One year on... Anne Flournoy

Anne Flournoy is the writer/director/producer/ editor of The Louise Log, a 44 episode series of internet shorts detailing the life of a New York City wife and mother. The webseries ran for over five years.

We interviewed Anne last year. She had agreed to conduct a twelve month follow-up interview, when Hurricane Sandy blew into Manhattan. The power went off and stayed off for days. During that time Anne remained in touch by texting on the smart phone she was able to keep charged by walking eighteen blocks to a coffee shop where she could access electricity. 

What follows is a mix of some notes typed during the blackout and texts she sent. As you'll see, and to my everlasting amazement, Anne was determined to keep her part of our agreement.
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Today...
I want to preface this light-hearted post, written in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, by saying that I'm only talking about my extremely limited experience in parts of Manhattan. I haven't seen a television since the storm hit, but know from Twitter that there are people in parts of Brooklyn, Queens, especially Staten Island, and possibly even Manhattan, whose situations are actually dire and make what I call our 'have-not' situation look like the lap of luxury.

12:47pm 1 November 2013

Thanks Henry! Am on it. It s dark and cold w/o power but mercifully there's power 18 blocks away and wifi cafes where u can find an outlet not much further. We're lucky to b dry. Counting my blessings on that front. Thank u for this opportunity and should have something within 48 hours. Best, Anne

This just in from a cold, dark apartment in a blacked-out neighborhood which feels more like the John Carpenter movie Escape From New York than Louise's Greenwich Village.

Since Hurricane Sandy, Manhattan (known to people in the other boroughs as 'the city') has become two cities: the 'haves', who are above 30th Street where there is power, business as usual, and the worst traffic jams I've ever seen, and the 'have-nots' who are 'downtown' (roughly) below 30th Street.

Downtown, there are no street lights or traffic lights, there are few cars and only occasional bands of people with, or without, flashlights. The only businesses open are the occasional 'candy stores' selling newspapers from a darkened storefront and a few mirthless bars lit by tea candles.

Because the subways are down, the city put free buses on the streets to try and help people get around. The buses were taken off the downtown routes at night because the 'roving bands' in the streets were too hard to see in the dark. 

The place feels scary. Once safe inside, it also feels great. Time seems to move more slowly. I haven't slept for eight hours, or more, in years.

10:44am 2 November 2012

Henry I 'm not going to have it ready in 12 hours as l'd hoped. Sorry. Everything is taking longer and this hiking around with the refugee bag: the laptop, power strip, flashlight (extra batteries) , sandwich - you get the picture -- it's kinda fun but my back is in revolt. Furthermore l've succumbed more often than l'd like to admit to the temptation of *social media* once l hit wifi. This has cut into my productivity rather seriously.

But now l m humbled and will really
Knuckle down.
Ever,

Anne

We're lucky to have a dry apartment (in a dry building), running water, a working gas stove for cooking and even a fireplace. So in spite of the vacated 5-story, single-family house across the garden that's been running a very loud generator day and night, (a house, I might add, which has a functional wifi, but with a secret password) I have nothing to complain about. I'm able-bodied and can lug my laptop, power strip, flashlight with spare batteries, and a sandwich out of the dead zone and up a mile to a store with free wifi. That's where the fun begins: jockeying for twelve square inches of standing room and an outlet in someone else's power strip, I balance my laptop and phone on the corner of a display and get back to work. I'm one of the fortunate.

The last year...
But to get to the progress report about The Louise Log, my number one priority since we shot Season 2 (in the late summer of 2010) has been to crank out the best episodes possible, generally one a month. In the past year we released ten, eight new and two remastered ones. Giving the audience something new every month seemed like the best thing to do. And actually the most I could do. By the time I needed a break, I really needed one.

And, it seemed like time to bask in the glories of the past year: Eve Ensler, playwright of The Vagina Monologues, saw and raved about the series ("brave, funny, real, deep and original"). The Independent named me "One of Ten Filmmakers To Watch in 2012", some blogs, including a National Public Radio blog, wrote wonderful things about The Louise Log: "brilliantly funny", "hilarious comedy" and "it could be a web sensation".

It was time for a break.

Or so I thought. Unfortunately, I thought wrong. Stepping off the treadmill allowed me to wake up to reality: as of this past May, 72 hours of video are reportedly uploaded to YouTube every minute. And oh, as you already know, every star in Hollywood is making or planning on making a web series. Well it does sound like a lot of competition but A) I'm very competitive and B) I have an old pet theory: "the cream will rise".

