E p i B l o g
Current
news about the online entertainment industry (including web
design, content, technology, and publishing) and a peek ahead
at the activity at many of your favorite series.
Thursday, August 02, 2001
Another series, which has been around for a little while, is Lake Hope. Set in New Hampshire, LH focuses on the lives of three disparate families in a town with a mysterious and supernatural past.
Suburbs, by Gavin Sims (producer of Passionate Generations) is a ten part Web series based on life in a small cul-de-sac. With character names like Gareth and addresses such as "Number 28, Beechurl," I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that the series is set in ... uh, New York.
In honor of Breathe's first anniversary, series released an all-new site, with changed navigation, character profiles, and more interactivity. Congratulations!
The Weekly Story Online, a network of Web series, handed out its semi-annual awards in mid-July. A three-person panel awarded highest honors to The Legacy for Outstanding Achievement in an Online Series, and gave LEG the nod for Outstanding Writing and Design as well. Triumph and Trouble received Outstanding Character Development, and Midway Prep took home the award for Outstanding Interactivity. The Story Awards, which honor the network's own series, also has a reader's choice element -- and you can visit The Weekly Story Online for the full list of award-winners. Congratulations to all.
After a short hiatus, Nashville-set Predilections returns with a new episode and staff additions, including a music advisor and an assistant editor. Producer Kel K, who's still looking for a staff writer, says that his "mature audience series" can be compared to cable TV shows as Sex in The City and Queer as Folk.
Wednesday, August 01, 2001
Is there a stigma placed upon writers who are published primarily in electronic form? Of course there is! Noted e-book author talks about the pitfalls of being an E-book outcast.
If you miss Covington Bay (although that series is due to make a return soon!), here's a series that might suit you: University Avenue, by D.G. Stribling, uses a script format with plenty of helpful detail in its descriptions to augment its realistic dialogue. Twenty-six episodes are already under its belt. Stop by and learn about life in York Harbour.
Siren, by Team Effort Films, is an ambitious action-adventure video series by a set of talented professionals who see the promising future of Web-based entertainment. Siren's a bad chick to know ... and a worse one if you get on her bad side. To quote the lady herself: "Broke into a research installation, stole a million dollar prototype, made a few boys cry. Not bad for a night's work." New episodes are ideally posted every other week, although production sometimes stretches this schedule a bit.
The Break In Forgot to mention that you'll need QuickTime plugin to play the film. It's a fairly slow download at 56K, so Siren is primarily for those of you with zippier download times.
This snippet was sent to me (thanks Jim!) and is definitely worth a look. A current court case involving E-book rights will have big implications for the future of seeing classic works in electronic form. Apparently a small publishing house went directly to several authors (including Kurt Vonnegut and Robert B. Parker) seeking rights to distribute some of their past works in E-book form. The authors agreed. Trouble is, the authors' current publishers (from Random House to Bertelsmann) claim that their contracts with the authors -- which gave the publishers the right to publish the works in book form -- included E-books as well. The publishers sought an injunction, which would force Rosetta to stop selling the E-books; a judge turned them down, but the case continues. Considering the stakes ... i.e., nothing less than the entire backlist of classic fiction and nonfiction works ... this one will probably last a long while.
In times of trouble, keeping a sense of humor is sometimes the only way to survive. That was certainly the prevailing sense I get from reading about the Webby Awards celebration, held at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco in mid-July. I mean, you've got to laugh at the irony of the fact that some of the big winners in the prestigious award ceremony (which honors fine sites in a variety of categories) have already succumbed to dotcom disaster. Never the less, the sites honored are among the most interesting, innovative and/or useful on the Web, so go take a look and enjoy -- before all you find is a 404 error notice.
New series alert! Cyprus Horizons is a traditional series set in an untraditional setting -- the city of Yasak, Cyprus. Meet a British family as they move to their new country.
Monday, July 09, 2001
In the "what are they, nuts?" department, CBS and RealNetworks have decided that since the only truly popular aspect of Big Brother I was its 24-7 webfeed, they might as well charge people for the privilege. Now, your epibloggist lauds the notion that content is worth money, Big Brother is already earning moolah via advertising on CBS. And is this content worth money? Will people spend $20 for three months of watching people lying around in bed? Will you? Thank goodness for a site that I found more addictive than the actual webfeeds, the Big Brother Fan Club. They offer episode recaps (snarkily done) and transcripts of webfeeds. Take that, CBS!
