"Using your experiences on this project and relating your programmes to other webisodes you have researched, discuss how taking account of the online audience affects the process of showing creative work"
For our project I was asked to manufacture an internet micro-series. The choice to broadcast a show/film etc online rather than on television, exhibitions or other forms of media screening affects the production and creative process quite largely. Websites like YouTube and Vimeo have expanded the methods in which these shows can be broadcast. Videos now no longer have to conform to time constraints, or censored subject matter (as they would have to for television). Deadlines can be created and changed, however the production teams see fit. Uploading and distributing your product is completely free, making anyone with a video camera essentially a 'director'. 'Web 2.0' has completely changed the conventions of how people see media products. The limitations in place before were vast, now there is a way to screen whatever you wish to almost (and probably soon to be) the entire world.
Some media productions have grasped this concept and have used it to become popular, when without it they would never had succeeded. These include the shows I looked at around the beginning of the project such as; 'Chad Vader', 'We Need Girlfriends', 'The Guild' and others. All of these shows have taken this distribution power and used it to become more popular than many television shows. This shows the start of the internet taking over what and how we watch things. When these internet shows become more popular than all television media, television itself will become unnecessary and be made redundant.
Advertising (that was once expensive and time consuming) is now becoming free. Social networking sites are now promoting advertising as with Facebook you can now create groups -such as the ones I made for Detention Deficit - advertising products completely free. This is a useful tool when producing an internet show as when you upload something to YouTube, due to the sheer quantity of videos on the internet it is quite unlikely that ours would have got noticed without appropriate Facebook (and Blogger, Twitter) advertising. I used my friends to start the popularity of our show, this is a very new and interesting point when thinking about internet videos. It is often people close to the creators that are the first to see it, and spread the word, as they are the ones who will listen to us about our product. When they watch it, if they think it is good they will spread the news and that is often how internet virals get popular. Before the internet, only the best looking, highest budget shows would get a shot at being broadcast on television, and only the top ones of these would get advertising, using the internet has made things easy for those with less money.
One of the best examples of this Facebook marketing is the internet show (now) sponsored by Microsoft: The Guild. They have used this social network marketing scheme to advertise their show to viewers and possible new watchers. These social and sharing sites are now becoming more and more interlinked with each other. For my project I was able to link Detention Deficit's Facebook page with its Twitter page so that anything I posted on the prior, came up on the latter and vice versa.
This is a Facebook fan-page for The Guild, much like the one our group used when promoting Detention Deficit:
The below image is a prime example of integrating websites together and cross platforming. As you can see, there are adverts showing seasons of the show for sale on DVD. However, it also shows how they are now advertising the seasons for sale at the 'iTunes Store'. This is another example of internet domination, because the iTunes store is an online shop where you can download files directly to your computer rather than having to do go out and buy them.


Our group had a budget of £50 at the start of the project, without these various internet related free advertising methods I would never have been able to spread the word to people enough so that they actually watched our episodes. For example, advertising in newspapers or on television would have been far too expensive so these sites were the perfect way to present our product for free. Coming back to my point on the internet making things international if I had applied for an advertisement in a newspaper or on television, the public who would view it would all be local. By using internet methods I was able to broadcast information about our show to anywhere in the world that had an internet connections. As a result of this there were people viewing our show from Chile, Poland and the US as well as the bulk being from the UK.
Another advantage of internet marketing and viewing is it's much easier to view and analyze statistics. Where, when and who view our videos is instantly recorded and available for us to see. From the two images below I can clearly see that the most interest in our show is directed at episode two, followed closely by episode three. Considering the next two most popular videos are the third teaser trailer and the preview for the third episode this shows that episode one was not so popular, suggesting that my videos got better (and more popular) the more I produced. This goes alongside the clever program on YouTube that tracks what people watch after they watch a particular video. This creates a 'related video' section and allows all of the videos to be interlinked.


These websites are not only a good way of obtaining statistics, but also user feedback. Each one has a comments section in which viewers can add their own feedback as to what they thought of our show. This is one of the most revolutionary things about the internet. Where as TV shows may have phone lines in which people may leave their feedback, this would generally only attract a certain type of audience (and generally good comments). The internet makes this easier and as the commenter/feedback leaver feels completely detached from what they're writing (i.e. they aren't talking on the end of a phone, and the world can't hear their voice) they feel free to leave far more honest opinions. Also, the increased ease at which they can leave comments means there is a much wider variety of people stating their opinion.
I had restrictions on what I was allowed to put into my finished product. For example, I was told that I had to remove all swearing and offensive material from the show due to some of our audience's ages being too young, but the internet has such a wide variety of communities that whatever I had put up would have found an audience. This removes the boundaries I would have to have followed if I were putting our product on television.
The ability to show work online and produce whatever you want will unlock unlimited possibilities for the media industry. It is already possible to see this happening, with some socially unacceptable/shocking websites that are now common knowledge. The internet is revolutionising the way we see media.