There’s been a lot of recent blog posts alluding to the rumor that the web series is dying. Most of the articles are looked at from the business side of it.

I’d like to add my two cents into the discussion as a content creator myself and a “small grasshopper” in regards to putting material online. From my own point of view, as someone who has been in the independent film world for a long time, creating web series is the best single damn thing to ever happen.

Is it a crowded space?

Sure.

Is it hard or near impossible to make a buck or attract advertising or sponsorship?

Of course.

Are the huge view counts attainable on a consistent basis?

No.

Hard? Challenging? Feel like your banging your head against the wall impossible?

Yes!

But this is nothing compared to the indi film world. You’ve got - dried up film financing, artistic compromises made for investors, diva talent, a distribution platform that has dried up, and has been proclaimed dead - an atmosphere of downright swindler ship with most low-budget foreign distribution companies, an over saturation of the marketplace leading films to wither on the vine, all of these are a daily occurrence in the indi film world with far, far more dollars on the line.

Perhaps it’s a result of me still being “buzzed” from being a newcomer in the online video world, but the sense of creative satisfaction I’ve gotten in the past few months has surpassed all my experiences in the indi film arena.  I’m making a show that I like, not what other cooks in the kitchen want to see, I’m making it with friends, shooting it in the style I want to, and above and beyond anything else, enjoying myself. This is not even taking into account the viewer ship we’ve gotten, which, while by web standards is fairly minuscule, is for my own experience in showing films to festival audiences, far and away amazing.

No DVD screeners that fail to work, no dealing with unscrupulous sales agents who won’t return calls, no barrier to pushing your material out to an audience. The ability to be completely and totally in control of your destiny.

Is it still hard to make money online? Do you still need some kind of recognizable talent or element? Is it still a momentously uphill battle? Of course, and those debates and challenges have been written by voices in other far more established blogs. But for web series creators who have been around for a few years, who have become disillusioned that things haven’t changed, don’t forget the tremendous power that doing these shows have given you - and don’t forget what the alternative could be - because doing a web show, with all the inherent challenges in doing so, is far, far more creatively satisfying than any alternative in the independent realm.

So “Meet the Mayfarers” moves in a new direction today. The story so far has been one continuous ensemble of the family struggling to live together to get the inheritance.

Every few months or so however, we focus on one of the characters in their own story outside of the main plot.  This first one, “The Penguin Chronicles” showcases Nick’s struggles in the entertainment business, made even more difficult now that he’s living at home.

Since the show has been shooting on a fairly regular basis now for over a year and a half, I wanted to make sure we’d be able to film even if we couldn’t get the entire family cast together. That was the genesis of these “Solo” episodes. Even though they are stand alone pieces,  a lot of the plots and characters introduced here are woven into the main ensemble episodes down the road.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little narrative detour in the show.

My definition of a great movie is solely based on one thing:  Is it rewatchable?

Forget if the “Subtext was important” or it was about some historical event, or an “important’ social issue. All that matters for me at least is - after I finish watching it, could I pop it right back into the DVD player and watch it again?

That’s why the movies that usually win all the awards never do it for me as much as the ones that are just additively re-watchable.

What’s your definition of a great movie?

One question I get asked constantly is why I created a show with a name so similar to a feature film I directed a few years ago. Many people assume that one must be a sequel to the other, or they take place in the same word, or that I simply just ran out of family name ideas.

The truth of the matter is a little more subtle than that. But to answer the questions: a) No, they don’t take place in the same world b) No, one is not a sequel to the other.

“The Wayfarers” was a comedy/drama feature film I shot a few years ago. It was the story of a family who are reunited when the dying matriarch of the family wants to stage a “remembrance ceremony” for herself before she passes away. The story veers from comedy to seriousness throughout the film. Tonally it is completely different from my current show. While there is absurd stuff going on, for the most part I tried to ground the film in reality.  It is a “slice of life” character study which is as much a study of the seaside villages of New England and the fishing life as it is the character dynamics.

