Felicia Day and her web series, The Guild, are full of win. »
Actress Felicia Day Reroutes Her Career With Web Series “The Guild”
BY: ARI KARPEL September 1, 2010
With her groundbreaking series “The Guild,” actress Felicia Day took control of her own career — and shook up the world of Web video in the process.
I danced for four hours in high heels,” Felicia Day says by way of apology for her morning-after sluggishness.
Last night was the wrap party for season four of her Web series The Guild, and for once it was no set-up-the-Rock-Band-in-the-living-room shindig.
She went all out, getting a local bar to donate space and hiring a DJ who played ’80s music all night. “I was like, If we’re going to do this, I want to dance,” she says between spoonfuls of fruit and yogurt at a West Hollywood café. “I’ve been working 12-hour days.”
It’s not as if she needs an excuse to celebrate. In three years, The Guild, a homemade comedy series about gamers playing a World of Warcraft-like virtual role-playing game, has gone from cute one-off to full-fledged phenomenon. The show’s run so far has garnered an estimated 65 million views, and has even spawned its own comic book. And in Day’s brave holdout for ownership and creative control of her series, she devised an innovative distribution deal with Microsoft that’s a new model for the burgeoning world of Web video. In fact, she just may be the only person who has figured out how to make a living by producing, writing, and starring in an original online series.
“This year, my coproducer Kim Evey and I have been able to say, ‘This is my full-time job,’ ” says the Alabama native. “A little blind enthusiasm got me a long way.”
Day shot the pilot for The Guild in friends’ houses with a borrowed camera. YouTube featured the third episode on its home page, garnering 1 million views. A PayPal button solicited donations and yielded a fan-driven bounty that let them produce roughly an episode a month.
As buzz built, Day and her company, Knights of Good Productions, signed with ICM new-media head George Ruiz. “At one point, there were 25 different offers on the table,” Ruiz says, “including from some major studios and networks and even a director with several $100 million films.”
Day turned down every one. “She said, ‘George, don’t make me take this deal!’ ” he says. So by the time Microsoft came calling, the agent had a new approach: The Guild is not for sale, but you can license it.
The Seattle-based behemoth bit. Microsoft pays an undisclosed fee to debut each season exclusively on the company’s Xbox Live, MSN, and Zune platforms (season four debuted in mid-July). “There is a common perception about Microsoft,” says Day. “Especially when we first signed with them, the fans had reservations.” But she was impressed that it got what she was doing and didn’t want to interfere. “Microsoft doesn’t even give me notes [on scripts]!”
“Felicia could be an entertainment executive,” raves Ross Honey, Microsoft’s GM of content acquisition and strategy for media and entertainment. He says that The Guild is Xbox Live’s most successful original-content effort.
Day’s company shares in sponsorship revenue from Xbox Live’s “branded-destination environment.” Ruiz has secured similar distribution and revenue arrangements with Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, and New Video Group, which distributes the show on DVD.
Still, Day says, “I’m turning down a lot of money. I could be much richer now. But if I have an idea, I can have it out to the world very quickly.” She has spun off a comic-book series with Dark Horse Comics, and when she had the idea for a sexy promotional music video, Microsoft put up the money to make “Do You Want to Date My Avatar?” Day says the scale of working on The Guild is much different from a traditional TV show’s. “Everyone is cutting their rate to work in Web video,” she says. “That’s why Kim and I always make sure the food is really good, and why we always have a really nice party. “
For years, Day got by in Los Angeles acting in commercials and the occasional TV episode, most notably an eight-week stint on Buffy the Vampire Slayer back in 2003. Frustrated by how slow Hollywood was to come around to her talents, the redhead channeled her geek love of gaming into The Guild.
Early episodes caught the eye of her former employer, Buffy creator Joss Whedon, who was inspired to cast her as the female lead in his own groundbreaking Web series, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.
For all of Day’s success, she’s only now starting to win over Hollywood proper. She has yet to land a regular network or feature-film gig, though Day recently wrapped the leading role inRed, a werewolf-slaying adaptation of the Little Red Riding Hood tale for the Syfy channel.
But Day seems content with her progress. “I’m used to being an outsider,” she says. “I was homeschooled. I don’t think like other people do.”
Rogue satellite may disrupt rural web, phone service »
As many as 35,000 people in rural Alaska may lose Internet access, long-distance phone service or both for hours at a time this week because of a “zombie” satellite that has wandered off course and is expected to scramble the signals of the Bush’s main telecommunications provider.
“Almost every single person out in rural Alaska uses one of those services somehow,” said David Morris, spokesman for General Communication Inc.
GCI is airing radio ads, posting fliers and plans to send text messages to cell phone customers warning residents in roughly 100 communities — mainly in Western and Northern Alaska — of the potential outages.
