Suddenly, ‘Quarterlife’ is a network show. Hmm.
After Lonelygirl15 you kind of figured the online video hijacking stratagem had played out, to everyone’s amusement.
Did viewers really mind all that much that the bedroom vlogger was an actress, playing out her little dramas in front of the writer and producer?
With Lonelygirl15, it was like going to the carnival and finding out the snakeman wasn’t really a reptile, just some weird guy with some scales stuck to his scalp. Sometimes it’s fun to be a sucker.
Now comes news that “Quarterlife,” the webisode series from “thirtysomething” creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, actually is going on the air — picked up by NBC. Imagine that. How handy that the chapters in each episode add up to the same time occupied by an hourlong network show. And because of the way “Quarterlife” was produced outside the studio system, it appears to be “strike safe” to air.
Yes, this could be a case of serendipity. If the networks turned to the bustling world of Web video looking for replacement material, no doubt the project had a giant neon sign attached to it. Nothing produced so far for the Internet can compete with “Quarterlife” quality-wise. And since the trusted brand of Herskovitz &Zwick made the show as independents, the pickup seems a no-brainer.
But then there’s this: “quarterlife” debuted on MySpace a week ago. The deal with NBC Universal “had been finalized before the (writers) strike” started Nov. 5, The L.A. Times reported.
Herskovitz told the paper the network deal hadn’t been announced partly because no time slot had been set aside. This apparently more important than coming clean to the fawning media that the show was no longer a Web-only property. The Times noted yesterday that ” ‘Quarterlife’ has benefited from reams of favorable press coverage as a pioneer of quality drama on the Web.”
And so at least a week passed with “Quarterlife” headed for the bigs while its makers claimed or implied cool Internet-only status.
The L.A. Times published a curtain-raising story a week ago that made no mention of a network deal or the possibility of one. That Times story of Nov. 11 had this exchange about a sneak preview at USC:
After the screening — which previewed the first hour of “Quarterlife,” in eight-minute segments — audience member Frank Chindamo, an adjunct lecturer at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, asked Herskovitz a simple question:
”To me it looked exactly like an hour of TV with six commercial breaks in it,” Chindamo said. “Did you do that on purpose?”
Herskovitz didn’t hesitate.
”You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he said.
”I don’t know how to create real emotion in less than an hour — I know how to do it in two hours, I know how to do it in an hour — I don’t know how to do it in a half-hour, and I really don’t know how to do it in eight minutes. So we made a decision to stick with what we know.”
There are several layers of uncharitable interpretation available here; connect the dots according to your level of cynicism.
Two decades in the Hollywood trades tells me the snake man is alive and well and vlogging away.
Good show anyway. Be sure to check out “Quarterlife” before your Tivo gets involved.
Their so-called ‘quarterlife’ goes online
TonightMonday night comes the big premiere of Marshall Herskovitz’s webisode series “quarterlife,” about college grads facing the big bad real world. Pumped up? We thought so. Please keep reading anyway.
The venues for the 8-minute show are MySpace and quarterlife.com. MySpace gets dibs, in a bid to access the social network’s massive audience.
“We only care about our site,” Herskovitz said at a recent USC screening (according to the L.A. Times). “We don’t care about MySpace, because they’re not paying us. But they’re bringing us a lot of eyeballs, so it’s worth something.”
quarterlife.com calls itself “A new community for artists, thinkers, and doers.” Visitors are invited to create profiles, and then upload videos and images. But mostly it’s home to a great-looking screen on which to unspool the series. The trailer shows young people getting through life together and blogging about it. “You blog to exist,” the lady says to the audience. Yeech.
This stuff looks familiar, straight from the network template for young adult women. No doubt “quarterlife” has heart and no doubt it’s manipulative. The show might be good but don’t expect a format breakthough from these guys.
Herskovitz, you may or may not recall, created “My So-Called Life
Paying for the new twentysomething series are big league advertisers such as Toyota and Pepsi.
Herskovitz wrote an opinion piece for the Times announcing that he and Zwick were done with network television. “Networks today exert a level of creative control unprecedented in the history of the medium …,” he said. “The problem, of course, is that these executives often have little background or qualification for making creative decisions. … This season’s new shows have been a good indicator of how successful that strategy is.”
He went on about the importance of the “quarterlife” experiment:
“We’ve worked very hard, and spent a great deal of our own money, to make it as good as anything we’ve ever done on television. And we’ve gotten calls from every guild and virtually every producer we know, all of whom are curious to see if this little experiment can succeed. Because if it does, it will prove that there’s a way to independently produce, finance and distribute ambitious content on the Internet.”
Of course, Herskovitz and Co. have the money and power to bolt from the nets and make a credible Internet series. Pretty much everyone else wanting to work in professional episodic video has no choice but to work for Big Media.
YouTube fun aside, the reality is almost all of the (legal) watchable stuff on the Web comes from real television. The networks repurpose their shows without additional compensation for the people who created that content. That’s what the current writers strike is all about.
One theory I’ve heard here in L.A. is that the networks are in no hurry to settle the walkout because they’re saving money they would have poured into their new crop of flop shows. Reality TV is cheap, relatively, and enough viewers will put up with it to keep the ads coming. Check out these comments about the strike savings from Peter Chernin, president of Fox parent News Corp.
The networks seem to be enjoying their speedy downhill ride. The strike’s disruptions to their primetime shows — and the defection of major talent such as Herskovitz & Zwick — are just two more bits of inspiration for viewers to conclude they have better things to do than watch network TV. Power off.
CinemaNow — Legal Movie Downloads
CinemaNow Free Trial. 100% Legal. 100% Video.
‘Prom Queen’ has date with Amazon Unbox
“Prom Queen,”
During its 80-episode run on MySpace, the series was sponsored by the likes of New Line and Fujii water. Episodes whizzed by at 90 seconds each. The Unbox feature version runs 2 hours-plus, without commercials. The series follows five prom queen candidates as they cope with “love, gossip and betrayal.” The finale came a few weeks ago with the big dance debacle. A new series with the same cast is set in Mexico and debuts in August.
“Prom Queen” received broadband Emmy nominations the past two years. Eisner’s new media studio Vuguru produced and distributed in association with the webisode creatives at Big Fantastic (“Sam Has 7 Friends”).
Co-creator Chris McCaleb told The Daily Reel, “Perhaps the greatest value the Internet has yet offered is the ability for anyone with a great idea and a camera to show their work to the world.”
Eisner’s non-statement on the Unbox deal reads: “By teaming with Amazon Unbox, we are making it possible for ‘Prom Queen’ fans to download and watch the entire series as a feature-length title whenever they want. The wonderful thing about producing in the new-media landscape is that fans can reach shows like ‘Prom Queen’ on a number of platforms. Amazon Unbox gives shows like ‘Prom Queen’ longevity and serves as a new mass medium and unique way for the show’s followers to watch.”
Amazon’s digital video download service requires Windows XP or Vista and works via TiVo’s computer-connected boxes. Sorry, forward-thinkers, no Macs allowed.