Scope

SURF’S UP: WATCHING WEB SERIES

Rochelle Siemienowicz

From its beginnings in 2013 as a single-day event, Melbourne WebFest – founded by Steinar Ellingsen, a former journalist, academic and early adopter of the form, as the creator of the award-winning 2011 documentary web series The Inland Sea: An Australian Odyssey – has grown into a four-day festival of screenings, forums and industry events, including an opportunity to pitch to ABC iview. Now, there are awards offered in twenty-five categories, eligible to both local and international titles. The 2018 festival saw 1600 attendees, and was sponsored by La Trobe University, Film Victoria and Screen Australia. These days, these industry players are all taking short-form content very seriously indeed, as are the free-to-air broadcasters and streaming services.

Certainly, there’s been an explosion in web series on local shores. According to the Film, Television and Digital Games Survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for Screen Australia last year, the number of episodes created grew from just 107 over the 2011/12 financial year to a whopping 3248 in 2015/16. Meanwhile, the amount of traditional TV drama created in Australia fell from 632 hours to 497 in the same period, and TV documentaries dropped from 566 hours to 444. The establishment of Screen Australia’s Multi-platform Production fund in 2012 has no doubt played a huge role in encouraging this activity. The current iteration of the initiative (now called the Online Production fund) allows applicants to seek up to A$500,000 per project – a significant amount for a young creative team.

By definition, a web series consists of scripted or non-scripted videos released