As a writer, I’ve been lucky enough in my career to be able to almost always direct what I write.
From when I started writing theater in college, to Break a Leg, to everything in-between, I’ve almost always had full power over my scripts. It’s not because I have trouble relinquishing control — no that’s not true, I very much have trouble relinquishing control, but I don’t mind seeing what another director, another producer may do with my words.
This, by the way, is not recommended. As a writer, your job is to write and then let your baby out in the world so that others can help it grow, change, and hopefully become what you hoped it had the potential to become. Sometimes, it becomes a serial killer and you disown it. Sometimes, it becomes a beautiful ballerina (I don’t know why ballerina) and you are as proud as can be of it.
My point is, what I’m doing is wrong. But I’m going to do it anyway.
This is my overly long intro to an episode of a show I recently wrote. It was for Wilson Cleveland’s series that he was putting together called Series 7 — which, much like Neil Simon’s London Suite (a play and playwright that I love dearly), consists of several short stories that take place in the same hotel room.
Wilson asked me to write one for Shannen Doherty and himself — an opportunity I, of course, jumped at. What I came up with was “Company” — shown below — the story of a very lonely woman who, unable to cope, copes all over the concierge (which is less dirty than that sounded).
I had no part of the production — Mark Gantt directed it (and did a great job of it) and it was shot down in LA — I saw a cut of it when it was basically done and so, I literally had no part in it after I finished writing.
What do I think of it? I think it’s fantastic! It’s a bit sadder than I wrote it, it’s a bit more intense than I wrote it, but it’s interesting to hear my words come out of Shannen Doherty’s mouth. It was interesting to see an actress of her caliber take my words and change the cadence to match her own. I think she nails the monologues and I think that she nails the few joke lines as well. Wilson does a great job also — it was easier for to write for him, as I’ve done so before with Temp Life, but the man can deliver a joke, and that’s important in any script I write. Most importantly, he lets Shannon do what she does and reacts properly — all in all, they do really well together.
Anyway, my point is — to all you writers out there, you’re going to have bad experiences, I guarantee, but sometimes, just writing a world and then letting someone else put their hands all over it is the best way to learn about your own writing.
One question for people who watch it and who’ve watched other things I’ve written — does it still feel like something I wrote? Or is the style drastically different? I’m just curious.
You know President Obama is affecting job growth when he personally, and almost overnight, gets you a two week, cross-country web series.
That’s right, we’re on the road again with 7-11 and Slurpees on the Slurpee Unity Tour 2010. The idea is this: A few days ago, President Obama suggested that he would meet with Majority Leader Boehner — working off of a previous joke Obama made about Republicans standing on the sidelines and drinking slurpees — a reporter asked Obama if this would be a “Slurpee Summit.” To which he replied. “A Slurpee Summit. Yeah, I like that.”
And so did 7-11. Offering to cater the November 18th meeting between Obama and Boehner with their new Purple for the People slurpee.
Where do we come in? I think it’s telling that the web series genre is growing when a highly-publicized campaign of this level hires a production company that specializes in creating branded content online to put a face on the entire thing. Our job is, as it was with the 7-11 Road Trip Rally, to shoot, edit, and release daily episodes of our host, Mike McLendon, as he travels from Dallas to DC, delivering slurpees, doing crazy things for unity (like riding a merman horse to deliver a slurpee to the Governor of Missouri), and spreading unity across the country.
We’re on the road for two weeks, and, we hope, it will all culminate with us delivering the slurpee to President Obama and Republican Majority Leader Boehner for their November 18th meeting — their Slurpee Summit.
So far, I kind of feel like we’re on a campaign trail, but it’s been fun, intense and is only going to get crazier. If you guys want to support us, you can go to the Facebook page for the campaign: www.facebook.com/slurpee and also keep up with our YouTube page for not only the episodes but behind-the-scenes footage of the tour too (it’s going to go across all video sites shortly — not just YouTube).
Today, Vlad (my brother) and I officially signed the contract to write what I’m going to loudly declare as the very first college textbook on writing for New Media. Now, I’m not 100% sure it’s the first textbook on the subject (though I honestly am fairly certain), but the first lesson in writing for New Media is that if you say something loudly, with conviction, especially on a blog, it’s always, always right.