I went to some conferences of bloggers and 'vloggers'. I listened to smart and not-so-smart people and I had the wind taken out of my sails. Generally, the people on the panels, the 'comers' everyone wants to talk to, are the ones who have a high Alexa ranking, lots of followers, and lots of other websites linking to their blogs. Some of these people are brilliant. Some of them are hacks.

When one successful blogger heard me say that, to reach our audience, "I post on Facebook and Twitter—sporadically," her face started twitching involuntarily. Another put it to me bluntly: "Success on the internet is like winning the lottery. Otherwise it's all about promotion." I guess I'd been banking on the lottery option because, under my marketing guidance, The Louise Log has been living under a rock. It was becoming clear that, in this digital world, cream does not necessarily rise. All of this put me in a really bad mood, as I got back to the work of editing episode #34, a fun episode which hardly felt fun.

After uploading it, I couldn't bear to dive back in to edit #35. My heart was broken. My ego was enraged. How could I have spent FIVE YEARS virtually abandoning the promotion of my life's work? How could I continue to sit on the sidelines watching others get recognized and have their work become self-sustaining? On the other hand, how could we have made this very personal and quirky series on very little money without doing it in this completely single-minded way?

The year to come...
In spite of misgivings that we owe it to the actors and to our loyal fans to continue releasing episodes, I'm following my heart. For the immediate future, with our skeletal crew, we can either produce episodes or we can promote episodes. We can't do it all at once. The solution is that we're not posting any more episodes until we've done everything we can to get word about The Louise Log out to the world.

I've taken detailed notes from Jon Reiss' excellent book Think Outside the Box Office. I'm working with Jacki Schklar of Funny Not Slutty on facebook ads. My niece @NatalieGrillon (MBA) is giving me marching orders on how to put tactics and objectives under the overarching goal of making The Louise Log the GIRLS of the online world. And we're posting on Facebook and Twitter a lot more often than 'sporadically'.

I expected to feel frustrated and blocked doing this kind of work. Instead, I'm like a lion on the hunt. The biggest problem is finding balance in doing the social media and not having entire days swallowed up by the distractions of social media. (I would be grateful for suggestions on how others handle this...) 

I'm scared out of my wits about starting a weekly vlog in which I'll talk to the camera about the process of making the series. But as with the production and post-production phases, I'm going to give this marketing and promotion my all.

If you're interested in helping, there's a list of suggestions at the very end of this: (http://thelouiselog.com/october-2012/). If you know of anyone who might want to be an intern/"Producer of Marketing and Distribution", whether they're in New York or far away, please get in touch. Thank you in advance!
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First posted: 7 November 2012

Interview with Anne Flournoy

For those who don’t know, Anne is the writer/director/producer/editor of The Louise Log, a 36 episode (so far) series of internet shorts detailing the life of a New York City wife and mother.

I asked Anne the following questions in the hope of gaining some insight into what makes for a successful webseries.

---

• Where did you grow up?

I grew up in rural New Jersey, far from New York City.

• Where did you go to school?

Though I 'went to school', nothing much stuck 'til I was out of college and could finally do what I wanted to—which was to learn to draw like Leonardo da Vinci.  Having studied Art History, I did what I'd read everyone in the 19th century had done, and went to Paris. I attended L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. Little did I know that this had degenerated into a place for Japanese businessmen-painters to gather and ask the nude models to pose with their legs spread. After a few months, an acquaintance tipped me off that I could audit at the Beaux-Arts and be surrounded by art students like me.
  After a few years I came back to the States and applied to graduate schools to get an MFA. Mercifully I didn't get into Yale. I say mercifully because at Yale, the sculptors were off in one building, completely isolated from the other visual artists. At Rutgers, where I was offered a spot, the sculptors, photographers, painters, ceramists, conceptual and performance artists were all crowded into one building.

"I don’t even have the nerve to wiggle."

I arrived making large wooden, axe-hewn sculptures, some of which had a problem staying upright. Two of the very sophisticated, second-year students came to me, barely concealing the fact that they were snickering: "You're still making free-standing monoliths??"
  More than a little insulted, I proceeded to do almost no work for the entire first year except to try and figure out how these conceptual artists could dismiss my work.
  Some of the professors, notably Leon Golub and Geoff Hendricks (a member of Fluxus) made the sheer cliff of my learning curve possible with their encouragement and integrity. By the end of the first year I did a performance which was an organizational nightmare involving all kinds of audio and visual equipment and performers on stage moving (silent film era) cardboard waves, with one or more of them wearing cardboard cutouts of rowboats as 'skirts'. And then all we had to show for the effort was a lousy video taken from the back of the auditorium. It landed me in a darkened room getting migraines and thinking that film looked like the easier, softer way.

• When did you first decide you wanted to write?

