Cold. Hard. Cash. We love it when companies are willing to put their money where their mouths are.
Massachusetts-based web studio OurTVSpace is offering up $10,000 to a writer (or writing team) to develop a full 20-episode original web series as part of their New Media Fellow program. Entries for the program are being accepted through August 15th.
I spoke to OurTVSpace founder Doug Kirkpatrick from his office in Sturbridge, MA, who said he created the program as a way to bring top writing talent to the production team to develop their next web series.
“We’re very much about sharing and collaborating with the artists,” said Kirkpatrick about the spirit of the program. He runs essentially a collaborative production studio for web video content where creative types from around New England drop in to support each others’ projects. It runs two very active social networks for local filmmakers, OurFilmSpace.com and OurTVSpace.com, which together boast over 2000 members.
The studio released its first original web series last fall, a teen drama-thriller called Oldbury Hill. The series had over 100 people from around the area working on it in some capacity, Kirkpatrick told me. “It shows how passionate people are over here – like a mom and daughter coming down from Maine,” he added.
This spring the company announced it had signed a deal with fellow Massachusetts-based web video company PermissionTV, who’s player powered the series Quarterlife, to license the technology to build its new digital network.
For the New Media Fellow program, they are looking for a scripted project of any genre that will be selected by a group of industry peers for development. The writer doesn’t need to relocate to Massachusetts, he assured me, but would be flown out for a series of meetings at the studio beginning in September.
The program is a work-for-hire, I’m told, though the deal structure is such that the writer will have a percentage of cross-platform and ancillary rights to the property. While not officially WGA signatories, Kirkpatrick said they are open to working with WGA writers and would use agreements that were acceptable with the union.
“What excites me is working together creatively with very talented people and the immediate distribution aspect of web TV, the digital convergence and the economic opportunities it presents them,” said Kirkpatrick.
The bullish outlook on the space is refreshing, particularly in a shaky economic climate. The studio itself is beefing up, adding a number of new content verticals to its slate, including foodie-centric, FoodPerfect.tv and history buff OldStory.tv.
Disclosure Note: I am on the Selection Committee for the New Media Fellow program, but I am in no other way affiliated with OurTVSpace.com.
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Comments
Lot of interesting things happening with Take180, Ag8’s Purefold, EQAL’s The Show is Yours and now this. I’m sure there are others as well. There seems to be an outreach to bring the viewer into the process through interaction that becomes apart of the production or the actual production itself. There might be a story there…
I like where it’s going. Sooner or later someone will hit on the right combination of elements to make a really unique and satisfying open source participatory experience.
It is great that they are helping in the collaborative process in this way. They are certainly putting their money where their mouth is.
The question is, will others do the same and to what degree? Eqal has previously provided $2500 for an eight week run of The Show Is Yours but did little to support and market the show. In this climate you really have to fully commit or it is just not going to work. This looks like a fair attempt to do just that.
$10000 for a web series script is a awesome! I have a few projects in the works, and now the question is which one am I going to write twenty episodes for??
We should not be all happy over an absurdly low number for writing scripts.. this mentality of “wow that’s great for web money!” must stop or companies will NEVER pay properly for content. They will just find someone willing to do it for these absurd prices.
It’s low money for TV/film, but relative to what they’re going to make on it, is it low for the web? There’s no real money to be made on this stuff – it’s just not there yet. What did they make on their other series, Oldbury Hill? I’m guessing not much. (That’s not a knock on the quality, just the state of web series economics.)
The only reason to do web-exclusive stuff is experience and exposure. The number of people making a living on web series is like…low.
Just wondering where the Terms and conditions for this are? I mean do you ahve to be a US citizen for this? been looking through the site and can’t see anything like this written down. I would love to submitt something.
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