SJimbrowski here. Felicia Day is launching her new premium content channel on You Tube Geek & Sundry today and I had the opportunity to speak with her about it. It consists of six channels with four premiering today (April 2nd) and a fifth April 13th. The 4 premiering April 2nd are THE FLOG, TABLETOP, The Dark Horse Channel and THE GUILD. THE FLOG is a video blog where Felicia goes and does things she has always wanted to do. In TABLETOP with Will Weaton they play a new tabletop game every week. The Dark Horse Channel uses new motion comics technology and THE GUILD is being released on You Tube with behind the scenes footage and in high def.

SJIMBROWKI (SJ): What was the genesis behind THE FLOG, and how did you decide what you were going to make videos about?

FELICIA DAY (FD): I definitely wanted to be on my new channel in a face way, and actually in the back of my mind wanted to upload videos more frequently to my personal channel. So I was thinking about doing a more blogging-based personal channel anyway so this was more of an opportunity to pull the trigger and make a show. Part of the reason was I had been on a lot of sets in the past year, and I was sort of missing the spontaneity of “let’s make a video and put it up really quickly” attitude. When I was looking at making a channel I saw that a lot of the really popular You Tube personalities have an amazing connection with their audience because of that spontaneity that I wanted to do that myself. So I really wanted to do something organic to myself, and when I sat down to think why do people follow me on twitter and like the things I share it is not just because of the content I make, it is because of what I like linking for people. In a sense this is situation where every week I am going to share things that I have discovered around the web in a way that I think will help people discover independent artists and creators. Every week I will go outside of the blogging environment and experience something new like crocheting, driving a bulldozer, playing the violin or cooking. It is definitely a variety and I by definition make it a bit un-categorical, because I feel like it is easy to put people in categories. It is definitely following my whims every week is the basic principle of THE FLOG.

SJ: I have seen the trailer videos and am actually looking forward to the bulldozer.

FD: Believe me, that was pretty stellar; when you call someone up and tell them “I want to do this” and almost 100% of people are amenable to me doing something. It’s basically kind of carte blanche for me to do anything I have ever wanted to do as a child or as an adult either, so literally I'll write down what I wanted to do and we have been doing them all year.
 

SJ: I also saw the trailer video for the Dark Horse channel and specifically the animation--how exactly was that done?

FD: The person behind it was an artist who worked in post production and animation and made a CONAN motion comic and uploaded it to You Tube. Dark Horse saw it and hired him to develop motion comics based around the technology that he created. This is an amazing cycle of this guy who went out and did something, Dark Horse picked him up, and then I went to Dark Horse and said “do you guys do motion comics?” They just happen to be working with this guy they found on You Tube to be doing motion comics and that is how this whole series started out. It is kind of an amazing sort of cycle where he just went out and did something and I went to Dark Horse saying do you want to do motion comics and they had him so that is how this whole thing started. It was a really interesting cycle. I had heard from Dark Horse earlier in the year last year that they were developing motion comics and when I was presented with the opportunity to pitch a slate of web series I really wanted to pitch things I love. Comics were number one and it just so happened to be they were in a development process where they had the technology and they had the titles but they just didn't know where to put them and monetize them. It was just sort of a perfect storm of awesomeness and we’re getting the GOON, CONAN, and HELLBOY. We have some amazing indie titles and hopefully people respond to it well this year so we can get more titles next year.

SJ: So these are all existing titles, nothing that they have created just for the channel?

FD: Yes they are all existing but they are definitely interpreted in a way that motion comic technology is really much better than other motion comics you’ve seen. The hope is to show fans who already read these titles how awesome they are brought to life with voice and animation but also to create comic readers out of the video viewers. You'll notice that every single show on my slate is designed to have a physical impact on our viewers, I just don’t want to make passively consumed content as I don't see that as taking advantage of the what web is, really. My goal is to create a community around these videos and inspire people to start reading comics, or play a tabletop game, or read a sci-fi fantasy novel with the rest of everybody on the web and maybe even make their own book club in real life. Definitely the goal is not to make video to just be consumed.
 

SJ: With SWORD AND LASER being one of the shows and your recent romance novel hangouts how did the two intersect?

FD: SWORD AND LASER definitely preceded my romance novel hangouts, and to be honest my hangouts are just a hobby. Veronica Belmont, who is one of the creators of SWORD AND LASER, is in my hangout group; there is definitely a crossover there cause she is a huge reader. But if you look into SWORD AND LASER they have a very smart perspective on the books they read but they also cover the news in the sci-fi fantasy world really well. They are going to be much similar to the layout of the podcast they have, so they’re going to have guests on and they are going to have author interviews. They are going to read a book monthly with the audience but also they’re going to have off weeks where they cover issues more in depth. We are also playing with the idea, because they are basically every other week alternating with TABLETOP on Fridays, of maybe doing Google hangouts with fans and uploading their video to our channel as well. Like I said, the bottom line is making sure the community feels like they are really on the same footing as us creators
 

SJ: TABLETOP was your idea or Wil Weaton’s idea?

FD: The cool thing about TABLETOP when I was putting the slate together, I thought who are my favorite people and Wil was someone who I definitely tried to persuade to get into web video but he never really found an idea he latched onto. I came to him with the idea would you DM D&D or a role playing game every week and he’s the one who put the spin on it: let’s play a different hobby game every week because this is a really awesome world that people don’t really know about. So he morphed it into to what it is today. The cool thing about the show is it is a long form show, so it is 30 minutes long every week, which is somewhat unusual but I feel like people are really prepared now to watch longer videos through the web because they watch them on all different kinds of screens right now. I’m really proud of the show and what we are pulling off on this web series scale is pretty phenomenal and I think the response just on the trailer means we are going to create a lot more tabletop gaming fans which is a bit of our subliminal goal.

SJ: I have certainly played tabletop games that lasted a lot more than 30 minutes--is that going to be enough?

FD: The goal was to have every episode be 30 minutes and we edit them down in a way that you can follow the gameplay and also contain it in a way that you are not just watching people spend 20 minutes figuring out what they want to do for a turn.
 

SJ: So you are launching three of the channels on April 2nd with the rest premiering later?

FD: Our launch is pretty unusual in that we are putting a lot more content than we’ll have in other weeks. So on April 2nd we’ll have an episode of TABLETOP, THE FLOG, THE GUILD Season 5 with annotated outtakes, part one of a three part Dark Horse comic will go up. We just wanted to make launch week as big as possible and provide a lot of content and SWORD AND LASER will premiere on the 13th with their first episode. But we will be announcing the book we are going to read with a special video on the 2nd so that everyone will know which book we are going to be experiencing together and they will have plenty of time to read it.

SJ: How is THE GUILD run going to be different that it was last year?

FD: We’re talking about gaming conventions, which touches on so many people’s experiences. I think the YouTube release will definitely reap a whole new audience with the content. We’re not only releasing season 5 starting on the 10th but we are releasing every Thursday a behind the scenes piece that explores whatever went on in that episode a little more in depth, so people will be able to see way more aspects of the filmmaking and the stories behind it. We had some amazing stuff that went on in season 5 that you will literally not believe. I don’t want to spoil it, but we have one character who was basically an extra who became a main character just because of production problems. So literally a guild fan became part of the lore because of scheduling. So I am really excited for people to see these extra behind the scenes. Then in the first week we are going to launch all the guild seasons 1 through 4 as movies in high def, so you don’t have to watch them all back to back, you can just watch them as movies.