Sense8

Transcending Television

Deborah Shaw, Rob Stone, Deborah Shaw, Rob Stone

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501352928
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Fernsehgeschichte & -kritik

This collection explores the many ways in which the Netflix series Sense8 transcends television. As its characters transcend physical and psychological borders of gender and geography, so the series itself transcends those between television, new media platforms and new screen technologies, while dissolving those between its producers, stars, audiences and fans. Sense8 united, inspired and energized a global community of fans that realized its own power by means of online interaction and a successful campaign to secure a series finale. The series' playful but poignant exploration of globalization, empathy, transnationalism, queer and trans aesthetics, gender fluidity, imagined communities and communities of sentiment also inspired the interdisciplinary range of contributors to this volume. In this collection, leading academics illuminate Sense8 as a progressive and challenging series that points to vital, multifarious, contemporary social, political, aesthetic and philosophical concerns. Sense8: Transcending Television is much more than an academic examination of a series; it is an account and analysis of the way that we all receive, communicate and consider ourselves as participants in global communities that are social, political and cultural, and now both physical and virtual too.

1

What’s Going On? Netflix and the Commissioning of Sense8

Amanda D. Lotz

Were it not for Netflix, there would likely not be Sense8. So, an apt place to begin is with exploring what Netflix is and how its peculiarity allowed for Sense8’s creation. As many will know, Netflix is a video distribution service that delivers video using the internet instead of technologies such as broadcast signal, cable or satellite transmission, or DVD. As a distribution technology, the internet has different capabilities than broadcast or multichannel services that are only able to transmit a single signal per channel to their audience. This limited capacity necessitates an organization of programs into a schedule. In contrast, internet-distributed services allow on-demand access to a library of programs. This allows internet-distributed services much more capacity—adding a show does not require taking another away—but they also are not limitless. Internet-distributed services are constrained by the budget available for programming.

Netflix also relies on a business model relatively unprecedented for the forms of video distribution that preceded it. Netflix is subscriber-funded, thus is not reliant on advertisers or public funds. Its precise model, in which subscribers pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to a library of programming, is thus more like the economics of paying to see a film or rent a video than the way most video to the home is funded, but the fact that payment allows access to a bundle of content also makes it quite different (Lotz 2017, 2018, 2019). Although many other companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Disney also distribute video using the internet, it is important to recognize that each of these companies conglomerate many businesses, and video distribution is just one piece of the overall enterprise—in some cases, a very small one. Netflix, in contrast, is purely a subscriber-funded video service.

These features derived from distributing by internet are very important in driving the programming strategy of the service. Netflix’s primary goal is to expand the number of people who subscribe to its service and maintain those that already do so. To attract subscribers, Netflix must offer them something of such value that they are willing to pay for it. Consequently, the content most valuable to Netflix is that which is not available anywhere else. This is very different to the strategy behind advertiser-funded programming, in which the goal is to attract the most attention—typically the most viewers—so that they and their attention can be sold to advertisers.

Beyond these core features of distribution technology and business model that differentiate Netflix from most twentieth-century video, it is necessary to account for the company’s constant evolution. Netflix was born in the United States as a DVD rental-by-mail service that is credited with the destruction of the video rental store business (Keating 2012). In this first Netflix era, which spanned roughly from 1997 through 2010, Netflix was primarily associated with film rather than television. Throughout the latter half of the first decade of the 2000s Netflix pivoted its business toward using the internet to distribute video in the United States. A component of that transition from mail to internet distribution involved the service emphasizing television over film titles as it increasingly became recognized as a service that offered past seasons of well-known American television series. Netflix also offered a healthy film library for streaming access, but the film library was far less robust than the DVD rental-by-mail service because of the difference in rights regimes for these different formats.

Netflix began the pivot to its third identity—multinational video distributor—in 2010 when it became available in Canada. Its reach expanded yearly, launching a year later in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2011; the UK, Ireland, and Scandinavia in 2012; the Netherlands in 2013; Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and India in 2014; and then Australia, New Zealand, and Japan in 2015, before CEO Reed Hastings’s announcement in January 2016 of its “global” roll out and availability in 130 countries, which has since climbed to 190, or all but Iran, Syria, and China.

