With all the lonelygirl15 imitators popping up again and again, it’s no surprise that the folks at EQAL have decided to further capitalize on the webcast phenom with a new contest called LG15: The Show Is Yours, where producers submit a 5-minute pilot and 8-week treatment for “social show” derivative of the LG15 Universe by building upon the mythology of lonelygirl15, KateModern, and LG15: The Resistance.
According to inside LG15, the official LG15 insider blog, a social show is defined as “an experience on a website where a community participates in a specific entertainment property by viewing and discussing videos and other multimedia content, and by interacting with the characters through profile pages, commenting, and chat.” It’s clear that the creators behind LG15 are building out the social interactivity features to attract more viewers to their own a destination site. “Right now we’re focused on building out the community features on LG15.com so that it’s easier for you guys to tell your stories,” The LG15 Team recently posted in an update.
Nevertheless LG15: The Show Is Yours will leverage LG15’s enormous YouTube presence by funneling pilot submissions through their partner channel. Fans seem to be excited by the contest but are more concerned with what this bodes for the next season of LG15: The Resistance, and seem skeptical that anyone but the pros can pull off anything worthy of the LG15 canon. Hopefully LG15: TSIY will get enough viewers to migrate over to the LG15 Universe so the creators can get back to business with LG15: TR Season 2.
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I think it’s a great idea that leverages LG15’s already highly-engaged/interactive base. Love the fact that web shows are experimenting. It further enhances the wiki nature of the web.
Anything would be better than “The Resistance.” I was an LG15 fan, but they have fallen waaay down.
I agree with Andy. I think it’s an awesome idea and it really gives fans a chance to contribute to the LG15 universe in a meaningful way. This is the natural evolution of “fan fiction.” I hope to see more content creators loosen their boundaries and encourage two-way interactions like this.
Would Design by Humans or springleap.com be examples of crowdsourcing?
I think if you only read the comments on the official LG15 blog, you will see fans excited about this. However, if you read the comments on LG15 Today, the fan-run LG15 Universe blog, you will find a lot of other concerns popping up. It’d be nice to focus on some of those too in this article.
Here is the link to the LG15 Today post: http://lg15today.blogspot.com/.....pilot.html
Fans of lonelygirl15/ LG15: The Resistance have long requested that the creators allow for a much closer integration of their fan creations with the main series. The idea was that this could have been done by creating a “hook” within the main series that fans could play off to create their own stories. This is a request that was consistently ignored by the creators. Fans of course did end up telling their own stories but if one of them came too close to looking like it was part of the main series the creators would “out” the series as “fan fiction” which often killed it in terms of the excitement these fan creations brought to the universe. The argument given by the creators was the they needed to protect their story.
Now for LG15: TSIY the creators are allowing creators to tell their own story but it comes at a time where there is no main series to provide a “hook”. Now the creators have indicated that they will provide advice to ensure that the story told is consistent with the LG15 Universe. This is a different model from what the fans had long requested and it remains to be seen if it will work better or worse.
It would have been nice if the creators had listened to the fans a long time ago. There are a lot of very good video series creators within the community and many have been alienated to the extent they now tell their story outside the LG15 Universe. While the creators have long paid lip service to community videos they failed to support and promote them in a way consistent with fan needs. This present initiative is a positive move in may ways but their is also a layer of cynicism because of the history of the situation.
The lessen here to anyone who wants to engage fans is to listen closely to them. To just say you are listening is not enough. Actions that show you understand their concerns is what count. This is a new paradigm for a new World. I am not saying that creators need to jump every time a fan has a good idea because sometimes you have to hold true to your own vision. However if you do not listen and respond, your vision may just die on the vine.
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