How do you draw an oxymoron?

I’m gearing up for the first production from our new production company, Lovable Varmint Productions.  Pre-production is getting underway. I’ve just posted the 2nd casting call and I’ll have to make sure auditions get scheduled. Our main shooting location is set. I still need to find another 2 locations for 2 short scenes. I’ve also got to nail down a few more strong people on the crew. Suffice it to say I’ve got my hands full. But in the midst of all of this I realized one very important thing that I hadn’t taken care of.

We don’t have a mascot.

As of right now, Lovable Varmint Productions is just 25 letters splattered across the top of the screen. That’s it. Nothing lovable or varmint-y about it. That’s just not acceptable.

What wouuld Mutant Enemy be without the zombie and his “Grr. Argh.”?

What’s Bad Robot without the… robot?

Well actually, they’d still be pretty darn good. But they’ve got some great branding. My wife and I used to wait until the end of Buffy episodes just so we could say “Grr. Argh.” with that awesome little zombie. And even now, when I see or hear that logo and zombie I automatically associate it with quality storytelling.  I’d love to have that kind of association with our work.

Of course we all have to remember, a brand is worthless if it doesn’t represent something great.  If Coca-Cola tasted horrible… wait… let me change that.  If Dr. Pepper tasted horrible then its brand wouldn’t mean anything. But when you put a quality product with a strong brand then you’ve got a powerful combination.

So now we start the quest for an iconic character to represent Lovable Varmint Productions. There’s only one problem…

What exactly is a varmint? Not to mention a lovable one?

The dictionary (now-a-days known as dictionary.com) calls a varmint…

noun

1.	Chiefly Southern and South Midland U.S. a. vermin. b. an objectionable or undesirable animal, usually predatory, as a coyote or bobcat.

2.	a despicable, obnoxious, or annoying person.

Soooo, yeah. No clear answer on what exactly a varmint is. It does seem a clear that “lovable” is rarely an adjective used to describe one. I think that makes me like our name that much more. Our name is an oxymoron.  Sweet.  But what on earth does an oxymoron like “lovable varmint” look like?

I wandered around deviantart.com for a while and looked for inspiration. There’s plenty there but I could never get in touch with anyone. And any attempt I made at creating some kind of varmint…. well I should really just stick with writing.

Then through the wonders of Twitter, I stumbled upon John Rauschelbach. (@rauschelbach) I posted a tweet a couple of days ago asking if anyone knew of an illustrator that could help and not long after that I got a reply from John. He was really understanding of the situation I’m in and agreed to help out as much as he could.

That same day he had some initial sketches ready and e-mailed them over.

1st pass at the Lovable Varmint mascot

Now if those aren’t varmints, I don’t know what is.   Well I actually really don’t know what a varmint is but those look like some to me.

I think I like #2 best.  He’s got a nice craziness about him. Maybe too crazy. I mean it’s hard to be lovable if you’re too psycho. He reminds me  a little of the hyena in The Lion King. You know the one. But that got me thinking. He needs to be cuter. Maybe a little less reptilian. A little more furry. And if we’re really going out on a limb and making a varmint, why not go all the way.  Becausse really, nothing on earth looks like a lovable varmint oxymoron.  So how about some wings?

I talked to John about that and he’s going to work on it some more and see what comes up. I for one am excited. I can’t wait to get the next batch and toss them up here. The process is interesting. It’s like making films in a way.  I for one am curious as to how it turns out.  I mean we have to have something good for the stuffed animals.

So what do you guys think? Any thoughts or suggestions? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it.

Buffy’s so engaging

The other day I wrote a post featuring “Buffy: Season 8.” It reminded me that I needed to pick up the latest issue. So I drove across town to pick up the copy I have reserved for me. (I really need to find a closer comic book store.)

Kudos once again to Jane Espenson (@CapricaSeven). There’s a reason she’s one of my favorite writers working right now. She keeps the voice of the original show and characters perfectly! The pacing of the dialogue. The word choice. All of it spot on. Then again it better be.  I mean she did work on the original show.

It also reminded me of why I like TV and serial writing.

That familiarity with the dialogue felt like I was talking to some old friends from high school.  I’ve heard them laugh and cry and watched them do everything from drink coffee to behead wrinkly faced demons. (How many of your friends in high school did that? Huh? That’s what I thought.)