Saturday, June 16, 2001
Hard as it is to believe, the Eppy Awards aren't the most prestigious prizes that the Web has to offer quality sites. That honor goes to the Webby Awards, given out annually in categories such as commerce, fashion, e-zines, music, broadband, and "weird." Consider this your reminder to vote in the People's Choice Webby awards -- they're open until July 4!
Well, this was a sad week for readers of online magazines. Pioneering publications Feed and Suck have shut down. Can the beleaguered mag Salon keep holding on? Fans of solid, witty writing had better start saying their prayers.
Speaking of awards: the National Book Foundation thought it was making a big leap when it graciously decided that e-books would be eligible for the National Book Award prize. This is the first time e-books have been allowed in, and I'm sure the NBF meant well. But trouble is, they're asking authors to submit a copy of the e-book printed and bound. That's how they'll be judging this new form ... on its text, and text alone.
As we in the Web series world know, however, e-literature is usually more than just text. Authors can enhance and elaborate on their words by adding images, offering their readers alternate pathways through the narrative, supplying animation and/or even producing sound effects that match what's appearing in the text. How can this experience be replicated in a bound book?
Until the NBF buys a clue and sets up a unique judging system that takes the vastly different format into account, I'm afraid that some of the most innovative e-book authors are going to be left out in the cold.
Sunday, June 03, 2001
A popular online storage space, Myspace.com, offered users the ability to keep any kind of files on its servers, from pictures to archived email; the service allowed you to access your material from anywhere you have Internet access. All this for free, of course. But on June 1, Myspace.com posted a curt message stating that they were closing their virtual doors -- and users only had until 5PM to save their files onto their own PC.
Except for this hastened death, the Myspace scenario isn't all that unusual. Website owners who had their sites hosted on homepages.go.com were given the bad news several months ago that the service was ending, but even so, many were caught short when their sites became unavailable...and they had no file backups.
Only last week, I spoke with one series producer (name omitted to protect the delinquent!) who found him/herself in this situation when s/he delayed in downloading the series' files. Fortunately, the producer was spared the total loss of episode archives because past eps were sent out via a mailing list, which still had record of the files. If that hadn't been the case -- and for most series, it isn't -- an entire history of characters and plots would be gone forever.
Now, before my friend complains that I'm rubbing salt in a wound, this happens *all the time* in the websoap genre. It's almost an epidemic!
Your friendly Epibloggist must state upfront that she doesn't use a free webhost, which are the services most likely to die an untimely death. But no matter what kind of host you use, whether you're a websoap producer or a regular Joe creating a personal homepage, it's very easy to prevent such debacles from happening to you. In fact, it's not only the safest way, but it's the best way to produce pages, and that's to create them *on your home computer,* with your own program!
Save it on your computer, and *then* upload the darn thing up to the Web -- don't rely on a Web-based service to do this for you. This way you'll always have a copy of your site, and whenever you have to move from one webhost to the next ... for whatever reason ... you're completely covered. Good luck!
New series to report! The site for Secret Intentions premiered on June 1, with no episodes yet but a nice white layout and sections including character profiles, location descriptions, recaps, previews, links, polls, and a contest offering audience members the chance to have their pictures displayed on the site to depict characters. The tagline promises mystery and some blackhearted types: "Would you kill to keep your intentions a secret?"
Blakes End also premiered in the past few days (May 27, 2001), and is already on Episode 2. Alas, episodes are not archived, so if you want to catch up on past occurances, you're outta luck! However, you'll find a character list and news updates, which currently mention the intriguing notion of a female character named Dudley.
Congrats to fanfic series Sunset Magic for both its return to the Web, and for reaching its first anniversary! The paean to NBC soap Sunset Beach celebrates the occasion with the beginning of its story arc, "Fade to Black."
Speaking of returns, Liberty Creek made a surprising comeback to the Web on May 28. The historical series, which debuted in Summer 1997 and is set in the late 1800s, has been defunct for quite some time, but producer Val Elchuk has now posted a new episode in time for the fourth anniversary. While Elchuk mentioned on the Eppy Forum that the series may go unupdated in the future, Episode #88 offers a welcome chance to revisit a classic.
And yes, another websoap marches proudly back into production. Since its return in late May after a hiatus of several months, Arcadia Burning has posted episodes 15 through 17. Recent storylines include a surprise shooting at Hartley House. Who can the victim be?
Like sharks, spies must keep moving or suffer fatal consequences. Thus it is with dangerman Ethan Fairchild in The Legacy, whose newest mission is being related in Darkstone: Secret Agent. The setting is Hollywood, where the production of a primetime TV spy series is marred by some dastardly deeds that will require Ethan's unique skills.
