Growing Pains

I was impressed. The show was a lot better than I expected from what I had seen all week on the site. I guess the producers and what Dan Harmon was saying about Standards & Practices added an extra layer of quality control.

I had been wondering since it's hard to know what VH1 will let on. They've had more raw shows like Web Junk 20, Shooting Sizemore and Breaking Bonaduce.

Then they've had a lot more produced shows like My Fair Brady, Flavor of Love and The Surreal Life so I wasn't sure which it was going to be.

I noticed that Dawn Cody uploaded a different version of Conjoiners and so did mathsfowussies of Speed Demonz then they both got in the Vote this week.

I'm doing this version to get it on TV since I already have the version I wanted myself on the web page so I'm not above taking constructive criticism and tweaking my work. I thought I could upload a different version of Chapter 1 since it's 20 seconds longer than the 2.5 limit they set.

I'm thinking of what was said about"You balance sexual tension like a master tightrope walker" that I've probably fallen off the edge with only the second skin texture maps and it won't fly with the PTB in allowing it on since it's too close to nudity.

Plus with the quote "bruises after the last orgy" I might want to tone down the dialogue and change some of the graphic depictions of the practices of Elysium especially since someone was asking what Grecian water sports were.

I guess I can find some other way of portraying the reasons why even if Elysium was a Paradise for some that the setup needed to provide that wasn't all that great for the people that did all the work.

I suppose I can find another way to show the motivation for Minerva to find a better job.

The thing I'm confused about is, that if the 1st episode didn't cut it, does that disqualify all the other episodes that didn't have the same thing? Maybe I shouldn't have taken Wysol's suggestion and not uploaded them all so fast and waited until the 1st one went through more of the process. But I figured it would help it make more sense if people saw more of the story.



Maybe I should do the combination of the animation with the live footage like I did in my Angel's on Patrol video. It might be the best of both worlds

They seem to be doing better with producing the show for VH1 than the interactive part of the web site though. Maybe because they have more control over that production and it's more familiar territory.

I know it's a rough job and I'm sure that Fred Graver is doing his best in a tough situation trying to get the web site together, like he was saying he was having a lot of trouble with the influx of new members joining the site after the show aired.

Last week it was sorta like having a clam bed that produced a few pearls, not that many but enough to be worth the effort in looking for them. Over the weekend it was like dumping seaweed on the clam bed where you have to sift through a whole lot of obstacles to even find the clams much less be able to pick out the pearls.

There are some things that the site needs to grow since it needs to be integrated if the show is going to be effective at being interactive.

Some are the user friendly part like a status bar to show the progress of an uploaded video so you know how much is left until it's done.

Some are more user feedback like a discussion forums so the comments don't have to be spread out over all the profiles and blogs where no one can keep track of the topics.

Some are filtering like the most discussed list and most viewed list so you can find what you're looking for easier, or to promote more quality control before it even gets to the production people.

I'm not sure but they might've taken out some of the executive level membership filters like they had last week because of the volume. I guess it took too much time to sort through.

It certainly looked like the people that uploaded stuff over the weekend certainly didn't take that test or look at the tutorial videos. If they did then they certainly didn't pay any attention to them. That would be a shame since I thought they were very good at teaching the basics.

I think they should be required to be viewed and passing that test about them to be able to upload. That would certainly help in filtering out the stuff that doesn't belong. Several people have already made comments to that effect.

Most of the stuff uploaded over the weekend had nothing to do with story structure. They didn't even get to the threshold much less cross it.

Only a very few of them had any attempt at a script at all and those that did looked like they only did the first draft and none of the revisions that were suggested. You wonder why some future versions of themselves didn't go back to the past to do some genetic engineering so they would have the patience not to rush into uploading just anything.

I couldn't see much or any at all signs of editing in a lot of them since a bunch of them were 4 mins and some were a less than 1 min so I doubt they paid any attention to the suggestions.

I guess it all depends on a more informed audience if they're going to make a success of managing user content effectively. The trouble is that it's like the old saying "If you want to to a mule, the first thing is that you have to get it's attention" So putting pages on the site that people have to respond to like that test is a way to get them to pay attention to the principles they need to learn and be able to upload something worth watching.