Webseries versus Feature Film: Which one would you do today?

[Kholi]

Musing, really.

They aren't all that different in execution, both you could do for minimal amounts of cash and lots of favors. Both can/or do end in the same runtime, and web-series often do not feel like actual television shows, most playing like pieces of features.

So far the major difference at the end of the pipeline looks like:

Webseries-

- Super easy to get away with poor quality because noones paying to watch it.
- Passively able to use someone else's intellectual property to gain hits/views/exposure (illegal or not, just saying people are doing it with great success)
- Hard to gain traction with original content
- Easier to get someone's attention if successful in a moderate way.

Feature-

- Needs much more attention to detail to succeed.
- Potential to recoup expenses are far greater.
- Seems like it takes quite some time to get one completed and delivered on a thin budget (if it's a more ambitious project, speaking from experience here... xD)
- Difficult pool to swim in with everyone hunting for the same dollar.


Always hard to know which path to walk, but which one would you do?

Also, I'm not saying it's okay to use someone's intellectual property, just that there seems to be little to no repercussions for doing so these days...

 

[CharlesPapert]

I guess you are referring to completely indie web series and feature films here. There are plenty of webseries being done with corporate money behind them these days. I just finished one for a major web portal, my second this year and both were the most ferocious schedules I've ever tackled. The first had the worse stats on paper--105 pages in 8 days, but it was in a faux reality style. The more recent one was 165 pages in 13 days in a formal narrative style, which made it even tougher.

Both featured a lot of recognizable faces and a few A-list stars doing cameos. The sad part was that no-one was making a good rate and we worked like animals to pull it off. This is the "new television" and it's a real bone job (given that we were on a budget about 1/10 that of a basic cable series). The excuse that "it's the web, there's no money in it" is wearing thin...

 

[hscully]

I was working on a story that I thought would make a good web series, and now it's a feature film I'm shooting in June. I just finished DPing a 35 page web-series for a couple of young commediennes which was tough but fun, since they are my friends.

So for my project I went for the feature but I think it's because the story just works better as a movie. I couldn't figure out how to do it in 8 minute episodes and achieve the depth of relationships and the tumbling of events.

I also know more about the structure of a good movie than I do about a series. Writing for a series is pretty hard if you want to do it well. It's not that easy to do that right. You have the episode arc and the series arc and you have to make those episodes fairly small for the web.

You can recover money from the web if you get the hits. BlipTV pays 1/2 on all adds. If you get 100,000 hits it can amount to $1900 if you choose the pre-roll, the pop up and the post roll ads. It's not a lot but it's enough to go again if you can put together enough people to work on it. It takes a lot of favors which are expensive too! The You tube channel requires a lot more hits. Subscription models don't do as well but I know one that shoots in CA that makes > $100K because it uses actors from day time TV that have been taken off air and serves a very enthusiastic fan base.

I think a lot of people producing series are doing so in lieu of a pilot, or as a pilot "lite."

Here's a something that REALLY interests me: Streaming to the TV via Roku, or other devices. BlipTV will stream your show on it's Roku channel but do not run the ads there. I'm not sure why. I think a model that gets the shows off the laptop onto a big flat screen TV is the one that interests me a lot. How to monetize it individually (i.e. not Netflix, Amazon, Hulu) is the real question. I think there's s window of opportunity in this.

I know how to code the Roku for authentication services over the web (you know, go to the website and type in this code). I did it for an educational company. How to get those subscription dollars is the hard part. The tech part is already done.