Summer is often a time to bring out the heat in Web series storylines, and among the first to announce big arcs is Come Nightfall. In mid-May, the series revamped its homepage to emphasize the Summer of Terror which -- as you can probably guess -- is a murder mystery that will eliminate a few characters and cause horrible consequences for others. Visit the CN site for a few promos setting the stage for the mayhem to come.
Some series are returning, and others are taking a break. Power and Deception has announced a very brief mid-season hiatus. The series will return on June 23, and will continue the wedding that began in episode #32.
On a very serious note, I'd like to offer my deepest condolences to Cassie Rademacher, an associate producer of Falcon Crest: A New Vintage, whose husband Rich died on May 22 after a long illness. My heart aches for your loss, and I will be thinking of you and your children during this difficult time ahead.
Congratulations are also in order to South Beach and its producer, Jason Edwards, for premiering the series' second season on May 15. SB's sophomore year began with episode 51. Best wishes!
SB also marks the occasion of its new season by launching a spin-off, South Beach Memorial. SBM focuses on characters introduced on its parent series, such as the Ya-Chings and the Vernons, but also adds a few new folks to the mix. The series premiered on May 31, and episode #2 is scheduled for June 15.
Some quickies to round out the EpiBlog: Triumph and Trouble has revamped its site with a spiffy new look ... For Now and Forever premiered a remarkable new daily schedule starting on May 9 ... and About Schuyler Falls* has also changed its schedule, with thrice-weekly episodes.
* Disclaimer: ASF is produced by Episodic editor-in-chief Kira Lerner.
In a major coup, fanfic series Falcon Crest: A New Vintage nabbed actor (and FC veteran) Gregory Harrison for an online chat in mid-May. Harrison, who played "Michael Sharpe" in the CBS 1980s primetime soap, spent plenty of time answering questions and generally being a mensch. The ANV site has a transcript of the chat, which (according to series producer Jim Jarrell) was so popular that it may be repeated in the future.
Saturday, June 02, 2001
The web series community has been filled with false identities perpetrated with varying degrees of maliciousness (i.e., from lots to none!), but they were all a walk through the park when compared to the sheer pointless cruelty of the Kaycee case. If you don't know about this hoax, here;s a short version: In a journal community, a young 19-year-old girl began posting about her experiences with leukemia, gained tons of friends and sympathetic audience members, but ended up dying and causing tons of sorrow and grief. And it was all a sham by a 40-year-old housewife. You can read about it here, in CNN, which is revealing that the FBI won't be pursuing fraud charges.
Web audiences are diversifying, which means it's time Web series start reflecting the range of surfers now going online and looking for entertainment. According to a demographic study performed by The Media Audit, which performed 350,000 phone interviews over the past three years, shows that while the Internet gold rushers consisted of wealthy computer moguls, young hip 20somethings and teens -- most of whom were white -- the rest of the world is catching up at last. By which I mean: minorities, senior citizens, homemakers, and people who are less educated and/or less affluent. So maybe now we can see more entertainment series that depart from the overpopulated genres of campy soaps and campier sci-fi series!
Wednesday, May 23, 2001
The media and much of Hollywood equate web entertainment with broadband, despite the plentiful evidence that other formats exist. Here's an article examining the problems inherent in streaming video as a delivery method for entertainment, from TechReview.com.
Tuesday, May 15, 2001
Pay to Publish, Pay for Review
Saturday, May 05, 2001
Fans of Dangerous Liasions or Cruel Intentions should recognize the plot of The Evil Sex, a video-based mini-series from Impassioned Productions. Controlling bitch-goddess Merty has been dumped by her recent boytoy for the innocent do-gooder Kate. Merty doesn't like being ignored. So she enlists her friend, sexual manipulator Dom, to seduce and destroy poor Kate. True to the original format of Les Liasions Dangereuses, which was an epistolary novel (aka, consisted of letters written by the characters to one another), The Evil Sex is told via email messages, which the audience gets to read after signing up and receiving the secret email address.
At the other end of the web tech spectrum, Ordinary World has been around for thirty-or-so episodes despite offering no interactivity, cast lists, maps, or anything other than short snappy scenes. Goes to show you that on the Web, any style of entertainment can find its niche.
Want more video series? Visit Pix & Rez, the tale of seven hip young programmers working for Saturn Toys as couriers and undercover agents. Splashy site (requires Quicktime) with, so far, two episodes to date.
