The Wisdom of Felicia Day: In Her Own Words
Forbes magazine calls her both a “mogul in the making” and “guru to the Internet content crowd.” The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, refers to her as “nerd-tastic” while the Wall Street Journal claims that she is a true “web entrepreneur.” It doesn’t matter the moniker, however, as Felicia Day has proven ever since The Guild first premiered in 2007 that she is the unspoken ambassador of the webseries medium and one of the few who have mastered the nuances of the budding industry. In addition to creating, writing and acting in The Guild, she was one of the main stars of Joss Whedon’s online musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, appeared in The Legend of Neil and The Webventures of Justin and Alden and branched out with a second multiple-hats-wearing webseries, Dragon Age: Redemption.
With such an impressive resume and equally talented, it is no wonder the Felicia Day is often considered to be the “Queen of the Internet.” Through the years, she has given numerous interviews in which she not only discusses The Guild, her acting career and love of gaming, but personal insights on how she found success within the medium and words of advice for potential independent creators as well. Taken together, these snippets into the mind of Felicia Day offer an overview of an industry still in its infant stages and the ongoing changes facing both the television and online video industries.
“It’s sort of the Sundance of our time,” Felicia Day told IGN in December 2008 in regards to the webseries and the Internet. “This is where people are going to be discovered and be making new content. And the cool thing about it is, there are no rules. It’s not like you have to make a two minute episode or a ten minute episode. It’s really whatever your story is. And I know that there are a lot of frustrated people in Hollywood, who aren’t allowed to tell their stories because they’re either not telling them in the way the studios or networks want them to, or it’s not appealing to as many people. The cool thing about the Internet is I can make a show about gamers that would never get made by traditional means, and I can find an audience for it. I think that it’s kind of the democratization of media in a sense.”
That spirit of re-writing the rules, breaking new ground and creating a new entertainment frontier are themes which Felicia Day has advocated from the very beginning. Other examples from the bounty of interviews she has conducted since 2007 include:
“Consumers are on the web. They are consuming things on the web; they’re unplugging their cable boxes. In the next year or so, there’s definitely going to be a huge shift in the industry where they’re going to need to spend money on things that people are actually going to watch, as opposed to a fading demographic on TV and in DVDs. Money is entering the space and there’s an opportunity for creators to go to companies and say, ‘Hey, I have a great out-of-the-box idea,’ and I think companies are going to be willing to risk a little bit more on an idea that is unproven because there is nothing proven in this space.” (The Wall Street Journal, October 2011)
“I’m just really enjoying opening the doors to new projects, because the stories that people are used to seeing on TV and film aren’t as interesting to people anymore, because on network, by definition, you have to appeal to as many people as possible. But on the Web, you can make something that is a little more niche oriented, which is easier to get the word out for. And I think that’s great—like, why not make things that are more tailor-based to people’s interest than a bunch of white people drinking coffee together? ’Cause we’ve seen it, we’ve seen it done really well, so let’s start doing things that people haven’t seen before.” (Paste, April 2009)
“Every quirky girl doesn’t have to be the best-friend character. It’s a very limiting and self-fulfilling prophecy. People only write things that will get green-lit so they write to those stereotypes. And that’s why I think that the audience is crumbling. Because the things they perceive that the audience wants aren’t necessarily what the audience wants. I don’t identify with a lot of the things I see on TV nowadays.” (Game Life, September 2009)
“The playing field is even. NBC.com is on the same level as any other website if you can get traffic there. And then, if you have a video and it’s featured on YouTube or Yahoo! or AOL, that is as highly trafficked a site as the networks. So as people move more and more toward getting their content in a browser, the playing field is completely even between the networks and more tech outlets. It’s a huge shift and hopefully it means people who have independent voices will breakthrough a little more and will broaden the kinds of entertainment that we get.” (Austin360, March 2011)
Felicia Day has also offered many words of advice for potential webseries creators. “Number one, you need to have a script that you think is really funny, and it’s true to yourself,” she told the A.V. Club in November 2008. “I think some people use things as a stepping stone, and they want to please people and show them, ‘Hey, I can do hip guys in Judd Apatow style,’ and it’s not true to them. If there’s something you know about, like motorcycles, do something about motorcycles first. Do something that’s really true to yourself and find a voice, and make the script as good as possible.”
Once a person finds their voice, the next step is to immerse themselves in the mechanics of filmmaking. “Just do your homework, and see how to make the actual short as good as you can,” Day continued with the A.V. Club. “And then after that, think about just from a practical level, ‘If I wanted to watch this video, what kind of person would I be, and how would I find it?’ The Guild came about because I picked a bunch of blogs I personally as a videogamer frequented, and I just cold e-mailed people, and I was like, ‘Hey. My name is Felicia. I have a show that I just made, and here it is!’”
A solid script and quality production, however, does not equal success in the webseries medium. Although The Guild contains both, for instance, it is Felicia Day’s unique grasp of the Internet and Twenty First Century social skills that truly transformed her creation from mere “one-of-many” into the online phenomenon that The Guild ultimately evolved.
“Sustaining an audience with a webseries is an impossible task. You’re starting a company and the video is just one piece of your offering. You have to have a start-up mind, you have to think about the web design, the trailers, your social networking sites. You need to make sure that you’re consistent, you need to have marketing materials at all times. The three-dimensional way that you have to build a webseries is unique. Some people upload a video and expect to get reviews overnight. The Guild didn’t have that. Maybe a couple of stars will have that kind of penetration, but big stars have done webseries that have gotten zero people to watch them. There’s no magic bullet—it’s just persistence and making content over and over again and knowing that you love doing it even if you might not get a million people to watch.” (Los Angeles Times, October 2011)
“I think the difference about our fans is they feel more invested in our show. Because we, basically, have been built on social networks getting the word out about the show. Because we don’t have PR. We don’t have marketing. It’s all, basically, me behind the computer. When you see an update on the Facebook page, it’s probably me or maybe a volunteer. Everything is done grass-roots because we’re on web video budgets, so we can’t afford to hire people to do stuff.” (Game Life, September 2009)
“To me, web video is all about creating community and connecting people around something they like, which could be my show, or it could be gaming. That’s the baseline for whether something is going to be appealing to a lot of people or just a select few. So when I’m thinking about adding to the video aspect of what I do, like The Guild, we do fan fiction contests and fan art contests where people can submit their art and then we put it in a gallery so everybody can enjoy everybody’s creativity as an experience. That adds to our show in a way where everybody can participate, even if they’re not physically making a picture. That’s a social sort of activity that enhances my community.” (The Wall Street Journal, October 2011)
Mogul. Guru. Entrepreneur. All three of those words characterize Felicia Day. Whether it is with The Guild, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog or Dragon Age: Redemption, she has demonstrated a knack for success in an industry that is still young and has not seen that many success stories. There is more to being a mogul or a guru or an entrepreneur than the mere creation of content, however—it takes vision and insight as well. As her many interviews have proven, Felicia Day has wisdom to go along with her talent, and in the end that may be her greatest asset.
Anthony Letizia (October 17, 2011)
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