The Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal is one of the most prestigious comedy festivals in the world.

For the second year in a row they are doing a Web Series Pitch Fest competition where you have a chance to pitch your comedy web series idea to top online channels and some of the best comedy producers in the business.  The deadline this year has just been extended but it’s soon: THIS FRIDAY: MAY 17th!

This is a typical pitch program where you compete for a chance to pitch your idea and your team to senior executives from top online channels. Last year’s winners, Mark Little and Dan Beirne, got a development deal from Cracked.com in addition to the YouTube promo.

Last year’s panel included Spencer Griffin (CollegeHumor), JC Cangilla (Yahoo!) and Michael Swaim (Cracked.com).

Finalists get to attend the ComedyPro conference, one of the top worldwide gatherings of people working in the comedy business.

First round of speakers and participants will be announced on May 23rd.

Here’s some details from the site and the LINK to submit.

Web Series Pitch:
A maximum of three (3) projects will be selected. Accepted applicants will be given five (5) minutes to present their work in an open-forum pitch session to a panel of industry experts. The winner will receive the opportunity to become an official YouTube Partner and to have their content highlighted across the YouTube site. Open to writers, producers, comics and web series creators. Click on the link for complete submission and regulation details. A non-refundable fee of $40.00 CAD must be included with each web series pitch submission (sorry, credit card payment only). If your project is not selected, you can apply the fee to a discounted JFL Comedy Conference pass.

This week in my column for the LA Weekly, I featured the indie animated web series. Hell Yeah!, which follows the trials of Satan as he tries to convince Jesus to let him chill in Heaven seeing as everyone in hell is a total asshole. Co-creators Sam Yousefian and Craig Ginsberg animate online advertisements for company websites by day and develop animated shows for TV and the Web by night. To read my LA Weekly article on the show, click HERE. Below, you’ll find my full interview with Co-creator Sam Yousefian who also does all the voices on the show. Enjoy!

How did you come up with the idea for Hell Yeah! ?

My friend Cameron Fredman made this little comic strip that was almost word for word what our first episode ended up being. I thought it would be a funny cute little 30 second episode, for like, ‘welcome back to school,’ Satan’s incoming class.   The more we thought about it, the more fun we thought it would be to follow these characters. We knew Satan couldn’t like his job because the place has to suck. It’s full of all these crappy people.  His job in hell is to make What Would Jesus Do bracelets, but he can never meet his quota because all his workers are assholes.

The idea was to do three or four until we figured out what to do with it. If you look at the first episodes, you’ll see they’re pretty rough. In the later episodes, we got more elaborate.  At the beginning, the whole series was supposed to happen in Hell, but it got boring.  So we though, ‘What if he visited his boss? Who’s his boss? It should be Jesus!’  We took him up there and it was just so much fun to see the interaction between the two of them that.  We did that in the third episode and realized the dynamic with Jesus and Satan was what was fun. We thought it would be cool to bring in other religions too like the Flying Spaghetti Monster Religion.

You do all the voices in Hell Yeah. How did you end up getting so good at it?

Well, I do most of the voice tracks in our commercial too.  I never did voices before starting the company.  I just had to do it because I needed to make money. I’d do narration tracks or whatever. And I would tell the client, if you want to change it, I can change it. And they would say, ‘No we love that voice. Who’s doing that voice?’  Now I do all the voices on our commercials in the beginning, and if the client wants to change it, we hire someone else.

You’re dealing with some touchy subjects here. Have you gotten any horrified emails?

Some people really hate it. Of course!  They’re like, what are you doing? These are things I believe in. I think the show’s hilarious and I don’t think it’s that offensive.  Sure it’s Jesus and he’s dressed like Barry Gib, but he’s not a jerk to anyone but Satan. Jesus should not like Satan!

In animation magazine, there was a really long comment. He rambled for two paragraphs about how the reason Hell Yeah is being mentioned in animation magazine is because we’re paying money and money is evil and we’re all going to hell.  And I’m like, paying money? I wish I had money!

You’ve created a cool, efficient way of animating your characters in your series. Can you describe it?

Yeah, it’s called inverse kinematics. It’s a process usually used on 3D characters. For 2D, you usually have to draw a character going from pose to pose, but in After Effects, we programmed the puppetry tool to allow each character to have little buttons on their body so we can manipulate their arms or their eyebrows, or have one part of their body always move when another part does to make them look more alive.  We can even add musculature in there so if you bend the arm, the muscle grows. This allows us to animate faster so we can get more story out and create more high quality animation.  We have lots of tutorials about how to do this on our YouTube channel.

Can you share an example of how this was used in Hell Yeah! ?

We use it a lot in the third and fourth episodes.  With Jesus, at the end of episode 3, when he’s standing on the walkway, his pants are waving and his hair is waving in the wind.  That’s all being done automatically so the animator doesn’t have to do all this extra work. When he bends down, it’s not like you have to move his knees out, it happens automatically.

How did you get interested in animation?

I spent the first eight years of my life in Iran before moving to the US. I watched a lot of cartoons, all the same sorts of shows as they have here.  Only over there, everything was illegal. A guy, like a drug dealer, shows up at your house with a suitcase of videotapes of, like, cartoons and Disney movies. It was very exciting.

When I was little, I always loved to draw. I would draw flip picture animations on the corners of my notebooks.  When I moved here, I didn’t know how to speak English.  To communicate with my classmates, I remember, I would draw pictures rather than talk. So if I wanted something, or to do something, I would draw a picture.  I guess I got better at drawing that way. I even started selling my drawings! Fifth grade: five cents a piece.

You and your partner Craig have a successful business creating online animated ads for companies. What do you guys think you understand about storytelling that works for ads too?

Craig went to Cornell and was doing documentaries.  I went to film school and was studying entertainment and writing scripts.  We both come from a content and storytelling background. When we approach these ads, we think of them as little entertainment pieces.  When you’re just explaining something, you lose people because it’s boring. When you’re trying to sell something, like a commercial, people can’t wait to get away. So we create a piece of entertainment, and while you’re being entertained, you’re learning how a product works.

It’s just the two of you creating this and your new show Chicken Strips. How many people usually work on a show like this for TV?

I’ve shown some of my friends who work in big animation studios our episodes and they say, ‘Wow did you have forty people working on that?’  Nope. Just us. It’s a bit slow going, though, since we’re doing ads for our main business all day and this is just on the side.

A very excited Sam Yousefian at Smash5media offices working on Satan’s moves.

What made you decide to do a web series?

In the past, we’ve created shows and pitch them to networks. When you’re doing that, you’re relying on someone being in a good mood that day, liking you and saying, ‘OK let’s do this one’.

About a year ago we decided to just create something. We decided to make the episodes and not worry if it was perfect yet, and not keep rewriting the scripts for someone else who might not even be in a good mood that day and who’s going to say no anyway. We said, ‘Let’s just make an episode. And the next one. And the next one.’  I know we’re good. I know we can do it.  And I know it’s going to be hilarious.

Do you still want to sell a show?

Absolutely. I’m not anti-traditional entertainment. I would love if our YouTube channel could make enough money for us to make the episodes and support ourselves that way.  Or I would love to sell a  show to a network.  Our new show, Chicken Strips is something we’re hoping to present to networks and use the web series as an example.

Can you tell us a little about that one?

Sure, it’s about chickens who are strippers. The story follows Chickadee, the new girl.   In the first episode, she’s auditioning to be a stripper at Fowl Play… lots of chicken puns.  Eggs is the owner of Fowl Play. He’s a big black cock.  It’s co-written and created by Jamie Becker. I met her in a hamburger joint, randomly. Our mutual friends told me she’s nuts and out of her mind and really funny.  I had her send me a couple scripts and she sent me Chicken Strips. I thought it was hilarious and that we should make it.  So we got together and started putting episodes together. I’m excited about this one.

You can watch all the episodes of Hell Yeah! And Smash5media’s animation tutorials HERE. If you enjoyed this show and this interview, check out my conversation with Shilpy Roy about her hilarious, quick and funny web series Hipsterhood.

