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.

First up was Joel Soetendorp two-part sketch “Drawn Together“, a clever title that was actually not mentioned (but also shares the name of an cartoon reality hybrid show ). As is often the case with sketches, they go on too long, they are built around a single joke and then padded out because a one page script looks a little sad.  However when the script is built solely around a single idea, one page is plenty, any more than that and you have to have worthwhile characters who your audience invest in.  Joel’s script fell into this trap with an early punchline that was never matched by anything that followed, but it was a great early gag.

So, speaking of character led comedy, next up we had Brett Snelgrove’s webisode idea “The Knot”. The 5 minute scene presented us with a unique couple in a fun situation, sure it was saggy and needs some rewrites, but he is definitely on the right track.  The question is, was it a sketch or was it webisode? Tough to tell, right now I am leaning towards sketch because I got no sense of an over arching storyline for the future, but this could change.

Our last sketch came from Jon Neale and his script “Miss World”, packed with some great gags, it was best explained as a bunch of jokes in search of a sketch. The sketch jumped around all over the place and while it got laughs, the inconsistencies in structure makes it useless in it’s current form.

Our main feature “The Daily Grind” by Shereen Docherty was warmly received following a passionate reading from our actors and as usual it generated much debate. One of the things that gets thrown up in feedback is correct formatting, since Shereen’s script was 1.5 spaced, the 30 pages took just over 20 minutes to read, shorter than a sit-com should be. The page a minute guide is a good one, but personally I don’t care that much on a script which is coming to the group for feedback.  I expect them to be too long, or too short because it’s a draft.  Even when it comes to correct formatting these are many different styles and at the end of the day as a long as it looks like a script you will be just fine. Of course formatting on Word can be hard, so if you are looking for a free script writing program try out Zhura or Celtx. Next up was the use of named music tracks, this falls into the same category of putting in named products.  There is this myth that a prospective buyer of your script will look at your choice of music or use of a name brand and bin your script lest they have to pay out the big bucks to licence them.  In reality they don’t care because hopefully your great story, snappy dialogue and fascinating characters will out weigh the mild inconvenience of changing “Coca Cola” to “cola”.   This is not to say that you now have a green card to ram your script full of product placement and hit songs, a good rule is only put it in if it helps enrich your script, if you can cut it, cut it. That might sound like I am going back on myself, but that “cut it” rule should apply to everything in your script; if it serves no purpose, cut it.

On the character front Shereen had succeeded in creating some interesting characters, although it was disappointing that on the rare occasion where we have a female scriptwriter we were still lacking in good roles for women. As a pilot the ensemble piece was a little confused since we did know who’s story we were really following. Something we see often in a script at the LCW is the main character just seemed to be along for the ride, things happen to him and around him without him having to make any decisions. The inactive protagonist is a common problem in event led scripts, remember let the characters lead the story, no the events.

Well that is all for this week and just in time as we have another meeting in 3 days.

Sketchageddon III was yet another mighty success for the London Comedy Writers, at least when I remembered to cast the scripts. Whoops.  Anyway, lets see what we had.

Acceptable Discrimination?, Body Harvest, and Big Issue by Gareth Moore, – The winner of last months blog contest hit the floor running three sketches, general consensus was tighten them at the top… except the last one which at 3 lines was short enough.  Debate rages about whether you can still take the piss out of ginger people.

The Art of Wally by Olly Allsopp, – Equally well received and with one person even commenting that it was one of the finest Wally based sketches he had ever heard.

The Present by Sally Ingrey, – Not so much a sketch, but scene from a film, wonderful dialogue, interesting characters.

Owning a Break-up and Carbs and Bombs by Ahmed III – The first sketch pulled an excellent slight of hand on the audience, while the second one that paired an airhead and a suicide bomber had an interesting mix emotions, but ultimately very funny.

I Was Also Thinking of Writing a Script by Anon II – In response to last week’s anonymous script, another was submitted, a fantastically funny homage to the original.  If only we knew who were writing these… maybe it was the same person….

Absolute Weakest Link by Luke Llyons, Class Conscious by Jeremy Davies and John’s last minute submission were all well received, however all suffered from similar ideas being done before.  This lead to an interesting debate about the originality of characters and ideas, or whether once they are performed, even be it over 20 years ago can  no one else go there? Deliberate or not.

The Lamb and Lion by Douglas Hooker – again this was less a sketch and more a scene from something larger, there were nice moments, but ultimately most felt that this was character exploration for the writer rather than a story.

Cuba Libre by Sally Sheringham – Two men in Cuba, this script had some great moments, although as is quite often the case, was over written at the start and the ending didn’t quite work. Some thought it would be better to explore a longer version, perhaps a feature film.

Middle Earth and Drone Controllers by Joel Soetendorp – Two short nicely written if somewhat surreal pieces, great take on the military and Middle Earth.

Finally Matthew Jessee presented the first of what I hope will be many webisodes from the group.  Sadly by the time we got round to this everyone was tired, while we are normally done by about 9.30, in an effort to get everyone’s sketches in we had over run and it was nearing 10.15.  The energy had left the room and reading came out oddly flat. Comments were fairly positive although the script still held too close to a scene from a sitcom rather than a single self contained story. Since the script Desperate was originally written as sitcom, it now needs a lot of changes to make it work in significantly different medium.  This means cutting down on locations, telling smaller stories and focusing mainly on a single character.

Well that is all for now. At some point when I have processed my thoughts I will comment on my Fourth Plinth disaster, and thank you to all those who offered such kind words of support. Like they say, life goes on and it doesn’t matter how you fall, but how you pick yourself back up.