LonelyGirl15 Creators Not So Lonely Anymore

Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried Have Built Their DIY Web Series into a Million-Dollar Online Production Company
By Robert Gustafson and Alec McNayr

On an otherwise average Tuesday morning in September 2006, Greg Goodfried made an ominous move. An associate lawyer at Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp, he walked into his boss’ office and shut the door behind him. He informed his boss that the following day he would be featured in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as one of the masterminds behind the popular YouTube video blogger known simply as “LonelyGirl15.” The articles, he explained, would confirm suspicions that the confessional-style videos were actually part of a fictional series created by he and co-creator Miles Beckett.

Lucky for Goodfried, his boss had actually heard of the Internet sensation and offered him a six-month sabbatical to finish the series, after which he could return to the firm. He never went back. Instead, he and Beckett turned their experience creating LonelyGirl15, now viewed over 100 million times, into an online production company called EQAL. In May 2008—just two years after uploading their first video—EQAL announced a $5 million round of venture capital financing.

We sat down with Goodfried and Beckett less than two weeks after moving into EQAL’s new offices in Sherman Oaks, California.

Doing It Themselves

Similar to Goodfried, writer-director Miles Beckett stepped away from a promising career to venture into online entertainment. Through fresh out of medical school, it was Beckett who originally conceived the idea of a girl on YouTube communicating via a video blog.

“He pitched me the idea,” recalls Goodfried about LonelyGirl15, “She would be an active part of the [online] community, and over a few months we’d start trickling in information: that she’s home-schooled, that her parents are in a cult, and that she’s being prepared for a ceremony. Then, after three months, she‘ll run away and you won’t be sure if she made it or not and we’ll be on the covers of magazines. And I was like, ‘that’s the best f-ing idea I’ve ever heard, let’s go do this thing.’”

They didn’t, however, intend the Web series to take center stage. “Originally, LonelyGirl15 was going to be a prequel,” adds Beckett, “We planned to shoot an independent feature film simultaneous to filming the online series and sell it to a DVD distributor or something.”

Unfortunately, they underestimated just how much effort launching LonelyGirl15 would take. “Just producing an online show is the most overwhelming experience anyone could go through,” says Beckett.

The duo spent a month prior to launching the first episode setting up YouTube and MySpace profiles for Bree, the namesake character of LonelyGirl15. In that time, “Bree” established a real relationship with the online community, so when “she” uploaded her first video, it had a built-in audience.

To build the mystique of the show, Beckett and Goodfried also created a fan Web site run by a fictional and nameless “superfan.” The site stirred conversation and offered a look into the mania the duo hoped to incite. “The idea was that a group of [real-life] fans— along with the [fictional] characters—were going to search for the missing girl,” Beckett says.

By the sixth video—just two and a half weeks into their venture—a LonelyGirl15 video received 500,000 views. Goodfried and Beckett decided to give up their feature film ambitions and focus their efforts on the online series.

The Show is Everywhere

EQAL’s tagline is ”The show is everywhere,” which represents Beckett and Goodfried’s view on the difference between online media and television. “It’s about breaking the fourth wall,” says Beckett, “All good writing is suspension of disbelief, and in TV, you suspend it within the walls of that television screen. It doesn’t extend into your living room. For an Internet show, it’s everywhere. The reality extends into your bedroom, into the real world, and onto other Web sites.” Adds Goodfried, “If you want to take Sex and the City and adapt it from a TV show into a movie, you wouldn’t string four episodes together and put it on a big screen: you would write a three-act structure and shoot it differently.”

Goodfried lists interactivity as the most important characteristic of any Web series: “An online show has three core pieces; the top layer is some type of daily or weekly consistent online content. Then there must be a community-based Web site where the hardcore fans can gather [and participate in] chat rooms, forums, and social networking. The third layer is then some sort of interaction between that community and content. It could be as minimal as American Idol fans texting in their votes, or as extreme as LonelyGirl15, where we might give out ‘secret coordinates,’ and, using them, the viewer can actually go to Central Park, dig up a flash drive, make a video of themselves, and upload it. Then the fan is in the storyline itself.”

