StoryMOOC: Week 3 Musings

The Future of Storytelling: Week 3 Musings

Unit 1: Audiovisual Series on the Web

In this unit Chris is talking about the evolution of TV series into a web-series. A web series mainly designed for the web-platform, it can be taken as one format or one unified media content which is a low budget production.

Five years ago a  web series was consisted of a single episodes or story-lines with continuous episodes which are called WEBISODES. She presented her own example when five years ago she was given a task to design a web series with keeping in mind the following three important rules:

1. production would have not more than five characters
2. time limit is not more than five minutes and
3. produced on a single location 

because it  is "cheap to rent" and "easy to design." 

All these three rules are the result of a low cost policy, its funding is mainly based on commercials as in private sector cable TV, tax and on pay TVs like you tube and sky tv.

When there is no money, the producer cannot produce a high profile webisode, that is he can not hire high profile actors. Chris says it a "vicious circle."

     1. missing funding which results in

     2. low production value which results in

     3. no marketing which results in

     4. low attention which results in

     1. missing funding...

Here our instructor gave us the examples of two German web based series UM HIMMLES WILLEN which was not popular as compare to THREE MINUTES series BLUTSBRUDER.

Now one can understand the restrictions of space and cast. But why there is a limitation of time?

Prof. Dr. Jan Distelmeyer, Prof. of History and Theory of Technical Media, University oAS Potsdam tells us that viewers "switch without switching", they have short attention span because they can switch to several channels in single minute.

In my opinion its true, people cannot read too much online as compare to books apart from those who are of a curious kind. Second, people are overwhelmed by the curiosity to search more at once rather to focus on a single content. It is easy for them to open several windows as Prof. Dr. Jan Distelmeyer had told us. Third, the element of learning is becoming obsolete by the passage of time and the only thing remains is entertainment. Forth, the web-content is sub standard. : ) Yes as Chris says it a "vicious circle".

A link of a very good report is given to us; Short attention span theater: Web video watchers bail fast by Peter Kafka.

This report tells us about the audience attention span for a single clip on youtube or on any other platform. Kafka has given an example of Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition” on Sesame Street in 1973. I tried. Hahahaha : ) it is too difficult for me to stick for the whole six-minute-forty-eight-seconds video clip.

I hope you will try it.

P.S.

These musings are written for the +iversity course The Future of Storytelling.