Is there a market for webisodes?

[Josh Negrin]

Ok so, like most of you on here, I've got a few movies under my belt as a director, including one that was shot on RED. I'm editing feature films now but my passion, more so, is directing.

My question is, is there a market for content developed exclusively for the web? If so, has anyone been able to tap into it? Any advice? I have a web series I'd really like to make for about $5k a webisode.

~josh

 

[Paul Leeming]

Me too, working on it now to see if it's viable....

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

My question is, is there a market for content developed exclusively for the web? If so, has anyone been able to tap into it? Any advice? I have a web series I'd really like to make for about $5k a webisode.

~josh

In my experience there is a market for independent webisodes; it seems skew towards comedy and is supported by websites that offer different "channels" of content under an umbrella URL. Heavy, Funny or die and My Damn Channel are a few working models out there. I'm not sure what the revenue stream is like, of course it's dependent on click-through advertising that is handled by the parent site and some kind of front-end deal would be a negotiable. Sites like Hulu seem to, so far, only dabble in network backed content and some is free, others are on a pay to play basis. I think your brand would have to be already established to play with Hulu.

I have seen people exploit with success the itunes pod cast phenom, launching content for free with hopes it goes viral and later monetizing the brand once it establishes a following. Vimeo might also be a good avenue for exploring this viral model.

 

[PatC]

I agree with Brandon and I think there is definitely a growing market for webisodic series.

 

[Indian maiden]

Dont Quit Your Day Job

Dont Quit Your Day Job

My question is, is there a market for content developed exclusively for the web? If so, has anyone been able to tap into it? Any advice? I have a web series I'd really like to make for about $5k a webisode.

I have been shooting exclusively for the web for over five years and have to say that there really is no money in it at this time. A combination of the small viewer window, poor playback and an ever moving fan base makes it hard to even get views. Actors also still have their noses up on the internet so casting is often difficult. I do not believe that it would ever be possible to recoup a 5K investment where the technology stands today. The biggest indicator of this is the fact that youtube has yet to make a profit.

This, of course, does not mean that someone will be able to break through that door but it still seems that channel101.com's "Kick in the Nuts" is still what the vast internet audience is looking for.

I try to shoot a weekly series and am lucky to get 2,000 people to watch it in a week. I understand that my audience is very narrow and I would do better if I did tits and skits like Lisa Nova but at the end of the day I just love film making.

iMaiden
www.youtube.com/imaiden
Red # 10938475644567

 

[Josh Negrin]

The truth is, you can spend hours upon hours on a project, that turns out amazing even, only to get a few thousand hits on the internet. But you spend 5 minutes filming and editing, doesn't even need to have production value, an attractive girl taking her shirt off, you'll get hundreds of thousands of hits.

However, I'm optimistic enough to think that, in the very near future, 6 minute webisodes that provide story driven content will be all the rage. Imagine a series like "24" condensed down to 6 minutes and put on the web every week. I would tune in! Of course, comedy dominates the web video market right now, who doesn't want to see a compilation video of bad women drivers? But the future (in addition to funny clips on youtube) is story driven, "I can't wait to tune in next week" 6 minute webisodes and mine will have lots of action!

 

[Tolin]

Sanctuary started out as a free webseries, that later got picked up by Scifi Channel and is now premiering it's second season. Webseries surrounded by tons of ads and all is just repulsive and unsuccessfull. Do what they did with Sanctuary- Release Youtube like videos as webisodes, and then sell the HD-versions for 2-3 dollars each.

 

[Chris Parker]

sell them where? would be nice if itunes accepted webisodes the same way they accept apps for the iphone. people make them worldwide, and the audience buys em for 99 cents each, and if you get a following, great, you make some money. if you don't, you don't......but that would be cool.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've been mulling over the webisode concept here too. Have two different web shows in mind and I'd really like to do them. I just don't see a clear way to carve out a market and charge subscriptions or download fees without spending a boat-load on advertising.

I'm with Chris, wish iTunes was a bit more friendly to indies... There are some indie shorts and oddball offerings on iTunes and there are ways to go about getting your stuff on there. Probably the best way is to approach an approved iTunes content provider that may be looking for content. I suppose one could become a content provider themselves if they have a full series of webisodes ready to go. Apply and see if it works out. Actually that gives me an idea Hmmm...

 

[Chris Parker]

Go Jeff....

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I believe it is possible, and will likely become more mainstream as time goes on. For now there is some money, but might not be the exact content you are looking to produce. It's in branding.

 

[Antti Pirskanen]

Star Trek parody Star Wreck and Joss Wedon's episodic musical Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog are examples of projects that were done with a minimal budget for internet distribution only.

Although the profits of these projects were originally meant to pay the cast and crew, there must have been decent revenue from subsequent DVD releases, games, merchandise, television rights etc. Even if you only make 200k, that is a very decent ROI on a film with a budget of 20k.

It will be interesting to see how the Star Wreck team's next collaborative film project Iron Sky project turns out.

There is an article about their production and monetizing concept on Venturebeat.