But I digress!
Vlad and I — as well as the brilliant Marie Drennan (more on her in a second) will be writing the very first college textbook on Writing for New Media — tentatively titled, wait for it, SCRIPTWRITING FOR NEW MEDIA.
Creativity, thy name is us.
The book will be published by Holcomb Hathaway in, if all goes well, around a year and a half (which is 600 years in Internet — so many web shows will fall in that time, and many web shows will rise — but always, always the word ”monetization” will be tossed around like a small, burning baby) — and will use Break a Leg and many of the other series out there to teach the various ways this medium is different than traditional media, the same as traditional media, and generally, how to write for the damn thing. (Note: that last sentence is not a good example of the writing quality of the book).
Meaning, I will probably be approaching many of you with questions and samples of your work, so stay tuned for that.
I have to give full credit to Marie Drennan for getting this book deal. Marie is a teacher at the San Francisco State University and is an avid fan of the medium. I met her at a NewTeeVee shindig like 15,000 years ago (3 years in Human time) and she was the only teacher then and since that I have seen attending panels and trying to figure out how to get her students caught up with the Future of Entertainment/The Downfall of Entertainment/The Nothing of Entertainment (it depends which panel you attend and which month).
Marie came to Vlad and I with the idea for this book, and while we offered input, she put together the proposal, sent it out and got the deal. Her passion for this is contagious and with her help, I think we can make this a really good, unique textbook that will continue pushing new media forward.
Which, by the way — if you have thoughts on the matter, if you think there are essential things we need to put into the book, feel free to comment or email me — I’d love to hear feedback from the community and I fully intend to use you guys and gals as a resource.
Oh, and yes, it will be written in our style, offer a ton of supplemental material and will be available as an E-book — because we’re hip like that.
As many of you know, we’ve been working with Evan Gotlib and the rest of the Blip.tv team to create branded campaigns for the many companies that Blip works with. The 711 Road Trip was a part of that, as were other gigs I have posted in the past.
The most recent job was for Reebok Zig Tech shoes, starring, if you watched Break a Leg, Mr. Dustin Toshiyuki (Mint) himself. Also, you get an extra cookie if you guess who the voiceover at the end is, as it’s another Break a Leg cast member.
Below are the first two videos of the campaign — next week, I’ll share the next two. Just to let you know roughly how the process went: Reebok had a specific idea in mind (trying to get the most out of your workout), we wrote the scripts, they approved the scripts, we shot the videos and voila — you should be seeing them play on various Blip.tv videos for the next little while.
This, as the title properly said, is how we make our money.
Anyway, without further ado…
…and…
Let me know what you think! If there’s any interest, I’ll relate how we did the various effects (if there’s a LOT of interest, I’ll get Dashiell, one of the Producers of HLG and our Head Editor/VFX guy to explain it).
There’s something electric about creating something out of nothing.
A few years ago, when we were looking for a place to put our newly-created series, Break a Leg, we found Blip.tv. Oh, sure, we put the show wherever we could — and sites like YouTube and Metacafe and Revver (may they rest in peace) served their purpose — but something about Blip.tv was different.
It wasn’t that you could personally talk to any of them (right from Mike Hudack, the CEO, and down), it wasn’t that they were the little guys fighting an uphill battle that they certainly would lose (or so I thought), it wasn’t even that they were from New York, and therefore hipper than everyone else. It was that — when those other sites catered to low-budget, poorly-shot, amateur of amateur video (your Sleeping Cats, your Embarrassed High Schoolers, your People Getting Hurt in Amusing Ways), Blip catered to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of filmmakers yearning to create anything other than a cat playing piano.
Blip was on the forefront of something that didn’t have a front. Blip was the cutting edge of a dull block of bad content. Blip was so ahead of their time that when I uploaded Break a Leg on it, I thought — wow, what a cool company,
I bet they’ll be out of business soon!
You see, at the time, online video was the guerilla warfare of art, it wasn’t about razzling or dazzling, it wasn’t about creating magic, it was about running out of the metaphorc trees, creating something as fast as humanely possible, throwing it at people,and hoping it spread like plague. Online video was the polio blanket of art.
