Everything’s coming up digital, how about you?
It’s in the air. The producer’s association just devoted their conference to the “new media”. The Independent Production Fund is financing linear web video. The Canada Media Fund will be calling for a second platform for all the television series it finances and offering a second “experimental” stream for innovative projects that don’t even have a broadcast license. The WGAw just signed its 33 online content copmpany. It goes on and on…
What about you? Are you creating something new and multi-platform? Or hipper still, a transmedia production? Are you writing and producing a web series? Tell me all about it. I want to know. Plus, it’s great to start promoting your project from the very very beginning so that you have an audience waiting and hungry by the time your production is ready. So give me the deets.
Comments are open.
deb
Yes, trying to develop an animated sci-fi web series with a VFX Producer in Vancouver. Keep looking for places to get money but not much luck. We have a plan as to its initial rollout and will probably carry on by ourselves. Have looked at Riese and Afterworld. Worried about lack of production money. Riese, a live-action sci-fi series, budget is $4500 per minute which is regarded as a lot of money but which translates into $200,000 per hour of episodic. So how does anyone get paid a decent amount? This is a quandary.
admin
It sounds like an exciting project, but you’re obviously facing the same problems many of us are. First, how do you finance it? Second, how do you recoup?
There are a lot of business models floating around but all of them rely on an audience. You need a community in place in order to start making money — either by selling ads, selling merchandise or selling subscriptions. I’ve heard some bandy about 10,000 as the minimum number of community members you have in place before you can start to earn any kind of money. It’s not a large number by Canadian television standards but it’s definitely going to cost you more than a production budget to get that audience.
Riese is now offline because they are working with a distributor which is another money route.
Malcolm Thomson
My first transmedia effort got bogged down a while back… http://www.aliceinparis2007.com.
But I already managed to produce 850 episodes of soap opera in German and so I ain’t quitting!
Bianca
After seeing some good stuff from Crushing It!, I’ve been inspired to start some sort of social media storytelling project with another actor/writer friend of mine.
The story is about a guy who leaves his home city and tells stories of the lives of those he left behind through his Twitter account. It won’t have the exact same structure of Crushing It!, but it will have the elements of using Twitter, YouTube and blog platforms for storytelling.
I plan to use my DSLR (shoot in HD video), use actors from my scene study class, and create the main website myself. Not really thinking about business models yet. I guess I’ll tackle that one later once I see how this all develops.
admin
Keep going, Malcolm and keep us posted on your progress.
Great news, Bianca. Let us know about your progress.