To leverage Web interactivity into a story-based experience, the team had to think about all levels of online communication. “We think about [MySpace] profile pages, chats, messaging, and live video streaming like a feature film director would think about camera angles and set design,” says Beckett.

The LonelyGirl15 experience extends past the confessional-style episodic videos. “Each character has their own profile page and can submit their own videos,” says Goodfried. “It’s as if these are two [real] kids. This could actually happen,” adds Beckett, “And there were repercussions of each one uploading a video.”

The series, therefore, is subject to the rules inherent in someone broadcasting their life and thoughts online. LonelyGirl15 is, by its nature, interactive in a way that could never be done on TV. Says Beckett, ”The hardest thing is to be able to think in a linear narrative, but then take that linear narrative and explode it outside the walls of everything.”

Restructuring The Definition of a Series

“Since our initial concept was a feature film, it had a three act structure. It was two or three pages with major beats, inciting incidents, and so forth,” says Beckett.

But as LonelyGirl15 became an online-only experience, the team had to rethink their definition of a series. “The pace online is much faster than TV,” says Beckett, “Every week on the show, something dramatic happens, and then the next week again, and then again and again. You literally burn through plot.”

Goodfried continues the questioning of the status quo: “What is ‘an episode?’ Well, we make videos five days a week: on Monday, we introduce the conflict. By the middle of the week there is heightened dramatic tension, and then by Friday, there is resolution and a cliffhanger. So there are beats each week that fans can get excited about and talk about.”

Just because the show is interactive doesn’t mean that there’s no writing involved. “It’s all scripted. One hundred percent,” admits Beckett, ”As we’ve expanded the team to include a director who isn’t writing and an editor who isn’t directing, we’ve found we have to be even tighter on the script.”

The experience of writing LG15 for almost two years sharpened their skills. “I had written a few screenplays for fun, and also wrote a few articles for my college’s humor magazine, but doing an online show where I literally I had to break story every week made me a much better writer. It’s like writing boot camp!” says Beckett with a chuckle.

You Don’t Have To Do It Alone

“Over the past couple of years, there really haven’t been that many shows online that have achieved really, really big viewership. I don’t thinks it’s due to a lack of creativity or talent; I think it’s a lack of a company like ours,” says Beckett.

“Sure, you can do it by yourself,” explains Goodfried, “Put something together, get something out there, and maybe it gets popular, but to make an online show into an actual business where you can quit your day job, you need something else.” Beckett inserts, ”The bottom line is you’re not going to get anywhere unless you collaborate.”

“We wanted to do more interactive shows, and we knew we would need financing, ad sales, legal, accounting, and someone to build our website and run it,” says Beckett, “But there was nobody who could offer that. Some people offered pieces, but nobody offered the whole solution.”

With the formation of EQAL, Beckett and Goodfried now have the resources to build large-scale interactive Web series. They recently signed with CBS to help the network expand the online experience of their flagship TV shows. But as they reflect on starting a simple Web series, they admit that the basics of storytelling are what really matter.

“Honestly, we were lucky that we did [LonelyGirl15] when we did it. We hit at the same time as YouTube, and that’s a hard thing to replicate, but we’re a perfect example of not needing the ‘right’ equipment to do the job. I didn’t have a Mac or Final Draft, because we didn’t have enough money to pay for it,” admits Beckett. “We shot with a Logitech Webcam plugged into a laptop,” follows Goodfried, “We had no lights, just a desk lamp and a window.”

Beckett summarizes, “the truth is you don’t need it. You just need a good story, and in this case, something that will work in the medium.”

If two guys with a Webcam can turn a story into a multi-million dollar, industry-changing production company, what can you do with the tools you have at your disposal?

