talking individual videos. The honest truth is that TV and movies is still the dominant way people watch entertainment. You want to change that? Hire Tom Cruise to star in your web series and have an ad budget that plasters bus shelters with half naked chicks in major cities around the world. Why won’t you do that? Oh right… there’s no money in it.

But the truth of it is, it takes hundreds of thousands of people spending millions of dollars to keep us entertained. It is a lot of work. I’m not just talking about actors and crew and studio executives, but local theatres and the people who put the ads up in the bus shelters. It is a lot of work. It’s hard. What is internet video missing in order to start making vast sums of money? That. Ads in bus shelters. Hundreds of thousands of people working behind the scenes to make it happen while making sure their families are fed.

So if you want to make web series to tell the stories you want to tell, and maybe find people who like watching them, great. Work your craft, care about your audience, buy a few cheap ads on the internet, and you’ll be rewarded with a great deal of satisfaction in people appreciating your particular take on the world. If you want to make web series to be rich and famous… you will be disappointed again and again.

So here’s my last thought. The web is (for the foreseeable future) the domain of the amateur. If you’re trying to make money in some way off the internet, especially in some creative or semi-creative way, look out. Cause there’s someone else out there who’s not as good as you, and not as experienced as you, but willing to do it for free. Name any facet of entertainment (including journalism) and you’ll find that they don’t pay (or pay so little you can’t make a living) for their online content. The few people that do make a good living at it are amateurs who just never gave up.

Asking “Who’s going to pay for my web series?” is like asking, “Who’s gonna pay for me to follow my dreams?” Every writer in the universe is told all the time, “I have a great idea for a novel/screenplay/sitcom/whatever.” So what’s the difference between the people who pay the bills through writing and those with a great idea?

Skins Lands Remake on MTV

As stated in in playback today - Skins has been picked up by E1.

According to the fun people at E1, Skins, brought by the people also making Misfits if you've been living under the sci-fi rock for the last month and a bit, said that Skins has:

"A style all it's own," says Barna. "It's definitely not Disney"

Which warrants a bit of a look if the folks who are championing the anti-sex Twilight teen stylings are going to add a bit more fun and less cautionary tale.

Set in Baltimore according to blogs and media sources, here's hoping that it doesn't get a de-grit-ifying. Though, placement in Baltimore, with such success of HBO's hyper-authentic The Wire may imply a movement in that direction.

Messages from Beyond:NextMedia's Prediction for the Future

This is the beginning of a series of blog posts following the trenches of NextMedia Toronto that will examine some of the issues those top experts at tapping for the next few years (or from the last few years). Check the schedule for an idea of what was on the docket.

- -

One of the first things I want to cover is something that @andyshapiro from Machinima.com spoke, very briefly, about.

One of the few content developers at the conference, they process things a bit different than your average content producer - and have a staff of freelancers in the +250 count.

But if you look at their model, it's working for them, and there's obviously a reason.

Machinima gets lumped in with fan vids a lot because... well... fans do it. But that's not what's happening here. It's also something we seem to talk about a lot 'round here.

Machinima.com has a licensing agreement with all the major players in gaming, and trade licences for a free pass at creating content that gets viewers.

And players like YouTube have revenue sharing schemes for people in the upward of 60 million views for a reason. With 20 million unique hits monthly that plays out in a way of constant updates and a quick turn around.

Andy sees a future where - eventually - we could just go the machinima route in some cases. Because "you can do high action so much easier".

And it's true - you can remake explosions without explosive experts, and have fun with things in ways not yet even thought possible.

And with Machinima.com having the developer's kits in some cases - it makes it even easier

But wait! See for yourself:



Machinima.com offers a great case study of why the constant update stream works brilliantly as a business model - if you keep inundating and offer a participatory community experience you become an easy-to-spot it-center of any new movements online.

And with a built-in audience from devout gamers already in place, Machinima.com seems to have it "easy", but they're still footing the upfront bill on costs for creating those videos.