Snail wrote:Was the voice at the end the guy in the White Suit in the apartment? Sounded the same to me...
Yes, it is. To be honest I'm not a fan of the actor's performance, he was just available for free on short notice. If we continue the series I may retroactively replace the voice so we can cast somebody else.
Anyway...
As I write this, the Ark Intermission episode has yet to be released - and when it does this thread may become the official discussion thread for it, or not. I dunno, that'll be a Teague thing. But I figure why not go ahead and do this now, I can always repost it if necessary...
To recap: Ark is curently viewable in the U.S. on Hulu, but nowhere else in the world. This is not because we don't WANT Ark to be seen worldwide, it's because Hulu's territory is U.S. only, and Hulu is the only site (so far) that's hosting Ark. The rights to Ark in the rest of the world are still available.
So the same week we delivered the episodes to Hulu, I uploaded them to YouTube on the assumption that we'd use that as the platform to show Ark to the rest of the world. They've been there ever since, set to Private mode, just waiting until I got the go-ahead to make them public.
Except, oops, Ark became an instant hit on Hulu.
Which meant Ark's owners (which, I remind you, I am not one of) realized they might do better than just throwing the episodes on YouTube, putting ads on them, and hoping the rest of the world stumbled on them. The myth that putting something on YouTube guarantees viral success was debunked years ago, nobody (myself included) believes in that strategy any more.
So the owners made a deal with Content Media Corp, a distribution company that promotes independent films and tv shows - and now web series - overseas. Content's mission is to try to place Ark with the French equivalent of Hulu, and the Belgian equivalent of Hulu, and (repeat with every country in the world). For every buyer they find, Content gets a cut of the profit, and Ark gets a cut of the profit. This is what distribution companies do, and have done for decades.
So check it out: Content has featured Ark nicely in their 2012 catalog (and I like playing find-the-Ark-thumbnails on the first page) and even more nicely in their Mipcom brochure.
But it's a hard sell, the episodes are short and it all ends on a cliffhanger that (so far) is not guaranteed to ever be resolved. But whatever non-US country you live in, if you operate a website that gets millions of hits, by all means ring up Content and ask about hosting Ark.
If you don't happen to have a website like that, well, how about this... the relatively tiny number of participants in this forum won't damage the market value of Ark if you should happen to see it. So I've thrown the switches on the episodes at YouTube from Private to Unlisted, which means they are now viewable if you know the link.
And (how's this for a switch!) they're blocked in the U.S. - you U.S. viewers can just keep on going to Hulu, where you will watch those Geico commercials and give thanks for them, as I do.
This is an honor-system thing, if the hit counts start going suspiciously higher than the approximate number of overseas members of this forum, I'll re-Private the videos. So no sharing, no leaking, and by the way, they're un-embeddable.
If you agree to the above, then feel free to click this link.