How does an online show differ from a TV one or a theatre one in terms of how people might watch it? (when they watch, where they watch, how they watch- e.g. on a computer or a phone)
Online webisodes differ in the sense that their target audience is usually of the more web savvy demographic, able to easily get to videos via adverts and/or share them about via social networking - i'd say this demographic typically is around the ages of 13-21, fitting into the generation raised with a computer for most of their lives, meaning they'd all have some form of knowledge regarding big-media coverage and culture around the world. This knowledge would allow the demographic to easily identify with issues, parodies and pastiches from around the world making both humour and understanding very very versatile. If a comedy was created with the same calibur of humour as, say, Family guy (not a webisode, i know), where it often takes in stories and issues from around the world and makes fun, but aired in the 1970's, nobody would understand it, as nobody would have access to trivial information like that. So when people watch these typically student-made webisodes, i feel that the humour is far more cliquey, giving the audience a sense of self - as if they are in a club, knowing that the others "know" too, making the issues raised more enthusing and private.
How do you reach that audience through your marketing that is different from other forms? (via links, social network messages etc- but you may have used some conventional strategies e.g. posters)
I reached them mainly through web 2.0. it allowed us to really publicise what is was doing. First I set up a facebook page and then a twitter, gaining as many followers as possible by adding friends. Next I linked twitter and Facebook together allowing whatever I typed on one to also be simultaneously published on the other - this took a lot of time off our hands. Finally I embedded a vimeo player on our blog allowing the audience to see our productions, as well as a twitter widget that showed our live posts on the blog too. This all added up to a very networked, hive of information where one page would be giving live updates, another would be giving good background information and another would be showing product - for users wanting all at once they simply needed to go to our blog and all would appear on one page.
I had no finely picked audience really, as I knew it was just a class project that would'nt generate money or fame. so when I did invite people I just explained and told them to treat it in a jokey, fun way, just to keep them enthusiastic and visiting on our behalf rather than the actual project's.
We didnt advertise with physical objects like posters, instead Matt designed our logo with photoshop and put it on all our sites - spreading it via the linkages I had between them all and through email as a kind of signature.
Our facebook page allowed us to post updates to the viewers which they'd be notified on every time they logged in - I'd often post messages from the fictional characters in detention deficit adding to the humour as it would be completely anonymous as to who posted.
How do they respond? (how quickly did you get feedback- number of views, comments, sense of trend in audience figures after each episode)
I got feedback as soon as we posted our first teaser - friends personally told me they didnt understand or didnt enjoy it but i accepted their criticisms and took them on board so i could make sure our next was better. however the actual comments on both the facebook and vimeo were all very positive which was nice to know - maybe only a few people didnt understand.. in the post before this the audience figures show a mostly male audience around our age but also a lot older, mainly due to the fact that our media teachers probably checked it out too.
How did you respond? (Idea that you can change aspects of the show before the next episode due to feedback- which would not be the case on TV at such a quick pace)
well, as soon as we saw lines' smooth camera work (not so much in editing however) we realised that OUR camerawork was severely lacking in professionalism - that was our first target. our next was to remove all pointless cinematic editing qualities from ours - I found that for the type of film, our pilot was far to cinematic and that it's style should've reflected a far more lo-fi program like peepshow or spaced. finally, after that, was just to shorten it considerably. our pilot was around 6 minutes long which is fine as long as the humour can stand that long, which unfortunately it absolutely didnt (mainly due to the excessive bad language and violence, which we also corrected).
Sunday, 7 February 2010
ORGANISATION
LINES
EPISODE 1: deadline met successfully - all model release forms signed before airing
EPISODE 2: deadline met successfully - all model release forms signed before airing
EPISODE 3: deadline met successfully - all model release forms signed before airing
DETENTION DEFICIT
EPISODE 1: episode late but all model release forms signed before airing
EPISODE 2: deadline met but model release forms not signed
EPISODE 3: episode unfinished and model release forms not signed
ouch. yes, we were a scatty, improv team. i agree. But i do feel that our episodes still came out looking acceptable, even in their rushed state. i am astonished as to how Lines managed to get so organised - i feel it must have something to do with their team size, after all, one of our members almost always failed to show up - if so i beleive we would have had our jobs evened out more allowing more work to be done on certain areas.
It isnt just people not turning up that was the problem though. I think it was the fact that none of us really had a solid area to work in during production - this WOULD've been hard anyway though as our team was so small - in real life, i can imagine an editing team consisting of several people (all working on different sections), just like the scripting and camera team. Again though, that still would've been hard as the films were only 2-3 minutes long, meaning the timeline would've been completed faster had one person worked on it rather than many all throwing ideas about - me and alex worked well on the first episode (even though our camera footage was pretty bad) but when Loz n James did it for the second 2 they completed it a lot faster... maybe due to the progressive shortening of each film or maybe due to the progressive attention to detail while filming in order to avoid continuity errors that would've taken time up being hidden via editing...
In future i hope we all work as a giant team of the whole class, enabling us to all work on individual segments harmoniously without conflicting ideas (due to the fact that the only conflicting ideas would come from within your segment rather than somebody else's, trying to make YOUR work fit THEIR workflow).
