- For the first time
in 11 years, 4tvs.com
will have no mention of 4tvs, no mention of The
Journey - it will be the home of all things "FOUR" as
I try to launch the Four Square reality show into
the universe. Every Sunday a new episode will go up
(starting with Episode 2 this Sunday), and I will
devote all of my free time to spreading the word and
getting the hits per episode as high as humanly
possible. This was never my intention, but after Atom
Films dropped out... I'm left with little choice.
I have to do this by myself, and hope
I gather enough interest to properly fund the
idea. Story of my life.
-
- The
"FOUR" Journey entries however will be a nice
little catharsis for me as I can finally let
everyone in on what's been ruling my brain for the
last few months. This series has been an editing feat
I never could've dreamed. I thought The Egos series on
CBS was time consuming. Nothing close to this. The
learning curve for this has been astronomical. Now
that I know the design of everything? Sure,
I could knock out an episode in probably 30
hours. Roughly the time it took to make an Egos
episode. But the devil is in the details and simply
put, that's all this show is. Layers upon layers of
scores, rankings, little special effects, sound
effects, camera angles, interviews, storylines... it's
just gargantuan. All the while, designing and
redesigning everything. You finish a couple
episodes... then, no - doesn't work. Start over. If
there's a second season? I will more than likely
redesign it again. Is it just 'cause I'm
insane?
-
- Don't answer
that.
-
- The answer lies in
what you're really editing. It's part video game, part
sport. As well, it's a sport that has really never
been televised, really never had a scoring mechanism
to it (I completely just made that up), and it's
4 fucking scores at once. It's a mess. I'm not
completely sure I've done it right, but because of the
"golden bar" you are able to follow who the leader is,
pretty well. First up, the current
episode...
-
- I've been showing
this to people for the past week or so and several of
you are confused by the scoring/ranking etc., so I
apologize up front - because the entire point was to
make it simple. And somehow in the description,
I made it more complicated. Funny, because
everyone who has played the game, thinks the
description is perfect. Which tells me, once you start
watching the games? It'll all make sense. It really is
as simple as 1, 2, 3. And future episodes will show
that.
-
- Now as far as the
opening story - it's 100% true. As I mentioned during
the making of the series last year, there's something
about this game that gets under your skin, and makes
you act like a 5 year old. You're nearly always
playing aginst yourself... much in the way golf makes
you nuts. It's never the other dude's good shot, it's
your STUPID shot that drives you nuts. The
foundation of four square is that the majority of the
time, had you just played it safe and passed the ball
off to the next person? You'd still be in. But you get
lulled into thinking offensively, trying too hard -
and getting yourself out. It makes for mental
meltdowns that are just wonderful. I'm telling you...
this is an Olympic Sport. It can also work on
television, and because the game requires alliances
that can change on nearly every play? It's perfect for
a reality show. Blah blah blah, I'm done selling, if
you're reading this - you believe me. It's now onto
how the hell to make everyone else
believe.
-
- I've contacted
every possible foursquare organization I can
find, and unfortunately the biggest ones seem to be
snubbing me. There are some fansites on Facebook that
are close to 10,000 people, yet the administrator of
the biggest one wrote: "You can't message me
from the fan page, haha sorry. :P" when I asked how to
contact him/her so they could post the video. (Sigh).
As well, I had one administrator of a site say
the show trivializes the community building aspect of
the game. Sweet JESUS people, we're talking about a
playground game. I honestly expected the four
square community to be excited about the prospect of
this on TV (some are), so the backlash is annoying to
say the least. Without that initial support, this is
gonna be very difficult to help go viral.
-
- So if you're
wiling to help by either emailing the links to friends
or just posting the video on Facebook?
PLEASE CONTACT ME.
I need to get several thousand views per episode
almost immediately... and then over the span of the
series, continue to bump that up. 4tvs.com
will help, because I assume people will go
through all of the ones up at one time, since they're
so short. Oh and that's another thing...
-
- In reality? The
entire series is 4 half-hour shows. It's maddening
that I have to space it out for months. When
I was initially going to have them on Atom Films,
we were going to release 2 episodes a week.
I would LOVE to be able to do that, but
I need the time to properly market each episode.
And two links is simply confusing and asking too much
of the person you're marketing to and one of the links
won't be hit. For those that are already into the
series however? This will make you crazy.
I apologize. As a storyteller it feels wrong.
I may just offer up a DVD with every episode on
it for $10 or something, just so people don't have to
wait. Then again, I am a bit ahead of myself, let's
get people actually interested first.
-
- So there it is.
4tvs.com
changed for the first time since I started it in
1999 for something I actually do believe could be
a bigger deal than a certain stage show.
Heartbreaking. But, the truth. Even today, it's the
truth.
-
- Adam
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