Thanks, Dave. That was a totally interesting and inspiring read.
When people are asked to share their story, generally everyone assumes that it
is a success story. In my case, I am getting a lot of viewers for my web series
and I make some money out of it. However, I do not consider the number of views
or amount of money as a quality parameter. I know I have to improve a lot in
different areas. My videos still got the views because I think, web series
world is different.
I wanted to make zero budget web series with the help of my handycam and
laptop. I started thinking about it during October 2009. I found that blip.tv
is a good way to host a web series, distribute it, and make money out of it.
There are other ways to do these things, but let me share my blip story as I
have experienced only that.
Unlike Youtube, blip.tv puts ads to any video episode you upload. However, they
like only episodic contents and not unrelated videos. Revenue sharing is 50:50.
That is, blip takes 50% share and gives the rest 50% share to the video
creator. Revenue started appearing after the views reached the count of 800 or
so. Blip considers one view from one IP address. That is, tricks like
refreshing many times, won’t increase the number of views. Another fact is that
the views from US gather more revenue. I am based in India and when my friends
and fans located in India see my web series, it increases the view count but
not much the revenue.
As I wanted to do a zero budget web series, I wrote the script, did the
direction, edited the videos, and even acted in all roles JI chose office
politics as my subject. I titled my web series as Bose is always right. It is
one of the earliest web series in India. Bose is a common name in India and is
pronounced like the way we pronounce Boss. There is a boss whose name is Bose,
an employee who does not have any name, an HR person whose name is Helmet and a
driver whose name is Speed. The first episode premiered on November 1, 2009 at
http://surag.blip.tv. To begin with, there were some views and less money.
Though it told a big story, each episode too was independent as I dreamt one of
them will become viral and will gather attention.
My plan was to complete the first season with 20 episodes. I was not gathering
any extraordinary views till 13th episode and I felt normal was boring to
people. The web series did not have any good lighting or sound techniques. The
characters like cab driver who ferry employees were familiar to Indian audience
only. The official life of these characters, though exaggerated to some extent
to get a humor touch, did not gather much international audience. I then made
the mistake of catering to everyone. I introduced an extra terrestrial
character and my insistence on zero budget meant the character had just a mask
and a jacket to look extra terrestrial!
I uploaded the 14th episode with this extraterrestrial character and the next
day just checked the view statistics. To my surprise, in a single day, it
crossed all the views I had for my last 13 episodes. I initially thought there
was some mistake in the system. Then I searched for my web series in the search
engines. Well, I found that my web series was seen by a lot of people because
someone did not like it and tweeted about it. It was tweeted and retweeted by
many people, it was blogged and reblogged by many others, and it was spread
across the world through social network sites, mails, and so on. People were
curious to know why the person communicating about my web series to them did
not like it. Yes, it became viral though not the way I would have liked it. I
got international views and more views meant more money.
I understood the power of Web 2.0. I understood that online video was
different. No one would send you the ticket of the movie they did not like. But
everyone will send you the link of the web series they did not like and would
want you to have a look at it. After some days the trend seemed to change. I
got comments and mails across the world from people who started to like my web
series. They did find some positives. They congratulated me as I was doing
everything alone. They felt my contribution from India was needed as it was
different from other web series from West. They felt my web series reflected
some of the situations they encounter in their work place.
As decided early, I did my season finale with 20th episode on March 8, 2010. It
was a fascinating journey and I was very thrilled to accomplish something that
I always wanted to. Yes, just because it got some views doesn’t mean that I
should stop from improving. I will do a season 2 or do another web series and
this time I will go out to shoot rather than confining most of the action to
indoors. Yes, I will remember the advices that I gathered from the recent
thread of discussion on “Shooting in Public”. J
Cheers,
Surag Ramachandran
Bose is always right: http
