It’s the first in a series, and, yes, we made it before the Michael Jackson news broke last week…

ROCK WITH YOU (Old Dance Video from 1980)

But the work isn’t over:
WE NEED YOUR VOTE!!!
Log in and vote (it just takes a second) at Stickam.com.

Episode 1.4 “The Escape” was named one of the TOP 10 COMEDY submissions. Category winners and the grand prize winner will be announced at the LA TV Fest July 8 & 9, 2009.

View Episodes 1.1 through 1.6 at: MyRoommateTheCylon.com!

Just a few years ago, anyone could walk into any office and pitch (and sell!) a web series idea. But those days are done, I say, and you have to know how to play in the “new” new media eco-system to get your work bought/produced.

You have to be able to work your way up the “new media pyramid.”

GOING SOLO

Of course, anyone can put video content online and, with some simple site-building tools and social media handywork, build a sizable audience. In the do-it-yourself model, the size of your audience is based solely on your ability to crank out material, market it, and interact — all by your lonesome. In this case, you just have your friends (none of whom are famous or celebrity of any sort, unless you’re lucky), so you’re stuck with the style and cleverness of your content.

Keep in mind, though, that many celebrities are getting into the “independently-produced” game. Consider Justine Bateman’s fm78.tv which is seeking advertisers for its self-funded web series projects, or Illeana Douglas’ Ikea-sponsored Web show, Easy to Assemble.

MID-MAJORS

The next level of content producers seem to be teamed up with (or created by) new, small digital studios. ManiaTV, College Humor, Revision3, and 60 Frames fit this model, but they’re laying off people: shedding some resources to make their already stretched-thin venture capital last. They are partnering with buzz-worth (but not A-List) celebrities, and are getting some nice press and initial traffic because of it. But the hype wears off. Traditional celebrities working online don’t seem to have the same holding power they have on TV. Not sure why that is. These smaller companies have room to experiment with no-name talent, but that window seems to be shutting as well.

THE STUDIOS

ABC’s Stage 9 Digital Studio, Warner Bros 2.0, HBO Digital Labs, and NBC Digital are all digital extensions of big companies are in the business of leveraging talent to get viewership, and because of the dampened economy, they have less and less room for error. Take Stage 9’s Squeegees (made by then-internet celebrity Handsome Donkey). I don’t think that show would be made today.

The window for relative unknowns making a traditional “show” at one of these big media companies is closed, I say. These small, but heavily funded (read: expectations) studios have embraced the traditional

What are the big media studios making?

• Rob Corddry’s Children’s Hospital
• Gemini Division with Rosario Dawson (licensed by NBC, but same difference)
• Web Series based on TV shows: Chuck, The Office, Heroes
• The Line, with SNL’s Bill Hader

All web series with name talent (even if it’s the writers who are the talent). Sony’s Crackle seems to be the only big media studio/site that is breaking this mold: they have name talent and unknowns all together. I wonder how that’s affecting their traffic mix.

SO WHAT?

The bigger the company you want to work with, the more stretched their resources are, and the more guarantee they’ll need that they’ll get their investment back. That means producers will have to start to (agents rejoice) package deals. Multiple levels of talent, production and web marketing experience, great amazing scripts, and locked-in advertising are all examples of negotiating chips. All that, and you’ll be forced to give up more and more ownership (if not all of it) to play at the top level.

The window will never close, however, on your ability to create something as a stepping stone to more leverage in the traditional markets. The entertainment business thrives on new talent and new voices. Is yours being heard?

It was billed to feature live commentary from director Jon Favreau (over the movie, a la DVD commentary), but before he started, he told us about his fight to get Robert Downey Jr. into the lead role… and low and behold, Downey himself had snuck in the back. So they did the commentary together.

And it was amazing.

Some thoughts from the experience:

• There won’t be a director’s commentary on the DVD. Favreau hinted at taping the event and posting it online. I hope he does.
• Robert Downey Jr. looks different in person than he does on film. He’s softer-looking, and smaller than you’d expect. I attribute this to great acting talent.
• It seems like 90% of the dialog in the movie was either improvised or written the night before (or hours before) shooting. Downey in particular seemed to relish messing with people (his sit-down press conference moment was improvised). Even the comedic moments with Stark’s robots came from improvisations on set, that were able to be heightened and called back as they shot scenes in order.
• Downey showed up on set even on days he wasn’t shooting. He was genuinely passionate about the project and the work.
• Gwyneth Paltrow took the role and said that, now that she has a family, she works best before 9 PM. Her first shot, at Disney Hall, wasn’t until 3 AM. Oops, says Favreau.
• Most scenes were shot with two cameras, allowing the actors to overlap each other’s lines, and to give Favreau many options for editing. (that’s how we’ve shot all our projects, too, btw)
• The heavily-CGI-ed suit-up scene was only added when Marvel saw how well Transformers did, and they ponied up an additional $2 million.
• The Iron Man sequel is not 100% official, but is being penned by Tropic Thunder scribe Justin Theroux. (Though, Downey said that he’d throw that script aside as much as he did on this one.)

