YouTube Content: It's About the Absence of the Fourth Wall

In theatre, breaking the fourth wall refers to the moments the actors break from the fantasy created by the play to directly address the audience. In that moment, the audience goes from passively watching a scene through an invisible fourth wall to a more active role. The actor becomes self-aware, sometimes realizing the fictional nature of his or her character and sometimes merely turning the audience into a temporary character.

Though breaking the fourth wall rarely happens in television and cinema, there are

some famous examples of this happening as well. One of the most famous examples is Matthew Broderick's character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Throughout the movie, Ferris Beuller addresses the audience, pulling us between the role of observer and confidante. Another famous example is in Annie Hall when Woody Allen's character addresses the audience to commiserate. Whether it is in theatre, television or cinema, the technique is used to help us connect and empathize with the character.

The other day, I came across an Indigogo campaign for a web series that has been going on for over two years called Clutch. It's got everything you'd want in a show: great storyline, acting, characters, lesbians, vampires, drama, suspense...it's well-produced and has won lots of prestigious awards. However, their YouTube channel has less than 1,000 subscribers (after over 2 years of consistent programming) and most episodes get under 1,500 views. I was scratching my head at this and wondering, "How could something so awesome not gain a huge, faithful audience?"

Then I contrasted this to another lesbian vampire series that has gained a huge, faithful audience on YouTube: Carmilla.

The Carmilla series doesn't even have it's own channel, it's housed under VerveGirlTV, which is awesome, but has lots of other programming not nearly as popular as Carmilla. The Carmilla series has nearly 6 million views (the Clutch series has 335,000 views) and has been running for less than a year. There are multiple fan Tumblrs about Carmilla (even fanfiction), well over 10,000 fan posts of Carmilla images on Instagram, lots of Reddit threads on the series, and fan art can be found all over the web.

Carmilla is fun and a great story, but it is not a high quality production and the story takes place in ONE location (a small dorm room) under the premise that the lead character, Laura, is recording a video diary. The acting is okay, the storyline is fun but not always totally logical, and there aren't really many special effects. This is not to put Carmilla down. I love it. I'm just contrasting it to Clutch, which is almost TV worthy.

So what's the difference here? Why has Carmilla seen nearly 20x more views than Clutch and why, when #SaveCarmilla happened, did the fans not only rally, but rallied with tampons (the show is sponsored by U by Kotex), while the Indigogo campaign for #SaveClutch is struggling?

Much of it has to do with the fourth wall.

Television, cinema and live theatre, which are a naturally passive mediums, are meant for us to sit back and observe. The occasional breaking of the fourth wall is a fun technique, but only really works in short spurts. YouTube, on the other hand, is an active medium. Even if we are content to just observe (without commenting or the like), we have the expectation that we are connecting with the person on screen.

There really wasn't ever a fourth wall to break on YouTube. The pioneers that grew early audiences spoke directly to the camera about their real-life issues. Even those with 'shows' address the audience directly. Pranksters let us in on the joke. Unboxers involve us in the experience. And not to mention...the audience that is lapping up YouTube videos has spent their formative years without a fourth wall.

Take recent phenomenon of The Katering Show, which just recently blew up on Reddit.

The same, hilarious duo previously produced a fabulous, well-produced comedy web series called Bleak last year on the same channel, Lead Balloon TV. The Katering Show, which has no fourth wall, has over 242,000 playlist views to date (the Thermomix episode above has well over 1,000,000), while the Bleak series, which requires a passive audience, has only 3,662 views. It's now getting some pick up because of The Katering show according to the stats:

There may be some exceptions, as breaking the fourth wall can work in passive media, but by-and-large, the content on YouTube needs to eradicate the fourth wall entirely in order to connect with the audience. Corporate videos, which often maintain the fourth wall by addressing an unseen interviewer or audience that is not the YouTube viewer, would do better if they approached the audience directly and crafted the content to suit that approach. Think of the success of the Old Spice Guy (no fourth wall) or Dollar Shave Club (no fourth wall) - two ads that were made with an active audience in mind.*

Years ago, Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message." If he were alive today, he would cite YouTube's lack of the fourth wall as a perfect example of what he was referring to (or, if I were Alvy in Annie Hall, I might consult him myself). The medium of YouTube stubbornly determines that programming requires a lack of a fourth wall.

When there is a wall between you and your audience, it separates you. If you want to connect to an audience online, design for the absence of the wall. Vimeo and other video platforms are experimenting with series that uphold the wall, but my gut says that the expectation for online content is that there shouldn't be any barriers between you and your audience.

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* of course there are many 'viral videos' on YouTube that maintain the fourth wall for other reasons - cute kitten, catchy music, paid views, etc. - but as a rule for creating a series and growing an audience, you should throw away the fourth wall.

image credit: Rafa_Luque on Flickr