EASY ABBY WINS MILLIONS ON LOW BUDGET
(published in Reel Chicago, 23 September 2014)
In a certain way, everyone knows someone like Abby Walker, the lead character of Juicy Planet’s YouTube series, “Easy Abby.” She’s the dinner party guest who shows up with a screw cap bottle of wine that’s not quite full because she took a few swigs in the hallway before knocking on the door.
“Abby’s a female anti-hero,” explains Wendy Jo Carlton, the show’s writer and director. “She’s young, she’s not married and she tells it like it is.”
But in another way, nobody knows anyone like Abby Walker. She’s charming and attractive but she doesn’t lead people on; a female Lebowski who can hold a job and look good in a t-shirt.
Also, she is a lesbian.
“It’s a mix of people I love and a chunk of myself,” Carlton continues. “My own life and my own girlfriends and cynicism about relationships mixed with a sense of awe and wonder and desire.”
The unique combination has helped “Easy Abby” generate nearly 20 million views in season one alone.
Season two, due this fall, will feature episodes that run twenty minues long, roughly three times that of their predecessors. The increase not only gives audiences more of what they want, but also, hopefully, gets Carlton more of what she needs: money.
“Based on what I was getting from folks in LA, ‘Easy Abby’ might be easier to get picked up if we do twenty minutes,” she recalls.
“Now it’s a living, breathing thing that’s ready to be adapted.”
Indeed. Besides earning raves from Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, the first season of “Easy Abby” has screened festivals as a feature film in Chicago, San Francisco and Italy. It’s currently making its way through Germany.
Carlton, whose work includes the award-sinning “Hanna Free” and the musical comedy “Jamie and Jesse Are Not Together,” always intended to create something more than the typical “YouTube ‘stars’ in their backyard speaking to a fifteen year-old.”
“Putting an image on YouTube is easy, but be careful,” she says. “It’s important to pay attention to craft and production value: consumption happens quickly and people are either on to the next thing or they want to see more.”
Working with three separate cinematogrophers wielding Canon 5D’s and shooting on location whenever possible, Carlton realized her vision of a “scripted, complicated webseries” that’s “fun to watch.”
“Sex and romance aren’t Abby’s only concerns,” she says. “She just happens to be really good at them.”
When you view the results, it’s easy to see why viewers love the show yet difficult to understand why investors ignore it.
Or, as she puts it: “You would think with 18 million views I wouldn’t be wondering how to pay the rent.”
Carlton and co-producer/lead actor Lisa Cordileone did spend “a lot of time” looking for sponsors, but received no more than a hunch that corporations are reluctant to get down with LGBT films.
“The folks with the checks are thinking, ‘oh, it’s a show,’” she explains. “Not an event like the Pride Parade.”
Attempts to partner with studios in LA didn’t go much further, even after Carlton offered to do product placement and presented analytics proving that 45% of “Easy Abby” viewers are men.
“People realize that those numbers are impressive,” she says. “But they say, ‘oh, it’s season one and it’s out there for free: we’re not sure if they can replicate that.”
So, for the time being, “Easy Abby” remains on YouTube, collecting viewers and searching for cash in a labyrinth of digital profiteering.
In this newfangled arena, content aggregators like the MultiChannelNetwork persuade YouTube channels like Collective Digital Studios to inform Carlton, “We want to increase our LGBT vertical and we really like the show and blah blah blah.”
Such deals offer a niche and a potentially wider audience, but they also require the show to stay on YouTube and, more importantly, do not provide what Carlton considers to be “the quickest, easiest answer.”
“I need up front money,” she says.
Joking that the scenario “kinda sums up how exciting and frustrating this past year has been,” she plans to keep nurturing the seed that got it all started in the first place.
“I’m interested in integrating mental health issues,” she explains. “In the beginning of season two, we meet Abby’s mother in a psych ward recovering from a bipolar freak out.”