The Ninja That Isn’t AskANinja

I’m not totally sure what to make of ‘Katana,’ the latest webseries pilot from the folks at Strike.TV.

It is a completely earnest attempt at making a ninja-revenge action film reminiscent of those from the ’70’s complete with well-choreographed fight sequences from clearly professional stunt fighters.  As TubeFilter told me:

The  hard hitting show stars John Koyama and Yuji Okumoto (also the writer-producer) alongside stunt superstars Al Goto, Sam Looc, and Don Tai. If you haven’t recognized any of those names, check out those IMDB listings, because you’ve definitely seen their movies.

‘Katana’ is part of a new wave of low-budget professionally produced fare finding its way to the web, much of it in the form of tried-and-true film genres like sci-fi and horror. The big question will be whether or not enough fans of these very specific genres will a) find these programs considering the overall lack of marketing budgets and b) if they do, will they really be interested in watching what boils down to cheaper versions of what they get plenty of on both TV and the big screen.

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Web Video Round 3 (4?) – Bring on the Sci-Fi!

It all started with the rise of the UGC video and YouTube.  People went nuts.  Look at all the viewers!

After watching from the sidelines for a bit some big media companies decided they should be getting those viewers.  Following some deep study of internet content everyone decided that the thing that really worked online was comedy.

A flood of “pro” content hit the interwebs and suddenly everyone from Warner Brothers to Sony had their own dedicated comedy video website.

A year later and none of these sites or any of their shows have gained wide-spread acceptance or notice.  Most have completely failed by any reasonable assessment.

One could argue that most of these efforts failed because, a) they weren’t very good and b) they weren’t publicized.

Of course, if you are a big media company, it can’t be your fault. It must be the genre’s fault.  So, after a year of failing with comedy comes a big wave of Sci-Fi web shows:

“Not all of these will succeed, but science fiction already has a strong track record online. lonelygirl15 turned from a vlog into a thriller with tech overtones. Sanctuary was one of the early big-budget sci-fi series, it was even picked up to run on the Sci-Fi Network. And most recently, Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog darn near crashed the Internet.” (via)

Check out NTV’s whole post for a good look at what’s to come.  When these fail, due to being not good, I’m sure everyone will move onto proceedurals – it’s what saved the networks, at least for a while.

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