Web Soda

How to #5: Story

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May 032011

There are hundreds of resources available to become a better screenwriter or to tell a better story, but a few classic tips apply to writing for web series in particular:

Start with a gunshot

Maybe not literally – though that’s a good hook – but throw something in the first few seconds that will keep your flighty audience interested. As early as 2002, internet audiences are spending less than a minute on a website. Now, it’s mere seconds. Make them count.

Start the scene as late as possible

Once you have your audience’s attention, you need to keep it. The best way to do this is not to waste any time. Do not write your characters getting out of the car, entering the house, sitting down, opening the mail, discover their father passed away, and then calling a friend to talk about it. Just do the last step – audiences aren’t stupid. The rarely seen positive of hyperactive audiences is that the shorter attention span means they’re a bit better at keeping up than they used to.

Show, don’t tell

If you can ever cut the dialogue, do it. In the previous example, you may be able to get away with an opened letter, the phone off the hook, and a depressed looking protagonist. On a similar note:

Exposition is the most natural thing in the world…

Don’t force it.

Figure out where your going with this before you start filming

The best advice I’ve ever received as a filmmaker is to simply go out there and film. We let a lot of little things get in the way, things that will eventually drag you down into not accomplishing anything. However, if you’re serious about a web series, have a fairly good idea of where you’re going with it. Don’t waste episodes (and the audience’s time) by hashing out exposition for yourself.

My advice to have the first few episodes written, as well as the last few – of the season, the narrative arc, whatever. Think of it as plotting your route from A (your beginning) to B (your ending/major plot point). Then figure out what needs to happen in-between.

Then go out there and film.

How to #4: Premise and “the formula”

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May 022011

The (usually good) advice most screenwriting gurus and film experts suggest is to start with the story first. However, for web series (in much the same way as any low-budget feature), the story may need to be kept in check with the reality of the situation. If you have a post-apocalyptic epic brewing in your head, there’s no reason not to write it – but you’ll want to keep reality in mind for when your actually want to make.

The premise for a web series usually emerges from the previously discussed factors. What sets are available? Who can play the characters? What can we manage in the realm of special effects?

This formula is apparent in almost every web series out there.

Agents of Cracked: the Cracked offices are available for filming. Daniel O’Brien and Michael Swaim worked together at cracked.com and have an established relationship they can work with. The jumpy-actions style of the filmmaking popularized by shows such as Battlestar Galactica is cheap and easy to mimic with very little overhead, all the while providing the show with a distinct action movie feel. Thus, parodying the buddy-cop formula of action movies, Daniel O’Brien and Michael Swaim star as two special agents at a hyperbolic version of Cracked.com.

Likewise, The Zombie Inconvenience emerged from the realization of these factors. We had, at best, a house and the nearby neighbourhood, an established actor and a younger comedian, and zombie effects are extremely cheap to produce. We chose to parody the one-take style of web blogs, partially because they’re an accepted style for our chosen distribution method (YouTube.com) and because they allowed us to film fast one-takes on a somewhat less-professional camera.

To break it down: setting + characters x (means of production) = premise.

e.g. bedrooms + Felicia Day x (very little means of production) = first season of The Guild

[Note: If this wasn’t Felicia Day, I may have accidentally described how most porn is made]

Here are a few made-up examples of how this can work:

Campground (setting) + single dramatic actor (characters) x single camera = web series about the last man alive.

Attic + Roommates x prop guns = web series parodying “Panic Room” style movies in which a group of roommates are hiding in their house as it’s being robbed.

Web series are about working with what you have.

How to #3 cont’d: Special Effects

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May 012011

Before I got into live-action film, I was into animation. As an outsider, the experience always struck me as simple enough.

It wasn’t. It never is. God I missed sunlight.

Computer animation emerged from traditional animation, and though it seems easy enough because of premade models or downloadable effects from the web, it takes time to learn and an impressive mind to use it effectively. Programs like After Effects are absolutely worth learning. They’re an invaluable tool and a means to give the finish product a distinct glaze. But they’re not where your film should start and they’re not to be underestimated.

A friend of mine, having no After Effects experience, spent 20-some hours animating an opening sequence – specifically, the word “Introducing…” and a moving spotlight over the words. It’s not for the faint of heart.

However, on the other side, YouTube channels such as Digital Corridor’s or Freddie Wong’s highlight what a competent special effects team is capable of. With the right people, special effects can be an invaluable shortcut that makes a simple video shine on the internet. But it’s advanced stuff and something to be worked towards. I encourage anyone interested to take their time learning it, and for the sake of their films, to start simple and work upwards.

