That’s a big part of why we signed our deal with Lionsgate, and are putting our next show on Hulu – if you want to make shows to the scale of VGHS, YouTube is not the place. You have to pay for that content elsewhere. Right now, given the typical viewcounts of a wide variety of videos, it’s basically impossible to make higher cost long-form content make sense under an ad-supported model. And the rumor is that Minecraft videos disappeared altogether from the YouTube front page because some top ranking exec caused a firestorm when he pulled up the site one day and asked, “what the hell is Minecraft?” For a brief, infamous, period, video commentaries with very little content and a disproportionate amount of cleavage were commonly seen in the “related videos” column. When we started song parodies were very common, and many creators made healthy livings doing covers and parodies of the latest hit single. This mixture has been tweaked multiple times throughout YouTube’s history. There’s a mixture of nutrients in the environment which makes it easy for certain things to grow and flourish. Platforms like YouTube are like a garden. YouTube’s current model cannot financially support long-form high-production value series In no particular order, here are some of the things we’ve learned making a big budget webseries over the last three years: Music Usage is a new line item from this season because we licensed a number of tracks for use.The post-production sound number is lower than what would typically be expected because we partnered with Dolby, who graciously helped with post sound.Here’s how we used $2,435,434 to make Season Three of VGHS: That has necessitated different methods of financing, from ad supported, to brand sponsored, to pay VOD. With every season, we’ve gone bigger – adding more cast, more action sequences, more stunt sequences, and a bigger budget. Its budget is an order of magnitude more than nearly every other webseries, and an order of magnitude less than nearly every other television show. In terms of minutes watched, VGHS represents the most popular content on our channel, even compared to perennial favorites with incredibly clickable thumbnails and SEO optimized keywords (In this instance, I’m referring to “Rollercoaster Day,” which is consistently the most viewed video on our channel which I believe comes from its completely absurd thumbnail).įinally, VGHS is, from a budget perspective, atypical. In terms of views, all three seasons are sitting on a total of over 106 million views. VGHS is also, from our numbers, a pretty popular series. We also have pretty respectable IMDb and Netflix ratings. We’ve also been up for a small spattering of industry awards (Producers Guild, Golden Reel, etc.). Season 2 was named Variety’s “Best Webseries of 2013” and won Streamy awards for Best Directing, Best Ensemble Cast, and Best Sci-Fi/Action Series. VGHS is, from what other people tell us, a pretty good series. Our goal with this post mortem is to show you, from a budgetary sense, what went into making VGHS Season Three, while summing up some of the lessons we’ve learned over the last three years.īut before we begin, we should at least give a brief overview of VGHS. People are often surprised at how much goes into creating a show, and while VGHS has never had the luxury of budgets even remotely approaching typical network television content, we’ve always felt that we’ve done a lot for very little. We hoped, with our budget breakdowns, to give proper perspective into how much it actually costs to put together a narrative series with a modicum of production value. We’ve found that, when it comes to online video, people tend to assume it’s all cheap to create. In the past, our post mortems have been summations of how the budget was spent (Season One can be seen here and Season Two can be seen here). After having created three seasons of Video Game High School, and faced with the daunting task of putting together a post mortem that would sum up, essentially, three years of our professional lives, Matt and I decided to adapt the time-honored approach of “reckless procrastination.”
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