In many ways, the web series scene is like the Wild West, or a young colony on a hostile alien planet. Everyone is welcome to play. There are no rules. But if you don’t have the chops, you’ll get eaten alive.
Vancouver is a hotbed for web series development. We’ve got a time-tested corps of film and television professionals chomping at the bit to create brazen, addictive, and riveting content.
And our locally produced web series are launching careers, garnering millions of hits, and collecting awards at high-profile festivals around the world.
But like in the Wild West (or that distant alien planet), it’s truly Every Man/Women for Himself/Herself. Web series are largely self-funded, self-produced, self-directed, and self-marketed. It can be a cold, lonely, and ultimately unprofitable venture.
It’s in this untamed setting that Frostbite Pictures has found solid ground.
The Vancouver production company is bringing a Hollywood studio approach to the new media world — without the trappings of an old-school Hollywood mentality.
“What the internet will need to be successful is a Hollywood-style studio that doesn’t have the legacy of Hollywood business deals and plans that are preventing Hollywood from truly making a go of it,” says company co-founder Ivan Hayden.
A 17-year veteran of the Vancouver visual effects scene, Hayden met his future business partner Jason Fischer on the set of Supernatural (Hayden was running the VFX department; Fischer was the production coordinator).
Soon Hayden and Fischer were launching their first web series, Divine; this was four years ago — still the early days of the local web series scene. “It was new territory, and everybody in the business, when we told them what we were spending our money on, looked at us like we were stupid,” recalls Hayden.
But the pioneers forged ahead, and as Divine caught fire, their fellow filmmakers began coming to them for advice: namely, how to maneuver the rocky road from production to distribution. Hayden and Fischer recognized a hunger they could satisfy.
“We realized that there needed to be a studio both for the filmmakers and indie people who are trying to get credibility behind themselves, and also for the business and the industry.” Thus, Frostbite Pictures was born.
Frostbite’s web series — which include After (starring Robin Dunne of Sanctuary fame), Aeternus, The Last Fall of Ashes, andPolaris — have scooped up numerous accolades on the international festival circuit.
In May, Polaris took home the grand prize at the inaugural Toronto International Web Series Festival; more recently, Polaris’ star Johannah Newmarch (When Calls the Heart) won the Leo Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Web Series.
Any way you look at it, Frostbite is flourishing. Three years ago, they produced three series. This past year, they powered seven. By the time the next festival circuit rolls around, they plan to have breathed frosty life into more than twenty shows from an array of genres.
Frostbite’s series are distributed through online channels like YouTube, Vimeo, and JTS.tv. Hayden sees a bright future with on-demand content providers like Netflix.
“[Viewers] are tuning in to Netflix to see the new Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, but there isn’t enough content to satiate those people,” says Hayden. “Netflix is going to need to come to a studio and say, ‘we need massive amounts of content at a lower price point, and we need to be able to work with someone to figure out how that will play out.’”
At this point, Frostbite’s goal is to ensure that everyone who’s working on one of its properties gets a reasonable paycheque. “It’s amazing to see how many business people are listening to us now, whereas three or four years ago when we were doing Divine, the new things we were talking about were just a little too far for them to consider,” says Hayden.
