Stars Taryn O'Neill, Janna Bossier, and Craig Frank at a New Media Vault Event.

Inspired by Mathieas’ Tubefilter piece on building buzz, and a  shout out to Dialogik Digital and the immense help they did in our pre-launch, I figured I’d blog about Promoting a Web Series. Please note, I am not claiming that the promoting of our show was a complete success, nor am I claiming it to be the right way to promote a show, it’s just the way we chose to do it.

When you’re doing an independent series for the web, one of the big daunting tasks is in the promoting of your web series.  Most people who create shows aren’t promoters, advertisers, or public relations gurus, they are filmmakers and storytellers.

Personally I’m glad to see that the “if you build it, they will come” watch mantra is dying fast. Why? Well the internet is a HUGE place. There are a lot of eyes out there, and you’re never reach them all. That is why you need to guide your target viewers to your show, and you need to find your audience.

I’m going to re-point to Pam Kulik’s, Dialogik Digital post on this because she really has it fleshed out better than I do so take a look. She really covers our Launch Strategy,  Promoting, and Audience Building, so I encourage you to learn from it, I know I did. I remember being on a conference call with them and Dailymotion before our launch and the two P.R. reps just chatted away about all this promotional/press jargon that I had no clue about. -

If you’re a web series creator, if you get anything out of this post, I’d say look into finding/hiring some P.R. representation, it’ll shoot your promotions forward 10 fold.

Anyway, PR rep or not, you’ll always have to do at least a good deal of hustling yourself. Heck even the creators behind shows like The Bannen Way and The Guild have to hustle to get that extra promotional push. So no matter who you got helping you,  I’d like to highlight four things about web series promoting that I feel are vital.

1. TAKE YOUR TIME! – I write this with an exclamation point because I really, really mean it. This also goes for pre-production, production, post-production, as well as crafting your promoting strategies.

Everyone remember the rule of Cheap/Fast/Good, you can only have 2? Well most web series I know don’t have a ton of money so by default you’re gonna be Cheap. So by that rule you’re gonna be either Fast or you’re gonna be Good. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be Good than Fast.

and seriously ask your self “what’s the hurry?” -

As we were dead set on releasing Compulsions in the 2009 calendar year, our original target release date was mid October but we fell behind in post. Then we were ready to go in Mid November, but our team agreed that pushing back and releasing in early December would be the right way to go.  We ended up with more time to finish the show, we had more time to craft our promotion strategy, and we had a nice little window between two major holidays to launch.

2. Promoting to people who watch Web Series. Relative to everything else this is easy (mainly because pretty much everyone in the web series world is so friendly and supportive). This process is pitching/promoting your site on all the forums and websites that cover web series, Tubefilter, Newteevee, Indie Intertube, WebSeriesToday, Slebisodes, SciFinal, 93Studios, The Web Files, and more..

All of these sites (and more), have sections (if not the entire site) dedicated to promoting web series. So yes they will at the very least watch your show at some point. Also please remember that most/if not all these sites have very limited resources dedicated to covering your show so please be patient with them. Many of them are covering web shows solely because they love doing it so lets cut them some slack if they fall behind. – A good set of rules to follow is Liz Shannon Miller’s “How to Pitch Me Your Web Series”. READ IT.

Going for other web series creators is a great core to start with, it’s a pre-conception that everyone knows everyone, but that’s not true. There are too many web series out there for everyone to know everyone, so go out and meet some of them and hopefully they’ll sample your show.

Please Realize: Not everyone is gonna watch your show. Blasphemy you say? – Well let me ask you this? Have you watched everyone else’s show? I know, I haven’t. I have good friends in the community who I know have not watched all of Compulsions, and our entire season runs less than 40 minutes. – So the best you can do is to  tell people about your show. Maybe they’ll watch it, maybe they wont, but hey you got out there.

There are some out there that think promoting within the “community” is a waste, but I find that false. I think it’s important to do so, but it’s not an all in. I just feel it’s a strong core to grow from. As we’ve discussed internally, this is where you’ll get your first 1,000 views, then if the show resonates your audience will grow naturally.

3. Promoting to your Niche/Audience – This is absolutely vital, and this comes from knowing your audience, and promoting to it.

Now with Compulsions, it’s kind of a hard show to niche. It’s more a thriller than a horror, but even with that classification it gave us a direction to go towards. Though hard to classify, it was easy to know what audience we’re not. Put it this way, my own Mother has yet to watch even an episode of my show. Why? Because it’s too violent, she doesn’t deal with violence, but violence is a niche audience and that’s what we started with.

In thinking violence and horror, we reached out to many online publications that cover horror/thriller type content. You have to be crafty with your pitch. Did every horror blog cover us? no, but some did and that helped us reach a strong audience of thriller fans that we wouldn’t have reached otherwise.