Joe Towne & Daryl Johnson

This week in my column for the LA Weekly, I featured the indie web series, Friends In Therapy, which I discovered at the Hollyweb Fest. When I first saw the series, I thought the acting, writing and comedic timing was just brilliant. When I learned the show was completely improvised, I was even more impressed. All eight episodes are under two minutes each so you can watch the whole first season in about fifteen minutes, and I highly recommend it. As you probably guessed, it’s about two friends… in therapy. You can check out my LA Weekly feature on why I like the show so much HERE or in the paper today. In addition, below is my full interview with creator/stars Daryl Johnson and Joe Towne. Enjoy!

D: Joe and I met at a tonic bar in Los Angeles.  So L.A. We had a mutual friend who worked at this Tonic bar, who would make us these awesome and sometimes weird health drinks to make us feel better. These drinks consisted of Chinese herbs, dragons feet and deer placenta–

J: That’s disgusting.

D: You drank it. Anyway… it was destined to be a friendship that would last the test of time if we could drink that stuff!!

J: I can’t believe that’s what was in those drinks. I knew there were ants and deer antler and butter made from an almond. 

D: After knowing each other on an acquaintance level for some time, we decided that we should try and work together on something and see where it took us. After meeting up for coffee one day we kinda brought up an idea which eventually transformed into a pair of friends who decide to go to therapy for their friendship. 

D: My advice would be keep it simple and short. I think there are so many people who create web series that are a huge undertaking and aren’t funded by a major studio or production company and drain a lot of resources. I think if you keep the idea simple it will lead to a more interesting series. Also I think the average Internet viewer has a short attention span, my idea for watching an internet web series is usually anywhere from 2-5 minutes. I tend to want to lean closer to 3 at max.

J: I don’t know if we are qualified to give advice as we are only a few steps further down this journey than they are… That said, if you want to make a web series, go make sure that (after all the work you are putting into it behind the scenes) you remember the reason you are doing it in the first place.  Our first and main intention was that we wanted to have fun.  We felt (and later found out) that when we are having fun, others seem to be having fun too. That is more important than anything.

D: I think fully improvised web series can be a lot of fun.  Our web series was fully improvised and unscripted. I think it worked for us, because me and Joe have an awesome chemistry that was there before we ever even worked together, so the dynamic that you seen on screen is real and true. I think that is why people can connect with it.

J: I recommend that you use two cameras so that you can capture nuances and aren’t forced to recreate any of the moments. A fun game is to give yourself something different to focus on before the beginning of each take (a strong inner thought) that launches you into the scene. And finally, make sure you like the person you are improvising with. For us, our chemistry is what makes or breaks our series because we don’t have anything else. Except a couch.

Did you plan to address race in the series or did that just come out of the improv?

Just shy of 30, Brian Mcgreevy has been working as a successful screenwriter in Hollywood for years. He and writing partner Lee Shipman have had two scripts on the Black List and have an adaptation of Dracula currently in development with Russell Crowe and Eli Roth attached, among other projects.  His adaptation of his first novel Hemlock Grove premiered Friday as Netflix’s second original show. Mcgreevy also executive produced the show along with Eli Roth, and was kind enough to sit down with me and chat about how Hemlock Grove ended up at Netflix and the process of creating for New Media.  He also offeres some damn good advice for aspiring writers and artists of all types.  I know I was taking notes, and not just for this interview.

How did you come to sell your first TV show to Netflix?

I am a novelist in addition to a screenwriter and I had written a novel and sold it to Farrar Straus and Giroux. I didn’t really use a book-to-film agent because I’d been working in the studio game for a couple years so I had a pretty solid sense of the landscape.

I had my agency set meetings with producers and interviewed them personally. I basically went with the guy who was most aligned with my preexisting criteria for a partnership.

What was that criteria?

I was in a position that writers in this town rarely find themselves in. I had leverage because I owned the property flat out.  The two conditions I went in under were: One- I am executive producer on this project. You are not a producer over me. We are peers.  Two- this is a hard R.  The subject matter inherently lends itself to a kind of sanitization because it has paranormal themes and the main characters are adolescents. The execution of the book was very unsanitized.  There was a lot of fucking, violence and casual drug use, which, from my own perspective, is much more representative of adolescence than, for instance, Twilight.

I had a very high profile producer, who I like and have worked with, say to me, ‘This is the next Hunger Games!’  And my response was, ‘Have you read this? Did you get to the part where the protagonist is doing violent role-play with a prostitute yet? Out of boredom?’

It was great to find someone who said, ‘I’m OK with potentially making way less money off this and doing the way cooler version.” That was who I ended up working with.

Did you consider film first? When did the adaptation become TV?

We were looking at film.  We sat down with Eric Newman, Eli Roth’s producing partner, and said, ‘OK. What’s the coolest version of this?’’  When TV came up, we realized the coolest version was a TV show.  It wasn’t always the case, but TV has become the artistically superior medium to film.

None of us really knew much about TV. At one point it came to my attention that NBC was looking for a horror show and I said, ‘You’ll get a limb from my body before this show goes to a network and becomes CSI with monsters.”  At the time, the House of Cards deal had just been announced and we all looked at each other and said, ’That’s what we want.’  We chased that deal for six months.  We had offers on the table from more traditional premium cable outlets but instinctively none of us thought that was cool. None of us thought that was the future.

What was the process like pitching to Netflix?

They were highly interested, but they were also highly selective in their buying process. When you pitch a network, you’re pitching a pilot deal, so their level of investment is relatively minimal. When you pitch to Netflix you’re selling the entire show.  We pitched to networks, got a couple offers.  The Netflix pitch was last. When we walked out of there, my TV agent just shrugged and said, ‘You know you just asked them for 50 million dollars?’  So yes, they were interested but they weren’t falling over themselves to appease us because they knew they were offering the biggest, hottest deal.

What about developing with them?

They were very permissive in terms of how willing they were to allow us to transgress certain boundaries that a network would have never let us. We have a highly sexual, highly violent show with a cast of underage characters.

I doubt if we’d gone with Showtime that they would have been terribly puritanical.  But if we’d gone with a basic cable channel, we wouldn’t have gotten away with half of what we did.

You’ve done a lot of adaptation work in the past. Was there anything specifically difficult about adapting your own work? 

Yes, many things. It’s very unusual to be working on a screenwriting project that you’ve had the benefit of five years of research and development on going in.  You have to ask yourself, when is my thinking too rigid? When do I have to adapt to a different medium?

Also logistically, when you’re shooting a TV schedule and you have a finite amount of resources and days, there are certain creative decisions that just have to be made NOW.  Creating in the theater of your own imagination is slightly different than when you have a crew of 150 people and you’re hemorrhaging money and time.

What was something specific that was really fun to shoot?

I think many would agree that shooting graphic and horrific violence is terrifically fun.  It really bonds everyone because, you know, it’s a form of deep play. When we’re children and we’re playing, we don’t recreate dramatically uninteresting scenarios.  We create the most awesome, fucked up, nightmarish, mythological scenarios that we can.  So when you have a group of trained professionals doing this as their job, it’s a privilege.  Actors in my experience are never happier than when they’re knee deep in fake blood.

After living with these characters as fiction or so many years, was their any specific actor cast who shed a new light on a role or was alarmingly similar to what you had imagined?

There is obviously more than one example of that, but I will say I felt very privileged to work with Landon Liboiron who plays one of the main characters, Peter. When you cast an actor, there is something that naturally overlaps with the essence of that person and the essence of that character.  This is probably biased because Peter was the character that I identified with the most emotionally while writing the book. When you have this person that you’ve been living with for all these years in your head and then you meet this actual person who embodies their qualities, it’s a bit of a pleasing mind fuck, especially because I consider the character the closest thing this story has to a role model.

His own value system is very simultaneously antithetical to the bourgeois materialism that underlies the United States, but also deeply moral and grounded in his own, like, bizarre hippy sense of honor. That’s something I would say kind of exists in Landon as a human being. He’s had a lot of success as an actor at a young age, coming out of Degrassi. But he also comes from this rural Alberta farm.

Where do you think content creation is headed?

The new players, Amazon, Xbox, Netflix, Hulu, are chipping away at the former monopoly that was held by the broadcast networks.

It’s incredibly significant that this shift in technological infrastructure means the broadcast networks no longer control the vehicle of delivery. You don’t need to own a satellite; you just need a coaxial cable.

