thinking about "scalability"

Last month, Bill Cammack wrote a great post about the scalability of shows, in which he asked a lot, I should stress that: *a lot* of good questions that people should really consider as early as possible in their work.

It's an interesting read, and although the post seemed to be mainly geared towards "online shows", I thought about it in terms of projects in general. I left a comment saying, "[this post] made me think about the scalability of, not only “shows”, but projects. Are Amanda and I prepared to have Pedal grow in the way we really want it to...? How do we prepare for that. How do we evaluate our strong and weak points. Lots to think about".

In which Bill commented back a whole list of even more questions to dwell upon :)

It’s interesting that you mention the word “project”. My original title was “Does Your Project Scale”, because the same applies to websites, social sites and films, like you’re making.

As far as your production team’s concerned, you should definitely consider what happens if Pedal grows. You should also consider what happens if someone sees the work you’re putting in and wants to hire you to do other films or commercials... If someone sees your style and thinks it would be perfect for their project. Does that take away from the future of Pedal? Does that add to it?

What happens if a channel wants to pick up Pedal and show it in weekly chunks? Are you prepared to re-package? Are you saving split-track versions of your audio for each episode? That way, if you need to change music or dialogue, you can do so with minimal hassle...

There was one question that stuck out for me more than all the rest - which are all important questions that Amanda and I need to address sooner rather than later. For those of you who have been around this site a long, long time, you might know that at one point, we did have to make a decision regarding the "re-packaging" of Pedal, there was an opportunity to pitch the idea to Discovery, and break it up into 9 or so episodes. This changed almost every "artistic" choice that we had made in the years before. And we changed all this without having ever having considered it before.


It ultimately lead no where and we were left to start from scratch again a year later, but it taught us an interesting lesson and I think made even clearer to us how important it was to tell the story the way we had always wanted. Some things just don't translate well in certain mediums.

I know someone could make a very entertaining series on the trials and tribulations of a groups' coast to coast bicycle adventure. And it could be "epic", and "dramatic", and packed with "cliff hangers" at every turn. But... Amanda and I have no interest to tell *that* story, we entertained the idea for a year, and I think now we would not do so again.

That's not to say we don't want Pedal to grow - it was just a side thought I had from reading Bill's comment.

So, I would agree that thinking about how to best prepare your project to "grow" or to "scale" is important - and easier said than done, but it's even more important to know as early on as possible "how" you want it to grow. For Amanda and I, having not put much thought into that in the early planning stages, let us get side-tracked.


One aspect of the project that we've given a lot of thought to before the fact, is the 64 Days series we've been releasing. We know that at one point, it will break off onto it's own as well as support the feature film. And we would be far more open to re-packing those episodes - but the film, I believe we're concrete on.

But having said that, don't be afraid to take risk and experiment with opportunities that come along. I suppose this post doesn't have a lot of answers, it's just been something that's been on my mind since reading Bill's post.