Last year I picked up on <i>Sanctuary For All</i> a web-based video horror series shot almost entirely on green screen (http://www.sanctuaryforall.com). The show stars the lovely Amanda Tapping (<i>Stargate SG-1</i> and <i>Stargate Atlantis</i>) who I also believe produced the dark stylistic drama. The show was originally set up as a subscription-based series (if you wanted the hi-rez versions, the low-rez versions were easy to find for free). I subscribed to get a peek at how the show looked and I have to admit I was very impressed. I really love seeing a low-cost production like this done, with good writing and talent. This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to do years ago, but the technology just wasn’t cheap enough at the time.
So, my hat is off to Amanda and everyone at Sanctuary. Their web-only video series has now been picked up for a 13 episode run on the SciFi Channel:
“Hello Sanctuarians, So, let?s make it official, we have the green light that we have been waiting for. Sci Fi Channel in the U.S. has ordered a full 13-episode season of Sanctuary and we begin production in March. International television distribution deals are still being negotiated”
Now, while I’m very happy for them, what I really want to see is a solid business model and a successful web video series that is a financial success purely on the web. Not PPV but ad based. Sanctuary never got a lot of web exposure — I only found it by accident and nobody I’ve ever talked to about it had heard of it. Clearly, highly visible online distribution and some really good PR work will be needed for the first breakout web series.
Perhaps Yahoo/Microsoft or Google will put together an API and toolset for budding web video producers to use that would pre-format the content in some standardized fashion, and then promote such productions on tv.yahoo.com, video.aol.com or other high traffic sites. This would open the door to broader, mainstream viewer acceptance. At the same time this would embolden less mainstream producers to push the envelope in new directions. That would be fun!
-pfs