I love finding web series that have both a healthy archives and a promising future! Yorkgate, a websoap based in England's historic city of York, has more than seventy episodes under its belt, and continues to publish twice each week. Yorkgate is written by staff members of the York Evening Press, and is part of a local tourist site/portal.
MediaGuardian.co.uk | Marketing & PR | Web soap to make TV debut
I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but... Deep Angel is a companion web series to an upcoming computer game. Stunning graphics (not surprisingly) accompany this science fiction tale of a futuristic undersea battle cruiser. Yes, the series owes a great deal to SeaQuest, which is natural considering that the minds behind DA were also associated with a fanfic series based on the Spielberg TV epic (SeaFire).
Secret Horizons is a traditional soap that developed out of a role-playing game/series, Currents RPG. The series begins with Jamie, a young husband contemplating a return to his hometown, thanks to his mother's request for him to come back to helm the family company. Wife Mickie isn't initially thrilled with the idea, but will go along for her husband's sake. Will the family survive? (Heck, even if you don't enjoy traditional soaps, you may find something yummy in the site's recipe section!)
Thursday, May 03, 2001
Trellix Cafe - other features!
Tuesday, May 01, 2001
The End of Free A blog devoted to the downfall of free content. hooray.
Check out The End of Free, a blog. By which this means, the end of free content. Hooray, just what we need -- a chronicle of failure!
And the other side of the argument: visit SaveTheFreeWeb.com - Discuss Ad-Supported Content and Ad-Blocking to see if Free Content can be rescued from its ballyhooed demise.
Blair Witch strikes again -- can Spielberg do it right? MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Kubrick's strange afterlife
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
As many of us know -- at least, those who are dedicated entertainment news addicts -- there's a dark shadow looming for fans of shows other than Survivor, Judge Judy, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and CSPN's Booknotes. Yes, if you actually enjoy fictional entertainment, be prepared to go lukewarm turkey. The Writers Guild of America, i.e. the union for screenwriters responsible for film and TV scripts, is in the midst of negotiations with studio executives and producers (as repped by the AMPTP -- the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Most people are expecting the writers to walk when the contract ends on May 1, which means that we can all expect fewer original comedies and dramas this fall and winter. (The last time the WGA called for a strike, in 1988, they were out for 22 weeks, which delayed the TV season.) Not only that, but SAG-AFTRA (the two actors unions, aka Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) are also about to begin negotiations in May, and could walk once their contracts end in July.
Okay, so you're asking me, 'why is this worth space in the beloved EpiBlog'? My answer: this could actually be good news for web series, especially the amateur ones that largely populate the Eppy's pages. Can those of us who are websoap producers capitalize on the dirth of original entertainment? It's highly doubtful that web series will replace ER, West Wing or Once and Again (let's not be delusional!), but if we play our cards right, and strategize a good marketing campaign should this strike really occur, websoaps could be considered a good alternative for, say, The Weber Show.
So, anyone have any good ideas?
As is only appropriate for this Spring/Easter issue, we have a bunch of rebirths/resurrections to announce. First, Hidden Secrets of American Towns has a new address (didn't work at the time this was published, but Geocities can be glitchy sometimes!), and is back from a month-long hiatus with four new episodes ... The Weekly Story Online has a new clean look and a tighter focus, which debuted early in April. Publisher Chris Longo restructured the site, formerly a general web series 'zine, as a network. Articles will concentrate solely on the TWSO's own affiliated series ... Longo's own series, Cordial Deception, is also back after a break, and has posted its fifth episode ... and, after a three-month break and a near-death experience, Breakers has returned with its lucky 13th episode.
More quickies: New family trees and other doodads are up at Gaysville's new home ... Covington Bay is about to celebrate a huge milestone: four years online! Admittedly, the series is on an extended hiatus, but merely existing for four years (since April 1997) without packing up is remarkable, truly worthy of tremendous admiration ... finally, Eppy Featured Series Serenity has a new "Flash"-y bio page, which not only profiles characters, but describes the intertwining relationships between them, too. Click here to see all the info (but only if you've got a Flash-enabled browser).
May is one of three months in which TV series go 'all out' to wow their audiences, in hopes of getting high ratings (which result in higher advertising rates). Though web series have neither ratings nor, typically, ad rates, that doesn't stop some producers from following the 'sweeps' tradition. Three storylines from
The Lives We Live
will culminate in May. "A huge car accident ... will help in unveiling one of the
biggest secrets in Watersdale," producer Richie Rodriguez reveals. "There will be not one, but two murders!" Car crashes and murders? Cool!
