Why Isn't 'The Line' a Bigger Hit?

What's your theory on why 'The Line,' a funny, well-done series of seven short episodes, isn't racking up more views?

The series was produced by 'SNL' cast members, and produced by Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video. It features several recognizable actors -- including Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis. It was directed by Seth Meyers.

They got big publicity earlier in the week in The New York Times. They paid to send out a press release on PR Newswire. They had distribution on sites like FunnyOrDie.com, YouTube, and Crackle. The series is funny -- I watched four or five episodes in one sitting.

But on YouTube, the episodes on average have 43,000 views. On Crackle, the average is 18,000 views an episode.

If they were depending purely on showing advertising around and during the episodes, that kind of traffic isn't going to produce much scratch. Lucky that they signed a sponsor for the series, Sony Pictures (Crackle's parent company), which uses it to advertise some upcoming movies.

What isn't working?

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

I'd pinpoint two things...the second more significant than the first.

1. Not enough of a cliff-hanger or hook to carry you from one episode to the next.

2. The name. Try Googling "The Line" and see what comes up. You get Johnny Cash and a lot of other stuff, but not this series. Now try Googling "Ask a Ninja" or "Homestar Runner" and see what happens. Those Web series are the first result.

"The Line" is a good name for a movie or TV show, when you have a studio or network to spend millions advertising it and promoting it. People know to find it at theaters on August 22nd, or on TV on NBC.

But on the Internet, Google is the way many people find stuff, and if you don't appear on that first page of Google results, people won't keep hunting. I submit you need to give your series a distinctive name that doesn't already produce lots of Google results. (What did the words "Homestar Runner" mean before the animated series started up?)

Here's a link to Episode 1 of "The Line."

Interested in hearing your thoughts...

Sundance Panel on Digital Opportunities for Creatives

This afternoon's panel at the New Frontier was a heap of fun. I especially enjoyed the interplay between Maria Maggenti, a writer/director in the true indie mode (her last movie, 'Puccini for Beginners,' was made with InDigEnt and shown at Sundance two years ago), and Evan Spiridellis, co-founder of JibJab, a digital "microstudio" in Venice Beach.

Maria talked about her experience making a three-minute film for cell phones -- she loved it -- but asked Evan a lot of questions about how JibJab has cultivated an audience (and an e-mail list) over time, and how they're making money from their work.

A few bullet points that stood out from the conversation (and the audience questions):

- It's still hard to find industry types who "get it," and are willing to experiment with new production/marketing/distribution models. Evan referred to Walt Disney's embrace of TV in the 1950s as a way to promote his movies... and I think it's still unclear which studio will follow in Disney's footsteps with the Net.

- Though Paramount and its MTV Films division could be a good candidate. MTV Films released 'Jackass 2.5' in December directly to the Net, as a full-length streaming feature. The Internet release (free, but ad-supported) was followed by a DVD and paid download offering. (The movie didn't have a theatrical release at all.) David Harris from MTV New Media said that there were three issues they encountered with the experiment: first was that someone posted the film to BitTorrent almost immediately, which meant that Paramount/MTV lost control over it (no way to tally views or deliver ads); second, that the site's age verification process created hassles for viewers; and third, that to watch the movie during its Internet premiere required downloading a new bit of software (Microsoft's Silverlight video player.)

- Evan noted that JibJab's goal when it makes its short animated music videos is to have one visual and one textual joke in every line of the song. I mentioned "Kirsner's 10-Second Rule of Internet Video," which says that if you don't give someone a reason for continuing to watch in the first ten seconds, they're going to close the window, and you've lost them for good. (Think about TV, typically thought of as the medium for short-attention spans. But when a sitcom or drama is starting, you likely give it a minute or two to get you involved. Not so on the Net.)

- David talked about the idea of navigable documentaries...MTV and Electronic Arts are working on one about videogamers, in which viewers will be able to dive deeply into topics (and games) they care about, skimming over those they don't.

- Someone in the audience asked about subscription models for indie content. We couldn't really think of any great examples (beyond porn and sports) of someone who is cranking out content and charging a monthly fee.

- John Pattyson with Ustream Entertainment sounded like he was happy to leave the world of Nielsen ratings behind; he and Evan agreed that it's nice to have real data about how many people are viewing your video on the Net (even if most sites still don't have good data about how much of it they're watching, versus just starting to watch.) Evan also said that having comments from viewers is nice, but the real sign that you've done something great is when they decide to pass it along and tell others about it.

- We reinforced the importance of collecting e-mail addresses (and perhaps ZIP codes, too) from people who express any sort of interest in your work. When JibJab's first viral video took off in 2004, they already had a list of 130,000 e-mail addresses that they could notify whenever they released new work. I likened it to LL Bean and Crate & Barrel: catalog retailers understand the importance of maintaining a mailing list; creatives are just starting to.

- Not every filmmaker is going to want to become a DIY demon and take control of their own destiny... there's a spectrum of entrepreneurship, and some will be game to think creatively about business opportunities, while others will want someone else (a studio or distributor) to do it for them.

- We talked about the model of releasing work on the Internet and then producing a DVD. JibJab did that with some success, and so has AskANinja.

- A filmmaker came up to me afterward and asked a few questions about promoting a documentary that won't be out for another year or so. I suggested that there was no downside in starting plant seeds around the Internet, sharing clips or full interviews (longer than what will end up in the film) with communities that care about the topic (it's about a paralyzed fellow -- didn't get much more than that.) Sharing this free content is a way of building interest and buzz, and also collecting e-mail addresses of people who'll appreciate a notice when the doc is available on DVD, or being shown on TV or in theaters.