There are a lot of bloggers up-in-arms about this, as bloggers can be (read: “The DMCA sucks!” “Burn copyrights!” “Anarchy!”). Bloggers, who tend to be writers, creatives, artists, and marketing self-promoters are probably especially fond of Mad Men, and were, probably, like me, excited about further interacting with the characters. Twitter seemed to be a spot-on communications tool for the show.

I 100% agree that AMC (which pays for and owns the show) has the right to do this.

I just hope the cable network takes note of the moment and makes these Twitter accounts official. They should continue the good work of their anonymous (and probably now pissed-off) fans. I can only hope that staff writers or assistants are tasked with maintaining these accounts, and they don’t have to run things through legal before each post.

Links of note:

• I am @Paul_Kinsey
• Mad Men on Twitter
• DMCA takedown notice forces Twitter to blacklist Mad Men characters (Venture Beat)

I just stumbled across something totally separate from the show: someone has created Twitter accounts for a couple of the main characters, and they’re interacting, as if from 1962, with fans from 2008 (and with each other). Brilliant.

So far, I’ve been able to find a couple of character Twitter accounts. Don seems to be the most active, with over 800 followers and 170 status updates. Sure, Twitter is mostly for early-adopter technophiles, much like being on Digg, but it’s a probably a smart tactic for engaging the fans most likely to blog and use online media to spread your messages…

• Don Draper: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Peggy Olson: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Pete Campbell: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Joan Holloway: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Updated: Sal Romano: Twitter
• Updated: Bud Melmen: Twitter (and LinkedIn)
• Updated: Bobbie Barrett: Twitter
• Updated: Paul Kinsey: Twitter

The most interesting part of these accounts is that the characters are responding back to questions, rants, references to post-1962 pop culture (e.g., Peggy has never heard of “A Clockwork Orange”), and furthering the fan interaction into the show. Most of their updates are replies. Official or no, this is cool.

And, probably pretty easy. All it would take is someone with a deep knowledge about the show and a program like Twitterific or twhirl, where you can have multiple Tweet windows open.

And it doesn’t stop with Mad Men. After a little more research, I found Twitter accounts for:

• Liz Lemon (Tina Fey on 30 Rock)
• Michael Scott (Steve Carell on The Office)
• Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson on The Office)
• Darth Vader
• Borat (with over 5,000 followers!)
• Norman Dale (Gene Hackman from the movie Hoosiers – seems abandoned, but you get the point)

That’s a lot of fake Twitterers! Perhaps a real fake Twitter account might bring in the right audience to kick-start your communication strategy.

Daily, 2-minute episodes delivered as “motion comics,” similar to the Watchmen downloads I mentioned last week. And the 25-episode series is leading up to the debut of his new book, a la Foreign Body.

Half advertisement, half action series, TNT’s new short-form series Lucky Chance is a high-speed romp through a what feels like a student film inspired by the fast editing style, one-liner quipping actors, and outlandish mobsters in Guy Richie’s Snatch.

The series, which consists of twenty 2-minute episodes, airs on TNT (and almost as an afterthought, online) during the commercial breaks of episodes of Bones and Law & Order, and is essentially a commercial in itself.

The story follows DEA undercover agent Lucky Chance (yes, that’s his name, and he carries around a pair of lucky dice to prove it) who murders some dishonest cops, and must race to clear his name. Along the way, we find out that his red lingerie-sporting girlfriend is one of the agents asked to bring him in.

The style of each episode is certainly frenetic, with fast, chaotic camera moves and jump cuts, which unfortunately don’t match the slow, story-driven movement of the shows they support. And in a strange editing tactic, lines of dialogue are shown on screen, as if to engage the half-watching viewer.

The series is heavy with product placement, primarily from the 2009 Dodge Challenger. The show itself feels like a series of scenes connected by shots of a Challenger racing over the desert sand at sunset: the same gorgeous shots you’d expect of a car commercial. Other consumer products are introduced just as obviously: the cold and brooding Lucky oddly orders a “Fiji Water” at a bar and the barkeep drops it right in the middle of them. Each character’s mobile phone also gets a fair amount of screen time.

