Why do you create web series? This week’s #WebSeriesWednesday is definitive web series.

There are a ton of web series out there, and each one has its own reasons for coming into existence. Some are vehicles for actors, others might be created through branding opportunities or maybe as a pilot looking for a bigger distribution.

The most common creation story is simple – the people involved really wanted to do it. It is just like how some people really want to go to Disney World, or want to lose weight, or start a business. It is some inner desire sparked by some external stimulus.

‘Broken At Love‘ is this later type of series.

There is something more significant here though. Web series creation is most certainly a cultural movement brought about through technological advancement. It’s a new way for individuals to tell their own story on a higher level than previously possible.

Working on their serve…

We used to write private journals, then the information super highway and our desire to share with others gave birth to blogs. Fiction provides that elegant balance between sharing and privacy. Film, with its combination of music, visual arts, story and performance, has always been at the highest level of artistic expression – yet the means of creation has long eluded the everyman.

Web series are the result of those means finally becoming attainable. Those people who are seizing the opportunity and creating in the space, not to propel themselves above it but for the experience of creating within it, are the most interesting to cover.

For ‘Broken At Love’ series creator, and star Karolina Sivas the reason why was simple: she had to. “Sometimes there is a story in your heart that needs to be told” she says.

‘Broken At Love’ is very much a poster series for the movement. The story feels personal and very narrow in scope. The production made use of a film school crew (USC represent!) and made due with some interesting production trade-offs. Of course the show would not be complete without some noticeably rough edges.

Fantasy is different from the reality

The story follows Vivienne Taylor, a naive, college student at USC who takes a chance on making a documentary covering a famous tennis player. It’s the personal touches that come through strongly – the interest in tennis, the vegan food and the movie making within the movie. Life is lived in the details.

The aforementioned tradeoffs are classic web series tradeoffs. The most obvious is the running theme of episodes taking place in vegan restaurants during business hours. It was kind of fun seeing the different spots and how each shop worked their brand in. It’s tough to convince a location owner of the merits of letting a bunch of people inside to film; this is mostly because there are none.

They meant to get the boom in this shot 🙂

The rough edges come from the limited experience, and the small time nature of web series production. They were things like not having enough color correction, occasionally unbalanced audio, and lack of a lot of polish. These things are common and will get better with time, the only problem is that they make potential viewers quickly tune out and turn off.

Presentation is not just to make your series more comfortable or easily digestible to viewers, it is ultimately what convinces a lot of people to watch or not. People need to stay to decide if they are interested in Vivie and Holden’s journey.

For now, with a glut of content available freely online, it is presentation that is the key to building an audience. Sustaining that audience is an entirely different arena.

Karolina and her team still have the web series bug, and there is plenty more story to tell. The show is very much a drama and episode eight, while a fitting conclusion on its own, leaves open plenty of questions for a second installment.

‘Broken At Love’ is in pre-production on a second season of the show and with some additional experience under their belts they will hopefully be able to solve some issues faced in season one and start building an audience excited to discover where Vivienne ends up – I know I’ll be watching.

You can find Broken At Love online at http://brokenatlovetheseries.com