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Juina on the set with two actors portraying the young lovers in Deep Creek. All the actors were volunteers from the Oxygen staff.
PART III SHARING YOUR WORK
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WEBISODES:
time: Leave yourself a couple of days to write a script and figure out which of your friends will appear in it. As for shoot- ing, we strongly suggest you shoot all the scenes in all the Webisodes over a day to two.
The project here asks you to invent your own soap-opera world, cast it with friends, and produce five or six Webisodes of twenty to thirty pictures each. This undertaking will be a challenge—no doubt about it. I suggest you team up with a friend.
Every episode had three storylines. We left one of these
open ended and asked the audience to vote on what the outcome should be. The polls closed at the Oxygen Web site on Wednesday and a new episode had to be posted on Friday. We added a teenager who was portrayed on our slide show by one of the Oxygen staff. However we hired a real teenager to write daily diary entries on a blog and to answer questions and comments submitted by Web viewers. These interactive elements seem obvious now but blogging and voting was in its infancy at the time.
Step 1: Write the story. Write what is called a beat out- line of the storyline. This is a simple string of sentences that gives the plot points and suggests the series of photographs you will be taking. A good melodrama begins with a huge dramatic crisis that involves two or three characters. End each Webisode with a cliff-hanger. Don’t be intimidated by the script- ing phase. There are no lines of dialogue for actors to learn. Instead you are inventing a series of poses into which you will add thought balloons or another convention that represents short spoken phrases.
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CHAPTER 7: PROJECT IDEAS [ 269 ]
YOUR OWN MELODRAMA, BASED ON SNAPSHOTS OF POSING FRIENDS
REQUIREMENTS
CASE STUDY: julina
Julina Tatlock has most recently been a programming executive at Oxygen Media. But she got her start directing theater, making independent films, and producing interac- tive narratives such as this one. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her writer husband and three kids.
gear: A digital camera that can snap pictures in rapid or- der, a computer with Photoshop and Illustrator, and any blog or site that allows you to post slide shows. Forego a sound track. Note that Webisodes can also be distributed over the Web as QuickTime movies.
Our team went home one weekend with the assignment to come back with ideas for an online soap opera with no plug- ins and no broadband. Just HTML that would stream fast over dial-up connections. I came in on Monday and pitched a soap featuring two women running for mayor of Deep Creek (as in “Up the creek without a paddle”). Our three-person team then brainstormed the rest of the characters and a plot based on successful formula of soaps. Eventually we hired a profes- sional soap writer and an artist to help with Photoshop and Illustrator.
budget: There are very few out-of-pocket costs. You might want to get some pizza for the actors and some props.
The series title set the graphic style: bold primary colors, graphics, and stylized photographs.
Our next step was building an audience. We approached AOL and because of their promotion, Deep Creek became heavily visited. The biggest thing I learned was the dual importance of a good story and easy accessibility —JT
Step 3: Shoot stills. For each scene in your story, you will need just a few shots, so choose them carefully. Shoot your actors against a solid-color, evenly lit background, because this makes it easier to select your actors in Photoshop and put them onto a new background. Try not to crop your actors as you shoot
Julina used a digital still camera to shoot the source photos against a green-screen background. The green background made it easy to cut out the
WORKFLOW
Step 2: Find actors. Think of who you can wrangle to
be your soap stars and let their personalities inspire you. Remember that in melodrama, plot and physical action are dominant—don’t go for subtlety. Instead go for big gestures, big story, big action. No acting is really involved, just posing for the camera and a willingness to look silly.
characters. Illio Krumins-Beens and Christy Zelling had fun with their roles.