Waking up to the future

So, while I remain somewhat secretive about some of my projects, I've decided that for my latest foray into entertaining the masses I will blog extensively on my efforts.

My latest project is a web series. I'm co-writing the series with my good friend Bernie Su. He and I believe that we can make a quality entertaining product specific to the web (at least to start).

While I won't be spilling the story details as yet, here's our basic construct for the series.

We've written a "pilot" episode which introduces our main characters and concept, but is (at least for now) not directly related to the main plot of the 8-episode series.

Each episode will be 5-6 minutes in length, and we hope to clock the total project in at 44 minutes.

We are still working on distribution and I am bringing aboard a producer I think will get us on the right track as we move toward ramping up the writing on the other episodes.

I fully intend for this to see the light of day by the end of April 2008.

Oh, and yes, it will have its own website and viral marketing elements. It should be fun.

Not your traditional Christmas films...

A World Without Writers Video

MY SLED!!!

Writing while the WGA pickets...

So, I'm contemplating my own future during the strike. Mystery project which had just gotten some MAJOR MOJO is now in limbo as we wait it out. There will be no joy in Mudville, and certainly no selling.

So, off I go to contemplate other projects. There is of course the new spec pilot I'm writing, which I will continue to crank on. Then there's the graphic novel I'm seriously considering. Oh, and I'm thinking of trying out another pilot as a longish narrative story first, just to help figure out the beats. And then there's the web series.

I'm very much looking forward to getting the web series off the ground as I think it's a cool idea and unlike most series which seem to be talking heads, this one might actually be interesting to some people. But here's my question of the day...

...if you were to watch a web series, what is the longest an episode could be before you'd get distracted/bored/stop and need to watch the rest of it later? My thought is 5 minutes is about the most someone will take in a sitting. But maybe it's less, maybe it's more. I know pacing and the goodness of the material accounts for a lot and can help the time fly by. But I'm interested in any other opinions.