The Black Dawn Ep.4

Lee and Mack make a shocking discovery, but they hide the truth from the others.

Next episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csZgKN…

“The Black Dawn” is a groundbreaking online experience, combining a web series with video blogs, short films, and an online comic. Visit http://www.webserials.com to see more.

2 Swirlies

We haven’t posted this show from WebSerials.com in a long time, so I thought I’d get one up.

This is a short episode. Don’t let the official length fool you, there’s two minutes of credits in a 5 minute video.

This series builds at a glacier pace, as the characters discover things that the audience always takes for granted. In this episode, there’s only one line of dialogue that’s new information, or surprising. And it works, but I would like a little bit more stuff happening. I feel like we’re four episodes in (yes, granted, short episodes) and I still don’t know where this story is going, and what the main conflicts are. The characters are still on the “How bad is it?” level of things.

So what’s next?

Black Dawn Ep. 3

Unable to contact anyone else, Adam and some of the others venture into the darkness to find out if his family is still alive.

Next episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-RKz4…

Download season pass: http://www.webserials.com/blackdawn/c…

“The Black Dawn” is a groundbreaking online experience, combining a web series with video blogs, short films, and an online comic. Visit http://www.webserials.com to see more.

2 Swirlies

“It’s 11 AM, and it’s still pitch black out.”

It’s been awhile since I checked in with this 2009 web series about a mysterious dark cloud over Los Angeles… looking for it’s long lost brother. No, just kidding. Just about everyone’s dead and no one knows why.

In this third episode, they go driving around L.A. looking for other survivors – and his family.

I’m not too sure where they were going. First there was the stuff immediately after the cloud and everyone died, and now I’m not sure what the character’s goals are. I know, some might say I’m only on episode 3, and it’s been a long time since I saw the first two, but I don’t really know anything except that people are dead. What’s the story here?

What saves this episode is the impressive acting and pathos towards the end. I felt myself getting a little bit wattery eyed myself.

Black Dawn – Ep 2.

Adam finds other survivors, but as they gather together it is clear that no one knows what has happened.

2 Swirlies

“We don’t know what tonight is going to bring. Or tomorrow.”

In true movie fashion, the beautiful girl in distress is the second character we meet. Will they get together?

This is the second episode of the series, and we see that there are, indeed, some survivors from whatever it is that killed almost everyone in L.A. The survivors huddle in a basement and get what surely must be the worst pep talk ever – a real downer followed by, “Everything’s going to be okay.”

I’m still waiting for this series to get going. I’m a sucker for science fiction, so I guess we’ll see what picks up next…

The Black Dawn – Episode 1

Day 1 – 9:27 am. A mysterious plague falls over Los Angeles, leaving death in its wake.

2 Swirlies

Okay… and then what?

Nice premise, even if we’ve seen it before. People start dropping dead and no one knows why.

The problem is that we watch a full five minute episode and we don’t know more than that… which is to say the same things we knew going in. We don’t know anything about the main character, not his name (at least I didn’t catch it) or why we care about his story.

I don’t want the maker’s of The Black Dawn to feel like I am singling them out in order to make a point, but they have fallen into a trap very common to short form series. Your first episode is not like an opening chapter of a novel, nor is it the opening scene of a movie.It needs to tell a satisfying story, like a pilot for a TV show, only in a very short time span.

Here’s the difference. With a novel or a movie, the audience has already committed to the work as a whole. With a 5 minute episode, the story has to be compelling enough to convince someone to seek out the next installment. You can’t simply start to tell the larger story, you have to finish a smaller one. (And of course leave things hanging enough to make people care about what the storyteller has up their sleeve.)

In this episode of Black Dawn, we know going in that people are going to drop dead, and that’s what we get. I’m hoping in the next episode something else will happen. We’ll keep you posted.

Here’s a little poll. What webseries has the best first episode?