On The Zombie Inconvenience, we filmed on a $500 camcorder rented for free from The University of Victoria (a number of us were students there). We also rented sound and lighting equipment, which really pushed the final image from something shot in a living room to something that looked professionally made.

For editing, we utilized Final Cut Pro, which is a heady investment for most. The student discount is a great way to cut a few hundred bucks off, but luckily, the school computers at the University of Victoria meant that we could use the program free of charge.

As far as special effects, we didn’t try anything too fancy. TZI was a learning experience for everyone involved, so we placed people in new roles they were interested in learning but hadn’t any real experience in. It was our camera woman’s first time behind the camera. The boom slips into more than a few shots. Thus, we kept our special effects ambition in check. A friend of ours was experienced with zombie makeup, and under her tutelage (and having her do most of the work), we had some absolutely amazing and convincing zombies in the film. Best of all, it barely cost us anything – fake blood and silicone are cheap.

Andrew Johnson on the set of The Zombie Inconvenience. This was one of the fast zombie-makeup jobs too

The lesson here is that there are always options available. It’s a matter of looking, making concessions where appropriate, and working hard when you don’t have the money to cover the deficit.

How to #3: Production, Post, and Distribution

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Apr 302011

The three main facets of film production (production, post-production, and distribution) have been made exponentially more accessible over the past decade, and it’s a result of this that web series have taken off as much as they have. One area that has become a crutch for both professionally made film (and, perhaps more justifiably, amateur) is in the realm of special effects. Some filmmakers are pushing the boundaries of the web medium almost purely out of the strength of what they can accomplish with limited means; for everyone else, the rule I come back to for the three main facets and the CGI’d cherry on top is this: does it serve the narrative (or goal) and would the piece be stronger without it than with it?

Freddie Wong has made a name for himself on YouTube due to the extraordinary quality of his homebrewed special effects. DO NOT EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS OUT THE GATE.

Production:

Nearly everything has a camera in it now. And these cameras aren’t completely useless either. I recently held auditions for an upcoming film of mine and I recorded each actor’s performance using my iPhone. An associate of mine just premiered a short film of his at a film festival, recorded on his iPhone using a 35mm filter app downloaded for a buck or two. There’s very little standing between the idea of making a film and the means to do so. DSLRs have been exploding in popularity with filmmakers because of their intense depth of field producing high-definition and professional looking results. Hell, a season finale of House was filmed on the Canon 5D Mark II.

Personally, I like DSLRs for filming. They present the best cost to performance ratio without too many debilitating factors. It’s a recent trend in film, so the cameras aren’t always intended for video, but they’re evolving fast. There’s an excellent guide on DSLR’s (available as a free .pdf) available courtesy of nofilmschool.com.

Even if you have a brick as a cell phone and very little cash, you can always rent equipment or connect with aspiring filmmakers via online communities, such as Vimeo’s community forum.

Post-production:

Circling back to the iPhone as a mark of super-cheap means of filmmaking, iMovie is available as an app for a few bucks. It’s not the most advanced or varied means, but it’s in the palm of your hands with very little overhead, and that marks a change.

Every operating system has professional level editing software available for it (each one offering a free trial too), and many operating systems ship with editing software included. Regardless, it doesn’t cost much and it’s worth learning. A basic rule of film: you can’t make bad footage good in post-production, but you can make good footage great. It’s a pyramid scheme where each level feeds off of the preceding one. Give yourself a good base and work up.

Distribution:

This is the probably the aspect of web series that receives the most attention and the biggest reason for their success lately. There are two main means of distribution on the web (YouTube and Vimeo), but they are no means the beginning and end.

YouTube is the obvious choice as the biggest collection of amateur video anywhere. It offers the potential to monetize on success almost immediately, and if your film does well, it can absolutely explode. The comments are useless, but creating a brand via a channel is an interesting means of getting out there.

Vimeo is a more professional choice, an area for equally passionate peers to comment and view your work. There’s no opportunity to make money from the site itself, but it’s presents a slick opportunity to build up a portfolio, network, and improve yourself within the robust community.

Blip.tv is focused on monetizing web series. They apparently pay more than YouTube, but I have no experience on the service and can’t make an informed comment. Interestingly, they apparently push their content on to other sites, such as Vimeo and YouTube, which is good news for exposure.

Tubemogul allows you to link various accounts (YouTube, Vimeo, Blip, etc.) to track views. They’re rolling out a revenue-based service, but it’s largely untested.

NOTE: NoFilmSchool beat me to the punch with this article – I ended up using them for reference before I published this draft.