- Joel Heller from Docs That Inspire was in the audience, and I saw him wielding a recorder -- so he may have audio at some point.

A few more notes from the Future of Film conference

Some last notes from yesterday's Future of Film event in LA...

- I had a chance to talk with “Ask a Ninja” co-creator Kent Nichols after his panel. We talked about the competition between professional and amateur/semi-pro content creators online, which I think will intensify this year. Kent didn’t seem worried. “I’m just fighting for five minutes of people’s time,” he said.

I asked him whether he’d played around with Joost. He said he had, but that he isn’t convinced it will take off. He did say that the concept appeals to media companies like Disney, though, because it’s like TV all over again, with a channel metaphor and everything.

- Director Jason Kohn, whose first movie, “Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)”, won the documentary grand jury prize at Sundance this year, was the day’s most passionate (and profane) speaker.

He wants to shoot movies on film, and have them seen in theaters. With his documentary, which focuses on corruption and kidnapping in Brazil, “I was reacting against the future of film. The future of film at the time was video, and I thought the future sucked. So I decided to change the future.” He said he was depressed after listening to all the day’s talk about digital distribution, and watching movies alone on tiny handheld screens. “This was made to be projected in a theater in front of hundreds of fucking people,” he said. “We’re entertainers. We’re not fucking drug dealers, just fulfilling demand.”

Kohn is a real firebrand. He worked on the movie over five years. After the first edit, he and his investors realized he didn’t have a compelling ending. The movie didn’t make it into the Toronto International Film Festival. So he went back to Brazil, and eventually met the dangerous character who provides a solid ending for the movie. Kohn doesn’t have distribution for 'Manda Bala' yet, but it sounds like talks are still pretty active.

- Tim Sarnoff, who runs Sony Pictures Imageworks, was the final speaker of the day. He said that the company’s performance-capture abilities had been improving with each movie. With ‘Polar Express,’ recording the motion and facial expressions of a single character was a challenge. For the upcoming ‘Beowulf,’ there were scenes where they did mocap for 20 characters – including horses – simultaneously. That film, Sarnoff said, required 28 days of performance capture work. With ‘Surf’s Up,’ the upcoming documentary-style animated movie about penguins who surf, they did key-frame (standard) cg-animation, but they did performance-capture on the camera. The idea was to have the feeling of a real documentary cameraman shooting the scenes, which of course had all been created in the computer. I’ll look forward to hearing more about that.

But Sarnoff said that he doesn’t want people to focus too much on technical innovations like those. As visual effects and computer animation mature, “the future of film is in the performances, and the characters you can create.”

New Edition of 'The Future of Web Video' is Out

Just wrapped up a major update to my book, 'The Future of Web Video,' barely in time for the South by Southwest Film Festival, and some other fun events I'll be involved with this spring.

What's new? There's updated info about the iTunes Store slowly opening to independent content and YouTube's plans to start sharing revenue with creators; updated stats and forecasts; changes to the overview of sites that help indie producers make money; and new interviews with Metacafe co-founder Arik Czerniak, filmmaker Lance Weiler, and Kent Nichols, the co-creator of the popular "Ask a Ninja" video series. If you don't have a copy yet, either in annotatable paperback form or as a bevvy of fast-downloading digital bits, now's the time.

The new table of contents is below.

Table of Contents

Tuning in to the Future of Web Video

Web Video: Opportunities and Challenges (Chart)

> The Revenue Equation

Getting Paid: Sites that Help Indie Producers Make Money (Chart)

Perspective: Steven Starr, Co-founder and CEO, Revver

Perspective: Arik Czerniak, Co-Founder, Metacafe

Perspective: Kent Nichols, Co-Creator, "Ask a Ninja"

> Going Viral

Perspective: JibJab Media Co-Founder Gregg Spiridellis

Perspective: Fritz Grobe, Co-Founder of Eepybird and Co-Creator of “Extreme Mentos and Diet Coke Experiments”

Conversation: “Evolution of Dance” creator Judson Laipply

Perspective: Ahree Lee, Experimental Video Artist

> Beyond the PC

Web Video on TV: Reaching the Couch Potato Audience (Chart)

Perspective: Jeremy Allaire, Founder and CEO, Brightcove

Conversation: Jim Barton, Co-Founder and CTO, TiVo

Perspective: Shawn Strickland, Vice President, Verizon FiOS TV

Can You See Me Now? Crossing the Cellular Chasm

> Movies

Perspective: Waterborne director Ben Rekhi on Web Feature Films

Conversation: Writer-Director Lance Weiler

Perspective: Joe Swanberg, Independent Film Director

Conversation: Jonathan Rothbart and Stuart Maschwitz, Co-Founders of The Orphanage

> Advertising

Conversation: Steve Hayden, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

Conversation: Jeff Lanctot, Vice President, Avenue A | Razorfish

Conversation: Andrew Robertson, CEO of BBDO Worldwide

Perspective: Jamie Tedford, SVP of Marketing and Media Innovation, Arnold Worldwide

> Data and Predictions

Surveys, Stats, and Forecasts
- Advertising
- Discovery
- Mobile video
- Payment
- Sharing
- Viewing habits
- Atom Entertainment's 15 Most Popular Videos of All Time

Visions of What’s Ahead
- Viral video
- Playing Web video on television
- Amateur vs. professional content
- High-def
- Piracy
- Advertising, measurement, and tracking
- Transitions and transformations

> Back Matter

Glossary

Recommended Reading

Blogs and Other Resources

Author Bio

A Note on Sources