Another niche audience that began to arise that we never saw coming was the Soap audience. In making the show, we never thought to be classified as a ‘soap’, but after thinking about it, the core of a soap opera is (usually heavy) “character drama”. Well looking at the core of our show, I’d say we have a lot of heavy character drama so we went with it.  That devoted and supportive audience found us and in turn we began to promote towards it.

Speaking of character drama/soaps, if you want to see a well watched show that knows its audience, check out the Streamy and Indie Soap Award winning Anyone But Me. Whether or not the show is for you is up to you. But really look at what the show is about, and all the great core niche audiences you can promote towards.

4. Make the Best Show You Can - This is related to number 1, but really just go out and make the best show you can.

They say that ‘Word of Mouth’ is the most powerful form of marketing. Well Word of Mouth only happens when the show you make resonates with your audience and they pass it around to their peers, this gives your show its longevity.

In my opinion, most of our press coverage and our long period of  ”buzz” wasn’t because of how well we marketed the show, it was because of how well the show resonated amongst the audience and the press. All of our main stream press coverage didn’t come because we were a thriller. It came because the person writing the coverage really liked our show.

As Peter Drucker once said

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Thanks for reading.

Walking on Stage at the Streamys - photo by J.Regan Huston

It’s been a memorable week to say the least.  As much as I can say that I am thrilled for our Streamy Win I am not going to ignore the Streamys Ceremony debacle. My family was there, and it was good that I won, because I felt that really glossed over all the bad that was the ceremony itself for them. It left a bitter taste in my mouth after celebrating my finest moment as a writer (to date). I won an award where I was nominated against writers of several TV shows I deeply admire and my predecessors in my category are Jane Espenson and Ronald D Moore, two writers I hold as icons in my craft.  I remind myself that it wasn’t the Streamys or Tubefilter proper giving me the honor, it was from the voting body of the IAWTV who didn’t produce the Streamys, but instead determined the winners.

Despite the content of Compulsions and most of my stories, I generally like to remember the good things rather than the bad. So I will do my best to focus on that for this post. The Streamys, Web TV Week, and everything we as creators of online content do should be recognized, honored, celebrated, and for most of the week it really was.

Rewind –  7 days ago WebTV week began. Tuesday started with Digital LA, where I got to hang with a bunch of my pals that transcend both web video and web tech. I got to meet Andy Dugan, an Emmy/Webby winner who seems to be one of the Streamys biggest critics, and though I am a Streamy supporter and somewhat a Webby critic, I very much respect his opinions and where he’s coming from. In all though, it wasn’t a huge attendance of WebTV people, but it was great start to what would be a long week.

Wednesday came the Streamy Craft Awards. –  Going into an awards show, I understand splitting the awards up into two ceremonies. The Oscars do it, the Emmys do it, and when you’re trying to be all encompassing like the Streamys, I get it, there are a lot of awards to hand out. Compulsions had no nominations in the Craft awards but my team and I came in full support of the space, our friends, and for the shows we admire. I was sitting three seats away from Jeremy Redleaf of Odd Jobs and right next to Christian Taylor, Nina Bargiel and the Valemont team,  so being with them as they won was an absolute thrill.

The ceremony itself I thought was great, ironically it was lean, fast, and smooth. The banter/jokes from Jim Festante were in general pretty good. If a line/quip fell  flat, it was moved on from very quickly. If I were to critique anything from this, I would have liked the ceremony to show some clips. Categories like Cinematography, Art Direction, and Visual Efx just beg to be shown on screen. But either way lean, fast, and smooth. Here are you awards, say your speeches, and let’s get back to mingling.

Thursday came New Media Vault. Another solid event attended by great people. I like going to the Vault events, and this one was fun. Got to touch base more with other Web TV peeps and pals. One great thing to note about the week, there were a lot of people from out of town who I got the absolute pleasure of meeting, and really that’s what this is all about. Meeting people, making new friends and contacts, and celebrating the work we do.

Friday came the premiere of Vamped Out with Kevin Pollak and Babelgum. This was a solidly attended premiere, some traditional media peeps (Topher Grace, Matthew Perry) and of course more web peeps. I think at this event my energy was really starting to wain, but I do remember having a fun time. I had the absolute pleasure of meeting the team from Riese the Series, and praising that I got one of their street team “button pins” during Comic Con 2009.

Saturday was the Blip.tv/Streamy kick off party. This was a great event, Blip.tv always throws great events (I happily told Dina Kaplan this when I saw her). I was really happy to see the YouTube vloggers there in full force, it felt like all of WebVideo was coming together in celebration. This was truly the penultimate event leading up to Sunday.

Sunday – The Streamys – (I could write a huge post just on this, but much of it has been said) – I’m gonna preface this by saying that though we were one of the most nominated shows of the evening. We certainly weren’t treated as royalty (nor did we need/want to be). I had to fight to get our cast and crew members (that weren’t nominees) tickets, I had to fight to get an extra ticket for my own sister but I understood “every show wanted to be there, and they all wanted their entire teams to go”. The Tubefilter guys worked hard and have whole hearted intentions, I give them an ‘A’ for effort (an obviously a much lower grade for execution).