It’s harder to get that connection when you have shorter form writing or straight episodic shows.  BTW, did I mention I consider film to be short form.  To me, a thirteen episode serial drama is a 130 hour movie. (Give or take a little for commercials.)

So yeah, I really prefer TV writing because it does give you the chance to really dig deep into the characters and what makes them tick. To me, that’s what’s really interesting.  You can blow up things all day and it won’t keep me as engaged as learning about a character.

Of course that has an effect on how I think web content should be done and the way that I want to launch my projects.

I think one of the failings of a lot of web content right now is the focus on straight episodic story-telling. Don’t get me wrong. There’s definitely a place for that. But for a real successful franchise you need something that drives people to your content.

The operative word there is “drives.”

At the end of an episode, your viewers should be marking their calendars for the next episode to launch. They should be thinking about what happened and what COULD be happening in the next one. They should comment on the forums and leave messages and talk to other viewers about what just happened. That “drive” is what shifts viewers from being”social” viewers to being “engaged” viewers.  And ultimately that’s what you need for your shows to succeed.

Engaged viewers are more likely to notice and respond to ads.  That can be really helpful for everyone’s bottom line. But there’s something even more important.

Engaged viewers aren’t only loyal, they’re evangelical.  They tell other people about it so they can share the experience and have someone to talk to about it. And ultimately, isn’t it all about entertaining as many people as you can?

I can tell you that my goal is to make people feel something when they watch my stuff. Whether they laugh, cry, scream, or squirm (or all at the same time if I can figure out how to make that happen) I want people to feel something.  In order for them to feel something, they have to care about what they’re watching.

Of course that’s not all there is to it. In order for a viewer to be engaged in a franchise, the producers need to engage with them. It’s time consuming but well worth the effort. Look at social networking sites. My wife visits Facebook a LOT.  She does it because there are friends and family there that she can talk to and catch up with. There are not only people there that she cares about, there are people there that care about her.  If there weren’t, she wouldn’t go back.  No one would.

Engagement is a two-way street and producers need to remember that if they really want to take advantage of new media. It’s a new ballgame and time for a new model, but some things always ring true.

If you have a great product and you take the opportunity to talk to and listen to your viewers then you can be successful.

What do you think? Am I crazy? Too simplistic? Too convoluted? Tell me about it in the comments and let’s start a conversation. Next time I think I’ll talk about transitions.

Pondering the process of crowd-funding

Two parts to this post.

First, if you know any web shows that you like or that are releasing episodes right now, let me know. I’d love to see them and talk about them.

Second, I’m sitting here pondering realities or theories of crowd-funding.

For those of you that have missed me talking about crowd-funding, here’s a brief synopsis.  Viewers pay for the production in advance.  Brief enough?

There’s obviously more to it than that but a still fundamental question remains. Which comes first: the content or the money?

In the case of something like “Jericho” (that I talked about before), people saw the show and loved it enough to rally together and push to have it saved. They did it because they had seen the show before. Would they have been so motivated if they hadn’t seen the show? What if they had just heard a concept about a small town surviving in a post-apocalyptic America? Would that have been enough to motivate them without seeing something on the TV?

That’s a pretty important question for us indie producers. How much do people need to see before they start to believe in a project? Production sketches? Scripts? What about talent attached? If they like the actors, is that enough? Is it an amalgam of everything.

What do you think? How much information do you need before you’d be willing to part with $20?

Fun with Fan Funding

Everything’s easier with money, right?  Well maybe not everything but a lot of things. And making any kind of film is definitely easier if you have money in the pocket. But how do you get that money in the pocket when you’re just a little indie producer? It’s been the theme of endless debates and I don’t think anyone has the answer, but some people have a few thoughts.

There’s a segment of the population that’s trying user supported production. Much like your local PBS station will take to the airwaves and ask you to support their station, indie producers are looking to the community to help finance their projects.

For an example of what I’m talking about, check out “Invasion of the Not Quite Dead.” Anthony Lane (writer, producer, and director who you can follow @IndywoodFILMS)  has been working on this project for about 2 years and recently hit the twittersphere to raise funds to make the movie.  He’s selling “Producer” credits as well as DVD pre-sells and other goodies, like a day on set as an extra, to really help draw in people to help fund the project.