I didn't originally want to write. I hadn't done particularly well at school and didn't think I could 'write'. The need for fake subtitles for my first short was my first foray into it and then in wanting to make a feature, I just figured: 'Gotta do it. No one's going to send me a script.'

"Rejection enhances my self-esteem."

A poet friend recommended a life-changing book which gave me a way to write without a lot of hemming and hawing or even using sentences. Writing the Natural Way by Gabrielle Rico.

• Your character, Louise, exhibits Woody Allen-type insecurities. Is that a New York thing, a conscious choice of style, or just you?

Hmm. I don't know if insecurities are a New York thing. I'm not the most confident person I've ever met but would like to think that whatever issues Louise has are like mine on steroids.

• Ten favourite movies?

In no special order:

Un Chien Andalou (1929), Bunuel
Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Godard
Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Jarmusch
Why Not (1970), Arakawa
The Piano (1993), Campion
Mulholland Drive (2001), Lynch
All About My Mother (1999), Almodovar
Pulp Fiction (1994), Tarantino
Galaxy Quest (1999), Parisot
Love Serenade (1996), Barrett

• V.O. was the backbone of the ‘noir’ films of the 40s and 50s, and has been used in movies as diverse as Bridget Jones's Diary, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Quiet American. Most modern “experts” decry the use of V.O., but I love the way you use it for Louise’s interior monologue.  Have you had many comments about that?

"All I need is a knife... and a bag of onions."

So happy to hear that you like it. It arose as a last minute attempt to salvage the first episode which, with just the picture and the music, didn't seem to be working. A wonderful writer, Lucile Bruce, with whom I worked on an early version of my 'second feature' told me that Emir Kusturica had taught a class at Columbia University's graduate film school. He'd made a point about 'the third thing'. If a scene isn't working with a man and a woman, add a dog. Or a clap of thunder. Etc. I was about five months beyond my self-imposed deadline to make a viral video and it was the end of December. All I could think was that if I didn't finish and upload this Louise Log before January 1st (it was supposed to be a single video) that I could be trying to improve it for months—or years—to come. So I whispered into the macbook and that was that.
  In answer to your question, people seem to love it or hate it.

• The Louise Log starts out as a small Woody Allen-esque show, then it gives a bit of Dr Who skip as Phineas morphs into another body, then it expands into a Seinfeld or 30 Rock type of story, with a single person struggling to maintain a grip on reality while others around them seek to distort it. Is that the future for Louise? A Jerry Seinfeld or Liz Lemon anchor role?

That's an interesting analysis! As you can see, the first two seasons have been more about putting one foot in front of the other than about executing a grand plan. The guiding principle has been to give Louise 'obstacles', to have fun and (since the 4th episode) to find a balance of the internal monologue and the exterior life. I feel that 2-3 character scenes and a very simple story arc work best with my sensibility and the under five minute format I love. If you want to compare recent episodes of The Louise Log to two of the most popular shows on television, please be my guest.

"What did we go over in June with your therapist?"

• For years, budding screenwriters in Australia have been pushed toward writing (and making) short films. With the success of Italian Spider-Man, that push has been redirected toward making webisodes. Do you have any advice or warnings for inexperienced wannabe filmmakers?

Hmm. Okay. From my experience I'd say two things are really important.
  Figure out a way to tell your story as cheaply as possible. It usually takes time to find your audience and if you blow all the money you have on the first five or ten episodes, you may not be able to hang in there as long as you need to.
  The second thing is about length: ask yourself 'How long should this video be?' If someone had asked me this, I would have thought that they were 1) a picky accountant-style person, or 2) just not that bright. Only four years of hits and misses has convinced me that this is a very important question. And there are two factors to consider: the filmmaker's particular gift and the story (not the script... the story).
  Some people have epic imaginations and gifts and are straining at the bit to be able to upload thirty minute videos to YouTube. Others, and I put myself in this category, are miniaturists and do best with very short pieces. I'm sure there's a third category of people who can do both but... haven't done an exhaustive survey on this.
  The second sub-factor of 'the story' has to do with the arc. Some of The Louise Log episodes are much less successful than I think they could be because I slavishly tried to cram what we'd written as 'an episode' into one episode. (I think Episode 23 should have actually been three really really good episodes instead of one that's sub-par.)

"Ever thought of a web series? ... It’s cheaper than therapy."

• What do you think are the essential elements of a good webseries?