The Red Carpet- I felt this was a VAST improvement over the Red Carpet last year. It was relatively organized, and it moved. Our team was able to go from station to station, reporter to reporter, and yes they fell behind, but really I thought this went well. – If you don’t agree with me, try to remember last year when it was an absolute mess – I have pictures to prove it.  Anyway after our team walked and did our thing. I had a lot of fun just hanging out with different people. Though it was kind of nutty to try to get all our cast together through general admission, it eventually worked out.

The Streamys Awards Ceremony – Dance number – eh (why wasn’t it the LXD?) . Sound issues not a great sign. Long self deprecating humor/vulgar skits… another red flag. But I’ll be honest, I was feeling a lot of nerves, I wasn’t being objective about all the mishaps.

By the time they announced Writing in a Drama, we had already lost two categories (Actor and Director). I believe that our team, our families, and our immense support in the indie community was generally deflated. – Doesn’t matter who you are, you always hope to win. So when they announced that I had won, it was an electric moment. The roars around me were deafening. I hugged my family. I high fived my team,  I gave Craig a big embrace, and he pushed me to go up.

The instant I hit the stage it felt like the audience exploded. I heard a pretty amazing roar from the crowd. That moment was truly the greatest experience of my life thus far, and that is what I want to take from it. The adrenaline, the reponse, it was amazing. Many friends, and fellow indie creators described it as their highlight of the evening, and it was truly an honor for me to be that for so many people.

When I got backstage I was immediately greeted by The Bui Brothers and as many of you know my work as a photog, it was pretty awesome to see them, they both gave me big hugs. As I went through the press area I got to see another photog, Maria from Kodak, who I hadn’t seen since we were shooting last years Streamys. I also got big hugs from Jenni Powell, Pam Kulik, and Stephanie from Mingle Media TV. I took a moment to watch the announcement of Best Female Actor in a Drama and was thrilled to see Rachael win. I stopped my press run to go over to give her a big congrats hug.

When I made it around back to the audience, I walked in to what appeared to be the turning point that spiraled into the “train wreck”, the crashing of  The Fine Bros video. From there we’ve heard about how all the big technical difficulties that came about, no need to address them again. Yes it was vulgar and embarrassing but the main thing is that I sat through the bad to see the good… I saw great online content being honored.

I’m gonna end this by referencing nominee and Super YouTuber Phil DeFranco. A few weeks ago we had chatted about the Streamys and he was  constructively critical of the process, it was a great intelligent discussion, we agreed, we disagreed, but we wanted the same thing. At the end of the day I believe we all want online video content to honored, recognized, and respected. Yes the 2010 Streamy Awards ceremony was disappointing, but the intention to honor, recognize, and decorate the space is a noble and thankless task. Thus I will continue to support Tubefilter, the team behind the Streamys, and any individual or organization that is out to support the online video space.

Thank you for reading, and it is truly an honor.

Me, Nathan Atkinson, and Michael Tohl on the Red Carpet - photo by The Bui Brothers

Craig Frank wields the belt against Taryn O'Neill

Looking back at our series, one of my favorite stories was the rumor that Craig Frank is a method actor. This started last July, back in Pre-production, when Craig came up to the production team with a request. He asked that during the days that we’d be shooting in the interrogation room, that he get some space to prepare and be by himself to be away from the hustle and bustle of the set. This one request would begin the chain of events that became “Craig Frank is a method actor”.

Let me give you some back story, we shot our 8 episode season over five consecutive days. Day 1 were the office scenes, Day 2 were the IT Room/Garage scenes, Day 3 and 4 were the Interrogation Scenes, and Day 5 were the House/Cassandra’s room scenes.

During the first two days of shooting, Craig was his usual self on set. A couple wise cracks here, some playful fun there, but still the consummate professional and a great guy to have on set. He came, he did his scenes, and he even hung out for a while afterward. At the end of Day 2, as he did his goodbyes to the cast and crew he said to all of us, “see you all in 3 days,” for the Craig that we knew would not be with us, but rather someone else.

Day Three started with a different feel. We knew it was going to be a “different day.” We were shooting some very intense scenes, and we had a very different lead actor. When Craig pulled into the warehouse, he stayed in the car while the crew prepared. I remember watching him sitting in his beat up old Integra staying very still. An announcement went over our walkies from Producer Michael Tohl with explicit instructions that no one was to disturb Craig’s concentration. Eventually Michael came over and personally walked Craig over into a room designated to him, a room labeled “Do Not Disturb“.

