Crackle Continues Its Commitment to the Original Webseries
The
new Crackle
webseries, Held Up, premiers in September 2010 and promises
to be one of the Sony-owned video network’s most ambitious projects
yet. Written by Randy and Jason Sklar, creators of Back on Topps,
the comedy centers on two separate but simultaneous robberies at the
same branch bank. According to Entertainment
Weekly, Held Up originally began life as
a pilot for Comedy Central in 2008 but when the network passed, Sony
decided to develop it as a webseries instead with original creator Gene
Hong passing the reigns to the Sklar Bothers.
This is
not the first high-profile endeavor for Crackle as the site has been
producing a number of quality webseries in recent years, beginning with
2009’s Angel of Death. With reported budgets topping
the one million dollar mark, it is obvious that both Sony and Crackle
are committed to the medium. Considering that its last major webseries,
The Bannen Way, amassed 8.4 million views in February 2010
and more than 13 million by the end of March while setting online video
records along the way (according to Wikipedia),
the future for both the medium and the website certainly looks bright.
Despite
such success, however, Crackle still has plenty of cracks. As the New
York Times pointed out in its August 23, 2010, article,
“Sony’s Bet on Sticking With Web Shows,” the 4.1 million
viewers that the site attracted in July 2010 without The Bannen
Way is a fraction of the 12.6 million who clicked on CollegeHumor.com
during the same period. The article also suggests that Sony may merge
its PlayStation Network, which provides games and online content for
PlayStation 3 users, into Crackle and thus provide a much stronger presence
on the Internet—as the Times points out, the PlayStation
Network currently has fifty million registered accounts worldwide.
Although
most insiders expect online video consumption—whether it’s
episodes of TV shows or original webseries—to rival that of the
television set over the next few years, nobody has yet found a way to
generate meaningful revenue from Internet video. Both independents and
media giants alike have experimented with different approaches, from
graphic ads to thirty-second commercials to iTunes, but the gains have
been insignificant compared to traditional television.
Sony experimented
with a unique business model with Angel of Death by releasing
a DVD version of the webseries after its initial online run was completed.
“If you can figure out some ways to plug (web programming) into
traditional business models, maybe you can make high-quality work for
the Internet,” Sony President Steve Mosko told the Wall
Street Journal in June of 2008. In this instance,
the “traditional business model” is direct-to-DVD movies,
an industry that has proven to be popular as of late. Even with its
approximately one million dollar budget, Angel of Death still
cost cheaper than most direct-to-DVD offerings and by adding additional
scenes that tied the storyline together more tightly, in effect turning
the bit-size webisodes into a more traditional motion picture, it also
opened the potential to sell the finished product overseas as a TV movie-of-the-week.
“We’re
not expecting to make all our money back in that initial (online) window,”
another Sony exec, Sean Carey, likewise commented to the Wall
Street Journal. In a sense, the approach mirrors the business model
for other Hollywood mediums—major motion pictures, after all,
make the bulk of their revenue through DVD sales and international rights
just as television shows do through syndication. No one distribution
method is enough for any medium these days, so why wouldn’t the
same philosophy hold true for Internet content?
Although
Sony may be embracing traditional industry business models when it comes
to revenue, it has a different approach in regards to production. While
network television can often be a tug-of-war between the creator of
a series and the network itself, for instance, Sony has demonstrated
a “hands-off” approach in regards to their webseries endeavors.
And whereas initial Hollywood ventures into the online video medium
exhibited another television behavioral trait—cancelling a series
early if it didn’t immediately find an audience—Crackle
has the luxury of displaying patience because of its multi-pronging
strategy.
“A
lot of early attempts by traditional studios rang false because they
were using TV standards and style but weren’t willing to spend,”
Mike Hudack, chief executive of Blip, explained to the New York
Times.
Sony has
obviously learned this lesson since the early days of Crackle. Not only
have large budgets been the norm in recent years but the studio has
gone out of its way to attract “names” rather than unknowns
for its endeavors. Angel of Death, for instance, was created
by Eisner Award-winning comic book writer Ed Brubaker and starred Zoë
Bell—the stunt woman for Uma Thurman in Quentin Tarantino’s
Kill Bill—as well as Lucy Lawless of Xena fame.
The Bannen Way, meanwhile, was professionally cast with the
assistance of Sony and featured the likes of Robert Forster, Michael
Lerner and Autumn Reeser.
For Held
Up, Sony not only signed the Sklar Brothers but Kaitlin Olson from
the FX comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Steve
Carr, the director of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. According to the
New York Times, Sony and Crackle have yet another big-budget
project in the works; entitled Backwash, it centers on “three
eccentric losers who travel by ice cream truck” and stars such
television luminaries as John Stamos (Full House), Allison
Janney (The West Wing) and Jon Hamm (Mad Men).
The Internet
and webseries medium, however, have been seen by many as the great “equalizer”
in regards to creative storytelling and video production. While Hollywood
is often depicted as having a “closed door” mentality when
it comes to the television novice, for instance, the advent of the webseries
as an alternative outlet, coupled with the Internet’s ability
to reach an audience without the need for professional distribution,
has potentially opened the door for independents. Sony’s high
budget endeavors packed with recognizable actors seems to circumvent
that theory and could even be seen as another Big Media attempt to monopolize
a budding industry that is still in its early stages.
Truth be
told, however, the webseries is indeed still in its early stages of
development despite being around for a number of years now, and while
the medium has seen gains in viewership it still pales when compared
to those of television. In addition, the low cost of equipment and the
relative ease of making video available on the Internet has seen a proliferation
of webseries that are not always of a high quality—not just from
a production standpoint but in regards to writing and acting as well.
In this sense, Sony is assisting the independents: by raising the bar,
the many quality webseries available online that were created by “unknowns”
will potentially rise above the muddled efforts of those less talented.
High concept
creations like Angel of Death, The Bannen Way, Held
Up and Backwash also raises the awareness level of the
medium for the millions of potential viewers who have yet to experience
original online episodic video. If the promise of the webseries as the
great industry equalizer is ever going to reach fruition, the medium
needs to both succeed and be seen as a legitimate creative outlet.
And in
that sense, Sony and Crackle are obviously doing their part.
Anthony
Letizia (September 1, 2010)
