We’re all used to watching series on TV, and know that for some, it takes a form of commitment. Not the kind you need to put a ring on – but the kind that gets you sitting on edge in front of the screen every week, anticipating the next episode, looking forward to the next event in the story and seeing more of your favourite characters.

Trying to recreate the suspension on the web is tricky because the online format, by nature, is there when we want it – the viewer can catch up at any time. Lucky for us, our audience is perpetually tapped into the web, and we have a year’s worth of material to release, and plenty of suspension to draw from the story our band of loveable superheroes are telling, that will continually unfold over the season. (Those diehard fans are a lucky bunch!)

Now, as we’re releasing early episodes of Ashes, and starting to build our fanbase, our curious new audience is asking us…. “Who are these guys?”, and “Who is Captain Euchre?” and, “There’s how many episodes?!?!”

Well, we will tell you.

On November 12th, we launch our new site at www.tightsandfights.com, and you will have multiple ways to enjoy the series, and get into the story. Jump right in, or start from the beginning. Pick your favourite character and get it from their point of view. Interact online in any old social media style, and build yourself a superhero persona on capester.com.  And for you non-committal types who want to catch up without going in for the long haul… you can do that too. Transmedia content comes in many flavours! And we’ll be here for you whenever you’re ready, (for approximately 3 minutes at a time). Try getting that level of commitment from regular television programming.

All the details will unfold in due time. So hang on to your curious inquisitions – (or rather, make them known! Comment here on our facebook page) and come November 12, you shall be enlightened.

Meanwhile, still curious?  Watch our trailer again.
Check out our website for a full explanation of the show.
And catch up on Captain Euchre! What can he do with a super-powered Euchre Deck, anyway?

and then come back for more

Shhh!

We here at Gopherx.net have long known the dirty secret of online video – almost no one watches until the end.

It doesn’t matter how long or short your video is, or what type of hosting you use, most of your viewers click away before the video is finished streaming.

Now, I’m not a fan of bloggers who simply rewrite other blog’s content and call it their own, so I’ll let you check out the post on Visible Measures that inspired this one on your own. (But you’ll have to wait for the link at the bottom, cause I do want you to read my post first!) But essentially they discovered that 20% of viewers leave in the first 10 seconds. That’s an average figure across the whole online video sphere. (Is there a g33k term for it that I’m not aware of?)

Like I started out saying, that’s nothing new. We discovered this fact when we were analyzing our figures for our early series, especially Team Leader, which was launched just when these sorts of robust tools were first being developed.

The first response people throw out when confronted with numbers like this is “People have shorter attention spans today.” Usually with a roll of the eyes. What they’re really saying is that the it is the viewer’s fault

that they’re not sticking around past ten seconds, or even to the end. And I just that that’s mean. It’s not the viewer’s fault that they didn’t like your piece of video enough to watch it all. (At the risk of bragging, we’ve found that our videos tend to blow away to the average numbers for completion – as far as we can tell we some of the highest completion rates on the internet.)

The myth of lowering attention span I think comes from a comparison between old media and new media. When you go out to a movie, you have committed yourself and your time to about two hours of watching. Not so with online video. Often we get a link emailed or tweated to us and we have no idea how long it is, or even what it is really about. We open it, watch for a few seconds, and then glance at the time bar. “Four minutes? I better get back to that report. I’ll watch it later.” And that counts as someone watching the video and clicking away. Is it a problem with attention span? Or is it just the fact that entertainment on the internet is still very much about discovery. How often do you sit down with a plan to watch internet videos for the next hour? (Despite what media gurus would have you believe, people don’t plan their time that way – they pick series, not platforms. But that’s another discussion.)

Another element of viewer abandonment (and the myth of the short attention span) is that watching stuff on the internet still… kinda… sucks. Let’s be honest about it. My computer is fairly modern, but I still set the resolution way down on a video so it will play smoothly and buffer quickly. Fiction videos, like web series, have a bit of a raw deal. To get the kinds of scenes viewers expect to see – being used to film and TV – can choke up a stream. It is hard to compress a scene where there’s lots of action and motion. And so the picture stutters, and freezes and buffers and we huff and puff and get to a point where watching that video just isn’t worth the wait anymore. It’s not the videos fault. And it’s not the viewer’s fault. If the experience sucks, why should people put up with it? They can click to Fail Blog or Lolcatz where the pictures come up right away, we can feel good for a moment, and then get back to that report.

So, yes, people click away. And we’re not supposed to talk about it – it might scare off advertisers. But it happens. For one reason or another, some people just don’t want to watch your video. It’s not great, but instead of keeping it a secret, we should be upfront and deal with it.

And the answer is not making that first ten seconds super exciting and super high energy or have boobies or whatever (unless that is what your video is about). Let it introduce your story, let the people who will never like to watch that story leave, and the rest of us can get on with enjoying it.

For those who are interested in the numbers, check out the post from Visible Measures.

Amanda gets ready to paint flats

It seems so simple.  Get a place, dress it up, and shoot a film!! Nothing is that easy I guess, but location can be one of the biggest challenges of pre-production.  Now, Tights and Fights was designed to be easy on locations and have a flexible shooting strategy.   But we wanted to take it one step further for one of our new characters. It was extremely challenging to secure a place to build a small studio set at almost the last minute.   It looks like our best plans are all going to work out.

The big challenge here was that we need to re-enter the locations 3 times to complete the 181 episodes.  What do you do with large set pieces for three months while more work is done to make the series a success?

Step one done

Well, we’d like to thank Jason McQuarrie one of our talented Art Directors and his family for their hospitality.  And I also want to thank for Amanda Gougeon for going the extra mile this weekend to help Jason build and paint it, and our friends at Deville’s Workshop for getting a lead on a nice set of free flats.

One week until we start filming!!

So when can you all see it?  Well that might take some time because its first distribution window will be on broadcast, but don’t worry it will be online eventually.  Stay tuned for more details.

Scott and Christopher partnered with writer/producer Josh Budd and director/producer Chris Forest shot all 12 episodes in November of 2006. It has taken us up until now to get through the picture and sound editing. We’ll have something to show you coming soon… we’re working on a sneak peek for all of our cast, crew and loyal Gopher X fans.

You can gauge my level of excitement by the fact that as I write this I am not wearing any pants.

Aaron Sorkin said that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was his most autobiographical work. Well… Scott says that Robot Roommates is his. Does that mean you’re a robot, Scott?

We’re working with talented Bryce Hallet (The Red Green Show, History Bites) for the animation to this one. We’re super excited to have Bryce on board with us. We’ve been trying to work with him for awhile now, and Robot Roommates is the project that made it happen.

We hope to go into production on RR (as we call it in our lazy way) by the end of April.

We’d like to thank Movieola for believing in us. If you get the channel, check us out!

Tights and Fights airing schedule

If you don’t get the channel, you should look into it. They’re doing great things. You can watch a whole bunch of stuff on their website, too!

This is an exciting time for us. We’ve got a brand website, and while it is still a bit of a work in progress, we’re very happy with it! We hope you like it.

Plus, we’re gearing up to do a new animated series, Robot Roommates, and after that we’re going to dive right into series two of Tights and Fights. We’re calling it Tights and Fights: Ashes, and it focuses on five different super heroes and their (eventual) quest to find Captain Euchre.

And we’re forming a new partnership, one that will definitely take us to the next level. We’ll let you know as soon as we can.

Watch this space!