You Suck at Photoshop

You Suck at Photoshop is a 2 season, 20 episode Webby award winning web series that chronicles fictional character Donnie Hoyle’s messy divorce and rampant emotional problems through a series of Adobe Photoshop tutorials. You Suck at Photoshop is unique in the sense that no characters are ever shown on screen, and instead the viewer is presented with a screencast of Donnie’s computer monitor. The dialogue is all presented through voiceover, along with Skype calls from Donnie’s friend sn4tchbuckl3r, who seems to be constantly begging for Donnie to join him in World of Warcraft. Occasionally, minor characters such as Donnie’s wife or his characters can be heard talking to Donnie off screen.
Although You Suck at Photoshop contains a well thought out story arc, each episode stands on its own not only as an informational Photoshop tutorial, but also as a piece of comedic fiction. While Donnie presents his information condescendingly to the audience, the techniques he uses are actually quite useful and it would be relatively easy to learn the basics of a professional level program just by watching this series.
You Suck at Photoshop was initially distributed through YouTube, and it was meant to be a one-off series. However, Troy Hitch and Matt Bledsoe (voices of Donnie and Sn4tchbuckl3r respectively, and the masterminds behind the series) were contacted by Rob Barnett, who had been formerly employed by MTV, VH1, and CBS and asked to create Barnett’s web television channel, MyDamnChannel.com. Much of You Suck at Photoshop’s success can likely be attributed to many of the episodes reaching the front page of the popular social news website Digg, as well as many users speculating that the series was voiced by popular comedians Dane Cook or Dane Cross. Due to viewer demand, the series was brought back for a second season, as well as spawning a spin off series titled Sn4tchbuckl3r’s Second Chance.
You Suck at Photoshop makes it apparent that with a good idea and clever writing, you don’t need massive resources to create quality web television content. Hitch created the first episode in only two and a half hours, which is amazing compared to the week long shooting schedules per episode of other web series. By working within the confines of what the team had, they were forced to rely on something more than fancy production techniques. Donnie was a character that the audience could relate to, and effectively made learning fun. You Suck at Photoshop can be equated to Sesame Street for the now nearly grown up Generation Y.

Dorm Life

by Steve D'Ambrozio


Web TV, is the new form of entertainment in the 21st century. There are a variety of shows on the web. From ‘The Guild’ to ‘Casual Sex’, to the Streamy award winning ‘Dr. Horribles Sing-Along Blog’, they all have a mass following.
The web TV show, I chose to review is ‘Dorm Life’. This show is based at a college on a dorm floor. The tag line for the show is “This isn’t Real Life. This is Dorm Life.” The show is a comedy. Season one which the show calls ‘semester 1’ has 20 episodes. Currently there are seven episodes of semester two. Attention Span Media are the producers of Dorm Life. According to their website “Dorm Life is a multifaceted, mockumentary-style series targeting 18-25 yr olds. It follows the lives of ten-college student thrown together on the same dorm floor. Full of mischief, adventures, rivalries, and romance, the comedic series carries a broad appeal from teenagers to college graduates of any age. The series launched Feb 4th and is centered around the www.dorm-life.com portal. It was a 2008 Webby Honoree.”
Two of the cast members have previous acting experience and one of them is involved in future productions. Jack De Sena who plays Shane and Nora Kirkpatrick who plays Courtney. Nora will be staring in the upcoming movies Transformers 2, Growth, and How to make love to a woman. Jack does not have any upcoming films.
Hulu has a ranking of TV shows that are shown on their website. Looking at Hulu.com and the Most popular shows category, as of 4/6/09 ‘Dorm life’ was the most popular TV Web show of ‘All Time’, ‘Today’, ‘This week’ and ‘This month. The second place for all time is Dr. Horribles Sing-Along Blog. This shows that Dorm life has a great retention rate. According to the Attentionspanmedia.com Blog site Dorm life beats the rest of the top 50 web TV shows. “Dorm Life Episode 1 to 8 retention was 170% higher than the average top-50 web series.” and that dorm life “retained 95% of viewers from episode 2 to episode 8.” Which was during Season 1.
Dorm life’s budget for the first season was approximately $300,000. They shot the show at a small university in LA on an actual dorm floor. The producers got the whole dorm building to themselves. Having an entire building to your-self to shoot episodes I think is ingenious. This saves on production costs. The cast was able to move into the dorm rooms and actually live there and develop a relationship with the other cast members and they’re surrounding.
The producers also see the show as a franchise. The current characters will move on but new freshman would move onto the floor. This keeps the show continuing past four ‘semesters’ and an opportunity to attract new viewers. If the producers keep using the model for success that they are now then the retention rate will continue to remain high and be one of the most popular web TV shows around.
Overall, Dorm life is a goofy, campy and fun show that shows the trials and tribulations of dorm life in a college. This show was a great find and is a must see for anybody who is looking for some college humor on a rainy day.

References:
http://www.tilzy.tv/dorm-life-returns-for-a-second-semester-with-carls-jr.htm
http://news.tubefilter.tv/2008/10/25/love-is-in-the-air-as-dorm-lifes-romance-with-hulu-continues/