I also made a decision 6 months ago to start using my real name everywhere I post professionally so people would know who they were talking to. I also wouldn’t have to keep track of which alias I was using on which sites.

Oh, and another thing, Electronic Sprocket is more than 15 characters and that’s over the limit of some websites for a login. (That’s right, I’m talking about YOU dee eye double gee dot com!) So now all my personal and professional stuff can be consolidated over at EricSusch.com. It keeps it all simple. And maybe I’ll get some love from Google too.

Thanks for responding. At least there’s someone reading my blog I’ve since watched all the rest of the episodes now available and I think I’m warming up to the series more. Knowing that the episodes are really supposed to be an hour helps a lot. You should make that clear on the web site.

My response to your response:

Call me crazy but I think that if Apple is giving you free computers in exchange for putting them in your show, that’s a product placement deal. In any case you don’t have to shoot your lead actress from behind to avoid the logo. You could simply give her a computer that doesn’t have an overbearing lit up logo on it in the first place. That way you don’t have the issue at all for the rest of the series. You don’t even have to bother with logo releases. More viewer attention on the drama, less time doing paperwork.

The second “product placement” I was referring to was specifically the Scion logo in the car dealership. (Yea, I know they’re owned by Toyota.) The point is that Scion’s are specifically marketed to young people. In episode one Jed says, “You got all these cars here that people under 30 should be buying,” just as it cuts to a wide shot with a surprisingly readable Scion logo looming over their heads. It almost looks like the logo was added in post. It’s not realistic against the bright windows at all. Anyway, if you didn’t get paid for that then you got ripped off and some guy over on Madison Avenue is really celebrating big time because he just scored a major coup and probably a big promotion.

In any case, enough about the never-ending distraction of product placement.

I think not having an RSS feed and not being in iTunes is the biggest issue I’ve brought up that you need to consider. I’m guessing that the deal with MySpace might be the problem there. If not you should start a feed immediately and allow people to subscribe. It’s the best way to deliver the show. It allows the viewers to decide where and when they watch it. If you always have to go to a particular web page you’ll inevitably loose viewers along the way because they’ll forget or sometimes they won’t feel like watching the show at their computer. Consider: My wife hasn’t seen the show and now she wants to. So what do we do. We can’t download the show to our AppleTV in the living room. Will we sit together in my office and watch it on the computer in a little window? Probably not. Should I just tell her to go watch it by herself at her computer and we’ll talk about it later? That probably won’t happen either and even if she did watch it all, what kind of entertainment is that when we can’t share it together? If you want the big audience, then you need to deliver your content everywhere simultaneously so the audience can have the freedom to enjoy it the way they like.

I think you are in a position to do some really pioneering work with this show and bring quality drama to the new media space. One of the things we’re trying to do with our little knitting show (at www.LetsKnit2gether.com) is prove that new media doesn’t have to be crappy looking home video of dogs riding a bicycle. It can stand toe to toe with broadcast television. Hopefully your corporate deals with MySpace and such won’t hamstring your show too much before you can adjust to market forces and make a success of it. Good luck!

But your other point is more important. You’re right, it is impossible to do a dramatic show in eight minutes, and we’re not trying to. These episodes aggregate together into one hour stories. You don’t get the full emotional impact until then. We considered all sorts of ways of presenting the show, and are still considering different ways, but this particular way — eight minute episodes twice a week — was decided on by Myspace, and tney’re refusing to let us change it. So for the moment that’s how it has to be, but when our Myspace deal is over we’ll be able to try a better template.

Thanks for giving us a chance.
Marshall

It was fun1