The Early Days of the Webseries Medium
Imagine a world without online video. No YouTube, no Hulu. A time when Apple’s iTunes and iPod were still relatively new and exclusively serviced the digital music industry. A time before social media became the hottest buzz word, a pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter environment that reduced Internet interaction to message boards. A time in which television shows were only available on an actual television and the World Wide Web was predominantly text and graphic oriented.
The year 2003 was just such a world when Pittsburgh native Justin Kownacki developed his first webseries. “I actually had the idea for a serialized web show way back in 1999,” he explains. “Originally, I had an idea for a short film, but as I tinkered with it I realized I was even more interested in seeing what might happen to these characters even after their initial ‘film’ story ended. I’ve always been drawn to the concepts of continuation and growth, and watching characters evolve over time—probably because I spent so much time watching TV and reading comic books while I was growing up.”
Few people had high-speed Internet access in 1999 to make such a project feasible, however, but by 2003 broadband had begun to take hold across the United States. Spurred on by acting friends eager to participate in such an endeavor, Kownacki divided his film concept into five short “episodes” and launched Something to Be Desired in September of that year. The series—known as STBD for short—lasted six seasons and spawned a spinoff webseries, The Baristas, in January 2011. Although webseries are now a common part of the Internet experience, that was not the case when Justin Kownacki’s creation initially appeared online.
“When STBD launched, there were only a few other webseries online that I could even find via Google, like Jamie’s Way, or West of Denman,” he remembers. “There were also a few video blogs that had a serialized format, but their audiences were mostly self-contained to their friends and peers. The idea of a web show that attracted strangers was still very much an uphill sell. But our cast got involved because they liked the idea of creating something from nothing, especially in a new medium where there were no rules (and no censors). Plus, our collaborative nature let them have a voice in creating and shaping their characters over time, and since most of our original cast were theatrically trained, they appreciated having more authorship of their characters than they’d normally have in a structured play.”
Just like Steve Jobs sensed that legal downloading of digital recordings was the future of the music industry in 2001, or comic guru Scott McCloud believed that the World Wide Web was ripe for graphic serials in 2000, so to with Justin Kownacki and the webseries medium in 2003. “This was pre-YouTube, and mostly pre-MySpace, so social networking and DIY filmmaking was still a foreign concept to most people, and aspiring filmmakers were still thinking in terms of festivals, not self-distribution,” he explains. “I knew that user-generated content would take off as soon as broadband penetration hit critical mass, but I was apparently in the minority. In fact, whenever I’d tell someone we were producing an original series for the Internet, they’d ask me, ‘So, do you want to be on public access TV someday?’ I tried to explain that someday your TV, computer and phone would all be the same device, so it didn’t matter what your distribution platform was because all content was eventually going to be in direct competition across every ‘box,’ but it took a few years for that reality to sink in.”
Still, the biggest obstacle that Justin Kownacki and Something to Be Desired faced in 2003 was the same one encountered by webseries creators ever since—attracting visitors to the content. In the early stages, STBD had to rely on the likes of Google searches and an audience that was both intrigued enough to remember the webseries and patient in regards to viewing the episodes over slower Internet speeds. The likes of YouTube and blip.tv helped in terms of growing an “online video mindset” and providing an easier means of promotion, but the creator of Something to Be Desired believes it was Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who had the biggest impact on the still infant webseries medium.
“When Steve Jobs used Tiki Bar TV as an example of how to watch video on the iPod in 2005, the entire webseries community received an implied anointing from the high priest of modern technology,” Kownacki states. “Other shows have enjoyed more success, and The Guild may be the closest the industry has come to producing a mainstream hit, but none of it would have happened this fast if Jobs hadn’t invited consumers to bridge the mental gap between ‘professional’ and ‘DIY’ content, and see them as candies in the same bowl.”
Having been at the forefront of the webseries medium’s birth with Something to Be Desired, Justin Kownacki is in the unique position of being able to compare the worlds of then and now. “When we launched STBD in 2003, it was a matter of explaining to people ‘why’ we were making a show for the Internet,” he remarks. “When we launched STBD’s spinoff, The Baristas, in 2011, it was a matter of standing out in an incredibly crowded web video market. In the seven years between series launches, web video had gone from ‘Why?’ to ‘Well, of course!’ People have gone from seeing the Web as a text-based medium to a visual medium, and this means there’s more competition than ever among DIY filmmakers, who are also in direct competition with all the mainstream studio product that’s being distributed digitally. So now, instead of trying to get people to understand the concept of episodic web content, new aspiring producers have to explain how their content is different from—and better than—thousands of other, similar content that’s already in the market, and find ways to make content that looks good and travels well across a variety of screen sizes and audience environments, from homes and offices to HD TVs and mobile devices.”
Not only was the independent webseries landscape smaller in 2003, however, but industry professionals have also joined the fray during the years that followed the launch of Something to Be Desired. Television auteur Joss Whedon was one of the first with his online musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog in 2008, for instance, while 2011 witnessed actor Keifer Sutherland choosing the dramatic webseries The Confession as his first post-24 project. Although the competition for viewers has thus increased even more, Kownacki sees a distinction in regards to these professional endeavors that could potentially shape the fledging medium for the better.
“I find it interesting that most of the professional ventures into web content—like Funny or Die, Dr. Horrible, etc.—have been actor, director and writer-driven, rather than studio-driven,” he explains. “To me, it’s clear that the artists see the potential of the Web as a positive way to create content faster, on a smaller budget, and reach an audience more directly than having to deal with an increasingly outdated studio system. Meanwhile, the mainstream seems hellbent on locking down the Internet, or bending it into a ‘new’ vessel for the same old production and distribution processes that have already proven themselves to be profitable and controllable according to the media industry’s existing rules and practices. So I’m interested in seeing what will happen as more of these professionally created webseries and channels emerge, and if their eventual success will cause the studios to panic, clamp down, or collapse.”
Kownacki also draws a comparison between the present day state of the webseries and an earlier time period in the history of motion pictures. “This situation is very similar to Hollywood in the late ‘60s—as chronicled in Peter Biskind’s excellent book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls—when quick-thinking independent producers, iconoclastic stars and the inefficiency of the classic Hollywood studio system led to a renaissance in American film, which only ended after Jaws, The Godfather and Star Wars proved just how much money a blockbuster film could really make. So perhaps we’ll see a digital media revolution co-spearheaded by the ‘amateurs’ and the forward-thinking professionals, which will create a new paradigm that the mainstream will eventually absorb and exploit.”
From a time before YouTube existed to a contemporary world filled with a multitude of online video options, Justin Kownacki has witnessed the growth of the webseries as an early pioneer in this new entertainment industry. His knowledge and insight into the early days of the medium offer an historical reflection of the trends and developments that have transpired between 2003 and 2011, while providing guidance for the future as well.
It is only by understanding the past, after all, that the future can truly materialize.
Anthony Letizia (January 2, 2012)
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