Week Nine: Research

With all of this talk of 'series bible', 'character bios', and 'audience analyses', you must be wondering "Well how did you figure out how you need to do all this?" Have no fear my two blog readers, this entry is all about research.

Blip.tv is a great starting point for researching web series viewer trends. It's a site that hosts tons of original series and distributes them across the web, tracking who watches what at what time and where for how long. One of the most important bits of data I found from them was what time of day people typically watch shows on the web, which is between 9pm and 11pm weekdays. That, in addition to the others bits of data they offer, helps tremendously when shows are in pre-production, trying to determine the target audience and marketing strategies.

I'm also conducting a market analysis, studying three successful web series: H+, The Guild, and Aidan 5. I'm studying these series to develop an idea of why these shows have found such success and gathered an audience from thin air. I'm studying their budgets, their marketing and social media strategies, how many writers are typically writing for the show, where they distribute their shows, etc. Basically I'm analyzing the ins and outs of these three shows, gutting them to discover the magic they use to create great shows.