Making “The Wayfarers” was a special time. I had been writing commercial spec screenplays for a number of years and came to a point where I wanted to do something that was straight from the heart, that was totally “me.” The story is not autobiographical, though there are many true to life and autobiographical elements in certain situations, and character colorings.

Even years later I look back at the eleven days we shot that film as one of the highlights of my life. I was doing what I loved to do, and the cast and crew truly bonded as a family in a magical seaside town.

Cut to a few years later and I was coming off of directing a film that was not close to my heart. I had been dealing with the hassles of distribution and bureaucracy of the film business. Most of all, I wasn’t having fun. When I decided to make a web show, I wanted to do a project for me, once again. But this time, being on the web, I knew that instead of embracing a “heartfelt” type of screenwriting, I decided to embrace my inner absurdity. I wanted to take the experience I had on “The Wayfarers” and put it in a fun, funny and comically bizarre context. Whereas “Wayfarers” was grounded in the real world, “Meet the Mayfarers” would be totally absurd, with a deliberate lack of logic. Unlike the film before it, the characters would not be people you would care for - they’d be utterly irredeemable. If I felt like the story zigging one off the wall way - well sure, why not? The point was to do something and have a blast shooting it.

And the reason I wanted to do a story about a family, even in a bizarre setting, was because I had so much fun on “The Wayfarers.” I wanted to return to the fun and sense of satisfaction I had on that shoot. I wanted to do something right off the bat that would be a “good luck charm.” That would ensure that the web show experience would be as good as the film.

So what did I do?

I flipped the W.

And there we go. Two totally different projects. While some of the foundation of them are the same, they are miles apart, both because they are each made for different mediums, and because their goals are different.

And, while I am a huge fan of crossovers - there won’t be any for these projects.

At least…not yet.

“Writing is re-writing.” How many times have we heard that phrase before? And it’s true. The first draft of a script is never the final one, and the real magic comes from looking at it weeks later from a different perspective, and reshuffling scenes, cutting some, and adding some more. It is critical.

And yet, conversely, the idea of “Re-shooting” is somehow a no-no. The standard mode of thinking is that, if a film has to be “re-shot” that means that something was wrong with the original shoot. It is a Scarlett letter on a filmmaker who attempts to do this.

This mode of thinking is outdated and wrong. A lot of that stems from the corporate backwards way most studios run. Every word, phrase, and story beat has to be planned and approved months ahead of time, with no movement or room left for improvisation. I find that the one of the biggest bursts of inspiration I get creatively is seeing the first cut of the film. When its on its feet and the characters are moving and talking one can instantly see what works and what doesn’t. One can easily cut the fat out of the scenes, and streamline the narrative. I find that the film is now “alive” and I get ideas for new scenes. I’m inspired by what the actors are doing, and get excited about new ways the story could go. These are things you can’t see on the page.

This is how the creative process works. It’s totally natural. And smart filmmakers should budget for re-shoots. Even if the first cut works perfectly (and it almost never does) there is a benefit to adding new cutaways, shots, and potential scenes. True, its difficult. Actors and crew are onto other projects. Hairstyles have changes, as have seasons, but its a challenge that is beneficial.

And the top filmmakers budget for this. Woody Allen always schedules at least three days of re-shoots on every one of his films, months after the original cut.

I did this on “Mayfarers.” In the original cut we never saw Porter Mayfarer, the grandfather. In re-watching the first cut I saw how much this phantom character affected the other characters’ lives, and thought how great it would be to have cut-aways to him, and eventually, episodes about him.

I hope that with new, cheaper technologies filmmakers will look at the filming process more like the writing process, and throw off the corporate rigidness that has dominated the field the last 100 years, and instead embrace the idea of re-shoots.

Re-shoots are not a dirty word. They are a necessity.

I’ve been juggling a lot of balls lately, gearing up to shoot episodes of our new show. I’m looking forward to it. Major goals for this go around for me is learning more about working with green screen, and expanding the characters we have in this new show.