I was recently given some excellent advice by Eric Mortensen the Director of Network Programming at blip.tv. "Scripted' content is (with rare exceptions like The Guild and Anyone But Me) having a hard time getting masses of viewers. The more you can give the viewer a sense of great immediacy—like that of a newscast—the better." He didn't use the example of LonelyGirl, but the blurring of the lines between fiction and non-fiction, which that show accomplished at first, is what I took from his suggestion.
  Humor is supposedly hotter than straight drama. And getting to the point in the first ten seconds, OR LESS, matters. No fancy title sequences, no meandering—BOOM. Grab the viewer's interest and let them know what you're up to. You've got only a few seconds before they'll be getting skyped or messaged by a real life friend. Which brings me to the last suggestion: develop characters which can compete with their own real world friends, who your viewers will care enough about that they'll put their life on hold to watch your show.
  This is so much easier said than done. I've put some resources which have sustained me through the tough times on the website at http://anneflournoy.com/tools.

"Now we’re gonna need the raw milk..."

• Can you tell us any interesting facts or trivia about your show? Any funny stories?

The Louise Log (season 1) was supposed to be my second feature. I rewrote the script for years and finally 'put it on the shelf' when Delta Airlines lost all the carefully gathered notes I'd collected from smart people for the 'last rewrite'. I only started the first episode in an attempt to make a thigh-slapping viral video to get the attention of Hollywood executives. It was humbling to discover how hard it is to make a thigh-slapper. Only after four episodes did I realize that I was going to have to gut my script of its juiciest moments to tell the only story I wanted to tell.
  As far as the funny stuff, it's so painful I can't bear to recall it right now. There's one video of bloopers that gives an idea of the level of problems we've faced: http://thelouiselog.com/one-minute-reels-trailer-bloopers-etc/  (There are two videos here—you have to scroll down. It's called 4 Tips From the Masters.)

• What’s next for Anne Flournoy? More webisodes, a feature, the great American novel, or something more interesting?
 

There's so much of Season 2 shot and waiting to be edited... What I had thought was going to be Episode 24 has become 24-27 and maybe even 28. So it's really unclear when we'll finish editing and uploading Season 2. I'd love to shoot at least one more season of The Louise Log but that's as far ahead as I've thought.

________________________________________________________________________

This interview was followed a year later by One year on..., which deals with Hurricane Sandy and Anne's plans for the future.

First posted: 6 November 2011
This was the first interview I conducted with anyone, but not the last... Anne has been a great supporter of the blog over the years. I'm grateful she was willing to go first and take the risk with an interview virgin.  

In search of a bigger (online) audience

This year I've been pondering the subject of finding an audience. I've been watching my friend Carlo Petraccaro search for an online audience for Total Football: The Movie, just as I've watched another friend, Anne Flournoy, search for an audience for her web series, The Louise Log (TLL).

Yesterday I was startled to discover that Dutch Gordon had published his assessment of the problems confronting Anne and TLL on his blog, Comedy TV is Dead. His post is called How a Web-Series Like The Louise Log Can Return To A Bigger Audience.

There are many web-series creators out there looking at the results of their first (or second) season and wondering why they didn’t do better—by that I mean get more views. Anne Flournoy, creator of the excellent but flawed The Louise Log, has made her position clear on the matter; cream doesn’t always rise to the top on the Internet. Quite simply, most of her potential audience has no idea The Louise Log even exists, so she’s decided it’s time for her to more actively promote her show, and if need be, reel in one viewer at a time.

Louise is not alone in searching for an audience.

Anne had posted this—How Can I Get My Stuff To Go Viral?—on her blog. As part of the wider conversation that was taking place at the time, I had asked Anne in an e-mail: Do you want to be a filmmaker, or someone trapped in a cycle of trying to get people to like an old webseries? I suggested she move on to something new. And Anne, to her credit, completely ignored my advice. (But nicely. Anne does everything nicely.)

In Australia we have a saying about "flogging a dead horse." Anne subscribes more to the idea of "flogging the willing horse." More Hard Work has always been her mantra. Or, as Nathan Buckley put it after last year's season-ending defeat: "Harder. Smarter. Longer." And, no, that's not a sexual reference. He was talking about preparing for the new football season.

Meanwhile, Dutch Gordon got to the point—you need to discover those really basic factors that determine success or failure.

There are currently a lot of unsolved problems out there, but more often than not creators are overlooking the really basic factors that are determining success or failure. Too much emphasis has been put on virality, especially as to how it applies to web-series. This post is about the basic things all independent web-series creators should think about before they actively promote their show but most do not.

"But most do not." That's an observation I've made over the last year or so, as well. If you're looking for a larger audience online, read this post by Dutch Gordon in full. It contains a lot of sensible advice.

One year on... Anne Flournoy

Anne Flournoy is the writer/director/producer/editor of The Louise Log, a 34 episode (so far) series of internet shorts detailing the life of a New York City wife and mother. The webseries has been running for over five years now.

