So here — more than a week later — are the tweets that I would have sent out.
Felicia Day being interviewed by New Tee Vee‘s Liz Shannon Miller:
The Guild has over 100 million views.
It was extremely low budget producing. At parties or on sets where Felicia was working as an actor, she would her purse with food and serve it on set to cast and crew as they were shooting The Guild.
After the first couple of episodes aired, she and producer Kim Evey put up a paypal button so that fans could contribute money so that they could shoot the next episode. They had enough money after to shoot another episode after two weeks.
Felicia took down the PayPal button when she thought they had enough money to shoot the episodes.
Over 500 people donated $5 or $10.
In the first season, they released an episode a month. Each episode was a big event so people shared the episodes.
Felicia personally emailed every blogger and wrote in every forum because she really believed they’d love the show.
TV and movies have to please everyone. The internet is opposite. There are 2 million channels.
Think like your audience. Ask how can I get them to participate.
Personality drives a lot on the internet.
The internet is more psychological than people realize.
Penetrating the noise to signal ratio is a challenge.
Tweets last 10 minutes and then you need to retweet. You have to strike a balance spamming and reminding.
Dragon Age is her new project coming out this summer.
(On Twitter and in the social media) she’s there to entertain. If there’s a funny video she’s going to tweet it to her followers.
She still goes to blogs who feature The Guild to say thank you.
People want emotions — to laugh and cry. Humanity.
She’s still pinched in terms of budget for season 5. She’s still doing it low budget
She has a dream deal with Sprint and Microsoft. The Guild is released first on X-box, Microsoft and Zune.
The Guild has sold 4000 DVDs using Amazon’s Create Space https://www.createspace.com/ The Guild is also available on YouTube, Netflix and in stores.
Felicia thinks that a lot of branded content falls short because people freak out and want more brand. THe internet audience is very savvy about brands. They smell inauthenticity.
On the web you have an interactive fanbase. Felicia is honoured by it and grateful that people give her their time. She tries not to waste their time and is very conscious of balancing entertaining, interactive and promoting.
She was a math major in university.
If you want to find good web series to watch, she suggests checking out Tubefilter which reviews a lot of shows.
She believes that successful shows target a very specific audience.
It’s not just the number of followers you have but how loyal they are and how resonant you are with them.
Sometimes you have to put your message out there ten times before it is catches.
She and Kim have been very successful with The Guild because of work. This is a full-time job and they work hard at it.
Hugh Hancock
Thanks! I’ve been looking for a summary of Felicia Day’s talk, and haven’t seen one. Really interesting stuff.
I’m particularly interested by the note that she released each episode on a monthly schedule, and that meant that each episode was a big event. I’ve seen a similar approach work well in the Machinima world, where each episode in a series is released as it is finished – the buzz around a semi-random or long-term release schedule makes it much easier to keep up viewership and even pick up new viewers.
Of course that’s completely counter to the conventional wisdom that a web series has to release once or more a week.
James
The first season and part of the second season were shot somewhat broken up. Usually in 2 or 3 episode chunks over weekends. The setup tended to focus on the location they could secure for that weekend.
Season 3 on — the complete season was written, and then shot over the course of two weeks straight. So it was much easier to release them on a regular basis.
admin
Web series release schedules are a strange bird. It’s hard to say what is the right way to do it. But as Felicia proves, if you have an engaged audience, they are excited to see the next episode no matter what!