Once you came to Hollywood with what you hoped was a great original screenplay under your arm and you could make things happen in the business. Now it helps to already have made that film… complete with dedicated website, blog, Facebook/Myspace pages, key word, Search Engine Optimization(SEO) and email strategy, even perhaps a flash game widget. As the music business collapsed, musicians learned they had to market theEditmselves independently and digitally. Now filmmakers must move further and further into that same groove. While the Indie film business works through its current economic shake-out/evolution, DIY marketing has become essential for all but the biggest names.
The Fine Brothers(Benny and Rafi)
Lonelygirl15 c0-creator Miles Beckett of Eqal
Fine Brothers two-bedroom North Hollywood home/studio/production office/marketing headquarters
Suppose you decide to create content primarily for internet distribution. Web programs require even greater measures of interactive efforts. Webisodes are the new cable, but instead of hundreds of channels, there are infinite niches ready to be filled with shows. If you just create and upload some of that content — great, terrible or indifferent– probably nobody will ever know about it. You don’t just have to DIY on the production side, you must, must DIY big time on the e-marketing side. The interactivity IS the content. It’s a movie. It’s a TV series. It’s a website. It’s a blog. It’s a text message. And a Facebook page, etc. etc. Execute all that… and maybe they will check out your show. And if your reels are any good, they may just stay and watch. Much harder than writing that compelling screenplay. But then you have to do that, too.
Programmer at Eqal
A number of filmmakers who have set out to create specifically for the web have broken through and are now creating commercial programming for that space.
Programming niches on the internet are being filled by filmmakers who broke into the business with DIY webisode productions of epic proportions. Doug Cheney, Ryan Wise, Chris McCaleb and Chris Hampel, the four writer-directors who are Big Fantastic, did double duty against their industry day jobs — creating eighty nimble 90 second episodes of Sam has 7 Friends with their own resources. Making a full-time career of Big Fantastic, they did Prom Queen and Robin Cook’s Foreign Body, a web series prequel to the book of the same name for Michael Eisner’s Vuguru, plus Sorority Forever for the WB. Miles Beckett, Greg and Amanda Goodfried of Eqal, the team behind the internet blockbuster Lonelygirl15, are launching Harper’s Globe, a fifteen part web series which is a standalone webisode/social network series spun off the new CBS series, Harper’s Island. Tony Valenzuela, director of Harper’s Globe, created the evocative epic web series on his home computer. Returning home from his day job in an ad agency, Tony sipped energy drinks into the wee hours as he created his epic web series, 2009Atruestory, which led him to Eqal’s Harper’s Globe. On the comedy side, Benny and Rafi Fine(The Fine Brothers) have been Youtube comedy stalwarts with 24,000,000 hits on their fast, precise, often witty humor pieces. Living, producing, writing, directing and editing in their 2 bedroom apartment in North Hollywood, the Fines have been featured on all major internet comedy sites. With over 337,000 views in March – business as usual for their content, the Fines are #50 on the Most Subscribed YouTube Comedy Channel this month and #84 all time. In their own words… “Yes, we are brothers. Yes, we used to be orthodox Jews and are sons of a Rabbi. No, we will not stop offending you with our videos.” The Fine Brothers’ new web series pilot for Comedy Central is actually not raunchy and will air in early April. It features another Youtube superstar — video blogger Shane Dawson. Audiences grab on to compelling film content wherever it is being shown. Cable TV was once exclusively a ghetto of re-runs, but now it is the main arena for the best original television programming. Gradually, web series will surely follow the same path.
Doug Cheney, Chris Hampel, Chris McCaleb and Ryan Wise, the four writer-directors who are Big Fantastic
Watch Lonelygirl15′s Miles Beckett talk about web series development:
Harper’s Globe director Tony Valenzuela
Eqal programmer
Amanda Goodfried of Eqal
Harper’s Globe, Lonelygirl15, LG15: The Resistance Director of Photography, Kevin Schlanser
all photographs by Tom Benedek
© Tom Benedek 2009
One Comment
Tom,
That was a great article. You really put together a great sample of some of the top names in the online video world. I was glad to see the focus on the more dramatic side with all the attention internet comedy gets.
The interview with Miles Beckett was very insightful. It is such a big undertaking to put together an interactive project of that scale and I enjoyed hearing Miles talk about it so in depth.
Nice work!
Marty