Through researching the web series “Broad City”, and in particularly studying the episode “Laundry”, I learnt a lot about both web series as well as the attitudes surrounding the developing form.

“Broad City” makes an interesting case study, as while it started as a web series, it has become a very successful TV series, which now airs internationally (see here). While the motivation for creating many of the web series being uploaded everyday, majority of series won’t go far beyond YouTube. The story of how creators Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson is so fascinating, not only because it’s a rare success story, but also because it highlights how the web series is still seen as a lower form of production.

Although the production value of the later webisodes increased somewhat, majority of the webseries was shot on handycams, with fairly low audio quality. The last webisode was produced in 2011, and the TV series premiered in the US in 2014. The transition to television has universally been seen as a step up for Glazer and Jacobson, as they now have access to a bigger budget, more crew members and a larger audience. While these factors majorly influenced the improvement seen in the quality of the TV show compared to the original web series both in terms of content and production value, Glazer and Jacobson were only able to take full advantage of these new resources because of what they had learnt from working on their web series.

Web series make excellent learning environments for producers, as audience expectations are often lower than they are for professional productions. If published on sites with comment sections, such as YouTube, creators are also able to easily engage with their audience, helping them to improve the series with every new episode.

In terms of our own web series, I think we can learn a lot from “Broad City”. The early episodes start of really simple. As the creators got more confidence and began to build up an audience, they got more adventurous. Similarly, while I think we should take a few risk and be inventive with our web series, we also need to be realistic about the time and budget we’re working with.

I’m looking forward to working in the web series form. The opportunity to engage with audience members (outside of my friends and family) will help me learn how to take feedback and improve how I produce content. How much of this feedback we’ll be able to put into practice will depend on whether or not we decide to release each episode individually, but whatever feedback we do receive can always be taken into future projects.

Below is a link to mine and Amber’s describe and analyse table

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Z18Hoz5SqJBWoLHbI9Czw8LYSiDInBJALZb0_SnDHc/edit