The next two days were filled with different little tidbits. We had Craig shuttled between the set and his room, to ensure that he was never bothered. He never interacted with his scene partners Seth Caskey, or Taryn O’Neill, with the exception being in front of the camera. Actually no one interacted with Craig, save for a handful of the principal crew. Through the shooting days Craig remained intense, he brooded, he was stoic, and he was very quiet. Was it method acting? Was it Craig making demands? No… it was Craig committing to the character, and thus we committed to Craig.

Craig has stated to me that he never was lost in the character of Mark Sandler the Sadist, but I believe he convinced the rest of us that he was. There was a perception around the crew that no one was to look Craig in the eye (I don’t recall if this was a stated rule or not, but it pretty much became one). I also remember ‘shuushing’ someone for making too much noise outside of his room (yes I committed). And my favorite story was on set where our D.P. Jason Raswant was so intimated by Craig that when he needed him to move a simple step or two over he’d flag down Director Nathan Atkinson to relay the instructions.

The rumors began to spread, the crew, the actors, the guests on set,  ”Craig Frank is a Method Actor”, but it all just a rumor. The truth was that Craig did immense preparation for this role. He did his research, he prepared himself and had committed to the Mark character to put his all in this performance. We as the crew thus committed to Craig. He gave us everything he could, we gave him everything we could back, and the result is the performance you see today.

Craig Frank as Mark, Janna Bossier as Justine, & Annemarie Pazmino as Cassandra

Looking at my previous post on internal voice overs, I realized that I referenced a great deal of character psychology without even referencing its origins in the series. I think that character origins are so important when trying to craft a continuous story, yes origins can evolve as stories progress but it still is that foundation that drives the character. So in this post, I will touch upon the literary origins of the three leads that will help highlight the basis of their individual psychosis.

In looking at our three leads (Mark, Cassandra, Justine), a common classification is to call them all sociopaths. Personally I feel this is a little extreme of a classification, but that’s just me who read about a lot of sociopaths while researching Compulsions. Granted I do believe that Mark, Cassandra, and Justine are disturbed people, but I feel that they are capable of feeling empathy and thus believe that their levels of psychosis are definitely in the more infancy stages than say Ted Bundy or Charles Manson. But like any sociopath, they all have their origins. Ted Bundy wasn’t always Ted Bundy the serial killer, and thus our leads are at that early stage in their De-evolution. Sure they do bad things, but are capable of growing into so much worse when pressed and stressed.

As for the origins of our three leads specifically, we have to look at each character’s base. This may be hard to catch upon the first viewing on the screen, but each of the three leads is based on a historic literary figure.

Mark “The Sadist” – is based on the French Aristocrat Marquis de Sade, for whom the term Sadism is coined after. His writing was violent, extreme, blasphemous, and bizarre. De Sade was actually imprisoned for much of his life because of his writing, but what did he do? He just kept on writing.

Justine “The Hunter” – is based on the character of the same name in the book Justine (by Marquis de Sade). A story of a young maiden on a quest for virtue, but is presented with abuse, slavery, and other horrific acts all hidden behind a virtuous mask.

Cassandra “The Voyeur” – is based on the character of the same name in Greek mythology, who was given the gift of foresight and the curse that no one would believe her predictions.

Now it’s important to note that the Compulsions leads are simply referencing these figures in broad strokes and are not direct incarnations of them.

If you watch our Season 1 episodes you can see the direct links from our leads to each of these literary figures and therein lies their psychology. At his roots, Mark is confident, he’s in control of his compulsion, and yes he is a sadist. Does he know it’s wrong, yes. But he just keeps doing it. Justine, in a slightly different shade, has her confidence and proper wholesome life, but like the reference is a false facade to her violent life. And Cassandra, is truly the one who can see all but can tell no one without giving away her secret.

Now taking those one line descriptions you should be able to see the origins of their psychosis. Do you need to need to know that the three leads are based on these literary figures? No. It’s just that if you want to dig deeper in to the base of the characters, it makes it easier to piece together knowing their origins. All three of these bases gives you a natural path as to where you can craft the characters, because at their roots they are “disturbed”. Once you have this base it makes it much easier as a writer to guide your characters through their story and make their journey more about the person than the events. For it is not what happens, but who the what happens to that makes the story compelling.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and how we’ve only begun to scratch the surface on our story, thus we hope to give you more of the saga of Mark, Justine, and Cassandra in (crossing fingers) future episodes of Compulsions.

For my other blog posts on writing, you can head over here.

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Craig Frank on set.

It’s been a long couple weeks with the Streamy Nominations and such, I wanted this blog to come right after my previous two writing blogs on Themes and Drama, but this month continues to be a whirlwind. None the less, let’s get right into it.

Being a creator and a fan of Web Series I’ve found that many shows contain some form of narration. These types include, but are not limited to  -

• General Narrator - A person not part of the story/world telling the audience what is going on.
• Vlogging - A character speaking directly to the camera telling the audience what he/she is observing in the world.
• Voice Over(Internal Monologue) - A character speaking through her thoughts as he/she goes through the story.