But not on Blip. Their video player was higher quality than anyone else’s. Their shows were… well, shows. And while a very pretty girl at Metacafe told us very prettily, “Nobody watches content above one hundred and forty seconds,” Blip was waving their hands wildly and saying, “We do! We do! And everyone else will too, just trust us.”
And we did. And it was the best thing that we could have done. For my company, both because of their support of our shows and when we started working more personally with Evan Gotlib (their lovable, curmudgeon-ey head of Sales who is responsible for us being able to not only eat, but for me to not only afford a car but crash it) and the entire web community.
There’s a reason that over 400 people showed up to the Blip.tv launch party on Thursday. Because Blip.tv helped make thiscommunity. Blip.tv catered to creators. Blip.tv offered solace to those of us who saw the potential of this genre by pushing us to push ourselves to push that envelope to push this art where it needed to be pushed. Hell, Blip.tv is this community, and much like us, it started as a fledgling stubborn little company with a fledgling stubborn little dream and now, when web shows are starting to finally make some money, when quality is becoming King, when any TV, Film and Ad executive with an ounce of brain is trying to find out how the hell to get into this world — Blip.tv is expanding and opening an LA office. Blip.tv is this community — and when they’re doing well, it means we’re all doing well too.
There’s something electric about creating — and there was something electric about the Blip party. It had that new art smell, (what Charlie Chaplin must have smelled when he was busy revolutionizing film), it had that feeling of creation that very few people get to experience together. Sure, writing a great script or painting a great painting can feel damn near divine, but who gets to say they were there when a new genre was created?
We all do — and there’s a camaraderie in that that we’ll all be remembering for the rest of our lives.
…or maybe… maybe I’m just being unnecessarily mushy after drinking 600 Blip Bergamots and being told lovingly that I look like a serial killer by Zadi Diaz… who knows anymore?
As some of you may know, a couple of months ago our production company produced the 7-Eleven Road Trip — a reality series that followed two teams, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, as they traveled across the country, ate at 7-Elevens’, and did various challenges along the way, eventually ending up at the INDY 500.
When we got the gig, it was our intent to not make the same awful type of reality series’ that are prevalent nowadays — we wanted to make this show in our quirky, fun and theoretically smart style. Luckily, we had the extreme fortune of working with 7-Eleven and their ad agency, TracyLocke — both of which understood that the Internet does not necessarily function like traditional media and that funny, quirky comedy sells in this space like some kind of delicious, quirky hotcake. They gave us almost full creative power to do everything from having our host, Drew give them each a cardboard cutout of himself to having Mr. Peanut destroy their picnic and steal their stuff.
Thanks to this, thanks to Blip.tv and thanks to all the guys and gals at 7-Eleven and TracyLocke, the series was a huge success. Not only in the numbers and the results (that you’ll see in the video case study I’m about to post below) but also because I think it’s one of the first series of this size and scope that was really open to the creativity and innovation available in online video.
Let that be a lesson to you other brands and agencies!
Another lesson is to hire us.
A third lesson is to also pay us a lot of money after you hire us.
And now, the results of the 7-Eleven Road Trip in a fancy-shmancy video:
I’m going to have a more pertinent blog about our trip to Singapore and what I hope can come out of the connections we’ve made here. It’s all very interesting and a good step in the right direction for our beloved genre.
That said, I’m tired, we’re about to leave the hotel to get some delicious Indian food, and I’m going to save that blog for later.
For now, however, I’m going to regale you with fun Singapore facts. Ready? Here we go.
1. They’re not as strict as people think they are — you CAN chew gum, you just can’t sell it. It’s weird, yes, and apparently it was banned when someone, 30 years ago, jammed the subway doors with them (I think that’s what I heard?) but, as the locals say, “It was never that big here so, no one cares.”
2. They really are strict. If you carry a gun on you, it’s life in prison. If you fire it, even if you miss, it’s death. Someone graffitti’d in the Subway recently, and was given 6 months in prison and 4 strokes of the cane. Drug trafficking is death. Drug possession is also death. Stealing is 7 years in prison. Everything else has fines worth thousands of dollars.
