In the "season finale" of the Web series " Lonelygirl15 ," which was broadcast in a well-publicized event on Friday on the MySpaceTV platform, the cute teenage protagonist met her death at the hands of a religious cult's sacrifice.
A dramatic, soap-opera worthy exit indeed--especially considering that Lonelygirl15's videos were mundane enough at first to fool scores of viewers into thinking they were the real Webcam diaries of a flesh-and-blood teenager. Lonelygirl15 was exposed as an actress last September, but the video series continued and grew increasingly elaborate.
Leading lady Jessica Rose, 20, has since gone on to several movie roles and a regular spot on the ABC Family Channel sitcom Greek , but had continued to play Bree in the meantime. The video series was occasionally maligned for being cheesy and melodramatic, but at the same time, the production team's tactics--guerrilla filming style, use of multiple platforms and social-networking sites, and interaction with a highly engaged viewer community--was also hailed as an influential step in the evolution of Internet video fiction.
Unfortunately for the team behind Lonelygirl15, it may be somewhat telling that most people seem to have learned about Bree's death from blog posts on Monday--it didn't exactly create an online uproar outside of the series' loyal viewer community some of whom refer to it as "Lonelycrack" on the official Web site. Oh…and Bree died. A slightly laughable answer considering the series revolved around a homeschooled girl vacillating between being intimately involved with and evading a worldwide, underground, deadly Satanic order.
In part it had a lot to do with the duplicitous nature of the show. But it had more to do with the medium. True fans cared more about Bree than they do about the death of fictional characters in TV, film, or theater because of the intimacy they shared with her. Still, I can relate to those who are. It also turned out she too, like Bree, had been home-schooled at one point. Best of all? She was fresh off the plane. No casting agency in the city had seen her yet.
Rose was perfect for the part in so many ways. That role went to Yousef Abu-Taleb, then a bartender and a waiter. Neither of them knew until after they got the part that it would be on the internet. The creators explained the project to them in a cafe in LA. Abu-Taleb was totally fine with it. But Rose was heartbroken. Neither did the slew of YouTubers who had made it big enough to make money out of their video blogs. It was no wonder she thought it seemed dodgy. She called Abu-Taleb about an hour after the meeting, distraught.
In the end, they both decided to give it a shot. Whatever existed of their actual internet profiles had to be deleted or made private. The bed behind her is decorated with cuddly toys and a floral bedspread. On the door is a big, pink, fluffy feather boa. The first few videos followed the same formula as other popular vloggers.
Here was this cute girl, speaking into a camera about her life. Slowly they introduced Daniel, who mainly sat on the bed in the background while Bree recorded her video. People took to her — they found her charming, cute and funny. Behind the scenes, Beckett was obsessing over how YouTube worked. How did a video get on the most viewed section? How did it climb the charts? When they realised YouTube counted every single comment including the ones you made yourself, they would make it their mission to reply to every single one — so they appeared in the most commented section constantly, boosting their profile, adding more views.
Flinders said it made a huge difference. We could make a freeze frame that was thematically connected to the episode. Their efforts paid off. The viewer counts kept rising. Lonelygirl15 appeared in the most viewed section more and more. In the summer of , YouTube became the fastest-growing website on the internet. People were flocking there to watch what it had to offer.
And if you, like Bree, were a YouTuber who updated every two days, you were guaranteed to build a following. The first video starring Rose went up on 16 June. Two weeks later, a video they posted on 4 July, Independence Day in the US, got 50, views within two hours.
It was called My Parents Suck and it was the first time Bree got upset on camera. Up until that point, previous videos would reach the 50, - , mark within a week or so. By the end of the week, it was at half a million. Beckett thought people would figure out the truth a lot sooner than they did. I was a little surprised that the mystery of whether or not it was real lasted as long.
People had questions, but they never had any hard evidence. One of the main giveaways was the increasingly obvious plot line developing.
Bree found out Daniel definitely did have a thing for her, posting a video about it , of course. They fell out, made up — standard teenage drama. There were lighthearted videos about science and hiking Yet all the while, none of the videos were discussing the controversy. Usually, YouTubers would respond to the constant questions about hoaxes in their comments. But not Bree.
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