The strategy behind the series (and likely the similar-sounding upcoming series Blank Slate, sponsored by Acura) is to serve as a “Tivo-killer” to keep viewers from fast-forwarding through the commercials. It’s a tactic we’ll see more of as overall TV ad spending decreases, and, done well, it will provide an opportunity to add value to viewers’ experiences.

However, in Lucky Chance, the characters are thinly developed and the dialogue is a series of colloquial sayings and semi-puns about gambling. And unfortunately, neither of these things can be covered up with any amount of fast cars and fast editing.

Webby-award winning online drama The West Side is simply the best-shot series online. Shot in a self-proclaimed “urban cowboy” genre, it’s purely black-and-white and features gorgeous shot after gorgeous shot.

I spoke last week about tone, and The West Side has tone to spare. Problem is, it’s a little too slow and lacks enough story to really keep my interest.

Also, while it’s nice to see the show win accolades and press, its social network numbers are low (87 fans on Facebook, 74 MySpace friends).

All this makes it clear to me that the creators are not necessarily looking for an online hit, as much as for The West Side to be either picked up as a TV show or movie, or simply to serve as a stepping stone to a bigger deal.

If I were a studio producer, I’d give these guys a shot. What they’ve done with long, sweeping shots, and high contrast is nothing short of filmmaking genius.

Tyler’s Ride is a 12-episode series [guest] starring Christian music star Jeremy Camp. The company is self-hosting the video files, so viewership numbers aren’t readily available, but I’m really interested to see what a niche star like Camp brings to the table. The Tyler’s Ride MySpace page has 1546 friends, if that’s any indication.

The show is a prodigal son-type story with Christian undertones (and overtones, I hear, later in the story). I’m also really interested to know what kind of reaction the audience will have to the “course-shift” in the story. Could this show carry a secular audience and then keep them with the introduction of overtly Christian themes? I think not.

Then again, Jeremy Camp will likely only draw young Christian fans, and without a big marketing campaign, the series probably won’t gather a broad audience to begin with.

But that’s the power of the Web, right? To deliver content to a niche audience. If your production values are good, you can produce on the cheap, and you have a compelling story, you can monetize a project that wouldn’t have made it to TV.

Christian content is certainly an interesting market, and for too long has felt either too hokey or too preachy. Certainly, online distribution can give new voice to new relevant artists, which is a good thing no matter what you believe.

We all know what happened, but don’t write off our article just yet: quarterlife’s stumble on TV is still an important step for the emerging world of online media…

quarterlife

Creator Marshall Herskovitz illuminates his revolutionary stumble from TV to the Internet and back again.

By Robert Gustafson and Alec McNayr

The revolution was about to begin. Everything was in place. Established writer/producers backed it. Network marketing pushed it. The public relations machine was in full gear. The online community was buzzing. The Writer’s Strike was freshly over, and since so much of the debate centered on online content, the attention of the entire entertainment industry turned to NBC on February 26, 2008.

Write that down. It’s the date everything changed.

Quarterlife premiered as an hour-long television drama—the first directly derived from its online counterpart. Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick—already among the Hollywood elite for their work on television shows like 30something and My So-Called Life and movies like The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond—had created the show expressly for the Internet, but had jumped on the opportunity to move the show to television.

Their decision became the first experiment in discovering how “the future of television” would go. Could the Internet be more than just a farm league for television? Were shows actually portable across platforms? Would broad television exposure significantly expand the audience beyond the MySpace and YouTube users that had already seen the show?

Of course, we know what happened in the days following February 26, 2008. The Nielsen ratings were released, and the premiere Quarterlife episode only netted 3.86 million viewers, a 17-year low for that time slot on NBC. The remaining five hour-long episodes were moved to NBC’s sister cable network Bravo.

Regardless of these results, Quarterlife represents an important marker for an industry in transition. In a speech given at the Harvard Business School just days following the premiere, Herskovitz stated, “When you saw [Quarterlife] on TV, it didn’t look like TV, and when you saw it on the Internet it didn’t look like the Internet.”

