I am fast finding the "webisode" platform a very interesting in innovative way to present a series or even what on TV would be called a single one hour episode. Instead of one long episode of an hour or longer, each web episode is instead a short bite sized offering. Instead of that single hour you may in fact have nine or more episodes ranging anywhere for 3 minutes to upwards of 10 minutes. SyFy's Sanctuary started this way on the web - with 4 to 6 per hour, giving the fan little morsels at each visit. The beauty of this is that if you don't have enough time for a half to full hour, you can break it up and watch snippets during breaks or what have you. Plus if you want more, you simply keep watching other episodes in the series or better yet instead of once a week, you have a piece every day of the week.
So for me, the first was Sanctuary, a couple other less well hyped, then Woke Up Dead and more recently is a really good web-isodic program called ARK on Hulu.com
Here is the snipit that Hulu provides for the program:
- Two strangers plucked from different decades find themselves lost on a massive spaceship deep in space. With no information about where they are or how they got there, they must work together to figure out a way home.
At present there are 9 episodes that add up to about a regular 1 hour program sans adds (hulu of course has ads, but they are short and not intrusive)
Like Santuary I will bet that ARK is dependant on green screen, but even so there has been effort to provide an environment much like say SyFy's Stargate Universe's ancient mysterious ship. So far, with 9 shorts down, we have a mix of SG Universe and Riverworld. There are hints that the "ARK" is ancient and carrying a precious cargo.
It is worth checking out and if you don't like it, well what, you're down 10 minutes or less? The ninth doesn't wrap much up, so maybe there is a bunch of other webisodes in the wings.
