This week at the London Comedy Writers we read the first 5 episodes of Brett Snelgrove’s webseries Tessa and Adam. A simple two hander exploring the relationship between a Brit boy and a Dutch dame. A strong enough premise, but one that needs to focus more on who the characters are rather than the situations they find themselves in. A key difference is a recurring sketch and webisode will be depth of the characters. I would write more about Tessa and Adam, but Brett has written an excellent blog on what he got from the meeting, so you should read that instead.
Instead I will look at the debate about the nature of a webisode and the hell it is.
It is hardly surprising people don’t know what exactly a webisode is, despite the term being around for over 10 years Websters only got around to acknowledging it 2009. Basically put a webisode is a single episode of a series that first aired over the internet, either streamed or downloaded. If you have a whole bunch of webisodes then you have yourself a webseries. It is generally accepted that a webisode will have runtime of 4-15 minutes, but I suspect that this will continue to increase as web TV gains in popularity. Reasons for the short length at the have been to do with budgets, YouTube limits and bandwidth (ie the speed it takes to download an episode). Broadband is now standard and streaming full length shows is no longer a problem, you only have to look at the popularity of BBC iplayer to see that. YouTube now allows longer videos and there are other sites that will stream and host material. Finally cost. This use to be a barrier in creating good quality shows, but digital technology is now much cheaper. For £10,000 you can buy yourself better equipment than is used currently on many mainstream TV shows. Mobisodes are the same thing, although originally coined as show for mobile phones the prevalence of the internet on phones has rendered this a thing of the past.
The next thing you have to understand is that a webisode is a broad term, it is basically a TV show on the web. This means a webisode can be drama, comedy, documentary, hosted, political, animated and even reality.
Knowing this, this should free you up in your writing. The web provides a massive opportunity for people to break through and get noticed. Distribution which has been for so long a barrier creatives has now been shattered. A BBC3 show will be considered a hit for topping 2 million viewers. Meanwhile this episode of Fred has a staggering 37 million views, what makes this more shocking is that Fred is currently the second most subscribed YouTube channel in the world and you have probably never heard of it, much like the number one channel Nigahiga. This shows that your videos don’t need to go viral to be a success, you create characters that people like and then tell interesting stories, the audience will find show if it is what they are looking for.
Hopefully we will be seeing more webisodes in the future as this is an exciting medium ready to be exploited.
So in parting I will leave you with a few different series that are floating around on the web.
You Suck at Photoshop – masquerading as tool to teach photoshop you can enjoy the host’s life fall apart over the series.
The Guild – Streamy award winning sitcom.
Gemini Division – Produced by NBC as exclusive online content the sci-fi drama stars Rosario Dawson and a ton of product placement.
Hardly Working – What goes behind the scenes at College Humour.
Red vs Blue – Now starting up on its 11th season, this web series follows 2 opposing soldiers in the Halo universe.
DJ School – ComComedy launches their first webseries, with hopefully more on the way.
