Webisodes: Is it the future of producing?

Webisodes – Is it the future of producing?

I was in Europe this April and I spoke to a number of companies about the utilization and monetization of the internet in relation to movie and TV projects. The discussion centered on making movie products or TV series that would attract and engage an internet audience. But how would it work financially? Could something like this be attractive to investors? Also, how would the medium of the internet change the product? We discussed for a while, bouncing ideas off of one another.

Alas! The answer! Six months later, I was in Los Angeles and I was talking to two good friends who are just wrapping a movie product specifically being produced for an internet audience. Certainly, I found this concept interesting and wanted to understand more about the process.

The project was called “SPLATTER”, a series of horror webisodes, and is being produced by the legendary Roger Corman and directed by the horror auteur Joe Dante. The first episode starring Corey Feldman launched on October 29^th, around Halloween, with two more episodes scheduled for November 6^th and the final one November (Friday) 13^th.

So here we see the format of a product designed for the internet and we see how this product benefits the financier, namely Netflix. The entire project’s cost of $200K is being funded directly by NETFLIX. Netflix then uses this internet product to market themselves by drawing the target audience to Netflix’s product.

Also, to engage the internet audience the producers included an interactive element. They are actually asking the general public to vote on the fate of certain characters in the episodes. Therefore, the audience becomes involved in the outcome of the series.

To summarize, Splatter was attractive to Netflix because it drew a target audience to their website in a new and innovative manner, prompting the company to provide funding for production. The series then becomes interesting to the audience because of the unique ability for them to direct the path of the story. So that is how it has been done. Is this a new formula that can be exploited by other companies and content groups?

What do you think?