The Promise and Potential of the Webseries Medium
Such an aim was ahead of its time, however, as Internet video in the late 1990s basically amounted to a two-inch screen of poor quality and low frame rates. It wasn’t until broadband developed into a better delivery system and the technology needed to film and edit dropped in price that the lofty ambitions to which The Spot had aspired finally became reachable. The Internet landscape is now dotted with a variety of quality webseries, created by independent video makers in locales ranging from Los Angeles to New York, Dallas to Washington and from Pittsburgh to Madison, Wisconsin.
“Quality,” of course, is the key word in that sentence. Once video streaming was perfected, a slew of creative wannabes initially hit the World Wide Web. While a few were able to rise above the multitude of “cat videos” on YouTube, most were of a sub par nature with deficiencies that included poor lighting, inconsistent sound quality, mediocre dialogue and bad acting. Fortunately there were enough exceptions to the rule—including Felicia Day’s The Guild, Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda’s Chad Vader and Something to Be Desired by Justin Kownacki—to demonstrate the potential of the webseries as a legitimate source of entertainment.
Then came Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and everything changed. Sure, it was created by television producer Joss Whedon and members of his immediate family but it fulfilled the promise of the World Wide Web nonetheless. Whedon, despite his somewhat rebellious nature, was still a Hollywood insider, so it should be no surprise that the three-part Internet musical had a sleek, professional feel. He had amassed enough friends and favors through the years after all, and was even able to land Neil Patrick Harris for the title role. Dr. Horrible was still an independent endeavor, however, in that it was crafted outside of the industry norm and showcased what the webseries medium was capable of producing.
Although amateurish webseries still exist, they have been overrun since Dr. Horrible’s debut by talented creators with true vision. More significantly, the independent nature of these productions makes them better than most shows currently on television—even if many of them have their roots in the classics of yesteryear. With only a few notable exceptions, most current network sitcoms do not stand up against such standards as The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show or even Friends and Seinfeld. While retaining their own originality, however, numerous webseries can be considered direct descendents of such comedies—including The Baristas, Copy & Pastry, Freckle and Bean and Saving Rent.
The World Wide Web has often been portrayed as the great equalizer in that anyone, regardless of gender, race, orientation or interest, can find an audience. The same holds true for the webseries medium as women—who have often been “outsiders” in the more male-dominated Hollywood—can be considered some of the best and most prolific webseries creators. There’s The Real Girl’s Guide to Everything Else, for instance, which features a Lebanese lesbian as its lead and was created by Carmen Elena Mitchell in order to offer a different female viewpoint of life in the Twenty First Century; Next! the series by real life casting director Heather Laird; and We Are with the Band by USC graduates Heleya de Barros and Vivian Kerr.
The webseries medium also allows for the exploration of settings that are not usually found on traditional television. Felicia Day originally wrote The Guild as a pilot but turned it into a webseries when television insiders considered its focus on a group of online gamers as “too niche.” A handful of other webseries, including Anti-Matter and The Variants, take place in comic book stores. Although one of the early tag lines for the CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory declared that “smart is the new sexy,” it took the Internet to prove just how true that statement was in a wide variety of ways.
Obviously none of the above observations are meant to suggest that the webseries is poised to overtake television as the predominant source of home entertainment. While there have indeed been a number of successes, the medium has yet to truly hit the mainstream and even fewer have found any sort of financial success. The webseries has, however, produced its fair share of quality entertainment that is on par with—if not better than—the majority of television offerings and that number will hopefully rise in the months and years to come.
Anthony Letizia (January 24, 2011)
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