Pre-production is the single more important key of production. I always like to be as prepared as I can possibly be, so that when I’m on the set I can quickly shift gears if need be. That’s another reason I love doing web shows. There is a level of playfulness and spontaneousness involved which is far more enjoyable than a feature. Also, instead of a mammoth month long shoot, they’re just weekend shoots.

In any case, other people can take the golf courses, ballgame, or beaches on their weekends. For me, shooting new films and shows is the best weekend for me.

Tonight I’m screening a double feature for the cast and crew - of both “Meet the Mayfarers” and my feature film, “The Wayfarers.” I’m excited to see so many friends I’ve made over the past few years with these projects. On both ventures, the cast and crew bonded together and became like a family.

On “The Wayfarers” it was over the course of a compressed focused period of time. A time where all of us lived in a seaside village, on a kind of film making vacation. On “Meet the Mayfarers” it was over the course of a year and a half, as we would gather together for fun weekends of shooting, an island of joy in our schedules where we could hang out and have a blast.

I think to an anecdote I heard about a filmmaker who is known for his semi-low budget movies. He met with a producer who kept telling him to hire all these other “professional” people. To which he replied, “If you’re not working with your friends, what’s the point?”

Well said.

I’m really looking forward to the screenings tonight. A great time to catch up with friends, reminisce about old times, and plan for future film making adventures.

As media people we often get really excited about images. My flatscreen TV is 1080! The Red camera shoots at 4 K! Marvel at how real IMAX can feel! Look at how beautiful and crisp that beach looks on the screen!

We often forget that beauty is right outside our door. Today is a beautiful summer day. Best to try to put the computer down and enjoy it while you can. Real life is much more more beautiful than 24 frames per second.

“That often happens when you make films. If you try to make the film to accommodate something outside yourself, or please an audience or please the critical community  or for commercial reasons or even artistic goals - if you’re doing it for some calculated reason that you’re not comfortable with and you strike out with it, you feel really bad.”

- Woody Allen

This is a quote that I knew of, and failed to listen to on a few occasions. And he’s right. The only thing that matters is passion. You can’t control the response to your film, you can’t control what happens when it goes out there to the world. The only thing you can control is the passion for your project. And in the end, that’s all that matters.

I’ve been doing something startling to myself over the past few years - I’ve been watching TV. And I rarely, if ever, watch movies. And from talking to friends and audiences, it seems I’m not the only one. And this isn’t necessarily an issue of the hassles of “driving to the theater” or theater prices, etc  - but more of storytelling in general.

This is most surprising to me. As a filmmaker, I’ve always loved film, and for me, TV was always in the backseat, or at least riding shotgun. But over the past five or six years that has completely changed. I enjoy the long, drawn out story arcs. I love getting lost (no pun intended) in a multitudes of characters’ lives. With the rare exception, from a writing perspective, even the best movies are quite easy to see the strings of the narrative structure behind them, and where they are going.

Of course this is nothing new - serialized content has been around for decades on film, and even before that. Star Wars was a reworking of a lot of Flash Gordon serials, and was in it’s own way, a log story arc.

Yet in TV I am constantly surprised. Surprised both in narrative - with many twists and turns, but even in more straightforward shows, surprised in the different type of characters, with various degrees of morals, who are more true to life and fascinating than most movie characters.

I always find it frustrating in even the most laugh out loud comedy feature films where the characters have to change in the end to become “good.” While sometimes this works, often times in a very funny broad movie it throws the tone off - and yet filmmakers and studio execs feel compelled to do this because they have only two hours with the characters, and they need to please the most amount of people.

I certainly don’t mean to say that TV is the death of film - but the many amazing shows should force filmmakers to be more unique and innovative. And I wonder where will audience’s tastes be in ten years from now? Will we all be loving watching ten second story arcs? For my part at least, I’ll continue to try to go to films, but my true joy is spending a weekend burning through a season’s box set worth of my favorite shows.

And I don’t think I’m the only one that feels this way.