How to #2: Characters

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Apr 292011

Rarely do amateur filmmakers approach a web series without having actors in mind. In most cases, the web series is a vehicle for the filmmakers themselves. Regardless, the same limitations that exist for the setting of the series typically exist for actors. One mistake that a number of web series make is that they employ non-actors in roles that demand actors.

Actors come in all shapes and forms, they range from wildly talented to melodramatic, and for every diva encountered, there’s a dozen hardworking actors ignored. And they are very, very necessary for the success of any film.

Most web series are comedies, which excuses for a lot less range – but the oft ignored comedic timing. Regardless, actors are not a resource to be ignored if they’re available. If not, friends can often fill the gaps if absolutely necessary. A trick to work within this is to use established personality and repore. Let people flourish at their strengths. Essentially, let non-actors act as little as possible. Let them act like themselves – and they will be far more convincing for it. There’s no reason your main character can’t have the wit and charm of your friend Fred, or the reason your two main characters can’t have the sexual chemistry of two people with sexual chemistry.

Anthony Burch and Mikey Neumann use their established relationship to make their onscreen relationship work. In a later episode, they recruit Escapist Magazine peer Lisa Foiles. Bringing in a cute girl never hurts.

In The Zombie Inconvenience, I had Matt Hamilton, a very talented local actor at my disposal. I had trouble finding a second actor who would be available for a (yet undetermined) shooting schedule, so Matt and I decided to use – well, me. We’d already established a natural repoire and I fit the criteria for our lead actor. Hamilton also managed to get an actress named Debs Howard to come in for a third main character introduced in the third episode we were shooting. Debs Howard also fit into an unexpected niche role that exists in television, but wildly more powerful on the web – the girl next door in a browser window. This will be discussed in an article at a later date.

Matt was capable of things as an actor that I simply wasn't up to

How to #1 – Location

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Apr 282011

One thing that most web series have in common is that they almost exclusively take place in a closed or limited setting. They’re not in their living room one week and Istanbul the next. Consider the television counterpart of the sitcom. There’s a reason these productions have historically been indoors, often in a family’s house each week. It keeps production costs low. The set is always at the disposal of the production. There’s no need to worry about scouting locations each episode or going through the mounds of work necessary to accommodate a writer’s wildest whimsy for setting. It’s a practical decision.

The first thing a web series creator should take stock of is the sets they have available. It could be their backyard, their living room, a café, whatever – but if they have regular access to it (and, obviously, can film there) it’s fair game. Worry about this detail first and dream big when you have the means later.

For example, consider The Guild. This series started with a few people in front of their computers, but as it grew in popularity, as did the means available to it. It was able to expand following the first season and accommodate new locales. But, notably, this came after it had established its success. Start small.

Most of the first season of The Guild is the characters talking to their webcam. NOTE: It's extremely useful to your series if the camera is constantly on you and you're Felicia Day

In my web series, The Zombie Inconvenience, we didn’t have a lot at our disposal. My co-conspirator was doing construction at his house, and we certainly didn’t have a closed set available to us anywhere nearby. I had a house next to a major road that I shared with a few roommates, which was far from ideal, but the best we could muster. I also had a roommate fresh from England – which meant he didn’t have a lot of furnishings in his room. Which, to me, translated to a relatively empty room I could use (with his permission), on top of the communal areas.

How do I Make a Web Series?

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Apr 272011

A lot of these rules can be broken. And there are exceptions. That’s the nature of the medium. Thousands of dollars, a particularly adept editor in After Effects – these are variables I’m not assuming everyone has at their disposal.

But, in general, the following need to be examined (usually in this order) when creating a web series:

Location: Where can I film?

Characters: How many actors do I have at my disposal and what are they capable of?

Production value / effects: How much money/time/talent is at my disposal?

Premise: What makes this idea unique or worth telling?

Story: How can all of this come together?

You’ll notice story comes last – which, to an artist, may seem like heresy. The sky’s the limit in your imagination, but for the sake of feasibility, let’s see what we can accomplish in your living room first. The medium’s expanding, and the quality of film on the internet is exploding to new heights. However, for any amateur or upstart, there are still very real barriers that may make their space opera a lot less viable than a couple of roommates trying to get laid each week.

As a helpful tool, I’ll showcase how my web series The Zombie Inconvience follows – and occasionally fails – in regards to each of these areas.

TV, but Smaller

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Apr 262011

When I say smaller, I don’t (necessarily) mean literally – though that’s almost always the case. Television is a bloated mass of big-budgets, huge crews, layers of management, and complex monetary schemes and plans. There are seasons, renewals, distinct time-slots, and advisory warnings. Web series manage to step over a number of these obstacles (or barrel through them) because, frankly, they’re so much smaller.