Philosopher Jacques Lacan once said,
“The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible”

As narration can elevate the drama, I feel that it also can be a very slippery slope. By definition it goes against one of the old adages of filmmaking “Show me, don’t tell me”. This warning should be especially observed in a web series simply because your run times are so short. One minute of narration feels a lot longer in a five minute episode than it does for an hour long. Thus for our show, I tried to limit the narration to come only when absolutely necessary and even attempted to give it a fresh unique spin to the characters.

In Compulsions, the narration comes in the form of Internal Monologue Voices Overs. Each of the three leads, Mark, Justine, Cassandra, all use Voice Overs to narrate the story and reveal more about their characters. It was important to me that when any of the characters would give a voice over, there would be a level of differentiation that was more than just “this person speaking his mind”. Our narration is instead grounded within the individual character and would come from a place where they’d reveal layers to themselves you would not see otherwise.  You’ll also notice that in each lead characters first feature episode, the final voice over is a defining character point for each and stated in their own unique voices.

Mark Sandler’s (Craig Frank‘s) voice overs come from a place of being instructional and ‘to the point’. His characer is very much in control of the situation. Thus in “educating” the audience with his VO’s it serves as a demonstration of his inner emotional control and confidence. At the end of Episode 1: Unleash, he proudly declares in VO – “My name is Mark, and I am a Sadist.”

Justine Davis’ (Janna Bossier‘s) voice overs come from a caring story teller origin, like a parent telling a child a fairy tale. I backstoried her psychosis as coming from a glossy yet troubled and twisted childhood, which would be shown onscreen as a strong yet extremely vulnerable and disturbed young woman. At the end of Episode 3: Fairy Tale, she ends her tale in VO - “That Halloween my Mother bought me a princess costume but I was disapointed… I wanted to be the Fire Breathing Dragon.”

Cassandra Morrissey’s (Annemarie Pazmino‘s) voice overs come from a literary narrative POV. The insipiration was if she’s watching a play and is acting as the commentator/narrator. If you haven’t noticed, Cassandra’s VOs are all written in Iambic Pentameter, which is by design. I thought the Iambics would add a level of creepiness to the character, which would in turn add to her own psychosis. At the End of Episode 5: Only I Can See, she narrates “People keep Secrets, every he and she. For they keep secrets, only I can see”.

Three characters all giving voice over narration in very different ways, thus justifying its existence in the first place and hopefully elevating the drama in each scene with its commentary. I encourage all writers to find new ways to bring narration to screen, if anything, it will hopefully give your work a fresh distinctive element.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post on using narration to elevate the character. I encourage you to check out my previous posts on Theme and Writing for the Short Form.

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Fellow Streamy Nominee, Kristyn Burtt (The Web Files) and I at The Good Knight's Quest Premiere

First off, I want to congratulate all the Streamy Award Nominees. There were a lot of peers and pals that I deeply respect that scored nominations and that is just awesome. There were several I was so thrilled to see that it felt like I was more excited than the nominees themselves.

Anyway it’s just been a crazy week. So crazy that this blog post is coming 3 days after I originally wanted to write it. The good thing with the extra time for this post is that I can reflect more on what the nominations means to the team, the show, and me. I’ll admit, I was nervous as heck going into Monday morning (when they announced the nominations). I had figured that’d we pull in a few nominations and do well, but you never know until it’s official.

I am truly thrilled with our Streamy nominations. What the Streamy Awards means to everyone else is subjective, but to me it means a ton. Last year when we were finishing Compulsions, I set a hard deadline to my team. “This show is coming out in its entirety this year, distribution deal or not!”, and sure enough with grinding hard work, and the promotional support of Dailymotion, it premiered and has been extremely well received. One note to add, as one fellow deeply respected creator pointed out to me on Monday, the nominations (and any possible wins) will also hopefully give us enough recognition to propel us into a Season 2, which is and should be the goal for any Season 1 series.

As for our nominations themselves, it’s awesome that we’re well represented. We’re nominated in what are traditionally referred to as “big categories” (Acting, Writing, Directing, and Overall Drama). But as this is a blog and I feel obligated to be honest, I’ll admit that there was still this bittersweetness to it. Being part of a team, there’s this  disappointment that comes when members of them don’t receive the recognition that you feel they deserve. I really wanted my craft/technical team to pull out a nomination or two, so yes I was sad that they didn’t receive any. But in reflecting on it, I believe that feeling of let down goes for any webseries out there, nominated or not.

I’ve had private conversations with several nominees from other shows who voiced the exact same disappointment that I had. Their show may be represented (and in some cases well represented) yet they are still saddened by being missed in categories which they believed they were a strong contender for. It may seem “greedy” but I assure you it’s not. It’s a feeling of camaraderie that stems from that “family love” mentality you develop when you’re  working in a collaborative process like producing web video. Every web series creator/director/whatever is going to champion the work of every member of their team, it’s just a part of the journey. Thus I really hope my peers that were nominated are truly grateful for the nominations they received, and not worrying about the nominations that they didn’t.