In other words, it really sucks being a criminal here. Or a gum salesman.
3. It’s really, really, REALLY western. The signs are all in English. TV is in English but dubbed into Chinese. The area where we’re staying — which is like, their main tourist/shopping district — is called Orchard Road and has every major designer store, as well as Starbucks (of course), California Pizza Kitchen, and just about any other western food.
It’s, as I said in my insanely witty Facebook update, only difference from San Francisco is trees and the fact that it has less Asian people.
4. The locals eat at places called Hawker Stands. Which are just little markets with rows of… hawkers. It’s really good, if not kind of intense. Justin and I ate fried stingray, chicken feet and other things people shouldn’t put in their mouth but do.
5. Their coffee is DELICIOUS. First of all, it’s basically espresso but in a full cup. Secondly, they call it Kopi and Kopi Si (or C, or See, or who knows) has condensed milk in it which, by the way, is like having liquid gold in your mouth (but in a good way, not in a, OH MY GOD I HAVE LIQUID GOLD IN MY MOUTH sort of way).
6. Just Shoot Me is on right now on TV. That’s how western it is.
7. It’s got a NIGHT SAFARI. WITH NIGHT ANIMALS. That like… live in the zoo but are free to — THERE’S AN EXHIBIT, hold on, let me catch my breath, there’s an exhibit where bats fly over you wildly. FREELY. They just, fly over you. And you get to try and catch them with a toothpick and throw them in a fryer. And if you do, you get to eat them!
Some of those things aren’t true, but some of them ARE and that’s AWESOME.
8. There’s a huge Indian population. They have a Little India and the food is delicious. Also, you can buy a lot of crap there — which we’re bringing back for our friends.
Crap for everyone!
9. This is my favorite thing in the entire world, so I’m going to save it for last… their icon is… the… wait for it… Merlion.
The Merlion.
It’s a lion’s head… on a fish’s body. The Merlion. It… it’s a LION’S HEAD… on a FISH’S body. Is everyone imagining that properly? Because it’s the best thing in the entire world. I keep wondering if it has gills or if the reason the real Merlion is no longer around is because it was God’s worst creation and they all drowned almost immediately.
The MERLION!!
…I know I should post pictures of all of these things, and I will on Facebook but, you know, for now, use your imagination.
Okay, I love you all, I’m going to go catch, skin, fry and eat a merlion.
I’m packing up for Singapore (leaving tomorrow for a fun 19 hour flight that stops over in South Korea — where I will attempt, for that hour, to solve the conflict over there) so not much of a blog for today, however…
Miss Daisy Whitney, a prominent voice in this whole online deal did an interview with me at the LATV Festival about the 7-Eleven Road Trip and some of the international deals we’ve done of late.
Daisy, by the way, is one of the coolest people around and has impeccable tastes in scarves.
I was doing a film shoot with Mr. Mark Gantt, recently — Mark, if you don’t know, is the producer, star, writer and I think assistant gaffer on The Bannen Way. The Bannen Way, if you don’t know, is a Sony-funded web series, feature film, action-drama-comedy, all-around good entertainment and, oh, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m pretty sure Mark was also a production assistant on Break a Leg, or something. I forget. I don’t talk to the crew.
Anyway, Mark, along with a few other Break a Leg actors (Alexis Boozer, Daniela DiIorio, Flynn Kelleher, Drew Lanning and myself) are all theoretically starring in a theoretic new series that is written by my brother Vlad and I and produced, as per usual, by him, me, Justin Morrison and Dashiell Reinhardt… you know, all of the same people who did Break a Leg and run Happy Little Guillotine Films.
Here’s my point. I’m talking to Mark about the web series community and I notice this odd feeling welling up inside of me. Part of it is attraction, because Mark looks like a rugged Tom Cruise after life really knocked him around, but the other part of it feels strangely like… bitterness.
Now, I’m not really sure where it comes from because I actually like everyone quite a bit in the community. Sure, I sometimes complain about them being guilty of over-pleasuring one another with their mouths, but I think there’s an amazing group of talented, innovative and unique entertainers who have been creating some fantastic stuff.