Though television and Internet-delivered shows have great disparity between them, they are getting ever closer in both quality and style. And if Quarterlife is the first of its kind, there are great lessons to be learned by screenwriters looking to prepare for the future.

We spoke with Herskovitz himself, just days before Quarterlife’s NBC launch, and he provided thoughtful insights into the origins of the show and where the industry is headed, which, in light of the events of February 26, 2008, become all the more clear.

Piloted Beginnings

Co-creators Herskovitz and Zwick created a pilot called 1/4 Life in 2005, but insist that this iteration of the show has little to do with its predecessor. “People assume that because we did a pilot for ABC, that this is the same project, which I can understand,” said Herskovitz, “but in fact, we threw out that whole story and all the characters and literally started from scratch because we’d felt we had missed.”

They gravitated towards the trend of young people increasingly using the Internet to create and communicate. “Because it was so oriented around the Internet, it just dawned on us that this was the perfect project to make the leap online that we had been talking about.” He expands, “Ed and I had this ongoing joke that two kids out of film school were going to make a $15,000 film, post it on their Web site, make $80 million, and make the studios irrelevant. And we thought, ‘why don’t we be those two kids?’”

Producing for the Web

With no standards or models for success, the two faced many unknowns in deciding how to write and produce this “show concept” for the Web. Yet, unlike most online writer/producers, they had a wealth of experience that helped guide their decisions.

“We decided that we’d write an hour-long show and break it up into six pieces because networks demanded six acts [for commercial breaks], but even that was arbitrary,” he shared, “And even then, when we said that we were going to do eight-minute episodes, people laughed and said that no one watches more than two minutes on the Internet. But I don’t know how to do anything emotional in two minutes; it seemed silly to me. The irony, of course, is that the biggest complaint we get about the online episodes is that they’re too short.”

Herskovitz, however, quickly found that the same experiences that helped him as a television writer hindered him when it came to the Web. “My original thought was that we’d do it for $50,000, own it ourselves, and shoot it as cheaply as possible,” he concedes, “but I realized I couldn’t do what I do for that much. I had been ruined by working in television.”

In the end, the Quarterlife team expanded the budget to $300,000—a figure higher than any other Web show, but far lower than even one episode of a television show. The challenge, then, was to create a show with high production values on a limited budget. “We found that we didn’t need a lot of things, like a costuming designer; the actors brought their own clothes.” He adds, “We confined the shoot to just a few locations with limited lighting setups. When we shot in a car, I was the one holding the camera.”

Though limited by his own budget, Herskovitz relied on the instincts he had spent his whole career honing: “It was a series of hundreds of decisions that sat between ‘what are our resources’ and ‘what do we need to make a show that we can be proud of’ and essentially trying to balance the two.”

Freeing the Script

Herskovitz and his team may have been limited by budget, but after years of writing for television, writing for his own, fully-owned Web series was a refreshing change. “Other than restricting situations, we wrote it just like we would write a movie or TV show, but I was able to shed some of the inhibitions that I had internalized while doing television for twenty years. Inevitably, when you do television, you begin to internalize those voices of doubt.”

The change allowed him to write dialog in a new way, allowing for more natural patterns, over-talking, and age-specific terminology that seemed relevant for the subject matter, but may not have been accepted on television. “There is a strange homogenization that takes place [on TV], whether you like it or not,” he said, “It’s very presentational and, over time, it demands that of you as a writer.”

The style continued through production: “Even as we started shooting, I felt this energy coming off these people—this feeling of reality—it was very exciting.”

The Old Guard Becomes New

After a disappointing one-episode run on NBC, it seemed as though the general television audience was not ready for the style of Quarterlife. But even days before its TV debut, Herskovitz questioned whether or not viewers would connect with the show’s unique voice.

“People could say ‘wow, that’s different’ and be interested in it, or they could just change the channel,” Herskovitz admitted, “but even if our show were to tank on NBC, I’ll be proud that we made the point that creative control and ownership should live with the creators.”