We interviewed Anne last year. She had agreed to conduct a twelve month follow-up interview, when Hurricane Sandy blew into Manhattan. The power went off and stayed off for days. During that time Anne remained in touch by texting on the smart phone she was able to keep charged by walking eighteen blocks to a coffee shop where she could access electricity. 

What follows is a mix of some notes typed during the blackout and texts she sent. As you'll see, and to my everlasting amazement, Anne was determined to keep her part of our agreement.
________________________________________________________________________

Today...
I want to preface this light-hearted post, written in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, by saying that I'm only talking about my extremely limited experience in parts of Manhattan. I haven't seen a television since the storm hit, but know from Twitter that there are people in parts of Brooklyn, Queens, especially Staten Island, and possibly even Manhattan, whose situations are actually dire and make what I call our 'have-not' situation look like the lap of luxury.

12:47pm 1 November 2013

Thanks Henry! Am on it. It s dark and cold w/o power but mercifully there's power 18 blocks away and wifi cafes where u can find an outlet not much further. We're lucky to b dry. Counting my blessings on that front. Thank u for this opportunity and should have something within 48 hours. Best, Anne

This just in from a cold, dark apartment in a blacked-out neighborhood which feels more like the John Carpenter movie Escape From New York than Louise's Greenwich Village.

Since Hurricane Sandy, Manhattan (known to people in the other boroughs as 'the city') has become two cities: the 'haves', who are above 30th Street where there is power, business as usual, and the worst traffic jams I've ever seen, and the 'have-nots' who are 'downtown' (roughly) below 30th Street.

Downtown, there are no street lights or traffic lights, there are few cars and only occasional bands of people with, or without, flashlights. The only businesses open are the occasional 'candy stores' selling newspapers from a darkened storefront and a few mirthless bars lit by tea candles.

Because the subways are down, the city put free buses on the streets to try and help people get around. The buses were taken off the downtown routes at night because the 'roving bands' in the streets were too hard to see in the dark. 

The place feels scary. Once safe inside, it also feels great. Time seems to move more slowly. I haven't slept for eight hours, or more, in years.

10:44am 2 November 2012

Henry I 'm not going to have it ready in 12 hours as l'd hoped. Sorry. Everything is taking longer and this hiking around with the refugee bag: the laptop, power strip, flashlight (extra batteries) , sandwich - you get the picture -- it's kinda fun but my back is in revolt. Furthermore l've succumbed more often than l'd like to admit to the temptation of *social media* once l hit wifi. This has cut into my productivity rather seriously.

But now l m humbled and will really
Knuckle down.
Ever,

Anne

We're lucky to have a dry apartment (in a dry building), running water, a working gas stove for cooking and even a fireplace. So in spite of the vacated 5-story, single-family house across the garden that's been running a very loud generator day and night, (a house, I might add, which has a functional wifi, but with a secret password) I have nothing to complain about. I'm able-bodied and can lug my laptop, power strip, flashlight with spare batteries, and a sandwich out of the dead zone and up a mile to a store with free wifi. That's where the fun begins: jockeying for twelve square inches of standing room and an outlet in someone else's power strip, I balance my laptop and phone on the corner of a display and get back to work. I'm one of the fortunate.

The last year...
But to get to the progress report about The Louise Log, my number one priority since we shot Season 2 (in the late summer of 2010) has been to crank out the best episodes possible, generally one a month. In the past year we released ten, eight new and two remastered ones. Giving the audience something new every month seemed like the best thing to do. And actually the most I could do. By the time I needed a break, I really needed one.

And, it seemed like time to bask in the glories of the past year: Eve Ensler, playwright of The Vagina Monologues, saw and raved about the series ("brave, funny, real, deep and original"). The Independent named me "One of Ten Filmmakers To Watch in 2012", some blogs, including a National Public Radio blog, wrote wonderful things about The Louise Log: "brilliantly funny", "hilarious comedy" and "it could be a web sensation".

It was time for a break.

Or so I thought. Unfortunately, I thought wrong. Stepping off the treadmill allowed me to wake up to reality: as of this past May, 72 hours of video are reportedly uploaded to YouTube every minute. And oh, as you already know, every star in Hollywood is making or planning on making a web series. Well it does sound like a lot of competition but A) I'm very competitive and B) I have an old pet theory: "the cream will rise".

I went to some conferences of bloggers and 'vloggers'. I listened to smart and not-so-smart people and I had the wind taken out of my sails. Generally, the people on the panels, the 'comers' everyone wants to talk to, are the ones who have a high Alexa ranking, lots of followers, and lots of other websites linking to their blogs. Some of these people are brilliant. Some of them are hacks.