The unions are going to need to dramatically rethink their roles when it comes to new media deals.  When you have a straight to series order, it gives you more options, but you need the flexibility to take advantage of them. If you’re shooting in one location in Episode 3, and let’s say the other scene is a logistically inconvenient company move that costs you $140,000, but you’re gonna be back here for Episode 5 (and Episode 5 is already written) you’d think you could save yourself a couple hundred thousand dollars by shooting scenes from both episodes while you’re at the location.  The DGA wont let you do that because they have a One Episode One Director rule, which is an outmoded holdover that doesn’t apply to this model.

What advice do you have for writers trying to navigate the landscape of where to create, TV, Film, Web?

Now, more than ever, the means of production are democratized.  This is a town that respects balls.  Creating opportunities for yourself is probably a much better investment in creating the life you want for yourself than interviewing for staff positions or auditioning for parts.  Whether you’re waiting tables or you have a trust fund, the opportunities to create something meaningful and exciting now are plentiful and increasing by the day.

Also, chasing the market is a mistake.  Taste is completely subjective.  History tends to be rewritten on the basis of who won and who lost. I see people now who perceive that Hemlock Grove was a no brainer. In no way was that true when I was writing the book and it was a very strange, very personal experiment in genre hybridization.  Almost every book agent and publisher said no to. In fact, I got exactly two yeses, one from my agent and one from the publisher that ultimately bought it.   It was a huge investment of hours, I spent the better part of my 20s working on it. But it was the thing that compelled me the most.

So I would say, you have to honor what is most authentically and individually your voice. It’s not going to be to everyone’s taste.  If you do that and you’re committed and you work as hard as you need to – which is a very important clause in that sentence because diligence, patience and hard work matter exponentially more than ability going in – you will succeed.  If you try to chase the markets and conform to some chimerical, external standard that at any given moment can change, you probably wont.

There are people that seem to make solvent careers that way, but I don’t think they are very happy. Post Raising Arizona, the Cohen Brothers were offered Batman. I’m pretty sure they aren’t losing any sleep over not taking it.  I’ve made a career of saying no to my agents. They’ll say, ‘But this could make a lot of money.’ And I’ll say, ‘Don’t care.’

What was the first thing that allowed you to have an agent to say no to?

It was the first script that my writing partner and I wrote together called Of Every Wickedness. It was based on a series of historical events that intrigued us. It was a very common story in this industry. The script got us our manager who is also a controlling partner in our production company, Shinebox SMC.  It also got us our agents. It went to all the big producers and studios. A lot of people loved it. Nobody bought it, but it’s what got us in the rooms and meeting the people who eventually helped us found our career.

What about that experience gave you the confidence to be the person who will continue to say no projects you’re not passionate about?

The answer is… nothing.  And if anything, everything about my experience in this industry the first two years would only have encouraged conformity and fear-based thinking. So basically, you need to have the courage and the conviction coming in.  I had a major leg up because I had gone to an excellent and prestigious multi-disciplinary MFA program.  I was lucky enough to have been surrounded by an incredibly talented group of people who, at the time, were just grad students, but now at least half of them have major book or movie deals. So I was already part of an elite peer group with regard to talent.

I came in with this mentality that in my own mind, I was already at the level of status I was meant to be, and the world just hadn’t caught up yet. I would say that sense of entitlement and frankly being a prima donna is probably essential to navigating this town because there are going to be a lot of people who are going to make compelling arguments why that should not be the case.

It’s a balance of putting in hours of incredible hard work and that prima donna attitude that what you’re creating is good enough.

I will freely admit that I was a little bitch. I was out here at 24 years old and Transformers was an enormous success.  So I was being offered… say… Hot Wheels and my response was, ‘No. I’m above that.’  In no universe was this actually true.  I was a 24 year old amateur punk coming out of Texas, but I still had this mentality, ‘What? Write a movie based on a toy line? No. I’m inherently superior to that. Fuck yourself,’ and basically maintained that mindset until it became true.

People have said to me that I had an unusual amount of success early on and what I would point out is that I have been writing every day since I was a teenager. I have thrown away more than the average 40 year old has produced in their entire life before I was 25.  I was the guy who was 20 year old and writing the practice novel that ended up in the trash can, rightfully so. I wrote 6 screenplays before selling one and wrote 30 short stories before realizing I have no aptitude at all for that medium.  I have heard NO more times than any other human I have ever met.

Sure Lena Dunham’s 26, but she’s someone who directed two entire feature films before anyone really ever heard of her. Not to mention all the production work she did in college.  Yeah, she’s really young but I know a lot of 35 year old ‘filmmakers’ who still haven’t gotten off their ass and made a movie.

If you liked this interview, you may enjoy my Interview with the writer/creators of Warner Brothers’ H+: The Digital Series.

H+: The Digital Series, Warner Premiere Digital’s apocalyptic tale of computer implants in the human mind, is my recommendation this Thursday in the LA Weekly for the Best of the Web. You can read my article on the LA WEEKLY website HERE or check it out in the print edition in the FILM section.

The innovative storytelling of first-time creators John Cabrera and Cosimo De Tommaso as well as the insightful direction by Stewart Hendler on what a studio would call a shoe-string budget, was one of the main reasons I wanted to feature this piece. Cabrera and Tommaso created the world of the show back in 2006 and pursued it’s creation through years of setbacks. I think their story is inspirational for writers and exciting for those interested in creating new forms of storytelling specifically for the web. Here is my entire interview with Cosimo and John that I used as research for my LA Weekly piece.

How did you two meet and come up with the idea for H+?

C: John and I met a little over ten years ago. I used to be a dancer and was dancing in the Celine Dion show in Las Vegas. I didn’t even speak English.

J: And my sister was also a dancer who was in the show. So I visited her awesome and that’s how we met. We ended up talking about the sort of stuff we loved: TV, comedy, sci-fi, movies. We found we had a similar aesthetic when it came to storytelling, even though at that time my focus was on acting. I knew someday I wanted to transition out of acting, but I wasn’t quite at that place and he had never even thought about writing.

The partnership really came about because of this idea. We conceived of it together and then we were like, ‘You wanna try and make this?’ or ‘You wanna write this and see if someone else would be into making it?’ That was in 2006.

“This was 2006. We were conceiving of a work connected by small computers before the iphone came out. We could see it coming, but it wasn’t there yet.”

Did you conceive of the show as a web series at that time?

C: We had only created the concept.

J: We had no idea what it was going to be. All it was was an idea of a world connected by nano-computers and something goes wrong and a lot of people die. So some people didn’t die and we started brainstorming who those people might be, like people in parking lots who didn’t have reception at the time. Little by little we started creating characters, while also doing tons of research on transhumanism and technology. That’s how we stumbled across other interesting stuff like Western women using surrogates in India and China because it’s cheaper.

C: Keep in mind this was 2006. We were conceiving of a work connected by small computers before the iphone came out. We could see it coming, but it wasn’t there yet.

J: Sweeping and swiping wasn’t there yet. There were not touch interfaces. When we conceived of it, we thought it was sci-fi. Then over the years, as we developed the show, we realized… OK! Not sci-fi anymore. There was even a worry that once the thing got made it would be totally passé. I think what ended up happening was that it came out at a time that it seemed most relevant.

C: At the very beginning, I was afraid of using words like app. I thought people wouldn’t understand it. Then of course, a few years later there’s an App Store!

L to R: Producer Jason Taylor, Director Stewart Hendler, Writer/Creators John Cabrera & Cosimo De Tommaso, Exec Producer Lance Sloane,

How did the first show you ever pitched end up being produced by Warner Brothers?

J: We conceived of the show in 2006 and did most of the world building through 2006-2007.

C: I would dance Wednesday through Sunday in Las Vegas, the Sunday night I would drive to Los Angeles to come work with John.

J: Then we knew we had to get it in front of people. At that time, getting people interested in funding a web series wasn’t really a thing. We started off sharing it with production companies, not specifically for film or TV, just as a big budget production. We got a few meetings through friends and then we got a manager for the project who ended up staying on as my manager now for the past seven years. He started getting us more meetings. The way it works is you get one meeting, then you use that to pitch yourself for meetings with someone else. Most meetings were in the TV space. The feeling mostly was, ‘This is really amazing. But who are you?’

C: I think their exact words were, ‘This is really ambitious…’ because we had this huge concept, but we had never written anything.