Always looking for innovative ways to use the interactive features of the Web -- and for ways to make some moolah in the process! -- the minds behind StoneyGrove.com have launched a new subscription-based educational site aimed at kids and teachers. According to SG co-producer Mark Freeman, StoriesPast.com "will include a number of educational modules for middle school students based around exploring a virtual place in the past. The first of these modules, Upstairs in the Past, will be going live later this month."
The deal is, the site encourages students to go on a virtual treasure hunt, snooping through Stoney Grove rooms for items that they can 'take' and inspect for historical information. StoriesPast.com will offer an online newspaper, and invite kids to contribute their own content. Good luck to Mark and collaborator Barbara Heath on this intriguing new venture!
Wondering what the heck happened to the Fanfic Review? Well, we had a little problem ... specifically, we lost our content when our coordinator abruptly resigned the day of publication! Oy, what price partnership, no? At any rate, we will publish the overdue issue on April 22, and will then resume regular monthly issues (note -- monthly issues, not biweekly like the Eppy) on May 22. Why are we revealing all this? Because there's a lesson to be learned: when working in a collaborative venture, be sure to have two people receiving content at all times! This is especially important in the online world, where there are no hard copies floating around ... and where it's easy for someone to disappear without a trace.
Some big changes to the Episodic are afoot, ones that will be both surprising and exciting, particularly to fans of smaller, less well-known series. Look for new voices, a new editorial structure, and new opportunities to learn about all types of web entertainment sites.
Look for the full announcement in our May 1 issue, with the majority of changes taking place as of May 15.
Sunday, April 15, 2001
BGM Online satire - Soap Opera, The Sad and The Soaked
Monday, April 02, 2001
Mi$ery Loves Companyis a soap parody brought to us by the folks from ihatefinancialplanning.com. The comedy's pretty broad -- a character is named Shirley Ujest, for example -- but that isn't always a bad thing!
Science Fiction fans -- especially those who fondly remember SeaQuest DSV -- might salivate when they visit Deep Angel, a lushly illustrated web series based on the premise that in 2041, the world's first undersea battle cruiser must fight enemies in a second battle of Pearl Harbor. You can download the scripts, which are for episodes approximately one hour in length (except for the two-hour pilot). The series is presented in anticipation of the launch of a PC game by the same title, and with only a few episodes under its belt, DA already has an avid fan following.
For yet another perspective on the fee-or-free content debate: I'm happy to say I've become a Liberati! No, not a Libra, nor a Liberal--I'm already one of those! The 'Liberati' are people who have signed the Libera Manifesto, a paean to free content providers everywhere who make the Web worth surfing. Sign and join today!
As always, there are some new web series, new addresses, and other goings-on in the Eppy community. In the newcomer department: Mt. Vernon Square tells the story of several young collegians based on the author and his friends. The series, which was announced on March 16, began with its first seven episodes already posted. (An interesting new trend!) Also, Avila Beach debuted in March, and has three episodes up and ready for viewing. AB's creator has plenty of soap writing experience -- his first series (not on the web) had an amazing 550+ episodes!
Looking for Victoria's Legacy? The series has moved in preparation for the new production by its creator, "Crossings," as well as other web-related activities. If you're interested in another quality series on hiatus, you can visit Nordan's Isle (an Episodic charter featured site) in its new home....with a new look for 2001! Though there aren't any plans to return to the series, the episodes are well worth reading.
In the "Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated" department, Return to Southfork has returned to publication, despite having announced its demise earlier this year. Interesting controversy over there regarding whether the authors would continue writing when audience participation seemed lacking. "Put up or shut up" was the theme by RTS's producers, who demanded more appreciation and interactivity from people who had been reading the fruits of their hard labor in silence. At first, author Justin Stiles threatened to take RTS private, posting episodes only for readers who had already been active participants in the community.
Audience response to this announcement was mixed, but most posts strongly supported RTS's production staff, complimenting their work and apologizing for not having offered feedback in the past. After the outcry, the decision was quietly made to post a new episode and to continue RTS beyond its original date of execution.
If you were a reader, would you approve or disapprove of this action? What about if you were the writer? Has this ever happened to your favorite series? Why does it take such an extreme action to elicit reader opinions, which is all Justin and crew were really asking for? What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
Questions for the ages, I know. Feel free to discuss them in the Forum!