The disruptions to GCI service are expected to begin Wednesday morning and continue until Saturday morning in blocks of time that will last 90 minutes to 5 1/2 hours, mostly in the morning and at night.
Picture the YouTube droughts. The silent cell phones and unanswered e-mails. Virtual “FarmVille” gardens withering and neglected on Facebook.
For Gordon Brower Jr., the 19-year-old son of a whaling captain, the outages mean exile from the online battlefields of what he calls Barrow’s favorite Xbox game — “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.”
Brower said he spends endless hours playing the online shooter with other gamers above the Arctic Circle as the snowmachine he’s been trying to sell on Craigslist sits in the yard outside. He’s thinking an Internet break might not be such a bad thing.
“It makes me a couch potato anyways,” Brower said.
The tale of the zombie satellite, mindless but moving, began April 5 when a roughly 4,000-pound and 46-foot-wide communications satellite called Galaxy 15 malfunctioned 22,300 miles above the Earth. It’s still powered up, but no one can steer it as it meanders near other satellites.
“It’s gone rogue,” said John Concilus, director of educational technology for the Bering Strait School District, and a self-described satellite and rocketry geek.
News reports blamed the failure on a solar storm, but a spokeswoman for Intelsat, the Luxembourg-based company that operates the satellite, says no conclusive cause has been determined.
“We understand that there are sacrifices involved here and that we are working hard with our direct customer, GCI, to minimize the impact to the citizens in Alaska,” said Dianne VanBeber, an Intelsat vice president.
The satellite’s path is taking it in wide, north-south arcs as it approaches a different satellite GCI uses to provide phone and Internet service to much of rural Alaska. When it gets too close to the “good” satellite, the rogue satellite is expected to disrupt the GCI signal.
Most of the villages either don’t have local 911 service or the service won’t be affected by the outages, Morris said. In five, however — Ambler, Deering, Gambell, Kiana and Shungnak — GCI doesn’t know if the interruption will cause 911 calls to fail.
The company estimates 4,000 residential customers, about 1,000 businesses, 78 village clinics and 49 schools could lose Internet access.
That means ATMs won’t work. Grocery store clerks won’t be able to electronically process credit cards.
For the Bering Strait School District, the timing couldn’t be worse, Concilus said. The four days of expected outage come as about 160 school employees converge on the Norton Sound village of Unalakleet for training that demands Internet access.
The district rescheduled some of the training to avoid the outage windows, while GCI set up a temporary dish in the village that will provide some Internet connectivity during the week, he said.
While it’s easy to picture the teeth-clenching outrage that would follow a 5-hour Internet blackout in Anchorage, the communities that GCI says could be hit by outages include towns connected by rivers and airplanes rather than roads, villages closer to walruses than Wal-Marts.
As a result, many rural residents say they’re used to all manner of such breakdowns, interruptions and inconveniences in everyday life.
“When you live where we live and play where we play, you have to be prepared for that kind of thing to happen,” said Bill Pearch, spokesman for the Bristol Bay Area Health Corp.
GCI has arranged for regional hospitals like the health corporation’s Kanakanak Hospital in Dillingham to remain connected to the Internet during the outages, allowing telemedicine services to continue, Morris said. Nearly 80 village clinics, however, are expected to lose Internet access.
In the Bristol Bay region, village health aides who lose long-distance phone service and Internet access should be able to dial hospitals on a satellite phone to retrieve crucial information, like whether a patient is allergic to certain medicine, Pearch said.
It helps that the Internet outages are expected mainly before the clinics open or after they close, he said. “It’s gone from what could have been a catastrophe to something that’s just an inconvenience.”
Ruth Barr works at the Deering village clinic and like many rural residents seemed to shrug at the notion of a few hours offline each day. This time of year many people are outside — looking for caribou and fishing, picking berries and bagging musk ox, she said.
“There’s quite a bit to do besides Internet, I guess.”
Leaving Facebook? Join the Diaspora.
I am seriously considering leaving Facebook at this point. Constantly changing the privacy policy, and stripping away more and more user control over data sharing, is supremely uncool. I could wax eloquent about privacy rights, but i’m too tired right now and “supremely uncool” pretty much covers it.
If you must have more detail, read something i tweeted earlier this week: RT @Gizmodo: Seriously, This Is Why You Should Still Quit Facebookhttp://gizmodo.com/5534736/
Anyway. I am fully supporting the Diaspora project from a bunch of brilliant NYU kids. You should too. Check out their blog, and then go to their Kickstarter and donate some moneys.
Geocities-izer »
turn any web site into a 90s flashback, complete with comic sans and midi fonts.
use with caution.