J: At that time, there was only one television show that even came close to what we wanted to do: Lost. It’s like, JJ Abrams. Yeah. We’ll give him the opportunity to try something like this, but why would we ever give two completely unknown guys something this big and wild? People were intrigued and thought maybe it could be another Lost, but then later that year all these shows like Flash Forward and The Event came out.

We had a few close calls and then one day I was listening to NPR and heard this piece on UTA about how they had changed course with their online department and were really focusing on creators. They decided they weren’t interested in the YouTube flash in the pan personalities, they wanted to find people who were telling great stories. I immediately called my manager and said, I want to take a meeting with them. This could be a web series.’ So we met with UTA and they thought it was greatm but they told us that the reality at the time was, there’s no money in this space right now.

C: The difference between now and then was also that no real content was being created just for new media. The studio was thinking, let’s try with the new media. If we see people are interested, we’ll move it to television. It was kind of like a pilot.

J: UTA ended up representing us for the project, and one of the many places they sent us was Warner Brothers. Other places were asking if we could make it for $50,000 to $100,000, but Warner was looking to put real money into something like this. Not TV budget, but much bigger than anyone else was doing on the Internet. Million plus.

C: Far more than we had imagined making it for.

J: We pitched them. They loved it. They asked if we had materials. We said yes, then went home and frantically started writing up diagrams and comic book pages, getting everything together. We sent it to them and then the writers’ strike happened. We weren’t even union but the studios were being so careful that they just stopped everything.

C: I forget about that time. As soon as the good news came it’s like we forgot about the struggles.

J: Literally the DAY the writers’ strike ended, we got a call. So they had actually been waiting to move forward with this. Now of course, ‘moving forward’ on studio clock is very different than anybody else’s definition. Contract negotiations took the rest of the year. After that it was a lot of stop and go, stop and go.

C: Looking back now, it was understandable. They weren’t sure. They were putting in a lot of money and they wanted to be as safe as they could. At that time we didn’t even really know what the market was for New Media.

“One day I was listening to NPR and heard this piece on UTA about how they had changed course with their online department and were really focusing on creators.”

What did you do while you were waiting?

J: I went off and did another web series called The Homes. We did it the way that Cosimo and I were originally pitching H+, a $100,000 web series that would last 2 hours, and I almost died.

C: I was touring around the world dancing, South Korea, England, Spain. Then I went back to Europe and danced with a company in Ireland.

J: We just kept checking. We were in limbo. Then, I don’t know what happened, but in late 2010, we get this call that’s just like, “Studio’s approved it. We’re ready to go. We’re going to be shooting in Chile.  I was in post production on my other show. He was in Italy. We were like, are you kidding me? Now?!

C: I was dancing and then they said, ‘You need to be in Chile in 15 days’.

How did you go about writing the script?

J: We outlined a mythology first. We created a timeline that spanned about two decades. As we go into Season Two, we’re using the same timeline

C: We had a lot of time to think about it!

J: Yeah, we had years to build it! So we had a linear, chronological timeline of events. Then we asked ourselves, what is the best way to tell this story? We always knew we wanted it to be non-linear. We knew the parking lot storyline had to have a sort of linear progression, but even in that storyline, the episodes are really independent from each other. There are several episodes that skip a huge chunk of information.

It was a studio job. All the parts of the process were exactly like a studio feature. Warner Premiere, at the time, was a division of the home video arm, which is technically the feature division of Warner Bros. So even though it was a serialized show, it was treated by WB as a film. Only difference was, we weren’t getting paid as much.

“In late 2010, we get this call that’s just like, “Studio’s approved it. We’re ready to go. We’re going to be shooting in Chile. “

What was going on at that time in New Media?

J: Back in 2006/7, when we were first talking about the story, the web was dominated by one thing: short form comedy on YouTube. If you were making a web series, you were making something that was only a few minutes long because nobody would ever watch anything more than that. There were a couple exceptions. Michael Cera’s Clark and Michael was a funny show back then, but it didn’t get nearly as many views as it should have. Then, in 2008 something very important happened that changed everything.

C: Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible Came out?

J: That too. But also, people don’t realize that a big consequence of the financial crisis in 2008 was that everyone started chopping their cable. That’s one of the luxuries that people cut in a bad economy. So what did people start doing? They started watching their favorite shows online on Itunes and downloading torrents.

So people went from only watching short comedy segments online to all of a sudden watching entire hour long shows on their laptops in bed, like Lost and Desperate Housewives and whatnot.

C: I remember watching Lost on ABC.com.

J: Exactly, all of the networks started showing content online, partially because they were trying to curb all of the torrent downloading. Before people told us, ‘they’ve got to be short because no one would be willing to watch something for an hour’ but when the entire world economic system collapses and you don’t have any money anymore, suddenly you are willing to sit in bed and watch four of your favorite shows back to back on a laptop.

C: If you have to decide what you want to cut, your internet or your cable… you’re gonna cut your cable.

J: This is why you’re seeing Halo 4 and House of Cards, because people are willing to sit through them. You’re even able to watch Internet content on your TV now.

“A big consequence of the financial crisis in 2008 was that everyone started chopping their cable. So what did people start doing? They started watching their favorite shows online”

How did you decide on the length of your episodes?

J: I believe web content has had a slow start because what it’s been needing is to find out what it is, independent of television. Television is already on the web, sure. But it’s so limiting to stop at, ‘well these should be little versions of TV shows that we grow until they’re big versions of TV shows.’

As soon as we started sharing it with the Internet space we started to think, what is the web version of this world. It was still the same mythology, but as soon as we thought in the terms of the web, our concept became nothing like a TV show, it became, pretty much, the storytelling format you see today. We developed the POV’s at the beginning of each episode. That was not in the TV version of it. Also the fragmented nature and how it’s told out of order. People always ask us if we’ve thought about making it into a TV show. Of course we have, but it wouldn’t look anything like it is on the web.

C: It would be a completely different experience. This version of the show would fail on TV.

J: The shortness was also due to when we started our process. In 2006/2007 people were telling us that it couldn’t be longer than three minutes because that was all that was out there.

C: When prom queen started, one of the most popular web series at that time, their episodes were a minute and a half each.

J: By the time we got to a time when it was clear we would be competing with shows that were 15 minutes long, we felt like, this show is what it is. We were definitely nervous people would complain it was too short, and the number one complaint in the comments is that it’s too short.

Hannah Simone as Leena

What was the casting process like?

C: I was in Spain at the time we were casting and would get all the videos an hour after they shot them. I was in charge of casting the couple Italian actors that we had.

J: We cast actors from all over the world. Samuel Vauramo who plays Topi was based in Finland. Hannah Herzsprung who plays Mata was based in Germany. We give huge props to Mara Casey, our casting director. She’s amazing. She used to cast Gilmore Girls and I was on Gilmore Girls, so she has been a dear friend of mine for a long time.

There was some discussion early on about subtitling vs. actors say, speaking English with an Italian accent in Italy. So much of H+ is about human connection in the digital age and how people relate to one another that we felt that language needed to be a theme.

Back when I was young, the idea of talking to someone in another country seemed really exotic and exciting, something you do if you have a pen pal. But now anyone can talk to anyone in another country just by getting on twitter. If you want to practice your language skills, you can get on Skype. That connection is such a part of what the digital age is and such a part of what our show is about that it just seemed dishonest not to use the actual language.

C: The medium was important to this decision too. If you have a show in the United States, American actor speaking Italian is fine. No one will know and when that product goes to Italy, it will be dubbed. But something like this, when this product goes to Finland, Germany, Italy, the people there will realize that it is not truthful, right? They can see that is not a real Finnish accent. So it would have seemed fake to them and that was the last thing we wanted.

How many people did you see for the role of Mata?

J: Casting Mata was a really long process. The actual nationality of that character had to change. It was originally a Finnish character. Then we realized, just because we wanted the best actress for the role, we should probably change her nationality to be sort of a mystery, so were seeing a lot of people, Swedish, German, etc. Then we found out that Hana was interested and she’s a pretty big German actress. Then something happened and she couldn’t do it so we were scrambling. It wasn’t until we were in Chile filming, still trying to cast the role, that we found out she was available. She speaks German, Italian and Finnish in the show. If you’re from Germany, you watch it and you know she’s German, and if you’re Finnish you know, that ain’t a Finnish accent. For everyone else, she’s a mystery, which works for the show.

