Our friend at Zen Films is taking on a very ambitious project.  It involves a game, a web series, a graphic novel, and a movie.  It makes me tired just thinking about all the work he must be doing.  That may be what it takes to market an indie film these days.  Major kudos to Robert Pratten for trying to kick off the shackles of the currently broken revenue strategy for indie films, and embracing the here and now. 

Plus he gets kudos for a storyline with parasites.  And metallic organs.  And no doubt, cool visual effects... 

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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YouTube is on track to lose $470 million in 2009.  Estimated operating costs = $711 million.  $360 million of that is on bandwidth costs.  In short, YouTube is bleeding a LOT of money.

Still, that probably doesn't make you feel any better about the cost of your own webisode...

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

I was browsing through my Amazon recommendations when I saw the Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog DVD.  It's being sold for $10.49 and it's No. 21 in Amazon's Movies & TV. 

Number 21 out of all the DVDs Amazon sells. 

Within the Movies & TV category, it is No. 1 in Musicals & Performing Arts, No. 1 in Action & Adventure/ Superheroes, and No. 1 in SciFi/ Comedy.

As you know, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog started out as a free webisode online.  What's whacky is that it is STILL available on the net FOR FREE.

WOW.  Go Joss Whedon.

Welcome to the New Economy, where banks give out bailout money as bonuses, houses in Detroit sell for a dollar, and free webisodes sell like hotcakes for $10.49.

So there you have it folks.  There's your answer to the billion dollar question of how to monetize your web videos...
1) release your videos on line for free ... 2) then make sure to call yourself Joss Whedon...

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Beet.tv had an online video roundtable this week.  The videos of the roundtable are online if you missed their live streaming.  They also have a liveblogging session of the roundtable, broken out by minutes.

Sounds like the biggest news is that blip.tv has figured out a way to serve up ads on ipods/iphones and keep track of them.  Monetization, of course, is a major issue at these events.

If you missed it and you're interested in seeing one of these things live, there's one going on tonight called "The Next Generation of Advanced Media" in San Francisco hosted by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Cheers,
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Strike.TV is the webisode site that the WGA writers started working on during their strike last year.  It launches with 10 webisodes (Variety calls them "skeins" - apparently, webisodes are so last month, but since the terminology hasn't been established, I'll continue to call them webisodes for now).  They're written by pros and some have recognizable talent starring in them.

Is this the first webisode channel?  It may be.  Sure, others have webisodes along with one-offs and user content, but this may be the first pure web serial play.  I like the concept.  Call out to indie filmmakers -- we need an indie webisode channel as well because it's no good trying to find one-offs.  If you can't compete with the star power and mainstream media of Hollywood writers, you can still offer something they don't have yet -- the long tail in a single location.

Susan Ee aka Angelina Jolie
www.feraldream.com

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The “Hollywood Goes Silicon Valley” panel at Techcrunch50 is being streamed LIVE at 5PM PST today on their site.  It has Joss Whedon, Stan Rogow (Gemini Division), Matthew Diamond (Alloy Media), Chris Henchy (Funny or Die), and Michael Yanover (CAA).  Check it out if you get a chance -- could be very interesting.

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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Invision, a web video guide, launched its beta yesterday.  They're at Techcrunch50 in San Francisco this week, strutting their stuff to VCs and technocrats. Their beta seems to be for channels only (YouTube, Hulu, Animal Planet, Yahoo, etc) rather than including one-offs like Dr. Horrible and Prom Queen.  This should be an interesting space to watch, especially since I predict a tsunami of video content will hit the web within the next year.

Also at Techcrunch50, Joss Whedon (writer of Buffy, Serenity, and Dr. Horrible); Chris Henchy, (co-founder of Funny or Die and co-executive producer of "Entourage");  and Michael Yanover (head of business development at Creative Artists Agency) will be on a panel called "Hollywood Goes Silicon Valley."

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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Check this out.  It's an interesting hybrid of novel and short films.  From Publisher's Lunch list:

"Creator and executive producer of the CSI television franchise Anthony Zuiker's series of three suspense-thriller "digital novels" (every five chapters readers are given website codes to access two-minute films that bridge to the next five chapters) beginning with SQWEEGEL, about an former FBI forensic investigator who retired after his whole family was murdered but continues to work a variety of grim cases, to Brian Tart at Dutton, at auction, for publication beginning in fall 2009, by Dan Strone at Trident Media Group (world)."

Variety says "Zuiker will write a 60-page outline for each book, then supervise a novelist who'll turn it into a 100-chapter book. Zuiker will write and direct 20 "cyber-bridges," the two-minute video segments that supplement the pages."

Sounds awkward to me but kudos to them for trying something new.  I'm guessing that if it was sold at auction, we're talking a six or seven figure advance.  And the guy hasn't even written it yet!  Must be nice to be famous...

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

PS - Variety says it's a 7-figure deal.

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Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Stats on Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog (a very successful web series by Joss Whedon):

Length - about 40 minutes, broken into 3 pieces.

Budget - LA Times reports that it's "in the low six-figures."  The Guardian UK reports that Whedon (who financed it) spent "a sum 'below six figures.'"

Viewers - reported to have had 200,000 hits per hour when it launched.

Number of crew - "in the dozens"

Set - Universal Studios backlot

Format - HD

Distribution strategy - free online for 1 week, then downloadable only on iTunes, now available on both iTunes and Hulu.  DVD distribution in the works with singing commentaries.

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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Here's what Stacy Parks of Filmspecific has to say about Prom Queen, a successful webisode:

Take Vuguru for example, Michael Eisner's year and a half-old
production company set up expressly to produce web content.
They have a big hit on their hands with PROM QUEEN, a 90 second daily
soap averaging over 200,000 viewers a day. The show was recently
picked up for a traditional DVD distribution deal by a major
company willing to experiment with this new medium. They are
packaging 2 seasons worth of shows together, adding in a ton of
never-seen-before footage, cast interviews, vlogs, and other
extras - and introducing it to the market to see if customers
are willing to actually buy a DVD of something, that they can
essentially see for free on the web.

But that's why all this 'extra' material is critical to the
equation....

In any case, PROM QUEEN is broadcast on a few different web
outlets including it's own PromQueen.tv, You Tube, and My
Space among others -- but to date, My Space has been the
biggest outlet, and with the thousands upon thousands of
registered My Space friends PROM QUEEN has, advertisers are
chomping at the bit to get in on this -- and thus is born
a very big revenue stream for PROM QUEEN.

Interesting, eh?  After the first 2 shows, Techcrunch said:

There was a three second pre-roll ad for the upcoming Hairspray movie, a short ad for Verizon Vcast and then a fifteen second post-roll ad for Hairspray again.

After the first season, Washington Post said:

Each episode? Just 90 seconds. ("When we were watching online content, we noticed that we started looking for something else after 90 seconds," explained show co-creator Chris Hampel.) The full season, in fact, is just two hours. Air date? Seven days a week, since on the Internet there are no programming schedules. Commercials? Let's just say the characters drink a lot of prominently placed POM Wonderful and Fiji Water for a reason.

The Post reported that the budget for the show was between $100k-$150k but I'm not sure if that's per episode or for a whole season.  I'm guessing it's for the season.  It's a whole lot of money if it's coming out of your piggy bank, but it's oh, so cheap compared to the overwhelming majority of production budgets.  And it's being reported as profitable.  Of course, you do have the Eisner brand behind it which engenders a whole lot of confidence with the advertisers...

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com

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