EPISODE 1: deadline met successfully - all model release forms signed before airing
EPISODE 2: deadline met successfully - all model release forms signed before airing
EPISODE 3: deadline met successfully - all model release forms signed before airing
DETENTION DEFICIT
EPISODE 1: episode late but all model release forms signed before airing
EPISODE 2: deadline met but model release forms not signed
EPISODE 3: episode unfinished and model release forms not signed
ouch. yes, we were a scatty, improv team. i agree. But i do feel that our episodes still came out looking acceptable, even in their rushed state. i am astonished as to how Lines managed to get so organised - i feel it must have something to do with their team size, after all, one of our members almost always failed to show up - if so i beleive we would have had our jobs evened out more allowing more work to be done on certain areas.
It isnt just people not turning up that was the problem though. I think it was the fact that none of us really had a solid area to work in during production - this WOULD've been hard anyway though as our team was so small - in real life, i can imagine an editing team consisting of several people (all working on different sections), just like the scripting and camera team. Again though, that still would've been hard as the films were only 2-3 minutes long, meaning the timeline would've been completed faster had one person worked on it rather than many all throwing ideas about - me and alex worked well on the first episode (even though our camera footage was pretty bad) but when Loz n James did it for the second 2 they completed it a lot faster... maybe due to the progressive shortening of each film or maybe due to the progressive attention to detail while filming in order to avoid continuity errors that would've taken time up being hidden via editing...
In future i hope we all work as a giant team of the whole class, enabling us to all work on individual segments harmoniously without conflicting ideas (due to the fact that the only conflicting ideas would come from within your segment rather than somebody else's, trying to make YOUR work fit THEIR workflow).
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Facebook and Youtube Insights
A great way of monitoring demographics and other information regarding Detention Deficit's audience is via Youtube and Facebook's insights feature, allowing the user to have a visual representation of their popularity among different countries, ages, genders, etc. here is our's:
Facebook Results
Facebook Results
Youtube Results
From this information, I've definitely managed to have some form of impact on our teenage target audience. However, if I wanted a bigger impact, i should have used the sites recommended in the previous post as they, similar to twitter and blogger, have features allowing them to update across many other sites like Facebook, Myspace, etc. all simultaneously - i used this feature to update our twitter AND facebook at the same time, just from one. With an array of say, 15 sites, i could link them up just like this and have a very broad spectrum of information to be passed onto users. I will make sure to use this technique in our future projects.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Gaining Youtube/Vimeo/Facebook/Blogger "Traffic"
Shame i only thought about all this just now...
(sourced from http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/development/promotional-websites-gain-traffic-quick-easy/)
Next time we have a similar project i'll keep all of these in mind...
Since now SM owns Noupe, their design news are now tied together. This number is not so accurate because I am on SmashingNetwork and get traffic from their features as well, but certainly worth submitting – 2 in 1!
(sourced from http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/development/promotional-websites-gain-traffic-quick-easy/)
Next time we have a similar project i'll keep all of these in mind...
1. StumbleUpon* ( 160,154 unique visits)
StumbleUpon is no different – you need a lot of friends, good network to bring traffic. But if you have that all, again it totally pays off 10 times. You should have few powerful stumbler friends as well, who could discover or maybe even share your stories – returning you with easy traffic in that way!2. Digg* (80,214 unique visits)
Certainly not easy traffic, but when you get the first time of Digg FrontPage you will never doubt it’s power and beautiful traffic income source. Building community takes a lot of time, so be sure you build contacts with few power diggers in your niche.3. SmashingMagazine + Noupe (74,494 unique visits)
*Updated: in the next day, when I published this article SM and Noupe took off their user news and now there are only SmashingNetwork news in sidebar, so for most of us, this traffic isn’t available more.Since now SM owns Noupe, their design news are now tied together. This number is not so accurate because I am on SmashingNetwork and get traffic from their features as well, but certainly worth submitting – 2 in 1!
4. Twitter* (22,119 unique visits)
Seems like now Twitter is getting even more popular as it is – if it is possible! It’s good to have powerful account or powerful friends with big networks to share your links with.5. CSSGlobe* (7,528 unique visits)
If your links will be accepted in this site, you will get serious traffic regularly! This site is my big discovery, I was surprised how valuable it is and what kind of traffic it can deliver.6. Facebook* (6,574 unique visits)
You need here to think seriously about community building or fan page, because it can really be good traffic income source.7. DesignBump* (5,921 unique visits)
8. Dezinerfolio (3,678 unique visits)
9. Design-Newz (3,436 unique visits)
10. WebdesignNe.Ws (2,709 unique visits)
Teasers, trailers and previews
Detention Deficit Teaser Trailer from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
Detention Deficit Teaser 2 from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
Teaser Trailer Three from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
i think that it works really well, it doesn't give you an insight into the episode coming up but it does mock the other groups episode. i thought the idea of a little friendly competition would be a great marketing strategy - just like the mac vs pc adverts:
the other group did the same to us too - upping their interest too, creating a "fan boy" effect often found in video-game forums, where particular users debate which systems or games are the best..
in their teaser trailer, they had the words, 'detention deficit sucks' on the white board in shot.