So far he’s gotten 231 people in the past 10 weeks who’ve joined as Producers out of his goal of 2000. A long way to go but nothing at all to sneeze at. In a recent e-mail with Anthony, he noted that he’s “…attempting to sell a film that hasnt yet been made, so for me to even have done 200 still amazes me, so the ratio is pretty good.”

He’s not the only one.

Have you heard of The Wingmen? (There’s a mockumentary by the same name, but they’re different.) How about “Artemis Eternal“? If you haven’t, maybe your should take a look.

“Artemis Eternal” is “… the premier crowd-funded, professionally-led, studio-quality film with absolutely no studio intervention, and the way production is approached tackles issues of media consolidation, independence and a lack of diversity in cinema as well as eliminating the middle-man and connecting artist to audience in a direct, meaningful way.” (That’s taken directly from their FAQs.)

So what’s going on with “crowd-funding” and all this fuss about violins on TV?

According to Common Cause, 6 major companies control most of the media in the U.S. The idea is that indie producers can bypass these huge corporate behemoths and go striaght to the consumer for funding. The people can choose what they want to see directly by their dollars.  If they like a certain property then they can send them some money to help make it happen.

Sounds good to me. It also feels like the next logical step in the progession of how media and the way people interact with it is changing.

Think back to the TV show “Jericho.” It ran for one season and was cancelled due to low ratings. (Don’t get me started on Neilsen ratings. But that’s for another post at another time.) After it was cancelled, the loyal fans of the show started a huge campaign to save it. The sent nuts to the network and sponsored ads and you name it. And save it they did. “Jericho” got another chance with a second season of seven episodes. Cancelled again for low ratings. (Cue sad trombone)

There have been tons of fan movements to save shows, with varying degrees of success. So the question is, why not eliminate the middleman? Why not just directly fund the show?

It may sound wacky but then again, it may be brilliant.  Let’s keep looking at “Jericho.”

According to TV By The Numbers, the Nielsen ratings for the second season of “Jericho” would average out to about 6.16 million viewers per episode. What if each viewer spent an average of $20 to go directly towards making more episodes?  This is all just quick math on my calculator, but we’re looking at over $120 million dollars!!! Let me write that out. $120,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros. A little unrealistic to think that all of the viewers would be willing to pay anything for their show? Ok.  Let’s make a 10% conversion to paid viewers. That’s still $12 million.  That’s nothing to sneeze at.  How many shows could this have made a difference for?

• “Angel” averaged 4.2 million viewers over 5 seasons.
• “Arrested Development” averaged about 6 million viewers
• “Wonderfalls” averaged about 4 million viewers

Now if you’re making “LOST” then this kind of money might not go a long way. But for smaller shows with smaller budgets…?

Of course it’s not that simple. But it’s a start. Maybe a new model for production isn’t such a bad thing and maybe right now isn’t a bad time to consider it for us Indie producers.

I’ll leave you with an interview Joss Whedon gave to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (yeah yeah, enough with the Whedon). He’s got some nice thoughts about a new model of compensation. While I think it specifically applies to web content at this time, he’s got some great points.  Read the whole article because it really is worth it. If you don’t have time right now, let me pull out a little section for you.

“… if somebody isn’t out there creating a system wherein independent production can thrive, it will wither.

We are now in such a homogenized, globalized, monopolized entertainment system where studios are swallowing all independent producers and productions. And they’re swallowing each other. Eventually there will just be Gap films and McDonald’s films. And that will be it.

The worst thing that’s happened in this community is the death of the independent television producer. We have to make sure that that doesn’t happen on what is, right now, a public forum, and not a privately owned forum.”

So maybe we should all look at our productions just a little differently.  Maybe we can crowd-fund our productions and compensate on a percentage so that everyone can share in success.  I think it’s time to at least consider it. I also think I need to find a way to put up a PayPal link.

And if anyone has Joss Whedon’s phone number, I’ve got a web series he’d love.

As always, let me know what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a conversation.

Is Keyboard Cat as powerful as the Super Bowl?

So I had a brief tweet exhcange with Rich Mbariket (@rmafilmsdotcom) over at WebSeriesMagazine.com after he reported on Joost shutting down its original content development. The question I asked was if we were looking at a bust of all of the original content providers out there. It’s a ridiculously complicated question and no one knows how everything will pan out. But after looking at Mike’s opinion I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring and take a few swings, and more than likely a few blows.