Herskovitz explained that the real breakthrough of Quarterlife was not simply the move from the Internet to TV, but the revolutionary change it signals in the entertainment industry. “From day one, there were two unbreakable conditions: first, we had to own it 100%, and second, we had to have complete creative control. As far as I know, that has never happened in the history of television. [Creative control] is being lost right now, because television is owned by six companies. They own these properties and now exert a level of control they never did before.”

But things are changing, thanks to the power of the Internet. “If you look at what’s happening right now, you’re seeing the dissolution of a whole set of rules for creating entertainment, and we don’t know what will take its place.”

Advice for the Future

Quarterlife itself may not have been a colossal success on NBC, but it does establish a new model for show creation. As studios and networks dump traditional pilot seasons and upfronts in favor of mining for and licensing content, Quarterlife may just be the new standard for serial entertainment.

That said, is a television writing job still the “big prize” for an aspiring writer? Herskovitz answers, “Yes, but [that aspiring writer] would be responding to how it was five and ten years ago. In television, everything you create is owned by somebody else. It is controlled aesthetically by someone else, whereas if you create on the Internet, you have the possibility of having it for yourself—of owning it yourself—and being the creative force behind it.”

Herskovitz acknowledged that creating something like Quarterlife isn’t necessarily a path available for all writers, especially those new to the business, but he affirms that writing, no matter the medium, is one of the best ways to break in.

“There are no undiscovered great writers. There is such a hunger for great writing, and there are so few good writers out there. I actually have a Darwinian view of writing.” He continues with some direct advice: “Write three scripts on spec, and if by the end of that third one, you haven’t felt that energy coming toward you—that excitement, that enthusiasm about finding a new voice—you should find something else to do, because you should feel that. The good writers do. It’s harsh, but it’s just true. You can get somebody to read your work. So, just try it. Just write and see who gets excited about it.”

We may not see another Quarterlife-like show make the jump directly to network television anytime soon, but Herskovitz and Zwick have put yet another chink in the armor of traditional media. The emerging world of online entertainment is still looking for a pathway to legitimacy and Quarterlife will certainly go down as one of many revolutionary battles fought between the ways of the old and new.

Are the days of canceling a critically-acclaimed, but unwatched TV show over? We watched quarterlife try to make the jump from online to NBC… would it be a better business model to do the opposite?

Here’s what I’d do to make the show a viable web series:

• Keep shooting, but cut production costs. You might lose some locations, but you can certainly focus more on some of the story with a few less setups.
• Instead of delivering an hour, cut episodes to 20-ish minutes.
• Add cameras to every shoot and capture more little moments that can turn into short-form side-character spinoffs. Additional pieces of content for each character, further building out the story.
• Open the story to include more spinoffs featuring other schools. You’re then building a universe.
• Following the quarterlife model (building the show on top of a social network), partner with a company that is already covering high school sports to build a social network for high school football nationwide.

Sure this is naive on a couple of fronts… namely, revenue. But it’s a creative start to the conversation.

So, am I right? Wrong? Is there a home for brilliant but canceled TV shows on the Web?

NewTeeVee, as usual, has some great coverage on the launch.

The digital studio has some big medium hyped big shoes to fill, in terms of getting PR and attention to their shows, with networks like 60Frames and ICN already out there. Their first show, Squeegees, should be a big beneficiary of the launch. I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.

They showcase their studio’s vision on the video trailer and also tease us with the names of some of their 20 upcoming shows. I did some minor research on the titles:

• Trenches (website and trailer available)
• Decisions
• Squeegees (see first two eps at ABC)
• Voicemail (season one happened before Stage 9 came around)
• Kill the Messenger
• Style Academy (related to the modeling agency?)
• Mancourt
• Weirdness.com (site is a placeholder)
• Coolinary Club (Found this: “a new kids cooking show called “Coolinary Club” that we are
  developing with The Henson Company”)
• Socal

Looking forward to seeing more (and being able to embed the videos!).