How
to Create a Sustainable Web Series: PodCamp Pittsburgh 2
The
Internet has seen a boom in alternative media opportunities during the
better part of this decade, enabling anyone with an opinion to impart,
knowledge to share or a story to tell the ability to deliver their viewpoints
to everyone in the world. Blogs give words meaning; podcasts then give
those same words a voice, while videoblogging can even provide them
with a face. The options are endless.
It was
within this context of endless opportunities that PodCamp
was born last year in Boston. Billed as an “unconference,”
it enabled purveyors of New Media to share ideas and experiences, as
well as offered workshops to help both novices and professionals hone
their skills. Since that initial inception, it has been held in cities
world-wide, with Pittsburgh hosting its second this past August.
That event
was organized by Justin Kownacki, who for the past four years has been
producing his own webseries, Something
to Be Desired (STBD). Consisting of ten-minute
episodes, this online television-style sitcom follows the lives of a
group of twentysomethings associated with a fictional Pittsburgh radio
station.
“The
show is about life after college,” Kownacki explained. “It’s
about life after college specifically in Pittsburgh. So if you’re
a Pittsburgher, you relate. If you graduated college, you relate. We
hit you on two different levels.”
The various
levels of New Media production is something Kownacki is an expert on,
as he demonstrated during his “How to Create a Sustainable Web
Series” session at PodCamp Pittsburgh 2. Although he primarily
talked about video, much of what he had to say applied to both text
and audio as well.
“All
social media, whether it’s journalism, whether it is a family
blog, whatever it is, everything that’s been successful has been
successful because you’re telling a story,” he remarked.
“You don’t just get up on a soapbox and say ‘I think
this,’ because it’s too easy for people to tune that out,
to block that out, to agree or disagree based on one line of dialogue.
What you really want to do is create a story, create an anecdote, create
a parable, create something that draws people a little deeper into what
it is you have to say.”
For Kownacki,
the vehicle he chose to draw people in a little deeper was that of the
webseries. Although this medium enables individuals to independently
produce television shows without having to go through the Hollywood
system, or even live anywhere near Los Angeles, it is still relatively
new and thus has its own inherent obstacles to overcome.
“What
folks like myself are doing is creating sustainable media that is going
to have a long shelf life, but it also requires the audience to invest
time in it,” he explained. “The tricky thing is, audiences
are used to getting media on TV, they’re used to radio shows being
on at a specific time. What they’re not really used to is seeing
something that requires the investment of their time every week. It’s
because, by and large, web media really is text based. We’re only
now branching away from the initial wave of text-based programming.”
To compensate
for this, producers of a webseries need to be creative with how they
make their content available. “It’s not enough to just have
this show sitting here,” Kownacki continued. “So Something
to Be Desired is available on BlipTV, it’s available on iTunes.
You have certain episodes we put on YouTube. We don’t put them
all there because we don’t want to give away the story. We don’t
want to have everything available so there’s no reason to come
back to our site.”
Another
device is to give viewers the ability to subscribe to the series via
an RSS feed, which then allows them to automatically have episodes downloaded
to a personal manager, like iTunes. “It’s the magazine subscription
way,” Kownacki remarked. “You don’t want to go to
the newsstand every day or every week to get that magazine. So you need
to make it as available as possible so your subscribers, your readers,
do not have to come back to you every week. You have to be able to give
people as many different ways to watch you on the Internet as possible
to make it fit into their schedule.”
All this
innovation does not mean new media is all that different than the old,
however. Many promotional and marketing techniques are similar to how
network television operates. Take the case of Geek
Riot, another Pittsburgh-based series, as an example.
Created by Shawn Smith, it originally featured him discussing topics
ranging from technology to comic books solely on his own. Eventually
he decided he needed more, and brought in Justine Ezarik, a.k.a. iJustine,
to serve as a co-host.
“He
realized he couldn’t do it all himself, he realized he had to
have another point of view and what better thing to do than bring in
an attractive geek who was live-casting,” Kownacki said. “So
Shawn tapped into that since he’s a guy. He wanted to bring in
somebody who was not a guy, somebody who had a different point of view.
By doing that they more than doubled their viewership.”
Geek
Riot utilizes Talk
Shoe, a web service that supports live podcasts
and enables audience interaction. As it turns out, the time slot immediately
preceding Shawn and Justine was occupied by a popular tech show featuring
journalist Leo
Laporte, and just as network television shows get
a bump in the ratings by following a popular series, the same held true
for Geek Riot.
“It’s
almost like the Nielsen ratings overflow,” commented Kownacki.
“Suddenly they went from being a pretty decent show that some
people had heard about to having this great audience that was sitting
there when Leo’s show was done saying ‘oh, wow, what’s
this one.’ It’s all about who you are and who you know.
That hasn’t changed. That’s been Hollywood’s mandate
for a hundred and twenty years.”
Kownacki
was likewise able to take advantage of iJustine’s popularity for
Something to Be Desired. In April of this year, during a miniature
PodCamp held in Pittsburgh dubbed BootCamp PGH, he cast both her and
podsafe musician Matthew
Ebel, who was in town for the event, in an episode
of STBD, thus tapping into another Hollywood staple: the “guest
star.”
“Justine
mentioned it on her blog, Matthew mentioned it on his podcast and on
his web site, and our numbers for that episode went through the roof,”
Kownacki said. “If you have a successful show and can bring in
someone else who is successful in there own right, you’re now
smashing your audience together with theirs and naturally there’s
going to be an overlap and some stickiness, some adherence. A lot of
the folks who came and watched this episode, who wouldn’t have
seen it otherwise, stick around and go backwards online and watch more
episodes of the show because they enjoy it. But had Justine or Matthew
not been on it, they would never have known about it.”
Where a
webseries does differ from network television, however, is that it is
independently produced. It’s your own creation, on your “channel,”
via the distribution vehicle of your choice. You control the content,
as well as paying for the expense, which is “minimal” compared
to the Big Boys. This gives you more flexibility in regards to every
aspect of production.
“Because
there’s no barrier to entry, if it’s not working for you
after a few months and you really feel compelled to change, you can
change instantly,” Kownacki remarked. “Nothing’s holding
you back. We’re not a major production company where you now have
to justify to a major boss how you invested thirty thousand dollars
in every episode, it tanked, you’re never going to work in this
town again. Thankfully, if something tanks and you want to try it all
over again, it’s free. It’s anywhere from fifty dollars
to two hundred dollars to produce (an episode of STBD). A lot
of our production money is actually spent on web hosting costs. I’m
not paying the cast; I love them dearly, but we’re not yet monetized
to where we can make a living doing this.”
These webseries
pioneers are instead doing what they do because they have the passion
and persistence to create, just like the independent filmmakers of the
early 1990s. Eventually the advent of Miramax studios and the Sundance
Film Festival gave the Kevin Smiths and Quentin Tarantinos the ability
to turn their passions into financial success, and the same will someday
no doubt hold true for the Justin Kownackis of the world as well.
October
1, 2007
