Deeming it an appropriate activity for my internship, I decided to take a half a day and survey the landscape of online-only series available for free viewing on the Internet. After all, once I do write/produce something, I need some way to get it noticed, and researching what’s already out there could serve to inform me of what works and what doesn’t as a web series. (Plus I need something to do while I wait for my mentor’s schedule to free up.) Indeed I plan on taking my writing to the web. (Look for Tip Your Tour Guide, a production of Pure Genius Pictures, a John Morgera-Eric Lee project, coming sometime later this year.) Check out this link for a list and summary of some of the better series the web has to offer:
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/mondo_extra/web_series_to_watch_out_for.php
After taking a look for myself, some trends emerged.
Structure: Episodes tend to be shorter than those of network and cable TV shows, ranging from roughly 3½ minutes to 11 min, though some special episodes (e.g., the series finale of The Legend of Neil) run over 20. Often they play as self-contained, single-act stories with a strong serial connection to the preceding and proceeding episodes; conflicts were rarely resolved completely by the end of the episode. Put three together and you don’t get a three-act, 24-minute episode, but you don’t get three episodic stories; you get something in between.
Budget: Present were a range of budgets that all fit in the lower end of the greater budget spectrum. Some shows, e.g., Hulu’s Tease or Koldcast’s Tyranny, look sharp and well produced, while others, even those from reputable channels (see IFC’s web series), don’t. But all the good ones made use of what budgets they had, keeping locations to a minimum, substituting clever editing and audio for visual effects, and sometimes parodying their own cheaply-constructed sets and props.
For a breakdown of web series content, see my next post, “Web Series Trends Cont’d.”