Filming for the web can have casts smaller than the crew itself. Pictured is a still from my short, Inception in under 60 Seconds

The biggest challenge of any TV show is the first one – getting produced. It used to be that a pilot was made, and based off of the promise of that – the first-run ratings, the value of the premise, the potential dollars, basically – shows lived or died. These days, a show usually has an entire season green-lit before you see it on TV. The financial investment – and burden – has only grown. The challenges described above have only become more important.

Television is important. Frankly, it’s pretty impressive these days too. However, where TV is a lumbering juggernaut, web series are a sleek little sprite. And it all comes back to the formula and the obstacle of the pilot. All it takes for a web series to get started is a bit of hard work and a few bucks. There are no time-slots, no ratings to bar the way, not even (necessarily) the concern that you have an audience. These are factors to be examined for success, but the minute nature of web series means it’s a lot easier to navigate these hurdles and sometimes ignore them all together. The audience can find you, instead of vice versa.

Defining the medium

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Apr 252011

Web series have gained ground as a medium over the past decade, moving from a cheap and experimental series to a financially viable and professionally driven medium. They come in all sizes, from narrative-driven parody to glorified podcast, but at their root, ever web series has the following a continuous narrative style or gimmick.

Web series are separated from internet videos of cats running into screen doors and monkeys flinging excrement because they aren’t random. Or, if they are, it’s purposefully random. There’s something that connects the video, be it a distinct style (e.g. Zero Punctuation reviews videogames every week while the narrator gives lightning-fast commentary accompanied by the shows trademark artstyle), a continuous narrative (e.g. Darth Chad’s adventures carry over from episode to episode) or some combination thereof (e.g Hey Ash, Whatcha Playing sometimes breaks narrative arc, but each episode begins with the question “Hey Ash, what’cha playing?”)

Each episode opens with this same bit of dialogue

Think of web series as miniaturized television; this is a metaphor I’ll come back to repeatedly. If it could be on TV, (albeit to fit in a 22-minute slot), it’s probably a web-series. The best counter-argument to this I’ve heard is America’s Funniest Videos, which is basically cute cats and monkey-flinging pre-YouTube. But AFHV still follows a distinct style; a host, a bevy of PG home videos in each episode, a distinct formula, etc.

Review: Cracked.com’s After Hours

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Mar 302011

After Hours

Comedy – Pop Culture

Created by Cracked.com

Starring

Daniel O’Brien
Michael Swaim
Soren Bowie
Katie Willert

Synopsis: Some of Cracked.com’s finest writers examine artifacts from pop culture, to distill life lessons and hard truths.

Review:

The gang behind some of the funniest articles and strangest videos of Cracked.com gather in a diner to tell you the horrible truths behind cereal mascots, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Back to the Future.

The entirety of the series takes place in the diner, save for the occasional tag that may exit for a quick punchline. Some of the headier ideas are supported by simple graphics and charts, but the entirety of the show is forward and to the point. Each episode consists of the four comedians talking. Someone may stand up at some point, but that’s for saucier episodes. If that sounds boring, I direct your attention to such sitcom staples as That 70’s Show’s circle, the girls of Sex and the City gathering in a chic diner to discuss their latest exploits (yes, I’ve seen my fair share of Sex and the City, and for those curious, I’m a Charlotte), or the bar from Cheers. After Hours never overstays its welcome, and despite the static set, the characters are active.

When I say active, I don’t mean they’re fighting conflict to save the girl or get a job. Each character is an active participant in the dialogue: the exchanges are fast and witty, and the banter is always relevant, and almost every line is either informative, funny, or a combination thereof.

One of my biggest complaints about web-series is that they often have non-actors in roles that demand a certain command of the screen. After Hours sidesteps this issue by having each comedian play themselves to discuss their ideas. A simple solution, but one that demands an interesting and intelligent person to fulfill it. Luckily, the crew of After Hours perform. Without knowing how each show is composed, I don’t doubt that the ideas come from the characters onscreen. The script is organic and, most importantly, everyone earns their place.

It’s a simple premise in a simple setting, but the jokes are never cheap and the ideas – based on the bubbly aspects of pop culture – are well thought out and genuinely insightful.

After Hours is my favorite web series at the moment, and well worth your time if you have any interest in comedy or pop culture. My biggest complaint is the difficult to discern release schedule for new episodes, but it only bothers me because I’m constantly craving more.

4.5/5

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