WEB video knows no season — new stuff just pops up any old time — so the notion of a fall preview is a little artificial. There’s a certain logic to it, though, because at the high end, where corporate budgets are involved, Web video continues to look and smell like television.
But professional online video is a big tent, one that includes, among many other things, television network Webisodes, satirical stand-alone clips on comedy sites and advertisements that begin life on YouTube as quasi-art objects. The business model appears to be in a tenuous state of equilibrium: while small companies that hoped to specialize in Web video are forced out of business by a lack of advertising, other producers enter the field because it’s cheaper than making television.
Here is a small selection of new online content — serials, one-shot videos and ephemera — that has recently begun or is arriving soon. Primary Web addresses are listed, but most will be available on a wide variety of video sites.
THE FALL OF KADEN (fallofkaden.com): This noirish serial about a loan shark and his no-account brother is two weeks into a 10-week run. Adam Leiphart, whose credits include being Wentworth Miller’s stand-in on “Prison Break,” plays Kaden.