Lonely Girl 15 guys Premier New Show at New York Television Festival

Tonight the Lonely Girl 15 guys Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett will Premier their new show LG15 The Resistance at the New York Television Festival.

I had the chance to catch up with them today at the festival with my FLIP camera

Rides To The Prom

In his blog Ask A Ninja Co-Creator Kent Nichols talks about what goes into the Ask A Ninja videos that he and his creative Ninja partner Douglas Sarine create and own. Kent explains why when the costs are averaged out each episode of Ask A Ninja costs about $6000 per video. Kent does a great job of explaining what has gone into building their business and their brand that will continue to grow but what Kent doesn't talk about are all the videos by Independent producers that are made for $6000 or less for large corporations.

Large companies are calling online video producers that have had viral videos and they are offering money to create new online videos for their major corporations and that's great. When I first started producing I would have loved to received a call from a large corporation who wanted me to produce something for them. Are you kidding? I would have done it for FREE. But times are different now. I'd still take the work but I want something more than money.

Today if you are creative and can produce a viral video that builds and audience you don't need a Fortune 500 company to pay you money. Just look at what Kent and Douglas and other online video producers that have come before them have done as well as what people like Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett are doing with LG15 and Kate Modern.

What you need to watch out for are the "Rides to the Prom" as I like to call them. "If you give us a ride we will show you a good time later on." What I mean by this is that when a big company says, "Hey, we want you to do this video for us cause we think you are the most creative and wonderful person out there and here's $6000." be very careful.

There are some TV Networks that have been doing this tactic in cable television for years. They get talented kids to work for cheap and instead of giving the kids a raise when they do a good job they just find new talented kids. That's a little bit different. As the kid you are getting experience and you have that TV Network name you can put on your resume and go find work at a network that pays more money for experience. Now you can create your own videos and get experience doing it.

The thing to remember is that now the rules have changed. You don't need a TV Network to get the experience to create something that is watched by millions and you don't need to work for a TV Network to make money. Don't get me wrong it's great if you can get work from a big company and it can be great money but you are not going to be able to build a business on $6000 videos that you don't own. Sure there are wedding video guys that make this kind of money and can shoot four videos in a weekend but that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about pursuing your passion and taking your wacky ideas and turning them into something that you own that pays you a check every month for years to come.

Now if you do get an email from a large company asking you to create a video for $6000 see if you can negotiate ownership. Could you imagine if you used someone else's $6000 to create the first episode of something like Ask A Ninja?

The Power of Lonely Girl 15

Well you haven't heard much about Jessica Rose since she left LonelyGirl15 (maybe because of some strike) or LG15 as they call it and just because her character died doesn't mean the LG15 series couldn't live on. In fact LG15 looks to be doing pretty well both in view numbers and in product placement deals.

You may have used your lunch breaks to do silly things like go eat or attend meetings but while you were doing that other cool kids with high speed internet connections have been watching as the cast of LG15 has come in contact with a JUMPER . No, not those powder blue polyester costumes I used to wear at the Listen to the Land boat ride at EPCOT Center. I'm talking about the kind that are being chased by Paladins like the one Samuel L. Jackson plays in the new 20th Century Fox's movie Jumper.

So if you have some time over lunch today or you are like Liz Gannes at New Tee Vee and you get paid to watch stuff like this, have a look and enjoy jumping around the Internet. While you're doing it take a look at LG15's YouTube Numbers just be sure to watch out for the Paladins while you are jumping around.

Navigating Episodic Internet Shows

With the exception of Apple's iTunes Podcast subscription I have yet to find an enjoyable way of watching Episodic Shows on the Internet.

When Prom Queen launched earlier this year it was a pain in the ass to watch the shows in order and catch up if you missed one. Eventually team Vuguru created a weekly recap show but it was hard to figure out where I left off and it still required some work. When the Big Fantastic launched their Summer season of Prom Queen called Summer Heat, Vuguru sent out a daily email and this made it much easier to catch up if I missed an episode. I could just go to my Apple mail and sort my messages from Prom and click on the shows in order.

If you go to Youtube or Revver or Veoh or Metacafe or any other video site and search for your favorite Episodic Show you will find it and it's trailers/promos in some crazy order. If you are at work trying to find that episode that you missed before your boss walks by and busts you for goofing off at work you are going to bail and wait till later to find that episode if you ever get around to it.

So far there are no Episodic shows on the front page of Youtube's Most Viewed (All Time) All: page. This says a lot about how we are still in a time of "spectacle" and have not yet moved into "Story" as far as Internet video goes. Even the Internet's biggest "Hit" story Lonely Girl 15's most popular episode only has had 1,708,683 views and if you want to start from never having seen an episode of LG15 and get all caught up, good luck. There are over 21 pages of search results for "Lonely Girl 15" on Revver and I couldn't find Episode number one so I went to LG15.com. There I found a place to start and a recap video of season one that brought me up to speed but that was work.

We need to speak with our contacts at the video sites and ask them what they can do to help. One viral video could bring a ton of viewers to your show but if that viewer can't find the next episode or the previous ones in a nice neat way that is easy to navigate it will take us all a lot longer to build audiences. The big boys in Hollywood already know how to make a programming dial work. It won't be long before they figure this out too and make it even harder for us little guys to break through the clutter.

Sure there are work-arounds but that involves "work".