So, I wonder — why? Why the bitterness? And then I realized it.
When we started, online video was an in-between, a purgatory for filmmakers who hoped that a TV or film producer would accidentally stumble on their video while doing a sweeping search for porn, watch it, and then pay them millions to get it made. In other words, we all wanted to be the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia guys and the Internet was one way to get noticed but not the place where our shows would actually… survive.
Every moment of Break a Leg was a fight. We were the David against the no-budget, full-time job, no-real-way-to-make-money-like-this Goliath, who is way worse than the Biblical Goliath in that he comes with more poverty. And as we started getting more and more press and more and more attention, and people like NBC and CBS started calling, we had this feeling of… maybe..? Maybe?! MAYBE?!
…but no.
No one knew what to do with anyone online at that time. They still don’t. CBS Interactive called us because they wanted to fund a series for a very decent amount of money, and then in a week told us they didn’t, in fact, have that money (lost in their couch cushions or something). Other networks we talked to did a lot of, “Call us when you have something.” – “But we have a lot.” – “We have no money.” And for some bizarro reason, even though we were getting press in places like the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times, agents absolutely refused to acknowledge our existence (still do, in fact).
When Break a Leg ended, we were exhausted and a little jaded. Okay, a lot jaded. It took a good half a year to start up the optimism engines again, and then things started happening for us. This blog was a huge help (I know, I KNOW — I’ll write more in it!). Blip.tv was and is our main benefactor without whom we wouldn’t be anywhere. FOX Italy bought Break a Leg. And our branded entertainment campaigns started becoming bigger and bigger and culminated in the 7-Eleven Road Trip (again thanks to Blip.tv) – a new and different kind of branded entertainment beast.
In short, we’ve done well.
So, why the bitterness? Because, I now realize, somewhere in the corner of my brain, near the part that’s responsible for hitting on women, I still think — after all we’ve done,why aren’t we on TV? This is JUST the Internet.
(The reason it’s in that part of the brain, by the way, is because being on TV makes hitting on women way easier.)
And as I realized that, I also realized what our job is, now, as producers of this content. If I — someone whose career has been made by online entertainment — am still not used to the idea that this isn’t Purgatory but an actual place where entertainment can live, then people who have lived and breathed TV and Film — networks, agents, producers, ad agencies — surely can’t even fathom it.
So, what’s our job? Our job is to not pigeon-hole ourselves the way that people tend to pigeon-hole online content — i.e. only 5 minute videos work, only sketch comedy works, only catering to one loud niche audience works, etc. – but to see this as our playground and to try, desperately try, to show that not only can we, the new breed of entertainment, create fantastic, innovative content on-line (short form and long, experimental and just plain ol’ amazing), but we can also get that content to sell and make money.
Because, we’ve grown up, as a community — I was bitter of the way things were, but that’s not the way things are. We’re at a different stage of our evolution in entertainment, we can’t just be satisfied to make things and release them and say, hey, that was pretty good, right? We have to think like businessmen as well as artists, we have to show that not only can we make great stuff, we can also sell it.
And once we do that, that’s when we reach the next level. Where online entertainment truly competes with TV in every capacity.
As for me and my bitterness. We’ve resolved the conflict. It’s a simple thing to realize — my whole life I’ve hated doing what I was supposed to do in a particular path. I never wanted to write spec scripts, beg for an agent and then be someone’s writing assistant on a terrible show — I wanted to do it my way and this is what we’re doing. This is the genre in which we’re playing, where our successes and failures are solely dependent on our talent, hard-work, and ideas.
And you know what, bitterness? I’m starting to really like that.
(Okay, that’s it. More blogs to come — I swear, this time. I’ll be in Singapore all week next week and between the 18-hour flight and the fact that we’re doing a seminar on online entertainment and having dozens of meetings with producers/businesses in Singapore just has to be written about.)
