Writing for web series

[dlevanchuk]

I was watching "walking dead" web episodes, about 2-3 mins each with 6 episodes total, and wondered about their story structure.

Do you think the whole web series was written as a 20 page screenplay, and then broken down to smaller 2-3 page screenplays?

Wondering about writing a short sci-fi web series myself, and just curious how the web episodes structured.

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

I've actually got a web series script sitting away waiting for the perfect time to strike.

I wrote the outline for the entire story (well, "entire" as it stands) and then chopped it down into manageable 3-5 minute pieces and then actually fleshed the pieces out as separate scripts.

I found it a lot easier to manage as you could essentially do whatever crazy crap you had to do for it to be entertaining, happy with the thought that at the end you'd still end up with continuity.

The other take is a web series which has very little crossover ala Red vs. Blue - in that case I think the writers stuck more with a theme, rather than an over-riding story.

 

[dlevanchuk]

Gotcha. That was I was thinking as well. Narrative outline, then chop the bastard up.
Thank you! Will you be filming your series anytime soon?

 

[Beatlesfan1225]

I film a webseries which I now release once a month, "FPS The Show" When we started in Season 1 I sat down and made an outline of where I want the show to go over the course of the first few seasons. Now, being a web series this altered quite a bit and looking back at Season 1 (Which I consider more of a test now more than anything) We didn't even really follow that outline. Since each episode was about 10-15 minutes, the scripts were roughly 20 pages each. We just started Season 2, we release one episode a month on the 30th, Except for this month of course.

I also film a second web series on my website, "The Report" which is a 15 minute long twice a month "Daily Show/SNL" type deal. It's a bunch of comedy sketches, a comedy monologue with a host at the beginning, and usually ends with a music video of sorts. For that we write each skit individually, and act them out to make sure we have the correct timing on each. We filmed 4 Report episodes in 2011, since we started in November. We have it on hold right now, because we are completely redoing the set. (Adding TVs in the back, a better desk, custom mugs, etc) We'll return with that in April.

Writing for a webseries is very fun, but also extremely time consuming haha, good luck!

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

Gotcha. That was I was thinking as well. Narrative outline, then chop the bastard up.
Thank you! Will you be filming your series anytime soon?

Yup! I've just been waiting for a specific tool to be released that kept getting delayed by the producers, and it was just released on Monday, so going to start work on it late next week after I get back to Melbourne from another production. Can't wait

Would love to see what you come up with!

 

[jmoschner]

Wondering about writing a short sci-fi web series myself, and just curious how the web episodes structured.

It varies alot from series to series.

Some are more episodic where each episode has a beginning middle and end. Those tend to run a little longer (at least 10 min or so)

Others I've seen are more serialized where it seems they just cut up a short film or movie into chunks. This seems to be the way most scripted web series are told.

Our web series (reality on demand) was written with an overall structure for the season more akin to taking the 5 act structure of an hr long drama and making each act an episode. I didn't write the season, just gave notes (mostly in regards to the vfx shots and what we could and couldn't do in post).

The good part of web series is that there are no hard and fast rules for the story structure.