When one successful blogger heard me say that, to reach our audience, "I post on Facebook and Twitter—sporadically," her face started twitching involuntarily. Another put it to me bluntly: "Success on the internet is like winning the lottery. Otherwise it's all about promotion." I guess I'd been banking on the lottery option because, under my marketing guidance, The Louise Log has been living under a rock. It was becoming clear that, in this digital world, cream does not necessarily rise. All of this put me in a really bad mood, as I got back to the work of editing episode #34, a fun episode which hardly felt fun.

After uploading it, I couldn't bear to dive back in to edit #35. My heart was broken. My ego was enraged. How could I have spent FIVE YEARS virtually abandoning the promotion of my life's work? How could I continue to sit on the sidelines watching others get recognized and have their work become self-sustaining? On the other hand, how could we have made this very personal and quirky series on very little money without doing it in this completely single-minded way?

The year to come...
In spite of misgivings that we owe it to the actors and to our loyal fans to continue releasing episodes, I'm following my heart. For the immediate future, with our skeletal crew, we can either produce episodes or we can promote episodes. We can't do it all at once. The solution is that we're not posting any more episodes until we've done everything we can to get word about The Louise Log out to the world.

I've taken detailed notes from Jon Reiss' excellent book Think Outside the Box Office. I'm working with Jacki Schklar of Funny Not Slutty on facebook ads. My niece @NatalieGrillon (MBA) is giving me marching orders on how to put tactics and objectives under the overarching goal of making The Louise Log the GIRLS of the online world. And we're posting on Facebook and Twitter a lot more often than 'sporadically'.

I expected to feel frustrated and blocked doing this kind of work. Instead, I'm like a lion on the hunt. The biggest problem is finding balance in doing the social media and not having entire days swallowed up by the distractions of social media. (I would be grateful for suggestions on how others handle this...) 

I'm scared out of my wits about starting a weekly vlog in which I'll talk to the camera about the process of making the series. But as with the production and post-production phases, I'm going to give this marketing and promotion my all.

If you're interested in helping, there's a list of suggestions at the very end of this: (http://thelouiselog.com/october-2012/). If you know of anyone who might want to be an intern/"Producer of Marketing and Distribution", whether they're in New York or far away, please get in touch. Thank you in advance!
_______________________________________________________________________

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Luci Westphal

Luci Westphal is a German New Yorker who divides her time between Brooklyn and Berlin. She makes one-minute videos of subjects that appeal to her. She's prolific (and extremely interesting), if nothing else.

The following quote is taken from her blog:

When I moved to New York in the late 90s it was still a raw and affordable neighborhood not yet zoned for residential apartments. Back then it was full of artist's studios and illegal lofts with amazing views of Manhattan and the bridges, with charming cobble stone, lots of garbage trucks, underground parties and always the noise of the subway crossing the Manhattan Bridge.

    Some of my earliest memories of living in New York City are visits to the DUMBO studio of our old friend and gifted painter Scott Sanders - and be inspired by him and the other artists and the view from the rooftop of the alluring, sparkling metropolis across the river: I felt that I had arrived in the city of my dreams.

    Of course, developers, city planners and people with larger incomes figured out eventually what a pearl lay across the river just one subway stop away. Condos went up, art studios were replaced by legal apartments and stores and offices moved into the neighborhood.

    While I miss the raw atmosphere of the older days (and those rooftop parties), I do appreciate how a lot of the beauty is being restored and preserved and that I can now get my favorite hot chocolate from Jacques Torres when I walk around one of the windiest (and thus coldest) corners of New York.

Here's her DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) video.



And here's her Graffiti Factory video, from Berlin. (You know I can't resist street art.)

And just one more, a ride across the Brooklyn Bridge. I'd love to do it myself. Probably never will (despite the fact I have a standing invitation to dinner with Anne Flournoy, one of New York's finest filmmakers), so here's the next best thing. 

Luci says:

I LOVE the Brooklyn Bridge. I love walking across it, riding on it (if no one steps into the bike lane in front of me), driving over it, stopping for a drink, taking photos, taking a boat under it, gazing at it from Brooklyn or from Manhattan. I think walking across it is the absolute "must do" for anyone visiting NYC. It's a great way to approach the city - but also a lovely way to leave the noise and claustrophobia and people of Manhattan behind and cherish the wide open space on your way to Brooklyn.

(Note: Parts of the bridge are screened off, due to renovations taking place.)

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"All I need is a knife... "

Here's another episode from The Louise Log: How to cope with your inner cat.