L: Amir Arison as Dr. Gurveer, R: Hannah Herzsprung as Manta

You were casting mostly from tape. Did you actually meet the actors before you started filming?

J: Everyone we cast outside the country we didn’t meet till we were on set. Cosimo met the ones in Italy.

How do you feel about your fans making chronological playlists?

J: We love it and we’re happy to send people their way to their channels to watch them. We when we were brainstorming the web series as non-linear, we always imagined how rad it would be if people put together their own timelines. At that time, we didn’t know we would be on YouTube so we didn’t know how anyone would do it. As soon as it became clear that YouTube was going to be our distribution platform, we started exploring what that meant and we realized people could curate a playlist. You can add jump points too so you can have episodes jump to the next episode cutting the end credits and the opening titles and that will play… sort of like a TV show..

True hard core fans who have been following us since Comic Con last year will remember that our first week, our credits were a minute and a half long. Straight up film credits. On a two minute episode.

What did you learn from Season One that you are applying to Season Two?

J: The data seem to suggest that the shortness of the episodes is not hurting us below a certain point. When the episodes get close to the three minute point, that’s when we get our biggest complaints.

J: More than the actual length, it seems that the release structure was what compounded people’s frustration with the shortness of the episodes. If you’re only getting two, two-three minute episodes once per week with a story that is already so complicated, it’s hard to follow.

I think the best way to release Season Two would be a daily series. Season One had eight chapters, each with six episodes. Those could be weekly chapters. A person could watch them day-to-day, or they could wait a full week and then they’ll get a playlist to play one episode into another. That way, you could watch a twenty minute ‘episode’ at the end of the week if that’s your thing.

Why did you choose to release two episodes once a week?

The question was whether we needed a long run so we could develop our audience. You’re coming to this show after it’s completed, but there were people coming in at the 4 month mark who still got to participate in the community of people waiting to watch week to week. Had we done it in 8 weeks, everyone finding the series would have found it after the community had ended. The question for season 2 is, is that building of community as important? Probably not, which is why a daily series makes more sense for a season 2.

Would you increase the length?

We want it to stay above that critical length we spoke about earlier, but think about it. If each episode is five to six minutes long, then how many episodes can we actually do? Forty eight, five to six minute episodes is like four hours of content. And when you’re only getting a one to two million dollar budget for that?

I know there are web creators who can produce that amount of content on that budget, but when you’re creating at the studio level, you have to pay everybody a specific amount. There are unions you have to deal with. That’s something independent web creators don’t think about when they look at studio projects like ours. They say, ‘well look, they got the big money.’ But there are so many doors for a studio project that are sealed shut. The only way you can open those doors is with money. On an independent project, those doors aren’t sealed shut, they’re loose. Things like permits. Independent projects can often just shoot guerilla style. A studio has to pay.

What else is going on for you guys and what are you hoping to do in the future?

C: I’m hoping to get the opportunity to write more in the United States. I love it here. At the same time, I would also like to work in my own country as well. I’d like to do this sort of work there. People in Italy are already watching TV shows on the Internet because a lot of TV shows come out later there, so people are downloading them on torrent and watching them on their computer.

“Independent creators may say,’Well, they got the big money.’ But there are so many doors for a studio project that are sealed shut that aren’t for an indie. The only way you a studio can open those doors is with money.”

Are there a lot of web series in Italy?

There are a few, but not so much. There are a few production companies that are willing to put money down and make a few episodes, but if it goes well, then they try to move it to TV. They are not interested yet in creating something just for the Internet.

What about you John, what else is going on?

J: I’m just writing, some stuff with Cosimo as a partner and some on my own. I’m currently writing two projects for film, which is exciting, and then I have a TV show that I’m trying to sell.

What advice do you guys have for a person who wants to make a web series?

J: Being a writer is the only profession in Hollywood that does not require anyone to give you permission to do what you want to do. An actor can’t just act. They need a script and they need to be hired. A director can’t just direct. All a writer needs to do is open up a laptop and start writing. I think a lot of writers forget that. They’re thinking about getting their project made before they’ve even written their story.

Get your story out on paper. If it’s a great story, somebody will want to make it. If you can’t find anyone and it’s a great enough story, you’ll find a way. We’ve been working on this story since 2006 and we just kept fighting until we got it made.

Click HERE to go to H+: The Digital Series’ YouTube Channel.  For another interview with first time creators, check out my chat with the creators of hilarious NYC web series High Maintenance about a weed delivery guy in Manhattan.

This week I talked to talented writer/ director Shilpi Roy about her episodic comedy web series Hipsterhood, which follows two hipsters’ mishaps and misconnections throughout Silverlake. Hipsterhood expertly utilizes a storytelling device you would never see on TV: The dialog in each episode is 99% in the two main characters’ heads. I think this show is a real gem of storytelling on the web because each episode has its own short adventure but leaves you craving the next installment.  I talked to Shilpi about writing, shooting and promoting the series.

How you came up with the idea for Hipsterhood?

When I moved to Silverlake, I was definitely not a hipster.  One of things that struck me was the way people dressed totally differently in that specific neighborhood. And I couldn’t understand how could spend all their time at a coffee shop. Then a couple years ago, I found myself buying… skinny jeans.  And I was so against them before, but then I tried them on and realized, ‘oh these kind of make me look good’.  Then I found myself thinking, ‘does that make me a hipster?’  And that brought on an identity crisis.  So I started paying attention to what the hipsters around me were wearing and doing and asking myself if I had become one of them.   That’s where all that inner dialog in the show came from.

How did you choose the structure of your episodes?

Before you start working on a project, you should always ask yourself, ‘Why am I doing this?’ My answer was that I wanted to experiment with film making and therefore make something that was easy to produce and hard to direct.  That’s why I decided to do all voice-over, because when your actors aren’t talking to each other, it’s easy to lose your narrative and get lost in the action.

I wanted to showcase the neighborhood, so I decided to make every episode take place at a different location in Silverlake. I thought about this as I ran my errands and it was then I realized that you often see the same people around the area. That’s where the idea of Hipster Girl and Hipster guy running into each other each episode came in.

How did you decide how long your season should be?

As I was writing the different Voice Over interactions, I thought, ‘how long can I keep this up before people get annoyed?’  So I stretched it as long as I could before I got annoyed, and that ended up being 9 episodes.

In each episode, they realize they’re both in the same place, they almost talk to each other, and something happens physically or mentally that makes them aware of the awkwardness of the situation and shy away.

How did you go about promoting the series?

I basically trolled the internet looking for website, publication, blog, anything that might be interested in our content. Then I sent them an email saying, ‘Hey I have this web series I think your readers might be interested’. I also started a Facebook page and Twitter account.  I also only released the show on Youtube and Blip.tv to start.

Why just those two?

Because I thought, Youtube is Youtube.  It’s the only place where you can get millions of views.  None of the names of the more selective online networks are widely known. People ask where to see your show and you say, ‘I’m on blip,’ and they’re like, ‘what’s blip?’

Then again, those networks are starting to have their own communities, and Blip is very much a community of people who love web series. I knew my content wasn’t going to be very popular on YouTube whereas it might be right for the people who go to Blip.  In the end I am getting way more views on Blip, but YouTube gave me the most exposure.

Everybody agrees that right now you should put your stuff up on as many platforms as you can.  I’m sure I’ll be on 5-10 eventually.

What you see as the future of digital media?

I think it’s all melting together.  In a few years there really won’t be a difference between web and TV content. I think it’s going to come down to consumer viewing habits. Are people going to keep wanting to watch the standard half hour format or are they amenable to more random time frames. Is 5 minutes OK? 15 minutes?

I wrote my show to be moments between two people because that’s what I like to watch on the web. I don’t like to watch 10 minute TV shows. But teenagers are getting used to watching short TV shows on the web.

What do you think about Web Series Festivals?

The ones that are legit are fairly expensive.  Then the ones that are more reasonable to enter are kind of a mess. I think the web series festival landscape is still very new and trying to figuring itself out. That being said, if you win some sort of web award, your views will go way up.

What web series do you like to watch?