Our initial idea was to have Pier walk into the toilets and find a homeless person snorting lines, he turns around, acing the camera and asks: "hey man, do you wants some 'lines'? i love 'lines' so much!", implying the other groups production, "lines"'s demographic - this was scrapped almost instantly when our teacher realized the drugs connotations and controversy.
Detention Deficit Ep3 from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
this trailer was meant to give you more of an insight into the episode itself. the other one we made previously was just a poke at the other group for what they did to us. this trailer shows what to expect really. we used really trippy effects and we clearly showed that it was keith who was halucinating as well. that is a rough description of the final episode.
i posted all of these on our facebook and twitter page to publicise our progress and competition with the other group. This added to our popularity but also our professionalism.
As well as that, i also posted casting videos and a blooper reel to enlighten our audience to how we work behind scenes.
Hayden test footage from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
Matt test footage from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
James Test footage from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
Test footage Alexander from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
Feedback
EPISODE 1 (pilot) Generalization:
Positive:
Good Opening Sequence x 2
Good establishing shots x 2
Good sound track
Milk shake shot good
Confident Characters
Well acted in places x 3
Good range of shots
Negative:
Tried way to hard to be funny
Girl isn't good actor
James way too extreme
Sound level not the same
Out side shot - flashback - needs to be clearer
Shots when characters look into camera don't work
Music cuts too quick
Way too long x 2
Too much swearing x 3
Not bleeped properly x 3
Alex's character changes too much
Shots look studenty
Should close up on cans
Too angry
Flashback too repetitive
Nobody does detention in a computer room
Characters kinda dull
Credits too fast
Door scene does not make sense x 2
Pier isn't french enough?
Too much fade out
Music too loud made them jump x 2
Unrealistic Characters
Detention Deficit: Episode ONE from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
Episode 2 Trapped generalization:
- Tries too hard to be funny, just makes it worse
- Keith totally unbelievable
- Alexander/James scene too long
- Script not quite tight enough, should be 'laugh every two seconds'
- Shots of Hayden don't flow x2
Positive:
Good Opening Sequence x 2
Good establishing shots x 2
Good sound track
Milk shake shot good
Confident Characters
Well acted in places x 3
Good range of shots
Negative:
Tried way to hard to be funny
Girl isn't good actor
James way too extreme
Sound level not the same
Out side shot - flashback - needs to be clearer
Shots when characters look into camera don't work
Music cuts too quick
Way too long x 2
Too much swearing x 3
Not bleeped properly x 3
Alex's character changes too much
Shots look studenty
Should close up on cans
Too angry
Flashback too repetitive
Nobody does detention in a computer room
Characters kinda dull
Credits too fast
Door scene does not make sense x 2
Pier isn't french enough?
Too much fade out
Music too loud made them jump x 2
Unrealistic Characters
Detention Deficit: Episode ONE from Detention Deficit on Vimeo.
Episode 2 Trapped generalization:
- Tries too hard to be funny, just makes it worse
- Keith totally unbelievable
- Alexander/James scene too long
- Script not quite tight enough, should be 'laugh every two seconds'
- Shots of Hayden don't flow x2
2/Feb/10
Today, although a little late, i finally uploaded episode 3 "gas leak". it was possibly our most rushed, hectically created episode yet with a day to shoot edit and publish. Yesterday i DID publish our episode but it was so rushed it was missing our title, credits and special effects. Nicely, however, Steve allowed us a final lesson to finish our vidos and upload them to youtube. Vimeo didnt let us upload because i exceeded our upload limit - we'll try again later in the week...
My thoughts so far have been that this has definitely been a highly realistic project. Maybe even TOO realistic for students - it seemed pretty extreme how spanners got thrown in the work but i've already covered that in an earlier post. All i'd say really is that now i know what to expect and that in real life you dont even get an extra few hours.
Our group has been under a lot of pressure - it's great knowing it's gradually being let off. I'm just worried about our next project. I'm sure it'll be the toughest yet as we'll be working with a real company with real deadlines and expectations - even though we've all worked very hard, we hav'nt felt like it was a real peice of work. We all agree our episodes are shabby and rushed but i think when we move on to work with the company we'll be FAR more engaged, knowing how important it is for the both of us.
My thoughts so far have been that this has definitely been a highly realistic project. Maybe even TOO realistic for students - it seemed pretty extreme how spanners got thrown in the work but i've already covered that in an earlier post. All i'd say really is that now i know what to expect and that in real life you dont even get an extra few hours.
Our group has been under a lot of pressure - it's great knowing it's gradually being let off. I'm just worried about our next project. I'm sure it'll be the toughest yet as we'll be working with a real company with real deadlines and expectations - even though we've all worked very hard, we hav'nt felt like it was a real peice of work. We all agree our episodes are shabby and rushed but i think when we move on to work with the company we'll be FAR more engaged, knowing how important it is for the both of us.
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