Finally, for my personal nomination in writing, I am of course ecstatic. It’s an honor to be nominated, and it feels good to be up against heavy hitters.  Amongst my fellow nominees are a slew of TV writing credits (Lost, Doctor Who, Torchwood, The L Word) and two big studios (Sony/Crackle and MTV Networks).  As a growing episodic script-writer evolving into short format, I really challenged myself to prove that an intense/gripping/sophisticated drama could be executed as a high quality/episodic web series, thus it’s rewarding to receive a level of recognition like this. At its very base, it is an encouraging piece of validation that pushes my to advance my craft, so I will continue to press more in my work. – In a phrase  - “I must be doing something right.”

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Craig Frank (right) and Janna Bossier in Episode 1: Unleash

Thank you everyone for reading my previous blog on Writing and Structuring Drama for the Short Form.  I was worried that the subject matter would get too deep into the thinking I put into my craft as a writer. So now I follow it up with an even deeper writing blog post.

I’d like to showcase how I tried to make Compulsions a truly thematic based series. As a writer/story teller, one of the challenges I placed on myself in tackling this show was whether or not a short form web series could be presented thematically.  And adding to the challenge, could a short form series support not only an overarching theme, but showcase different individual themes from episode to episode.

Stanley Kubrick once said, “A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”

This is another quote I absolutely love.  I feel, if done correctly, themes can deeply enrich the story for the audience at both a conscious and subconscious level. Many of my favorite stories of past and modern times can be attributed to strong central themes. For example Moby Dick was about Vengeance, and The Dark Knight was about Chaos. Of course one of the big differences between these stories of traditional mediums and any web series is the length of time. Would there be enough story time in a short season, and would there be enough time to do themes on an individual episode basis?

For our show in general, the theme (to me) is dealing with Internal Darkness. It’s in the framework for all three characters, Mark Sandler is a Sadist, Justine Davis is a Hunter, and Cassandra Morrissey is a Voyeur. Each character has a side of normalcy but on the inside  they have a darkness aka ‘compulsion’ that they let loose but keep controlled, and it is through these ‘compulsions’ that they achieve their release.

Though achieved, the general theme was the easy step. The much tougher task was to tell a different theme going from episode to episode.  Thus far our show has 8 episodes,  each episode runs between 3-6 minutes, and in each I’ve attempted to craft the story around an individual theme.

For this example I’m going to break down Episode 2: Friends. Which you can sample again below.

Though the title of the episode is “Friends”, the true theme of the episode is ‘levels of friendship’.

Here is the scene by scene breakdown.

1. Mark, declaring Justine as a friend, delivers the information to Justine.
2. Mark at the office dozing off, Randy rolls over and wakes him up, they have a very male/bros conversation about the what’s causing Mark’s sleepiness.
3. Mark in the Interrogation room with Adam as the interrogation continues
4. Mark at the Office – continuing scene 2 and continuing the male/bros conversation.
5. Mark in the Interrogation room – continuing scene 3. Where Mark finally gets the info he’s looking for but instead of rewarding Adam, he punishes him (“I am not his friend”)

Now as you look at the (in reality) 3 different scenes in this episode you see that Mark has three levels of friendship here.

Mark & Justine: In the short exchange you get the idea that these two know more about each other than any one else in the planet. There’s a high level of familiarity, comfort, and efficiency with one another.

Mark & Randy: In this exchange you have the two guys playing out a classic frat boy egging on scene but with a different spin as they are really talking about two different things. Also Randy thinks they’re much closer than they are.

Mark & Adam: This exchange is strictly business and in a sense very machiavellian. Mark gets the information he wants from Adam and instead of rewarding him or helping him. He instead swings a steel chair across his face.

So there you have it, a central specific episodic theme played out across one four minute episode of our show. Whether or not you agree, like, dis-like the use and execution of themes in our series is entirely up to your own subjective opinion.

Naturally I encourage you to re-watch Season 1 to pick out the details of the thematics of each episode, and across all episodes. I personally would love to see more stories on the web with an individiual thematic base, and I hope if anything that this post will help show a way it can be done.

If you haven’t already, check out my previous blog post about writing drama for the short form video which really breaks down the structuring of Episode 4: Solutions  and how you can tell two intertwining stories in such a short amount of screen time.

As always be sure to sign up on our EMAIL LIST, fan us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter

Bernie Su (center) answers questions on the RadNerd post show with hosts Flitz (right) and Damian Beurer

Thanks everyone that watched my guest spot on the RadNerd Show on Tuesday night. It was an amazing experience and the guys over there are awesome. I had a lot of fun just Nerding it up and big thanks out there to those of you who asked questions in the chat room.