To The Fringe, on Blip. It’s a European duo, kind of Flight of the Concords-esque.  The characters are going to the Edinburgh Festival, and every episode they do a  funny bit, then a song. You don’t really see stuff like it on TV and that’s what I’m always looking for, the random original thing that when you discover it you think, ‘Oh my God! I’m one of the only people to see this.’

I also like The Flip Side on SoulPancake, Rain Wilson’s channel. Each episode is a little short film that leaves you with a question like, ‘what do you believe?’. And then people start having a conversation in the comments about it.  I think that’s a great use of entertainment on the web.

What is the biggest mistake you see people make with web series?

I worked a lot in the web world before I wrote this, so I definitely had my list of things I didn’t want to do. I think anything over three minutes is too long. I’m not gonna watch it.   I’ve had people complain that Hipsterhood is too short, so maybe expectations are changing, but I think it’s better to leave people wanting more. I also didn’t want to make it like a TV show. If you’re going to make a TV show and just truncate it, then it needs to be really really good and your characters need to be really likable.

I personally think you should do something different from TV and original to the web too if you can.   Whether what’s new is the story, who the characters are, how you’re shooting it or how your promoting it, there should be something unique that you could only do on the web.  That’s why I did voice over for the whole episode, because I’d never seen that before.

To learn more about Shilpi and Hipsterhood visit www.HipsterhoodSeries.com

For more interviews with writer/directors click INTERVIEWS.

I recently got the chance to tour the new 41,000 square foot YouTube Studio that opened last November in Playa Del Rey.  YouTube/Google has four of these spaces around the world: NYC, LA, Tokyo and London, full of equipment and studios for YOU.  Almost none of the web series creators I talk to know about the space and those that do don’t think it’s available to them, but it IS.  There are events and classes in the space open to anyone with a YouTube channel.  In addition, every quarter, YouTube takes about 25 new YouTube channel partners (that just you allow ads before your video), as part of their Creator Class.  You apply with a project proposal and spend the quarter learning and creating in the space.

For major YouTube creators, there’s a residents program and those residents often mentor the creator class along with YouTube strategists.  There’s also a NextUp competition for additional creators to get a chance to spend two weeks learning and creating in the space.  For creators just starting out on YouTube or trying to boost their views, the space offers free classes open to ANYONE with a YouTube channel, as well as  a constantly growing Playbook of info and advice on their site.  So follow me below as I tour the space with YouTube Strategist Rob Polonsky (Chad, Matt & Rob) and the head of the YouTube Space LA, Liam Collins to learn about this incredible resource that you could be using. There’s an additional interview with them below.

LOBBY/SCREENING ROOM

Rob: That’s Olga Kay working in there with a bunch of her fans she brought in to be extras in a trailer she’s shooting for her new channel. She’s part of our creator class. Every quarter we open up applications to creators who apply with big ambitious projects to do in the space. This is our first quarter and 23 channels got accepted to use the space for a full quarter.  Olga will be shooting all over the space today.

STAGE THREE

Rob: This is Stage Three, what we call the ‘Recording Studio’. It’s a 1500 square foot space. Everything’s lit in a grid so you can customize lighting. You can build a small set. See these panels that are covered on the wall? Those are broadcast service panels You can plug your cameras and audio equipment into it and upload directly to our server.  One of those boxes over there has 48 mike inputs, so you can record a band in here and then in the audio control room you can isolate those tracks.

There’s glass windows so that that if someone’s in here shooting a music video, other people can be watching and learning from the lobby.

*At this part of the tour, Liam Collins, Head of the YouTube Space in LA joined us.

GREEN SCREEN ROOM

Rob: There’s three of these rooms. We make it as easy as possible for creators to come into the space and use these rooms. You hit one button. It’s pre-lit. You hook up your camera; you start recording and you’re ready to go.  It’s a big comfortable space you can do a lot with.

Liam: The idea is that this type of space isn’t too intimidating. When you walk onto one of the stages, it’s huge. It’s got lights all over the place and you’re responsible for getting those lights up there and getting them plotted. If all you’ve done is work in your bedroom but you’ve got a big channel, the green screen room might be a better entry point for you. Then we hope, over time, you’ll learn more and more about production so that you will feel comfortable in that larger space.

10 POST PRODUCTION WORKSTATIONS

Liam: This is post-production.  The idea here, as with everything else in the building, is that there are different levels for creators based on their needs and skills.  Here, me working on a document next to someone else editing is a great thing because people meet and learn from each other. A lot of YouTubers are self-taught and they like to sit in groups and teach each other, “How do I do a green screen cut?”  “How do I balance my audio?”  The idea of the whole space is collaboration.

POST PRODUCTION STUDIO

Liam: Once you have a crew, a director, and a producer, we have 10 editing suites you can move on to.  This suite has been converted into a control room.   We have these modular production switchers and audio mixers we can pull out and put in any of our suites. With these you can do a multi-camera shoot or audio mixing.  Our belief is with eight faders you really can’t do too much damage.  Across the hall we have a huge audio mixer with 128 channels and it’s a little more intimidating and you’re probably gonna want an audio engineer.

BACK LOT

Liam: Once you’ve applied on our website to come work in the creator class or be a resident, you are able to book time in any of the spaces and you can also book equipment. We have lights, grip equipment, cameras, set pieces, etc.

How do you become a YouTube Partner?

Liam: All that really means is allowing ads in front of your video. And you don’t need to wait for an email. There’s a tab where you can just sign up proactively. The idea is that anyone with a channel can become a partner, which is why we have way more partners than we used to.  Now we can support millions.  I like to say the price of admission here is that you have a channel on YouTube.  So you do have to be a ‘partner’ but it’s pretty much a technicality.

Anybody can apply to work in the space.  But one of the first lessons about building a channel on YouTube is that it takes an investment of time.  Because we have a scarce resource, we do show priority to channels that have shown a commitment to the platform.  If you have a piece of content and you’re thinking of getting onto the platform for the first time, not impossible for you to apply and get into the creator class, but it’s more likely that we’re gonna want you to spend some time participating in our other programs, learning some of the techniques that you really don’t need to come to the space to learn about the basics of building a channel. And once you’ve got some momentum, the creator class is probably more appropriate for you.

NextUp Creator Camp at the YouTube Space Recap:

What do you look for in your applications for the creator class?

Liam: We look for three things. First, as I said earlier, we look for commitment to the platform.

Next we look for your willingness to collaborate.  As Rob can tell you (Rob has a monster YouTube Channel, Chad, Matt & Rob that he built with a couple of collaborators) collaboration is one of the most powerful ways to build an audience on YouTube. So, if you’re gonna come here and work, we’re gonna want you to collaborate with others, and when we’re screening partners, we’re gonna want people who have shown they can collaborate. It’s smart to do anyway.  One of our goals is to be a place where innovation happens. So if you can show that you have an innovative way of collaborating,  we’d love to support you trying that and seeing how it works.

The last criteria is resources. One of the ways we believe we can help partners improve the quality of the content they make on their channel is encouraging them to think a bit in advance and plan what they will need.  Our application process is meant to encourage that.

HERE’S more info on the programs the YouTube space offers and how to apply!

Do you have to have a certain number of subscribers or views to apply?

Liam: Everyone in the creator class has very different levels of subscribers. Brian has a Saxophone channel and he has about 10,000 subscribers. Olga Kay has upwards of 600,000.  The idea is to inspire innovation and collaboration. Our goal is to grow channels and help our creators flourish on the platform.

Rob: I also look for ways for Freddy [Freddy Wong of Video Game High School, one of the resident creators] and our other residents to get involved in our community. Freddy is taking some of our creators out to dinner to help them with their pitches and brainstorm ideas for content.  We’re also working on him doing a Kickstarter workshop because he’s had a lot of success on Kickstarter.

Do you have people on the staff whose job it is to approach creators with ideas for new content?

Liam: Not so much.  Rob is a production strategist, an accomplished YouTuber as I said. I view Rob’s job as part creative collaborator and part account manager.  Every channel that works here has a production strategist assigned to them.  That strategist is their go-to.  Freddy Wong’s Video Game High School is shooting here right now, so anything they need, they call Rob, probably more often than Rob even expected.

But the great thing about Rob is that he’s made content that’s been very successful on the platform, so he has the authority to say, “You know I think that video should be 3 minutes not 4 minutes”.  It’s a suggestion and if they want to take it they can. Different channels will want different levels of input from us. We’re not necessarily initiating ideas and giving them to channels but we’re here as a sounding board for them to think of ways to become more resonant on the platform.