I don’t think it’s lights out for original web series production. In fact I think that we’ll see some original producers expand their offerings. Notice that I said “some.”

I read once that there are more than 3000 original web series on the internet. Wish I could remember where I got that number but it’s definitely stuck in my head. (If someone has the link to the original article, please pass it on in the comments.) A lot of those shows are your average everyday home producer who gets some friends together and makes a few episodes that they put up on YouTube or something similar. Nothing at all wrong with that. I highly encourage it. In fact, so does Joss Whedon, and who am I to question Joss?

But for the sake of argument, let’s put those content creators aside and look at the ones who are actively working to create professional quality original content. While I can’t say that I have an intimate knowledge of daily operations of these content creators, I think that the ones that are sticking to a traditional model of content creation and monetization are the ones who are going to struggle and end up closing their doors. Why? Because it’s NOT all about money.

Traditionally,  advertising companies look at metrics like total viewers to determine who they’ll pay and how much they’ll pay. That’s why they scramble for shows like the Super Bowl. There are a LOT of eyes on that one program every year and advertisers would love to get their products in front of them. So they pay a LOT of money for the chance to get those millions of eyes to see their product. That’s fine in a traditional media martketplace. Hell, it’s worked for years, decades, centuries (?), yarns(??). But the traditional media marketplace is changing and so should the rules.

As a lot of you know, there’s a raging debate in the interwebs about how to monetize web content. Are the total page views a really good way to look at the success of a site?

First off, how many of you have seen Keyboard Cat?

Judging by the views listed on YouTube, well over 1.5 million of you. Now how many of you paid any attention to the tiny little ads that show up on the page or on the video? Call me crazy… (go ahead. I’ll wait.)…. but I’m guessing not many of you. That’s because you’re not actively engaged in the content. While there are few things as fundamentally enjoyable as watching a cat dressed in vintage Lawrence Welk hammer out some mean licks on the keyboard, that’s all you care about. Once the video’s over, you move on. Nothing wrong with that. There’s an awesome video of talking cats there, too.

I’m going to argue that advertisers shouldn’t be interested in sheer numbers, they should be looking at “engagement” of the viewers. There’s a section in one of Eric Ries posts that I like a lot.

“In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. It’s entirely possible for the startup to be a massive success without having large aggregate numbers, because the startup has succeeded in finding a passionate, but small, early adopter base that has tremendous per-customer behavior.”

While this post is specifically about startups, I think the same ideas can be applied to online video. The content creators who take advantage of the unique ability of the internet to target specific audiences and engage WITH them on a regular basis develop a loyal audience that pays attention, which is what advertisers really want. Advertisers can shoot for the SuperBowl and hope they get a couple of percent conversion on their investment. OR they can spend some of that money with new media content creators who know how to use the internet to engage their viewers and give the advertisers a greater return on their investment.

So how does all of this really play out?  Let’s pull some numbers out of thin air for a minute…

Let’s say an advertiser spent $20,000 on an ad that reached 1 million viewers on the internet.  The question is, of those million people, how many people paid attention to that ad or took action on it? How many of you who watched keyboard cat clicked on an ad or even knew it was there? Let’s be generous and say 10%. That would be a 100,000 solid actionable impressions for an advertiser’s $20,000.

Now if a website has a loyal engaged viewship of 200,000, the chances of a successful impression should go up. Let’s say there’s a 50% conversion to action. The advertiser still gets 100,000 solid impressions and that $20,000 going to a smaller content creator could start funding a second season of an original show.

So I’ll argue that successful content creators don’t base their success on sheer numbers of viewers. The successful content creators are the ones who push forward with a new way of thinking about monetization and spend their efforts nurturing a smaller but highly engaged viewership that should be more enticing to advertisers. It’s not about the money, it’s about the community.

I know these numbers are simplistic and who knows what the conversion of an engaged viewership would really be. (Someone out there might and please share it in the comments.) I also know that companies still aren’t really looking at it that way, as we can all see by Felicia Day‘s (@FeliciaDay) tweet…

@ut_markle Unfortunately most companies don’t think that. Impossible to get product placement $ for the web show, we’ve been trying!

But can it work? Tell me what you think and let’s talk about it some more…. tomorrow.

(I was planning on talking about Kristen Bell saying the Veronica Mars movie was dead… but there’s always time for that later. Until then, here’s more keyboard cat love.)