One of the great questions I got asked on the show was “What was the biggest challenge of making a thriller in 3 minute chunks?” – I did answer the Q on the show, which you can watch here at about the 48 minute mark, but I’d like to center this post on my thought process on  how I approached writing an intense drama in the short format.

Note: I am not claiming that this is the “right way” to write drama in short format, these are just some of the choices I made. This is simply one of many ways to approach the craft. Like any web series, this show was in a way an experiment. Whether it worked or not is for the audience to judge.

Orson Welles once said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” This is one of my favorite creative quotes and I hope that all creative people heed by it. Personally this quote inspired me to set a few rules to follow in structuring and writing this series.

The Two Rules I set were.

1. No episode page count will be longer than 4 pages.
2. Each episode will cut between at least two different time periods and intertwine them together.

Page count: Why limit it? Well if you don’t you might end up with some 20 page epic, but really what this did was challenge me to write the dialogue and actions as lean as possible. When I pushed to a 5th page, I’d look at every line and action again and debate the relevance of it to try and contract it down. The intended result of this is that every line would have a purpose and hopefully serves multiple ones (both character and story).  — I tried to tell the biggest/richest story possible in the shortest amount of time.

The intertwining timelines: This is a story telling technique that I theorized would highlight what the series is truly about; and that is the ‘darkness in seemingly normal people.‘ This device allows us to show the juxtaposition of both sides of each lead character more seamlessly and yet still propel the events of the story forward.

For the sake of outlining, I am going to be using Episode 4 as an example (which you can watch below as a refresher)

Compulsions Episode 4: Solutions
Uploaded by compulsions. – Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Now here is the scene breakdown on ‘Episode 4: Solutions’ of the series.

1. Interrogation Room – Mark rips Sara’s blindfold off and asks her if she know why she’s here. She responds “no”, and Mark strikes her with a belt.
2.  Marks Office – Mark and Randy stand in front of Mark’s laptop who’s showing a blue screen. Randy suggests that Mark take the Laptop to IT.
3. Interrogation Room – (continues Scene 1) – Mark strikes Sara again and asks her Where “it” is? Sara says she doesn’t know, Mark determines she’s lying and strikes her again harder.
4. IT room – Mark meets Cassandra who’s already done a diagnosis on his laptop. Mark doesn’t like the estimate he hears, but Cassandra “is nice” and moves his laptop up to the front of the queue.
5. Interrogation Room - (Continuing Scene 3) Sara again denies that she knows anything relevant. Mark decides to “present a fresh perspective” and turns Sara around. Sara sees what appears to be a dead Adam. She freaks out and lunges forward, face planting into the ground.

Now you can see what the intertwining does for the episode. On the page this episode is 5 different scenes, but in reality it’s only 3. Scenes 1-3-5 are pretty much one continuous scene broken apart. Yet separation of the scene allows a 2nd story (or B Story) to be told and lets the episode play out as a bit of a roller coaster. You have 3 intense sections split with 2 calmer ones. So like any good roller coaster, what makes it fun is the rise and drops, and not just racing at one continuous speed.

You can also see in the breakdown how though there are two stories happening, they both are telling the same story relating to one central theme. “Solutions”.

Part 1 – Mark has a problem.
Story A – Mark needs to get the info from Sara.
Story B – Mark needs to fix his computer.

Part 2 – Mark’s usual tactics aren’t working.
Story A – Mark keeps whipping Sara, but she’s a tough cookie and sits strong.
Story B – Mark has tried rebooting, and “nothing changes”.

Part 3 – Mark solves his problems by “presenting a fresh perspective”  – Written into the Voice Over.
Story A – Mark turns and instead of causing Sara physical pain, shows her emotional suffering by presenting her a beaten Adam – Sara will soon crack and give him the info he seeks.
Story B – Mark gives his computer to IT expert Cassandra Morrissey – Cassandra will fix his computer ASAP.

So in 4 pages  and about 4 minutes of screen time, we’re able to tell two stories under one central them.

I hope this post gives you a good perspective of the story telling that went into this show. Again I did the best I could writing the most compelling and gripping show I could. So I leave it up to the audience to judge. Also, I really have to thank the crew and actors for executing what was on the page so effectively on the screen.

Next up I’ll address  some other questions that were asked on Tuesday night. I’ll be blogging about writing strong dramatic themes as well as addressing how I approached the use of Voice Overs.

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Craig Frank accepts his Indie Soap Award for Best Actor

It’s been a great week for us over here at the Compulsions camp. I’d like to lead off by thanking all of our friends and fans for the immense support for the wins. It was definitely very exciting on Monday night watching the Twitter and Facebook streams pop off  in support of our winners as they were announced. Second, a big thanks goes off to  We Love Soaps for putting together a great Inaugural Indie Soap Awards show and for doing a stellar job in raising awareness of Indie Dramatic content across the web. It’s also great to see an “awards season” start to unfold for the web space as a whole. Starting with the Clicker award, and now moving through the Indie Soap Awards and on to the Streamys and Webbys.