If you've come in late, The Louise Log is a comedy web series starring Christine Cook as Louise. It revolves around the confessions of a New York City wife and mother, hell-bent on getting it right in spite of her high-maintenance husband, her addiction to caffeine, and her over-active inner voice.

In this episode, a witch-doctor refers Louise to a therapist. Yep, another webseries involving therapy. And this therapist thinks making your own webseries is itself a form of therapy, so maybe there's something to this after all.

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Interview with Anne Flournoy

For those who don’t know, Anne is the writer/ director/producer/editor of The Louise Log, a 44 episode series of internet shorts detailing the life of a New York City wife and mother.

I asked Anne the following questions in the hope of gaining some insight into what makes for a successful webseries.

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* Where did you grow up?

  I grew up in rural New Jersey, far from New York City. 

* Where did you go to school?

  Though I 'went to school', nothing much stuck 'til I was out of college and could finally do what I wanted to—which was to learn to draw like Leonardo da Vinci.  Having studied Art History, I did what I'd read everyone in the 19th century had done, and went to Paris. I attended L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. Little did I know that this had degenerated into a place for Japanese businessmen-painters to gather and ask the nude models to pose with their legs spread. After a few months, an acquaintance tipped me off that I could audit at the Beaux-Arts and be surrounded by art students like me.

  After a few years I came back to the States and applied to graduate schools to get an MFA. Mercifully I didn't get into Yale. I say mercifully because at Yale, the sculptors were off in one building, completely isolated from the other visual artists. At Rutgers, where I was offered a spot, the sculptors, photographers, painters, ceramists, conceptual and performance artists were all crowded into one building.

"I don’t even have the nerve to wiggle."

  I arrived making large wooden, axe-hewn sculptures, some of which had a problem staying upright. Two of the very sophisticated, second-year students came to me, barely concealing the fact that they were snickering: "You're still making free-standing monoliths??" 

  More than a little insulted, I proceeded to do almost no work for the entire first year except to try and figure out how these conceptual artists could dismiss my work.

  Some of the professors, notably Leon Golub and Geoff Hendricks (a member of Fluxus) made the sheer cliff of my learning curve possible with their encouragement and integrity. By the end of the first year I did a performance which was an organizational nightmare involving all kinds of audio and visual equipment and performers on stage moving (silent film era) cardboard waves, with one or more of them wearing cardboard cutouts of rowboats as 'skirts'. And then all we had to show for the effort was a lousy video taken from the back of the auditorium. It landed me in a darkened room getting migraines and thinking that film looked like the easier, softer way.

* When did you first decide you wanted to write?

  I didn't originally want to write. I hadn't done particularly well at school and didn't think I could 'write'. The need for fake subtitles for my first short was my first foray into it and then in wanting to make a feature, I just figured: 'Gotta do it. No one's going to send me a script.'

"Rejection enhances my self-esteem."

  A poet friend recommended a life-changing book which gave me a way to write without a lot of hemming and hawing or even using sentences. Writing the Natural Way by Gabrielle Rico.

 

* Your character, Louise, exhibits Woody Allen-type insecurities. Is that a New York thing, a conscious choice of style, or just you?

  Hmm. I don't know if insecurities are a New York thing. I'm not the most confident person I've ever met but would like to think that whatever issues Louise has are like mine on steroids.

* Ten favourite movies?

  In no special order:

    Un Chien Andalou, Bunuel

    Vivre Sa Vie, Godard

    Stranger Than Paradise, Jarmusch 

    Why Not, Arakawa

    The Piano, Campion 

    Mulholland Drive, Lynch

    All About My Mother, Almodovar   

    Pulp Fiction, Tarantino 

    Galaxy Quest, Parisot 

    Love Serenade, Barrett

"All I need is a knife... and a bag of onions."

* V.O. was the backbone of the ‘noir’ films of the 40s and 50s, and has been used in movies as diverse as Bridget Jones's Diary, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Quiet American. Most modern “experts” decry the use of V.O., but I love the way you use it for Louise’s interior monologue.  Have you had many comments about that?
 

  So happy to hear that you like it. It arose as a last minute attempt to salvage the first episode which, with just the picture and the music, didn't seem to be working. A wonderful writer, Lucile Bruce, with whom I worked on an early version of my 'second feature' told me that Emir Kusturica had taught a class at Columbia University's graduate film school. He'd made a point about 'the third thing'. If a scene isn't working with a man and a woman, add a dog. Or a clap of thunder. Etc. I was about five months beyond my self-imposed deadline to make a viral video and it was the end of December. All I could think was that if I didn't finish and upload this Louise Log before January 1st (it was supposed to be a single video) that I could be trying to improve it for months—or years—to come. So I whispered into the macbook and that was that.

