Interesting event at Web Wednesday this week, as the cast and crew of web series Lumina turned up to talk about web TV.
Never heard of Lumina? We hadn’t either. But the lady behind it, Jennifer Thym, turned out to be a seriously smart cookie. She left a career in structured finance when her husband moved to Hong Kong and decided to get into the arts and make her own TV show. The result is Lumina - a fantasy thriller shot in Hong Kong, and distributed solely online.
The production is pretty slick, so it was quite a surprise when she revealed the whole thing cost just US$50,000.
In terms of monetising the show, Thym still seems to be making her mind up, though she conceded that relying on advertising around the series would not be enough. Merchandising and sponsorship seem to be two possibilities. In all, it was an interesting case study on how TV is going the way of music, with the rise of alternative distribution channels and the challenge to traditional business models.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 5:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Diary
October 9th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Thanks for the article! I think most websites are still sorting out how they are going to monetise, and for that matter, most films nowawdays! Would be great to do a follow-up in a year, after we’ve had more feedback and experience with the merchandising and whether that was a wise decision or not.