All in all, Iron Man is a great movie that really does teeter between comic book action and indie-film reality. The tone and creativity of it works great, and being a part of the screening only beholdens me to Favreau and Downey’s work even more.

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.

It’s not a secret, it just needs a little explanation, and here it is: Take Action

You see, for the past few months we’ve been spinning our wheels on this project. First we had to complete the deal, then we had to finish the show bible, and next we had to finish our budget. Each step seemed to take another week, and then we added on another week, and another week, and next thing you know a few months had gone by. But now that we have a shoot date, we can begin preparing. To complete the analogy in the title: The train has left the station.

I always say how it’s a lot easier to get on a moving train then to start one. Let’s consider my current producing job on American Idol Extra:

• It’s for an existing show (now in it’s third season)
• I’m just one small piece of the machine
• I have a specific role and responsibilities that are pretty much defined for me
• It gives me a pay check
• I get paid whether or not the show does well
• The show airs on the Fox Reality Channel. A channel that already exists and has a small, but loyal following.
• And most importantly, the show itself exists because of the massive success of the behemoth that is American Idol

So if American Idol Extra is a train, it’s already cruising at full speed and I’m just another “passenger” on it. As oppose to what we’re doing with our OWN production:

• We are in charge of of the entire project: defining the creative, all aspects of the production, and delivery
• How well the show does directly affects how much I get paid for it (i.e. multiple seasons)
• We are launching the show online through a site that has little history and leverage of its own

But now things are different, and since we have our first shoot day chosen, we can start getting our own “passengers” that come in the form of DP’s, Grips, Actors, and shooting locations. We’ve taken those first vital steps that have our train’s wheels turning, and on it’s way out of the station.

With the shoot happening we’re no longer having a conversation, but taking action. And in a town where there’s a lot of talk (I know this from my days as an agent’s assistant), it’s nice to see some action for a change.

It is vital to get this train moving, because once you do, you’ll be surprised how much easier it is to get people to jump on board.

In it, Alec speaks about the events over this past year (many of which I’ve been present for) that have lead him to the place where he is now. See his list below:

“- I started a blog before I really had anything to say. (But now I do.)
- I filmed a web series for no money before there really was a market for it. (But now there is, and now I have proven expertise.)
- I attended mixers and conferences just to meet people in the online video industry. (And now I know people.)
- I participated on blogs and message boards. (Which led to conversations.)
- I emailed people who were getting publicity. (They were happy to talk to me.)
- I got a gig writing about new media for Script Magazine. (It gave me a legitimate reason to talk to more established people.)“

What I take from Alec’s post is how everything he’s done over the past few years could be seen as a calculated move and set him (and us) up for success, but this list is just a portion of his past work. Alec’s been at his craft for quite some time and ALL of it has had a direct effect on where he is now.

For example, when Alec was working as a web designer fresh out of college, he didn’t know that he would be using those skills to design and build websites for his own online series (and production company). When he was running his improvisational theatre group, he didn’t realize how the exercises would directly influence his writing, directing and producing skills. And finally, when he started this blog, he didn’t realize how writing about new media for the past year would ignite such a passion for this emerging medium, and more importantly, makes him an “expert” in the medium.

Next, throw in my experiences that are mostly in the development, production, and industry relations and the two of us are quite a team. And once we combine our talents and unique experiences, not only does our company worth go up, but we gain leverage over others in the industry. But it would be foolish to think that it happened quickly. We’ve been individually and collectively working on gaining leverage in the industry (whether we knew it or not) for years, and just now I’m seeing it in the producing gigs I’m getting and the shows that Space Shank is selling.

Our goal is to keep on gaining more and more leverage with each project that we work on. The more leverage, the more influence, and the sooner we can start paying our bills with the work we do.

Here are the many ways to accrue leverage:

Money – The king of all leverage – either money to produce your product, or perhaps attaching a person or brand which has the ability to make money
Knowledge – For example: who is looking to buy your type of script?
People/Friends – Whether you have an agent, manager or an executive at a network they often have that inside information.
Timing – Self explanatory and unreliable, but a few people have gotten lucky.
Experience (Age & Wisdom) – If you work in the business long enough, people trust you faster. Or maybe you produced a successful movie before – either financially or critically acclaimed.
Product that’s in Demand – This could be placed under “Timing.” But you could gain leverage this way by thinking ahead or do what many big businesses do: cornering the market
Favors – Self explanatory ;)
Public Relations & Marketing – Doesn’t work all the time, but good PR always helps any goal.
Technology – Specializing in the next useful tools

Although some of these tactics work better than others, what’s important is to be aware of all of them. The next step then is to take a look at your past to see what leverage you’ve already accumulated, then start working more, producing more, participate more, and learn as much as possible.

1) Vimeo looks to have a really nice browser interface, and the ability to push HD, good-looking video. I haven’t seen online video with this kind of visual quality since my early response to Hulu. There also seems to be some nice privacy features on the site, so it might work well for personal videos, but I can’t get a sense of the site’s community, so Vimeo may be a longshot for any “viral” activity.

2) Possessed is a heartbreaking look at four “hoarders” from the UK. The short film is amazing in its simplicity.

POSSESSED from Martin Hampton on Vimeo.

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!).