ABSTRACT
Twenty-first century web series, particularly those series classifiable as ‘web soaps,’ demonstrate the ways that American indie film and serialized TV drama combine to shape a sphere of economically and creatively independent television. These hybridized influences on the indie web serial result in innovations in narrative, style, and representation that allow web series such as Conversations in L.A. (Amazon, 2017-19) and Giants (YouTube, BET+, 2017-18) to introduce innovation in the economic and creative dimensions of television. Through experiments in serialized narration and stylistic techniques such as long takes, these series both borrow from and push the boundaries of indie film and mainstream TV drama. They also allow for culturally specific representation of intersectional identities that are underexplored in these two spheres of influence, demonstrating the potential of indie TV to offer new kinds of stories and new approaches to moving-image storytelling, albeit in a context of economic precarity that makes the future of such independent projects uncertain.
