Shafe Shifter Just another guy on the internet.

My Summer Working on a Web Series.

This past summer and for the past year and a half or so, I’ve put a lot of my free time into a video web series production project.

This is an exciting time to be working on a project like this considering for the first time ever;  an advertisement during the Simpson’s is more expensive to buy on Hulu.com than it is to buy on network television.  According to a recent Gizmodo story, advertisements on network television during the show cost $20-$40/1000 viewer, while on Hulu.com the rate is $60/1000 viewers -- almost double the cost.

What used to require sitting uncomfortably at your computer desk, these “new media” sitcoms are now reaching people’s living room televisions via products like AppleTV, Tivo, Home Media Center and Xbox Live, not to mention mobile devices like the iPhone, IPod touch

The series we're working on is a comedy sitcom called Sex Hair.  Sex Hair is a band that seems somewhat bent on the 80s.  Interestingly, Sex Hair is an Air Band who never seems to get the professionalism of being ‘in the industry’ quite right.  Their rival band called the Gloryholes seem to have it more together than they do, being a thorn in their side at every turn.

Season 1 follows the band as they work up to compete in the town's battle of the bands contest. The winning band receives a brand spanking new tour bus to haul around the band's air equipment.

The viewers will find the situations quirky and humorous yet will be able to relate too many of the everyday situations presented that always seem to take a turn to the absurd.

For the series, I play the character Drew, who is the singer of the band.  In real life I’m the web guru, dealing with all things technical, with my fingers in writing and something with about every other aspect of the project.

This is one of the more massive projects I’ve worked on in some time.  It’s an amazing amount of work involving dozens of people.  People who are all volunteering their time and money because they feel it’s an awesome idea.   With this many people just coordinating schedules of the cast and crew who are all employed full time and operating on a volunteer basis is one of the biggest challenges.  Between the time involved scheduling, casting, gathering props and coordinating locations – I honestly understand why it takes so many people to produce a movie.

Filming is exhausting, 20+ hours on camera sometimes for 5 minutes of usable footage.  5-7 Minute episodes can take a few weeks to write, dealing with a whole season can sometimes be overwhelming.

After working on the series for awhile, there are a few things I’ve come away with aside from gaining a mass amount of knowledge about producing web content.  The most important is not to burn yourself out and make sure it continues to be fun.

Here’s a quick home video of a summer of producing Sex Hair.

Here is another video that is a featurette that was intended to be aired between episodes, however do to legal issues we cannot actually use it for the series and therefore won’t actually be released.

The website doesn't exist yet, but you can find links to our Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc here:
http://www.watchsexhair.com