--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Roxanne Darling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Bill said: > > For some reason, I can watch Jonny chat for 45 minutes or Phil talk > about his tech ideas for an hour with no problem... Yet I found myself > struggling through 8 at a time of scripted "follow these characters > through their 'adventures'" type of programming. It has to do with the > fack that Jonny and Phil are live. You don't know what's going to > happen. > > I think that is an interesting observation Bill - part of it is bc it > is live but I also think part of it is you know them - you have a > personal connection with them, not to mention their topics.
Yes. Absolutely on-point, Rox. :) The entertainment value is that you get to experience your friends doing their thing. You're automatically invested when you go "Let me go see what Jonny's up to on his show". It doesn't so much matter what happens on the show as much as "you were there" for what happened or you got to watch it in an archive. That's one of the things that television misses out on, compared to the net, because there's actual interaction between the showmakers and the audience, whether via email, IM, twitter, social site.... The topic relevance is important as well, because you might hear a new perspective on something that you've been talking about recently. That's another good thing about "live"... The conversations are entirely current. In the case of 'Quarterlife', there's so much post-production that's necessary, I would assume an episode airs a couple of weeks behind when the script for that episode was written... also assuming they don't have several episodes buffered "in the can". So if opensocial launched, it would be weeks before that information hit their plot, assuming they were attempting to be current. There would have to be something about the characters or the plot line that got me to invest in the show for me to have anywhere near the same level of interest in a scripted show. However, in the case of http://SomethingToBeDesired.com or http://TheBurg.com , I'm invested in those shows, not because of the plot or characters, but because my friends make them and I'm interested in their craft and what they choose to do with their production styles and storylines. Again, it ends up being personal investment instead of just watching something for no particular reason. > We are seeing an increasingly short attention span with our multitasking > hyper-stimulated lifestyles. You said, "You don't know what's going to > happen" but at the same time, you do know - in the sense that your > friends are a known quantity and quality - you know your time is not > wasted bc even if nothing outrageous happens, you have shared energy > with people you like/love. You won't have completely "wasted" your > time, which is how I sometimes feel after watching "entertainment." Absolutely. I couldn't stop watching Drew Olanoff walk around the halls of PodCamp Philly! :O I tried, but I just couldn't stop. I kept seeing people I knew in the background, Drew would stop and chat with people or attend a session... It was all relevant, so it was all interesting. NONE of my time was wasted. :) > The challenge for producers, big and small, is how to capture > someone's interest (emotional or intellectual) in a shorter and > shorter amount of time so that you even have a chance to make that > personal connection. At this point, I think the best way to do that, and 'Quarterlife' has a chance to do this on MySpace, is to have the actors interact with the viewers/members/users in-character as individual myspace members. The problem with this for a scripted production is that their characters aren't actually developed past the script. You can't ask one of those characters WHY they did a certain thing or how they feel about something, because they'd have to consult the writers, and that would be extra time (read: money) for the writers to develop deeper aspects of their personalities. Again, this isn't a problem when the show's authentic and not scripted. You can ask Bre Pettis <http://BrePettis.com> why he made a T-Shirt Cannon, and he can tell you. You can ask Jonny why he wanted to talk about Creative Commons, and he can tell you. > This does not seem to apply to things that are truly short form and > purely comedic, as evidenced by the higher viewing numbers of > frenchmaid and ninja. Comedy is in its own world, but as we see, that > is not easy to do! > > Rox > > -- > Roxanne Darling > "o ke kai" means "of the sea" in hawaiian > 808-384-5554 > Video --> http://www.beachwalks.tv > Company -- > http://www.barefeetstudios.com > http://www.twitter.com/roxannedarling > > > [snipped] > Yep. Everybody likes a good laugh, so comedy is just one of those things well-suited for internet entertainment. Drama's much more difficult, especially when you don't have the luxury of a pilot, which is often an hour long to begin with and sets up the characters, their location, relationships and potential plotlines. If you don't know why the USS Enterprise is on its 5-year mission, why should you care about the crew or the episodes? -- Bill Cammack http://CammackMediaGroup.com