 

[Kholi Hicks]

Definitely money. If you know the right outlets and have the right content. Your pilot has to shine and, like every other entity, you should be dealing with a High Concept High Profile storyline that the masses can get into.

There's definitely money, though.

 

[Josh Negrin]

Star Trek parody Star Wreck and Joss Wedon's episodic musical Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog are examples of projects that were done with a minimal budget for internet distribution only.

Um, Dr. Horrible was shot for $200k of Joss's own money. We have people on this forum shooting features for a quarter of that or less.

NPH cracks me up though, I'm a big fan! He throws great halloween parties every year for the neighborhood kids. Does his house and backyard up like a haunted house. Sorry, off topic but he loved the war film I made and we talked for a while about it.

 

[Ryan Koo]

Crackle's Angel of Death, a currently airing web series, was shot on the RED One to the best of my knowledge:

http://crackle.com/c/Angel_Of_Death

I shot and co-created the online "urban western" The West Side, which won the 2008 Webby for Best Drama:

http://thewestside.tv

I can say from far too much experience that it's very hard to get funding for webisodes these days, as there is no viable business model for generating significant revenue from online ads alone. None of the major studios have a good handle on this stuff, and online studios and startups are mostly interested in either very, very low budget stuff or brand-integrated shows that are half ad/half entertainment. Webisodes are great if you can do them on your own out of your own pocket (as we did with The West Side), but if you're looking for outside funding, I'd posit that it's still easier to get a project off the ground in the "old" media of TV or Film. This is certainly the case if you're talking about drama.

In the past six months I've met with... at this point, I would say most of the major TV and film studios in NY and LA so my pessimism is somewhat justified. A half-hour TV show has 8 minutes of ads for 22 minutes of content, and the rates those ads fetch are astronomical compared to what online ads bring in, not to mention people expect to see only one or maybe two minutes of ads for the same 22 minutes of content online. If you show one ad per episode, and you air that episode to 1,000 people, you'll be lucky to get $20 in ad revenue. That means that each $5,000 episode has to get 250,000 viewers just to break even.

People see Hulu and all these sites and they assume the content creators are making money, but online dollars are merely a drop in the bucket. We all use the internet and it's a wonderful content distribution platform, but the dollars haven't caught up with the eyeballs. Today, the vast majority of us read the NY Times online, yet only 12% of their total revenue comes from the internet.

My main tip for anyone pitching a web series is to go in with the knowledge that the studio doesn't expect to make money on the airing of the show alone. It's gotta have ready-made sequel potential, and the ability to be remade as a feature film or TV show (the rights for which they obtain for pennies on the dollar), and everyone's gotta drive Fords and drink Pepsi the whole time.

There's a future in webisodes, to be sure, but the already-difficult prospect of making a revenue-generating online show isn't being helped by the current global economy.

 

[PatrickW]

I think there is a market, albiet one that is fresh, undiscovered and untapped for the most part because no one knows how to tap into it from a business standpoint.

We are currently in the midst of a techno-cultural revolution, and the technology (cheap cameras, computers, broadband, P2P videocasting...) is ready, the artists have been ready and waiting for this kind of unparrelled power to share art, and now all it takes is for someone to figure out the darn business model.

To me it is clear that content needs to be free online, if it is not, it will be soon thanks to "pirates". That means that the project needs to be funded through other means...
And because the internet is such a social/community digital space, I think that using that power is nessecary to profit from online media. Both by using it to lower costs (P2P distribution [let the fans share it to lower the cost of doing so for you]) and by generating profit... like having a community site then advertising on it, or selling shwag. To me tradition media from the RIAA/MPAA cartels have stopped wanting me to give them money, and I think the salvation of digital media online will be through grassroots communities that make the fans of media want to give money (via adverts, donations, tshirt sales, dvd sales, etc) to further the arts they love.

 

[Josh Negrin]

Well, something that really does work is incorporating the advertised products into the story line. I'm no business expert, but as an audience member of a podcast called "twit (this week in tech) I actually do enjoy the advertisements.

Here's how they (and I'm sure many others) incorporate their advertisers into their podcast. They'll take a "break" from talking about whatever tech they are talking about and talk about their advertiser's product.

For instance, audible.com (a subscription based audio book reseller) is one of their advertisers. They'll stop and talk for a couple minutes about their favorite audio books available, of course, on audible.com and then go back into tech news.

Now, this means that us indy filmmakers are going to have to approach the advertisers ourselves. Which is no easy task. I'd say, make one webisode, as sort of a trailer and show them what you have in mind for the next one.

My webisode series, for example, is an espionage based series that could involve some high end technology. A main character enters into the room where the gadgets are dispersed and notices a brand new 1080p plasma monitor from panasonic. Through brief, character driven, banter he is told the vital specs on the monitor, iso on the monitor, and then the story moves forward.

Don't try and dupe the audience, but don't take them out of the story either. Ideally, for you and the advertisers, you want something that ties in nicely. Trying to make that scene work with diapers, could prove tricky.

Now.... to approach the advertisers.

 

[Joe G.]

"and everyone's gotta drive Fords and drink Pepsi the whole time."

Dystopian nightmare.