So, if you’re wondering (which you may absolutely not be) why I’ve been seemingly absent from the world of bloggery, it’s because we’ve been busy putting together a new show called the 7-11 Road Trip Rally. The show is an online reality series that will have two teams of two race across the country from opposite coasts to the INDY 500 while doing challenges along the way and surviving on nothing but 7-Eleven food. Videos will be released daily (except on weekends) starting May 10th.
No, this isn’t like anything we’ve done before. And no, this won’t be like any reality show you’ve ever seen — and I don’t say that in that grand sort of way that means it’s going to change your life. I say that in that — we were hired to impart our own style into this show, which means that it’s going to be funny, smart and absolutely nothing like anything MTV has done.
The press release is below. The official trip starts on the 10th, but we’ll have goofy audition videos up every day until then. Oh, did I forget to mention, Break a Leg fans, that our very own Drew Lanning (Jimmy Scotch) is the host? Oh, yes he is and he’s almost as hilarious as he is in Break a Leg.
Watch, support, enjoy! Thanks! I’ll actually try and update often from the road and tell you how it’s going. Should be interesting.
7-Eleven® And Blip.tv Join Forces To Create The Branded Series ’7-Eleven Road Trip Rally’
World’s largest convenience retailer launches web-based reality series following two teams as they traverse the country, competing in daily challenges at local 7-Eleven stores
New York, NY (PRWEB) May 3, 2010 — Next-generation television network blip.tv and 7-Eleven, Inc., today announced the launch of 7-Eleven Road Trip Rally, a web-based reality series produced by blip.tv that will follow two teams as they drive across the country, purchasing all of their daily needs including food and gasoline exclusively at 7-Eleven® convenience stores and culminating at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 28. New episodes of their adventures and challenges will air daily on 711RoadTrip.com, while 7-Eleven and partners, including Dr. Pepper, Planter’s, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer and Nestlé Pure Life, will promote the show through their own websites.
“The show provides a great opportunity to use the enthusiasm around auto racing and reality TV to reach fans and appeal to new customers on the web,” said Rita Bargerhuff, 7-Eleven’s chief marketing officer. “We knew the best way to get our point across would be through video. We’ve had great success with social media, so a web series made perfect sense. Blip.tv truly understands the distributed web and they’ve been invaluable throughout the development of this program.”
Customers and racing fans can follow each team’s progress, daily challenge competitions, and the comedic drama of a cross-country road trip not only on 711roadtrip.com, but also through 7-Eleven’s presence on Facebook and Twitter. Viewers will also be able to keep track of each team as all tweets will be geo-tagged and shared on an interactive map at 711RoadTrip.com.
Blip.tv will distribute the show to partner sites and platforms including iTunes, Yahoo! and AOL Video, TiVo, Sony Bravia, Verizon FiOS and the Roku Digital Video Player. The show’s final challenge will take place at Indy, where drivers Tony Kanaan and Danica Patrick from Andretti Autosport will announce the winners.
“7-Eleven is a brand that understands where its customers live and how to connect with them in an impactful way,” said Evan Gotlib, blip.tv’s vice president of advertising sales. “We have always been and will continue to remain focused on supporting and promoting quality, original web shows, and 7-Eleven Road Trip Rally is an exciting addition to the blip.tv lineup.”
San Francisco’s Happy Little Guillotine (HLG) Films is working with blip.tv and 7-Eleven to produce, film and edit all of the episodes airing on 7-Eleven Road Trip Rally. “It’s incredibly energizing to work with companies like 7-Eleven and blip.tv on this project,” said Yuri Baranovsky, one of the founders of HLG Films. “We’re independent show creators at HLG, first and foremost, and both companies allowed us to impart our expertise and our vision while working to create a great series. To me, this is the future of media; it’s branded content with purpose and high-entertainment value that will really draw in viewers.”
More than 44,000 independent show creators (from scripted sitcoms and dramas to news magazines and how-to shows) visit the blip.tv show creator dashboard every day to review their statistics, engage with their communities of viewers, tweak settings and release new episodes. Together these shows serve more than 85 million video views a month. Eighty-five percent of those video views are paired with targeted, direct-sold advertising from brands like PepsiCo, Chevrolet, Samsung, AT&T, Samsung and Scion.
I was doing a film shoot with Mr.