Part of the idea is that you’re only here for a short time, no matter who you are. Our goal is once you leave the facility you are better off than when we found you.  It can’t be too easy for you to work here because then you wouldn’t learn anything.

Does YouTube provide a crew for its creators?

Liam: No. As a creator, you provide your own staff. Some people already have their own crew, but if you don’t, that’s a part of coming in as part of the creator class. One of our creators, Nicky Limo usually shoots vlogs, but she decided she wanted to shoot a series. She didn’t have a DP.  Someone in the creator class heard about that, so now she has a DP, someone doing lighting for her. Etc.

What is your day-to-day like?

Liam: Hectic. It’s different every day, which is cool. There’s a different production in here every day. This morning, there were about thirty people outside the front door waiting in front of a sign that said, “Please wait here if you’re here for the casting call.”  You never know what to expect.

Rob: We turned the lobby into a cafeteria yesterday. There was a party in the parking lot too with a dunk tank. Very exciting.

Fun Fact: They serve three different types of Intelligentsia Coffee in the YouTube Snack Room!

So the schedule for those types of things is going through the strategist?

Liam: That’s right. There’s a massive calendar that everyone’s working off of. One thing that we’re learning, now that we’ve built the facility, is there are lots of iterations that need to happen. One of the innovations that’s going to happen is, how do we make the scheduling system even easier than it is already. It’s working but as more facilities are built by us or by others, this will be a model for how a YouTube production facility will work.

How many of these facilities do you think Google will build around the world?

We’re not gonna build a hundred of these. These are meant to be catalysts.  We’ve got LA, London and Tokyo. We’ll likely expand our New York space, which is pretty small right now. And then we’re thinking about different models for what happens in future years. There’s lots of people interested in building production spaces where YouTubers would work, so we’re just as happy for them to build something as us.

How did you get involved in this industry?

I started my career in the Navy. One theme for me is that I’ve always enjoyed working with creative people. I find engineers are very creative and I worked with many of them in the nuclear program.  After that I went to law school. I ended up practicing law and working with investors and start-up companies for about five years. Those are very creative people too, people building businesses, and some of my favorite clients were in the media industry. One of my clients invested in a company called Next New Networks and I ended up becoming the COO of Next New at the time that Next New was sold to YouTube.

Is this space going to make people less inclined to make content in their bedrooms, now that they’re competing with higher and higher quality content, made here?

Liam: Because this is a brick and mortar facility, it can only scale to a certain size.  So one of our goals is to inspire a lot of people who are outside the space.  One thing that we’ve found is that people are not aware of all the resources we have out there for them. The content group at YouTube publishes the Creator Playbook. It’s at Youtube.com/playbook and it has all the best practices that we’ve learned during our experience on YouTube of how to grow audience.  We also want to emphasize the work that goes into that creative process. If you don’t have a great story, you’re not gonna have a great video.

Historically we’ve had a lot of info on there about how to use YouTube, how to upload a video etc.  But more recently we’ve been focused on educational materials that help you learn how to grow an audience.

One of the ways we think we can benefit the greater community is by pointing creators who want to work here to the resources we have out there for them.  We also have programs that any creator can apply to participate in. For example, a couple weeks ago we had a program called The Animation Pros where we had four big animation channels come to the space to talk about their creative process and how they built their channels. We are also doing collaborations with other organizations in the community, so Sundance came and they did a workshop and screening.

In some ways, YouTube is changing the way new filmmakers create. It used to be all about getting your work on the festival circuit. Now it’s about views on YouTube.  Are the worlds completely separate?

Liam: We actually love short films and hosted a film festival on YouTube called Your Film Festival. It’s a big marketing program with Ridley Scott.  Michael Fastbender was the actor involved. YouTube gave half a million dollars to a YouTube creator who submitted a 15 min or less short film. It was narrowed down by online voting and the winners got to go to Venice.

Here’s more info on YouTube’s YOUR FILM FESTIVAL.

How is Google calculating whether this space is actually a good financial investment?

Liam: Well, it’s early.  Our first creator class started three weeks ago, so we’re just starting to see how that works and how our models work.

The first reason we build this place was to send a message to the creator community that we’re invested in them. But we also are expected to work with a lot of creators and publish a lot of content that gets made working in the space.

Right now we’re bringing in a class once a quarter.  We have other programs we do like NextUp, where we bring in a group of creators for one week and they’re here almost around the clock. Each of those models has it’s own advantages and disadvantages, so during this period we’re just testing models to see which one will work the best.

Rob: Regarding getting more views after working here, one of my channels just released an original music video that they shot here, and they’ve already surpassed most of their other videos in views for it.

Do you think you will ever offer one-time use of a specific space like the editing suite to a YouTube partner who is not a part of your Creator Class?

Liam: One balance we try to strike is working with channels where we know we can have an impact. It’s a transactional model. We’re not against helping channels on a case-by-case basis with individual needs, but the thing we’re focused most on right now is longer term engagements.  We believe you need to be in a space like this for a longer period of time so you can learn more.

If you enjoyed this interview, check out my interview with Corey Moss, VP of Digital Entertainment at Production/Management company, Principato Young.  Their clients are creating some of the best content on YouTube.

I’ll be able to share shows you send me that I think are great, web series industry new, and connect more quickly with readers. So follow me there if you’re a writer, working on a web series, or just want to stay on top of #webseries industry developments as more eyes move to the web.  Click the button below and remember to @TangledWebBlog about your #WebSeries!

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Eric Loya & Travis Richey – Photo by Catherine Farmer Loya

LA actor Travis Richey was lucky enough to be cast as Inspector Spacetime, the main character of a Dr. Who parody on the TV show Community. His part lasted for all of ten seconds, but was such a huge hit with fans that he was brought back for several additional episodes. A successful YouTube vet, Richey tried to pitch a web series concept to NBC based on the character, but heard nothing back. So he and his writing partner Eric Loya launched a successful Kickstarter campaign instead and made the show themselves. (Changing the name after NBC insisted.) They now have hundreds of thousands of views and are selling out panels at Comic Con. Their story is a great example of how true luck is when opportunity meets preparation and how indie creators are far ahead of the networks with regards to capitalizing on viewers across platforms. Here’s how they did it.

When in the timeline of you getting the role and it premiering did the idea of an “Inspector SpaceTime” Web Series occur to you?

TRAVIS: Success comes from luck mixed with preparation, and I was absolutely lucky lucky lucky to be cast as this character on Community, which was already one of our favorite shows. At the time I was only slightly aware of Dr. Who. The part was only, like, three lines, but I saw the potential of the character right away.

I new that NBC had a history of doing bonus content for shows like Heroes and I thought, OK this would be something that would make a good web series.

ERIC: Or even complementary material on Hulu or the DVD.

TRAVIS: It seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. So I called Eric and left him a message telling him about the part and saying, we need to write a web series or sit com about this character. And about a week goes by and he will not return my calls. He didn’t even message me! I was getting mad.

About five or six days later, he emails me, “I’ve been holed up here writing! I was going to polish these but here’s the first five episodes.” He’d already written them all!

Then we got together and started revising and inventing. We started coming up with the rules of this Dr. Who parody world.

ERIC: Travis added the All Purpose Tool that just seems to be able to do whatever it is you need at that moment. He thought it was funny that Dr. Who is supposedly going to all these fantastical worlds, but they all pretty much look like Earth, so we included a reference to that.

I thought of the ‘flee-quence’ because in Dr. Who, they run away A LOT. Like, that is their primary form of defense. So we literally have an entire episode that’s just running. Also, I think the Dr. is… kinda douche? He’s awesome and he has a right to be a douche because he’s the smartest guy in any room he walks into, but I wanted to play up that characteristic because I know that Travis can do douche very well.

Did you think you would sell it to NBC or make it on your own?

TRAVIS: Our idea was that we were going to pitch it to the network.

ERIC: We anticipated that once that episode aired, the character was going to take off because there are so many die-hard Community fans like us and so many Dr. Who fans. When those worlds collided we knew it was going to be huge.
Travis: We thought, maybe they don’t have time to write it themselves, so we’ll give it to them. ‘Here you go guys!’ But what happened was so far beyond what I imagined, it’s kind of insane.