Is the question really: How can I become a sold-out corporate whore?

 

[PatrickW]

"and everyone's gotta drive Fords and drink Pepsi the whole time."

Dystopian nightmare.

Is the question really: How can I become a sold-out corporate whore?

As someone that feels that product placement is both viable to creating real art, and being economically viable (profitable), I don't think that it has to equate to being a corporate whore, I think that if used properly when people make a webisode (or other art) product placement can both enhance the art, by making it more true to reality, give the artist a way to express what they like, and fund their project.

Sure Wayne's World style over the top product placement is in your face and shows the corporate whoreness of it, but a music video for an indie band featuring the guitars and amps used by the band is totally cool imo.

To me product placement needs to be:
- natural to the work
- profit needs to be the side affect, not the primary reason for the placement

 

[Jason Rodriguez]

I feel in the end the current state of affairs in the indy market will continue to propagate themselves as long as there is a lop-sided proportion of individual content creators (i.e., directors) compared to content distributors and producers.

The chief problem here is that with every indy model of production, you end up with the content creators themselves re-inventing the distribution wheel. For instance, JNFilms, you wrote that you may have to create your own advertising revenue model, mimicking the advertising model of TWIT. In the end though it's going to be an advertising infrastructure that you create, customized for your production, and on the whole you will most likely not be spending the money, resources, or making the investment to propogate that infrastructure in a ready-made package for other productions. Obviously the folks from TWIT have not pre-packaged their revenue model for others besides themselves if productions are having to mimic their model from square-one.

So in the end we're really in a catch-22 situation here vs. major studio content. With the "everyone as directors" model of operation, our ability to create a distribution model that is larger than each individual production can muster on their own is greatly minimized. There is no ready-made infrastructure mechanism for one production to package their revenue-creation model, and then provide a means for another production to grow that model by picking up where the previous production left off. Instead, subsequent productions find themselves creating from scratch their own revenue sources and "modeling" them on the successful concepts of their predecessors . . . but in the end everyone is starting from square-one, not building on a solid foundation that others have laid.

In order to break this degenerative cycle, there will have to be concerted investments made in the infrastructure of revenue generation for indy content itself, not the current status quo of revenue models that are a necessary capitalistic by-production of the artist's desire to monetize their individual projects, but failing to create the orthogonal task of packaging together a revenue-gathering mechanism that other productions can use as "ready-made" building block to steadily construct a revenue system where the system as a whole is greater than the sum of it's individual parts.

As noted eariler, if iTunes, or something of that nature, which is a dedicated distribution source that is directly investing into and improving it's own content distribution system, would create an "indy content distribution package", then the independent director/artist could concentrate on that task at-hand of producing great content without having to necessarily worry about the task of monetizing it, or at the very least of finding a possible refined revenue stream with its own dedicated marketing potential far greater than could be mustered by the individual efforts of the artist themselves. While there would still be onus on the director/artist to create through marketing the community to generate the revenue stream from, the low-level tools needed to generate that community would be taken care of . . . in other words the middle-ground *marketplace itself* would have been built by resource like iTunes where "real customers" looking to purchase content could directly connect with the generators of that content for sales.

The current method of indy revenue creation is almost as bad as door-to-door sales . . . in other words people are in their homes, and are not in the mindset of buying, so a door-to-door salesman is often seen as somewhat intrusive. Sure there are companies that still do that, and it has very low overhead, but compare that to the mall at Christmas where you have a marketplace full of people ready to buy, and are in the mindset of making a purchase. The onus to maximize the potential for purchases among the available variations is now dependent on the branding power of the product, not on the ability to change the mindset of the person in their home from anger and annoyance to an impressed purchasing mindset.

So in the end I feel that as long as we have an environment where each production must spend some overhead on the orthogonal task of trying to raising capital through their own individualized revenue methods (or copying the revenue creation methods of another "successful" production, but doing-so from square-one), we are not going to be working on the "construction" of a "marketplace". In the end, if you think about it, that is what a studio-funded production is about . . . they push a majority of their money for a given production into revenue generation, marketing, distribution stream creation, and capitalizing investments on available distribution streams and ancillary paraphernalia, leaving the actual production's directors and producers to the task of making the film. They are not worrying about how to generate the money to make the film, or trying to convincing investors that there will be a revenue stream for the content to gather profits from once the film is complete-the infrastructure the studio has built creates that vertical market for them to create in. Granted, those who hold the purse strings tend to dicate the "artistic direction" that a film may go in, but just saying, this is the problem with monetizing indy content, especially with the internet. There is no "build-it-and-they-will-come" model for revenue generation out there. Each production is simply left on their own to take some percentage of their production resources that could have gone else-where (typically these resources are time and money) and pile it into a cobbled-together revenue generation system that is often not even packaged and abstracted to the point where they themselves can reuse it on their next project, let alone another production.

Anyways, these are just some thoughts I have gathered on the state of revenue generation from indy content after Mark Gill's speech, and some of the musings from others like Mike Curtis at HDforIndies, etc. Maybe it's skewed a bit negative, so I'd be curious to see what the rest of you think . . .