In the footsteps of Lonelygirl15

Tom Green examines the state of online drama

Ever since Lonelygirl15, the series of postings by an American teenager on YouTube that turned out to have been scripted by Miles Beckett and Mesh Flinders, became the first hit online drama in 2006, people have been trying to predict how this new form will develop.

Lonelygirl15's first post - starring Jessica Rose.

Tens of millions of people around the world have watched Lonelygirl15’s musings on life and love and the fact that it cost little to make and didn’t need any paid-for marketing, suggested that the established model of big budget Hollywood films could be challenged.

Why bother with cinema release if YouTube can reach a global audience? Why spend a fortune on film-making if all you need is a cheap video camera and an unknown actress? Why pay for posters and commercials if teenagers can spread the word online?

Of course, short films on the web are a very different beast from a feature film or TV series, but there was no doubting the power of this new phenomenon.

So, two years on, how far has the revolution progressed?

History lessons

In some respects, the success of Lonelygirl15 can be traced back to the release of Jaws (1975) and The Blair Witch Project (1999), feature films that changed the business model in Hollywood.

Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg from Peter Benchley’s novel (screenplay by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb), was the first summer blockbuster. Using heavy advertising and a nationwide release to stimulate public and media interest in a high concept story it created a new expectation among the press and the public for media events.

The Jaws model became established practice until The Blair Witch Project, written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, showed how a buzz could be created without a big budget. Using a cleverly pitched internet campaign, the studio teased the public into a frenzy of speculation about whether the film was a true story or not, and eventually took almost $250 million dollars at the box office worldwide.

Lonelygirl15 was the logical next step. Like Jaws it had a high concept – the teenage confessional made possible by online video. Like Blair Witch it had mysterious origins – was this girl real or not? Like both films, it captured the imagination of public and media to create a hysteria of interest that no one could have predicted. The question was whether its success could be replicated.

Kate and Sofia

Perhaps surprisingly, the direct descendant of Lonelgirl15 lives in England. KateModern, also created by Miles Beckett, and with Luke Hyams as lead writer, has many similarities with her Californian predecessor and was launched by the social networking site Bebo in 2007. The first series claimed an audience of almost 48 million, while the second, Who Killed Kate Modern, is getting around 1.5 million viewers a week.

Also showing on Bebo this year is Sofia’s Diary. Originally created in Portugal by Nuno Bernardo back in 2003it has now been adapted for audiences around the world. Another first person confessional, it has relatively sophisticated editing and camera work and an interactive element to allow viewers to influence the story. It’s owned by Sony, but the intention of making a direct connection with a young online audience remains. With viewers estimated in the millions, it seems to be working, and Five have picked it up to show on their subsidiary digital channel, Fiver.

The challenge from a business perspective, of course, is to make money from these viewers. Lonelygirl15 probably made very little directly for its makers (though they’ve done well since) but YouTube, which sells advertising space, will have benefited from all the viewers. Bebo also has advertising but possibly more significant are the endorsements. For example, MSN, Orange Mobile and Disney/ Buena Vista, are reported to have paid up to $500,000 each to be associated with KateModern. Product placement is common and companies like the fact that these programmes are so much a part of teenagers’ worlds.

The problem for those wanting to create similar shows is getting a platform. YouTube has the highest number of visitors but unless you pay (a lot) to have your show promoted, you are reliant on the online word of mouth that Lonelygirl15 achieved. This is where social networking sites like Bebo have such an advantage – a large audience that meets online to chat. In the world of online drama, they are the equivalent of an old fashioned network broadcaster.

Until recently Bebo’s rival, MySpace, had tended to focus more on music than drama but last year they premiered Quarterlife, a series created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the men behind the hit TV series Thirtysomething. Aimed at an adult audience and described by its makers as a standard TV series made by network-standard writers, directors and crew, it certainly aroused plenty of media interest and was picked up by American TV network NBC.

However, after record low ratings the series was cancelled after the first episode. Not that MySpace has been put off. In April this year they announced a major new partnership with production company Shine Reveille International to develop new TV projects from the original content created for its website. In addition they’re developing a new online drama, I Love Chieftown, working with some of the people behind KateModern. Like Kate, the characters will be young and English, with the focus on new acting and musical talent. According to press reports, the intention is to launch a 60-episode series in September.

MySpace has also previewed a new film, Beyond The Rave, ahead of its release by Hammer Films on DVD. Commercial success could see a whole new model for film release – social networking sites create the buzz, before a DVD release that no longer relies on prior cinema distribution.

Away from the social networking sites, in the UK the highest profile online drama has been Signs Of Life, written by Peter Dornan and made by Endemol for the BBC last year. With a budget of £800,000 for eight 20-minute episodes this was certainly not a case of using the internet for cheap programming. The mixture of drama, horoscopes and personality tests was certainly innovative, although without the traditional measure of viewing figures it’s hard to know whether it can be judged to have been a success.

Another online experiment has been Dubplate Drama. Created by Luke Hyams and shown on Channel 4 and E4 as well as online, it launched in 2005 claiming to be the world’s first truly interactive drama with viewers able to vote for different story outcomes. A second series followed and a third is in development.

In general, UK broadcasters have tended to use online distribution to complement conventional transmission rather than replace it. Channel 4’s Skins (created by Jamie Brittain and Bryan Elsley), for example, has previewed episodes on MySpace as a way to drum up interest and engage the younger audience that can be hard to reach.

More experimentation from broadcasters is in the pipeline, however. Some will be interactive, but that isn’t necessarily the key. "My biggest demand is for a good writer,” Geoff Goodwin, head of BBC Switch (the Corporation’s youth brand) told Broadcast earlier this year. “In the past, the technology has tended to come first and the story has been second fiddle.” He’s developing several new multiplatform dramas that should be seen in 2008.

It’s still early days for online drama. No one quite knows what will work and what will sink without trace, but an increasing number of writers appear keen to find out.

In Hollywood the writers’ strike encouraged many to investigate new media options and leading scriptwriter, John August, has already announced that he is working on a show that will play solely online. “The project is financed outside the studio system, with some of that much-fabled internet money,” he wrote on his blog at johnaugust.com in February. “It has actors you recognize, and it probably could be a TV show — but it won’t. There’s near-consensus that in the next year or two, one of the web shows will really take off and change the game. I can almost guarantee you it won’t be ours. We may never see the light of day. But it’s the right time to be experimenting: with tone, with format, with economic model.”

Something that will certainly help projects like John August’s is the increasing number of people watching TV on their computers. In March 2008, more than 17.2 million requests to download or stream BBC programmes were made via the new iPlayer service. So, if people are watching drama, such as EastEnders streamed or downloaded on their PC or Mac, does that make it online drama? And, given that the BBC has now done a deal with Nintendo to test the iPlayer on the Wii console, and Microsoft is developing programming for its Xbox console, will there be a merging of role-playing games and interactive drama?

Many things are possible. What’s clear is that, regardless of what screen a drama will be viewed on, and whether the budget is £100 million or just £100, it still starts with the script.

This article was first published in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Summer 2008)

For advice and rates and conditions when writing online, download the Guild's 'Guidelines for online drama and content' from the Rates and Agreements section.