Seven more reasons to create a web series
September 11, 2008 by Matt · Leave a Comment
If you thought the last four advantages to creating a web series were good enough to get you started, here are seven more reasons to turn your film idea into a web series:
- No Rules - The only rule is to please your audience, and don’t break the law. Make a violent comedy, or a PG horror movie. No industry exec is going to tell you “That won’t work”. Which brings us to our next point…
- No Gatekeepers - There is absolutely no one between you and your audience. No one decides whether or not your series is released except you.
- Time of Return - If you make a movie, it might take you two years to get distribution, and then another 6 months before you see a cent…if you see any money at all. What if instead, you had actual cash in your hands only a month after you’ve released your first episode?
- Synergy - Lets say you really like this idea of making a web series. What if you make a new series with a different concept? You could advertise it at the end of the episodes of your current series. If your first series has run for 6 months, then you can capitalize on six months of promotion, and give your new series a huge jump start. Taken to the extreme, you could create a multitude of different series, and start your own internet tv channel.
- The low cost of “failure” - You are definitely going to get some views. If you keep your production expenses as low as possible, then there is a much much greater chance of breaking even….even with a total flop. Not to mention there is no intrinsic loss of face. If you got a movie green lit by a studio, filmed it, and it was a flop…you’ll have a tough time working in the industry again. On the net you’ll just be some person who made a crappy video, and if you make something better everyone will completely forget about it.
- Feedback - The key to success in any business is knowing your audience. The beauty of the web is the ease of organizing data. With a little web savvy, you can keep tabs on your fans and their interests. Not to mention, all of these video sites offer the ability for people write comments. You can interact with your audience, and find what they really like. If they like a certain character, your subsequent episodes could include more of them.
- Getting bought - As I mentioned in my article on the
Writers Strike , even though the WGA strike is now over, the studios will still be looking to the net for new content. They’ve already been doing so, and its only going to increase. What if you could have the studios coming to you? Imagine having the studios begging you for your product, where its you and not the studios who have the bargaining power. - Any main character dies - While it makes for great feature films, invariably your series will probably just start to catch on two episodes before you show the episode where he or she dies. The truth is, you’ll probably be shooting this series on a shoestring. You’ll have a few dedicated actors that believe in your project. Can you afford to kill off any of their characters? Follow the star trek logic…when the team beams down, the only person who doesn’t come back should be the random red shirt guy.
- Heavy makeup or prosthetic characters - If you do this sort of work, then it means you’ll have to schedule completely around this character. If it takes 3 hours to put the make up on, then that means that entire day has to be dedicated to that character. This can cause some serious scheduling problems. You may feel your script can’t work without breaking this rule…fine…but you’ve been warned
How to convert your feature script into a web series
So maybe you’ve been reading this blog so far, and your really interested in going the web series route. But maybe you already have a feature film script, or worse…maybe you’ve spent money optioning a feature script. Never fear, because in most cases you can convert that feature film script into an entire first season or more for your new web series.
First there are a few things you absolutely have to toss out:
Converting your screen play into a web series
The most important thing to remember when converting your screen play into a series is length. The ideal length for most series is less than five minutes. I’ve seen a few that make the fifteen minute mark, but you’ll have a much harder time finding video hosts that support video files that long. If you stay tuned to this site, you’ll begin to see just why this is so important.
So you are now going from a 90 to 120 page script, to a ton of five page scripts. In order to keep your audience interested, something major has to happen on every fifth page…in other words near the end of every episode. This doesn’t necessarily mean a cliffhanger, but something big has to happen that will keep your audience interested.
Remember that many of your viewers will discover your series after several episodes have already played. Sometimes a person will randomly stumble on episode 3, when episode 6 is online. Having something big happen at the end of each episode will convince them to watch episodes four, five, and six.
It’s also important that you’ve structured your series such that a person could come in at any point during the season and still find it interesting. It needs to be interesting enough for the person to keep watching, but also raise questions in the viewers mind that make them want to go back and watch earlier episodes to better understand the characters.
And above all, expand on your characters more than the plot. People watch series because they have strong feelings about the characters. Just think how soap operas work. They have about a dozen plots they repeat over and over again (i.e. Has amnesia…its his twin…cheated with my sister). But these programs have developed huge fan bases simply because people have a strong emotional reaction to the characters themselves. The same should be true of your series.