In the episode of Community, what happens is Britta shows Abed the show and casually says, “Here’s this British sci-fi series that’s been on the air since 1962,” and then they play it. That’s it.

But fans, in the course of a weekend built the entire history of this fifty year old television show that never existed!

ERIC: They cast all the inspectors. They figured out their nemesis. They had a lot of storylines, created rules of the world. It was insane and amazing.

TRAVIS: And Community saw THAT and brought me back the next week to shoot stuff for an episode that they’d already shot.

Here’s Travis as Inspector Spacetime on Community.

Did you pitch your show??

TRAVIS:I brought the script there and tried to talk up about doing a web series… And basically the answer was that they couldn’t take a script because in Hollywood, no one can take unsolicited anything. They told me I had to go through the proper channels.

So I did. I have an acting agent and he tried to submit it to the New Media people at Sony and NBC and we just got no answer whatsoever. We didn’t get a yes or a no.

But we still wanted to do this. So then I went to Gallifrey One, the worlds biggest Dr. Who convention and in order to make something special for them, we went ahead and did an animatic of the first episode. We recorded the voices and I had a friend do illustrations so I could show that to fans.

At Gallifrey One, some website wrote that there was going to be an Inspector SpaceTime web series. And when we were driving home, Twitter was suddenly exploding with Inspector Spacetime Web Series news. So I literally went home and launched the Kickstarter campaign that night.

ERIC: It was one of the few times I’ve seen Travis nervous.

TRAVIS: This felt like it could be big. Here we were just coming from a convention where our panel was a standing room only event and people were genuinely excited about the project.

So we launched the Kickstarter campaign. And raised over $4000 in the first day. It wasn’t until about day nine that I got a call from a Sony lawyer saying, “You can’t make this web series. You have to shut this down”

Richey at His Sold Out Panel at Gallifrey One

What? After they never answered any of your proposals?

TRAVIS: I know. And I said, well no I don’t have to shut it down because everything in the web series is completely original except the title and the look of the character, maybe. And you can’t copyright a title!

I had done a ton of research and Sony didn’t have any trademarks or anything so obviously they didn’t care that much about the character. Fans were already out there making posters and selling them and making money while we had specifically said that we weren’t going to make any money off this series.

As for the look of the character… It’s a bowler hat and a trench coat. It’s stuff that appears in everyday life and you can’t copyright that.

But, I didn’t want to fight with one of my favorite TV shows. So I told her, look. The fans are demanding this. If you want, I’ll change the name and the look of the character, but I really would rather work with you guys on it. It’s so obvious!

And they were basically like, “Well, we don’t have the resources… I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was BS. So I said I would make the changes to the show. But I told them, you have to know that if I make these changes, I’m going to tell the people who already gave money why I’m doing it and they’re not going to be mad at me, they’re going to be mad at ‘Big Company Sony’.

And sure enough, we got a whole new wave of press for making those changes. And in the end it’s good because now we own it fully and can do whatever we want with it.

ERIC: And the new coat is maybe even better than the old coat.

TRAVIS: In the show he’s still called Inspector. We don’t call him Inspector SpaceTime, in the same way that on Dr. Who they just call him Dr. We changed the Associate from Constable Reggie to Piper Tate. We didn’t have to change the script at all.

ERIC: And we can always truthfully say, “Starring Community’s Inspect SpaceTime Travis Richey”

How has the success of the show affected your careers?

TRAVIS: It’s brought us a new fan base, which allows us to raise a budget to make more content. We’ve also had people coming out of the woodwork to help us make that content. Neil Gamon expressed interest in writing our episode. Our director of photography for Untitled… was Matt Ryan who just came off being one of the camera operators on Star Trek. Our director was Vincent Talenti who’d just done Fall Out: Nuka Break. The costume designer who designed the inspector’s coat was a fan, and the guy who designed the Inspector’s Optic Pocket Knife, which is the coolest actual working prop ever, was a fan.

Also, we got signed to The Collective, which has a YouTube Network. So everything will still live on the Travis Richey Channel but The Collective will help promote our content and build our audience.

There’s not a lot of crossover between “Traditional Media” and web television yet, so being a web TV star doesn’t mean I’ll be getting more auditions there, but it does mean I’ll have more opportunities to produce content and we have a ton of content we can’t wait to produce, including Season 2 of Untitled…

ERIC: Untitled… Season Two has already been written.

TRAVIS: Yep, we’re just looking for funding now trying to decide how to fund it, whether through another Kickstarter campaign or sponsorships in exchange for advertising, a pre-roll ad, product placement, etc. Brian is helping make some of those introductions and I went to the New Media Expo and people approached me there about the project.

ERIC: It has affected my career in that sometimes I get to do interviews like this. Also, I’m going to Comic-Con on a professional badge. It’s like a nerd’s dream come true.

Do you know if anyone on Community or Dr. Who is aware of your show?

It’s hard to tell whether people know about our Web Series or just the character on Community, but many of them do know about Inspector SpaceTime. Karen Gillen who was the most recent companion on Dr. Who has talked about Inspector Spacetime in interviews, but we don’t know if she knows about the series.

ERIC: ALTHOUGH, if she were to find out about the series, she should also know that there is a role waiting for her on season two!

You guys were able to raise a ton of money on Kickstarter partially because of the hard core Community/Dr. Who fan base your character had. Do you have any advice creators who’s characters don’t have the same built in fan base?

TRAVIS: We actually built our audience for three years. We built trust in our product before we asked for money. I get a lot of people asking me how to run a successful Kickstarter campaign and I look at them, and they haven’t done anything.

Eric: The answer is, work really hard for the next three years making content, then come back and ask that question. Except you wont have to ask that question because you’ll already have the answer.

So how did you build that audience over 3 years?

TRAVIS: I got introduced to the YouTube community because of Hank and John Green who are the Vlog Brothers. They created this really interesting Vlog where they were not allowed to communicate textually for a year, so they communicated through video blogs to each other. And people started watching them. They were very smart, very funny, very interesting.

They they encouraged me to start vlogging, so I created the first group vlogging project. I brought five people together and our theme was that we were all creators trying to start careers for ourselves.

ERIC: It’s called the Muse Cast.

TRAVIS: Each of us did a Vlog a day so we did five a week. They were about four minutes apiece. We had enough of a fan base that we decided to do a second year. I chose five new artists and Eric was one of them.

Eric: And it was through my year doing Musecast that Travis took note of my writing and he asked me to be the head writer of what ended up being our first web series we did that attracted an audience: Robot Ninja and Gay Guy.

TRAVIS: Hank and John became big fans of the show so they promoted us to their fans, so we ended up getting over 750,00 views. Unfortunately our budget was very small so our production value was very low. I was teaching myself how to edit. You can see episode 9 is where I learned how to color correct.

Where do you think the future of web entertainment is headed?

TRAVIS: I don’t think there will be huge networks or huge shows or huge stars anymore. I think it’s going to be much more niche and specific to your audience. I think that means more people will be able to make livings.

ERIC: You mean you don’t think we’re going to have movie stars?

TRAVIS: Even now, movie stars don’t get the $20 million dollar paydays they used to get. The Friends got, what? 2 ½ million an episode? That’s much more rare now because no show is getting that amount of audience. The good thing for us and for other creative people is that I think that means more people will be able to make livings.

What advice do you have for people who want to create a web series?

TRAVIS: Just do it. Things are even easier than 3 ½ years ago when we first did it. The cost of production is so low. Surround yourself with people who are better than you at a variety of things. Eric is a prolific writer. My friend Brian is great with music.

ERIC: Find a person who is more than just talk. So many people in this town have all these great ideas that they’re happy to talk about, but nothing ever happens. If you are fortunate enough to be or find one of those people who actually does that thing, grow that relationship. Also, have a clear concept. Know what you want to say and make sure you’re saying it. If your stuff is worth people’s time, they’ll find it.

This is the last day to donate to the Untitled Web Series… Kickstarter Campaign. Click HERE to see their Kickstarter video and page.

If you enjoyed this web series or interview, you may also enjoy Whole Day Down, a web series about a doomed art gallery starring Willie Garson (White Collar, Sex & the City) and Patrick Breen (Men in Black, CSI: Miami) and created by Tai Fauci.