See What's In My Brain

I’ve watched Act 1 of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog now about four times. Its brilliant in its simplicity; born out of Whedon’s brain during the Writer’s Strike. He bankrolls the entire thing himself, and gets a couple actor friends to star in it. If what Whedon says can be accepted at face value – and I think it can – monetizing the episodes is the only way he’ll be able to offer any pay for cast & crew.

The internet as a distribution channel for independently produced digital media is not a new idea.

Podiobooks.com is one such example. They provide bandwidth and a website where authors can ‘publish’ audiobooks of their own work. For the consumer, the service is free. Donations are accepted, and the author gets the lion’s share. The remainder goes to Podiobooks to pay for bandwidth and servers. The punch line to Podiobooks is that several previously unknown authors have gotten picked up by traditional print houses. I’ve listened to a bunch of audiobooks from there, and the quality is as good as anything you slap down $9 for at Borders. Plus: try before you buy. Works for me.

Traditional print media can’t seem to wrap its head around this idea. Tor is starting to, but the big publishing houses move at glacial speed when it comes to change. Scott Sigler, Matthew Wayne Selznik, Matt Wallace and JC Hutchins understand that their contracts came from doing just this – promoting their own work by giving it away. They self produced unabridged audio podcasts of their own work, and marketed it like crazy.

More and more mainstream authors like Neil Gaiman are starting to embrace this idea and several major publishing houses are experimenting with seeing if giving away some work for free actually increases sales of author’s backlists and other work. Guess what? It does.

What about episodic video that normally would have to be handled by a television studio? Last year, Sanctuary put 8 episodes out direct to the web. Sanctuary starred Amanda Tapping from Stargate-SG1 and had some other pretty big names behind the production. I have no idea how successful this was, but I believe Season 2 is slated for sometime in 2008 if it hasn’t started airing already.

There are also a handful of Trek and Star Wars fan produced stuff that in many ways is as good as the originals. They have great production value, decent writing and even star some of the original cast members from the various incarnations of the television shows. Unfortunately, they are a labor of love only. Strictly not for profit due to the licensing issues involved with Paramount and Lucasfilm respectively.

Many television studios are are playing around with putting webisodes of popular shows online. In some cases they will even broadcast new episodes streaming on their site. But the difference is these have already aired on traditional broadcast television, and most only post recaps. The web is considered a secondary marketing tool rather than a primary means of getting content to consumers.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction. Even with just 13 minutes of film aired so far in Act 1 of Dr. Horrible, Whedon’s entry into the new media distribution paradigm has to have changed the way content producers will look at the internet as a distribution channel.

Talk about validation. On Monday when Act 1 of Dr. Horrible was released, the site was bombarded into oblivion as more than 200,000 rabid viewers per hour were trying to get at the episode.

It doesn’t matter if you liked Buffy, Angel, or Firefly*. You can’t argue with Whedon’s commercial success. The man has juice in Hollywood, and his name is like a Word of Power, summoning legions of fiercely loyal fans whenever its attached to something.

I have to think Whedon – who has legitimate bones to pick with certain networks over the way he’s been treated – is sitting back wondering in this day and age, what in the world does he even need the networks for?

With enough bandwidth, his original works like Dr. Horrible – free of interference and hair brained mangling from the network suits – can be produced and distributed worldwide (and monetized on top of it).

I’m sure someone with Whedon’s draw could attract investors or capital to produce an original series purely on the web without having to go into his own pocket again. I can’t help but wonder: if Dr. Horrible had premiered long before the idea for Dollhouse came about, would it fly as a web only series? I think what we’ve seen so far with Dr. Horrible, it would.

I for one can’t wait to see how this whole thing shakes out. At the least, I bet we can expect more online, original content from Mutant Enemy. Grrr. Arggh. Bring it on.

*Honestly, if you can watch the entire first episode of Firefly and not immediately drop everything you’re doing and watch the remainder of the series at once, something is very very WRONG with you.