Meat Week Day One.
Meat Week Day Two.
Channel 101 is a short film festival (usually monthly) in Los Angeles, which also has a sister festival in NYC, Channel 101 NY. Channel 101 is the creation of Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab in which participants submit a short film in the format of a pilot under five minutes in length. The event is structured such that the audience controls what is shown and which film-makers return for the next screening in much the same way TV programs are rated and managed. According to the Channel 101 website, “Channel 101 is a chance to sit in the worn-out chair of the fat network exec, drunk on the blood of lowly artists whose right to exist is given in exchange for their ability to nourish...You run the network. You pick the programming.”
Roughly every month, a screening for Channel 101 occurs at the Cinespace theater in Los Angeles, with (usually) ten shorts being screened. At the screening, the audience votes on which shows they would like to see return. The top five shows are entered into the “prime time” slots on the Channel 101 website, and get to make a follow-up episode for the next screening. This process continues with new “episodes” being shown at each screening until one fails to make the top five, at which point the series is “cancelled.” Some successful shows also can choose to be voluntarily be cancelled, (The first to do so being Time Belt), making one last unvoted episode. Shows that fail to make the prime time spot are known as “failed pilots.” An added benefit of having a prime time series is that prime time directors are part of the panel that decides which five new pilots will be shown alongside the five established shows from the previous screening. Shows that fail to make the screenings are known as “rejected pilots.” Each calendar year of the festival is referred to as a “season,” comprising of 10 screenings, due to there being no December screening, plus month break “to allow the creators to rest” between spring/summer and the November screening, which is the yearly awards show (The Incredibly Prestigious Achievement Award or “Channy,” so named as a parody of Emmy). thumb|300px|right
What Channel 101 is not
Channel 101 is not a website.
It's a live film festival. It happens to have a website, in the same way that Burger King has a website. If somebody asked you what Burger King was you certainly wouldn't say, "it's a website about burgers." No, it's a restaurant. It just happens to have a site.
Same here. Channel 101 is about the live screenings. So if you see the people who run it treating the forums as if they were little more than an annoyance and a necessary evil, that's why. Neither these forums or this website lies at the center of the Channel 101 universe.
This is, incidentally, also why people are sensitive over forum criticism of the shows in the front page. See, once they're on the front page, they've already been judged. They're not asking for our opinion. That's not what they're there for. This isn't ifilm.com, this isn't newgrounds.com. They don't have online voting.
I know lots and lots of people stroll in - including me - thinking this is just an online presentation where the readers rule the roost, where the filmmakers are sitting with their hands clasped in their lap, anxiously waiting to hear what we say. Lots of sites do work that way, sites with advertisements and popups that depend on the voter traffic to make money.
This one doesn't. In light of that, do you see why a cut in forum traffic would be a good thing? And do you see why they wouldn't worry about losing the type of poster who is always getting moderated?[1]
It's not a Production Company either, but the Community has made several different webseries projects together that are not a part of the Cinespace screenings.
Trivia
- Channel 101 is so popular that, at any given moment in its forum, you might accidentally end up in a conversation with the person next door.[2]
- Stats up to January 2006:
135 Different shows had been screened.
33 made it in to prime time and were voted back for 66 more episodes.
That makes the average length of a show 3 epps including pilot. That makes this next stat even more amazing.
The longest running show was The 'Bu (no shit).
It ran for 11 shows and had a episode screen in 03 04 and 05.
The shortest show was the Mustache Contest which made prime time but never got a second show.
During the Bu's 11 show run they had 8 months off.
Laser Fart had 7 months off during it's 10 epp run.
Molly & Ringwald, Computerman, Time Belt and Yacht Rock on the other hand have all done five straight epps.
And just because I'm supposed to be working I also added up the longest running shows average prime time rank.
- Yacht Rock 1.4
- House Of Cosbys 1.5
- The 'Bu 2.3
- Laser Fart 2.4
- Shitcock 3.2
History
The idea for Channel 101 began in 2001, when Schrab invited several friends over for a screening of Jaws 4, but challenged them to bring a short film predicting what would happen in the movie. In 2002, three more short film challenges were issued, but the group of viewers outgrew Schrab’s living room. Instead, the screening was moved to the backroom of an LA nightclub. Additionally, friends of friends of the filmmakers were beginning to ask what this “festival” was called and how they could enter. In 2003, Schrab and Harmon named their creation the Super Midnight Movie Show and decided on a monthly screening and a five minute format. However, they quickly realized that once the show started growing, it would only be a matter of time before a large number of low-quality submissions were entered, and filmmakers would need to be turned away for time constraints. They decided to adopt a TV network-like ratings model where the audience votes on which films they like, and popular filmmakers were allowed to screen more films accordingly. In 2004, a pilot for a reality show about Channel 101 and its filmmakers was shopped to FX Networks, but was eventually passed on.[3] A sketch comedy show called Acceptable.TV based on the format of Channel 101 and executive-produced by Harmon and Schrab began airing 23 March 2007, for a short period on VH1.[4]
See also About Channel 101.
The success of Channel 101 led to a sister festival in New York, Channel 101:NY.