Even worse: the show is 8 episodes per season. Impossible to tell a story in this time frame, streaming media’s constraints are making for awful content with bad pacing. The overall length of a Netflix Season is too long for a film, and too short for a full season show. The premium tv episode length often also makes for episodes that are either trying to pack in a movie run time of content into half the time or more commonly to pad a standard network length episode into twice the time.
I think the only way to use this to make good content is to make your Netflix Seasons just be part of a season like Season 1: Part 1 and Season 1: Part 2, or to shoot for telling your actual story arc over the course of many seasons, each one being a chunk of the main story circle with a tiny mini side adventure loop built in.
I think two good examples of how to use the Netflix production/distribution cycle in these ways are Inside Job and Lupin, both of which seem to be canceled earlier than expected.
The Netflix model cannot successfully produce narrative driven content, because its format is too long for a for a movie, too short for a show, while also being too expensive for a show budget and not budgeted enough for a movie. It leads you to either make a mediocre spectacle or to have to spread your content out over multiple seasons.
Netflix will always betray you at a number of seasons other than your target, and having gaps of time between episode drops means you have to always make each mini-season feel partially complete but also not entirely complete in case you get renewed.
Even worse: the show is 8 episodes per season. Impossible to tell a story in this time frame, streaming media’s constraints are making for awful content with bad pacing. The overall length of a Netflix Season is too long for a film, and too short for a full season show. The premium tv episode length often also makes for episodes that are either trying to pack in a movie run time of content into half the time or more commonly to pad a standard network length episode into twice the time.
I think the only way to use this to make good content is to make your Netflix Seasons just be part of a season like Season 1: Part 1 and Season 1: Part 2, or to shoot for telling your actual story arc over the course of many seasons, each one being a chunk of the main story circle with a tiny mini side adventure loop built in.
I think two good examples of how to use the Netflix production/distribution cycle in these ways are Inside Job and Lupin, both of which seem to be canceled earlier than expected.
The Netflix model cannot successfully produce narrative driven content, because its format is too long for a for a movie, too short for a show, while also being too expensive for a show budget and not budgeted enough for a movie. It leads you to either make a mediocre spectacle or to have to spread your content out over multiple seasons.
Netflix will always betray you at a number of seasons other than your target, and having gaps of time between episode drops means you have to always make each mini-season feel partially complete but also not entirely complete in case you get renewed.