Category: Peer Production

Andrew Orillion: Brewing Up “On the Rocks”

A Behind the Scenes Look at the Creation of the First Multicam Web Series
by Andrew Orillion

It all began January of this year, with an email chain in a Yahoo group dedicated to TV writing. The question was simple, “How long would you go on with your writing career before you gave up?” The question got over 300 responses and started a lot of conversations. One of those responses was from Sam Miller, a writers assistant for Desperate Housewives. He had an idea, what if a small, but dedicated team of writers and industry professionals from the Yahoo group worked together on their own Web series? What would the results be? Five months later, the results were in and On the Rocks, a new Web series from a crowd sourced creative team, The Grinders, was born.

So, how did this happen? How did a band of near total strangers come together to create and shot a full-length, multi-camera, comedy Web series pilot? Over the next few weeks, leading up to the taping of the second episode, I’ll take you behind the scenes and give you an in-depth look at the creation of On the Rocks. read article

Bob Tinsley: HEFALUMPS and WOOZLES PART 2

tinsleys heroesby Bob Tinsley

When last we talked I had the “shooting script” in hand and was ready to publish an ebook with it.

Well, not quite ready. What I had was the body of the book. What I didn’t have was what is called the “front matter”. This stuff is usually taken care of by the publisher without the author having to worry too much about it. Guess what? YOU’RE the publisher. You’ll see this again.

Take a look at a book, either dead-tree or ebook, doesn’t matter. I’ll start with an overview, then take each element individually. read article

Peer Production: YES/NO

And now, straight from its home on Vimeo, a little video about ambition/decision/success/failure/joy/despair.

No, this isn’t about showbiz. But it could be:

read article

Bob Tinsley: Hefalumps and Woozles, or, Ebooks and Scripts

transmediaby Bob Tinsley

Transmedia.

That’s a hot new buzzword making the rounds of the prose indie publishing interwebs. I searched for it on TVWriter and got two hits; in neither of them did I find the word “transmedia”. Don’t know what the deal with that is.

But I digress. read article

Jenni Ruiza & Jesenia: BECOMING RICARDO

www.becomingricardo.com
www.becomingricardo.com

The Editing Room
by Jenni Ruiza & Jesenia

One of the most exciting things that can happen to a writer – is to be involved in the video editing process. Why? Because you get to see the magic of your words come to life right before your eyes! It’s like witnessing childbirth each and every time you sit in that editing chair.

It’s hard work with long hours – but in the end, you get to see your idea flourish and become exactly what you envisioned from the beginning, when you were putting that pen to paper! Fortunately, as the Becoming Ricardo writers and producers, we are heavily involved in the cutting room floor. This means we have full control over what stays and what goes – but that is no easy task.

So, what really goes into editing a webseries? First of all, keep in mind “Becoming Ricardo” does not have a traditional web-series run-time, as each episode averages 16 minutes. Why is that? Because we’re aiming for Television distribution, so we’re producing a package that is “Made-for-TV”. This is why we call it a WebTV Sitcom. read article