A great benefit to web content fans is that it gives us another outlet to discover content across the internet. It also proves how difficult it is to really be on top of what’s going on in WebTV. Going through the nomination process I had only heard of about half of the shows on the list, so even from my perspective it pushed me to sample several shows that were previously completely unknown to me. 

As for the awards itself, I was happy to see that the voting committee took the process very seriously in declaring their winners. For example, before watching the awards (which you can re-watch here) I was sure that Tatyana Ali would take the Lead Female Actress award for Buppies simply off of the number of total nominations for the show (13) and that she’s probably the highest profile actress in the field. (note: I am not taking anything away from her performance. I’ve watched several episodes of Buppies and she’s great in it.) Thus, seeing Rachael Hip-Flores take the win for her angst driven, conflict heavy teen aged character in Anything But Me was pretty awesome and definitely well deserved.

As for our awards, saying that I am thrilled about them would be an understatement. It’s exciting for a writer to see his/her own characters lead to award winning performances. So even though I technically lost in my category, I felt richly rewarded seeing Craig Frank and Taryn O’Neill take home big wins. It was very validating and it gave me a great sense of pride in my craft. At the very least, I must be doing something right.

Fun facts: This is actually the 2nd time I’ve written Craig into an acting award, and the 2nd actress named Taryn that I’ve written into one… so I guess I need to reach out to Taryn Manning.

Anyway let’s not take anything away from the actors. Earlier in the week one person commented to me about how “gripping” the series is. Going into our series, it was pretty evident that the Mark(Craig) x Sara (Taryn) x Adam (Seth Caskey) dynamic would really make or break the tension of the show. To see it executed so well by the three of them as well as being supported so well by our entire crew behind them was definitely rewarding at the very least.  In a later blog post I’ll showcase several of the performances specifically.

For our technical awards winners, Tom Boykin (Sound Design) and Michael Darrow (Editing), I’m thrilled to see them both being recognized for outstanding bodies of work on both fronts. I really encourage film/web series makers out there to reach out to either of these two. They’re both talented (award winning) and reasonable technical experts that are great to work with. Tom can be reached through his website http://www.tomboykin.com, Michael can be reached via twitter (@darkxavier666) or Facebook. You can also email contact at compulsions dot tv and get other contact information.

Annemarie Pazmino in the IT Room set.

One of the big phases of Pre-Production is settling your locations, and one of the first knee jerk reactions is to go with the cheapest (read: FREE) available. Looking at our Season 1, you can see an array of locales but two that really stand out as challenging finds were the Warehouse and the Computer Repair Room. Early on in our pooling of resources we found two such locations that would have cost us nothing… “Great!” we thought, but we soon realized how they were both “Traps.”

The term “Traps”, was spoken often by Producer Robert Grand in Pre-production. In his vast experience in line producing (and it is VAST) he’s come across many such experiences and warned us about falling into them. He described them as Traps because on the surface they appeared great, economical, the easy path, but in reality crossing them would result in more problems and more money in the long run.

Trap #1: The Computer Repair Room – From Day 1, Producer Michael Tohl  spoke about a Computer Repair shop that he was friendly with. Quickly into planning we managed to secure a deal with them to shoot at their working storefront for free but with one big restriction; we could only shoot there at night when they were closed for business.

So what’s wrong with only shooting at night? Well for one you’re doing 7pm to 7am shoot days, and those of you who have been on shoots like these know they are NOT FUN. They are draining for everyone, people move slower, and they are tough to recover from. Also specific to us, we’d have to shoot night for day, which meant not only slowing us down but also we would have to o rent more lighting gear. Thus in reality shooting at the “free” location would have in reality ballooned our budget with extra gear and extra crew time. Thus… a trap.

The Compulsions Crew onset at the Warehouse Location

Trap #2: The Warehouse – Let’s take away from the fact that this was the make or break location of our series, we were willing to put some money into this. The story here starts similar to the IT room, we found a serviceable empty commercial space right away. By commercial space I mean like a store front.  You see a space in a mini-mall open it and it’s just bare, plenty of room to stick poor Seth Caskey in a chair and mess him up right? Sure, but again there was big caveat, it’s a mini-mall store front.

Many of us go to mini-malls every day, they’re great, but are they great to film at? This particular mini-mall is busy; you have a gym upstairs and dry cleaners adjacent. Add the fact that the mall faced a major Hollywood street and you have sound issues all day and pretty much all night.  Plus with big storefront windows it meant lighting problems as well.  Thus again, blocking out all the windows with light and sound would mean more needed gear and a slower pace for our crew so again it would mean more money and again… a Trap.

As a result in both cases we ended up with other locations that we sunk some money into. Both locations were better, easier to work with, required less gear, and thus cheaper in the long run. In indie Web Production nothing is ever truly “free”, so beware of traps.

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