  In answer to your question, people seem to love it or hate it.

* The Louise Log starts out as a small Woody Allen-esque show, then it gives a bit of Dr Who skip as Phineas morphs into another body, then it expands into a Seinfeld or 30 Rock type of story, with a single person struggling to maintain a grip on reality while others around them seek to distort it. Is that the future for Louise? A Jerry Seinfeld or Liz Lemon anchor role?

  That's an interesting analysis! As you can see, the first two seasons have been more about putting one foot in front of the other than about executing a grand plan. The guiding principle has been to give Louise 'obstacles', to have fun and (since the 4th episode) to find a balance of the internal monologue and the exterior life. I feel that 2-3 character scenes and a very simple story arc work best with my sensibility and the under five minute format I love. If you want to compare recent episodes of The Louise Log to two of the most popular shows on television, please be my guest. 

"What did we go over in June with your therapist?"

* For years, budding screenwriters in Australia have been pushed toward writing (and making) short films. With the success of Italian Spider-Man, that push has been redirected toward making webisodes. Do you have any advice or warnings for inexperienced wannabe filmmakers?

  Hmm. Okay. From my experience I'd say two things are really important.

  Figure out a way to tell your story as cheaply as possible. It usually takes time to find your audience and if you blow all the money you have on the first five or ten episodes, you may not be able to hang in there as long as you need to. 

  The second thing is about length: ask yourself 'How long should this video be?' If someone had asked me this, I would have thought that they were 1) a picky accountant-style person, or 2) just not that bright. Only four years of hits and misses has convinced me that this is a very important question. And there are two factors to consider: the filmmaker's particular gift and the story (not the script... the story). 

  Some people have epic imaginations and gifts and are straining at the bit to be able to upload thirty minute videos to YouTube. Others, and I put myself in this category, are miniaturists and do best with very short pieces. I'm sure there's a third category of people who can do both but... haven't done an exhaustive survey on this.

  The second sub-factor of 'the story' has to do with the arc. Some of The Louise Log episodes are much less successful than I think they could be because I slavishly tried to cram what we'd written as 'an episode' into one episode. (I think Episode 23 should have actually been three really really good episodes instead of one that's sub-par.)

"Ever thought of a web series? ... It’s cheaper than therapy."

* What do you think are the essential elements of a good web series?
   I was recently given some excellent advice by Eric Mortensen the Director of Network Programming at blip.tv. "Scripted' content is (with rare exceptions like The Guild and Anyone But Me) having a hard time getting masses of viewers. The more you can give the viewer a sense of great immediacy—like that of a newscast—the better." He didn't use the example of LonelyGirl, but the blurring of the lines between fiction and non-fiction, which that show accomplished at first, is what I took from his suggestion. 

  Humor is supposedly hotter than straight drama. And getting to the point in the first ten seconds, OR LESS, matters. No fancy title sequences, no meandering— BOOM. Grab the viewer's interest and let them know what you're up to. You've got only a few seconds before they'll be getting skyped or messaged by a real life friend. Which brings me to the last suggestion: develop characters which can compete with their own real world friends, who your viewers will care enough about that they'll put their life on hold to watch your show.

  This is so much easier said than done. I've put some resources which have sustained me through the tough times on the website at http://anneflournoy.com/tools. 

"Now we’re gonna need the raw milk..."

* Can you tell us any interesting facts or trivia about your show? Any funny stories?

  The Louise Log (season 1) was supposed to be my second feature. I rewrote the script for years and finally 'put it on the shelf' when Delta Airlines lost all the carefully gathered notes I'd collected from smart people for the 'last rewrite'. I only started the first episode in an attempt to make a thigh-slapping viral video to get the attention of Hollywood executives. It was humbling to discover how hard it is to make a thigh-slapper. Only after four episodes did I realize that I was going to have to gut my script of its juiciest moments to tell the only story I wanted to tell.

  As far as the funny stuff, it's so painful I can't bear to recall it right now. There's one video of bloopers that gives an idea of the level of problems we've faced: http://thelouiselog.com/one-minute-reels-trailer-bloopers-etc/  (There are two videos here—you have to scroll down. It's called 4 Tips From the Masters.)

* What’s next for Anne Flournoy? More webisodes, a feature, the great American novel, or something more interesting?

  There's so much of Season 2 shot and waiting to be edited... What I had thought was going to be Episode 24 has become 24-27 and maybe even 28. So it's really unclear when we'll finish editing and uploading Season 2. I'd love to shoot at least one more season of The Louise Log but that's as far ahead as I've thought.

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This interview was followed a year later by One year on..., which deals with Hurricane Sandy and Anne's plans for the future.