At the same time as the service expanded its multinational reach, it began to diminish its reliance on licensing titles that had been produced for other networks and channels to instead begin financing the production of series commissioned by Netflix. Some of the earliest of these series were only “Netflix shows” in the US market—the non-US rights for House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black were sold to other distributors, frustrating new Netflix subscribers in those markets. But as Netflix’s strategy as a multinational video distributor solidified, it began purchasing global rights for the series it developed, and often for much longertime horizons than the norm—ten to fifteen years instead of two or three.

Though this practice deviated from the conventions of television trade, this strategy corresponded to the difference of Netflix’s distribution technology and business model. What incentive would people have to subscribe if the service was not the exclusive rights holder? Moreover, the on-demand ability of the distribution technology and the scale of its multinational subscriber base enabled considerable capacity. Where networks had to stop airing a show to make room for a new one, Netflix had no such capacity issues. The service derived value from its library reliability—from maintaining access to series. Also, the fact that Netflix does not sell attention to advertisers means that it is not driven to try to gather as many people viewing at a particular time.

Sense8

Sense8 was the sixth series Netflix commissioned. In its marketing, Netflix uses the terms “original” and “exclusive” somewhat liberally to include a series that it had no hand in making, but to describe the purchase of exclusive rights in foreign markets from whatever production company holds the rights. Sense8 meets a more rigorous and standard designation of “original” because Netflix funded the cost of the series’ creation. Although contract details are not disclosed publicly, it is likely the case that Netflix retains global rights to the series for a decade or longer in exchange for funding its production. Netflix did not yet have its own studio when Sense8 began development; it contracted Lana and Lily Wachowski’s Anarchos Productions to make the series.

Netflix released all twelve episodes of the first series of Sense8 simultaneously—as is the norm for the service—in June 2015. It had announced the deal for the series more than two years earlier, in March 2013 (O’Connell 2013). These dates are important because of the fluidity in Netflix’s aims and identity over this period. Appreciating when Netflix began Sense8 crucially informs arguments about what was attractive about the series for the service and the service’s approach to the series.

Netflix agreed to produce Sense8 a month after the debut of its first, and much hyped, original series, House of Cards. Because of its simultaneous full-season release, Netflix would have already had an indication of the response to House of Cards. In addition to data such as how many subscribers streamed the series, how many episodes they watched, and how quickly they watched all the episodes, Netflix would have monitored new subscribers and whether House of Cards was among the first series watched by new subscribers in order to assess the performance of the series and the viability of its commissioned series strategy (Sarandos 2019).

Even before the first episodes dropped, the commissioning of House of Cards had provided the service with an extraordinary amount of free publicity as the top-level talent attached to the project and its jaw-dropping budget generated buzz and expectation from the first announcement in March 2011. The buzz only continued as House of Cards launched and stories of viewers “binge watching” the season over the course of day mixed with accounts debating the foolishness of Netflix’s simultaneous release strategy and extended the unpaid publicity of the series and service further.

When Sense8 was greenlit, Netflix reached roughly thirty-three million US subscribers and nearly eleven million in countries including Canada, Central America, and Northwest Europe. A month later Netflix released its second series, Hemlock Grove, which Hastings claimed was viewed by more subscribers in its first days on the service than House of Cards, but Hemlock Grove never received the critical acclaim or general attention of other Netflix series (Ludwig 2013). Thus, Netflix had a basic sense of the viability of its strategy shift toward commissioning series at the time it began developing Sense8.

Sense8 was similar to other early Netflix commissions in that the announcement of the series alone made news. Just as the idea of acclaimed film director David Fincher and actor Kevin Spacey had attracted attention to the House of Cards order, the news of a series from the Wachowskis drew notice—as was likely intended. Such announcements of forthcoming work from well-known talent were not only helpful in providing unpaid publicity for the service but also valuable motivation to encourage potential subscribers who were curious about the service to take the step of subscribing, or at least starting a free trial of the service that represented a different type of video experience than was common.

The series’ budget was part of the initial deal, which has been anecdotally reported as nine million dollars per episode, a sum that lands it on lists of the most expensive television series made as of 2020 (Kurland 2019). This high budget was not particular to Sense8, but characteristic of the early shock and awe campaign Netflix embraced in moving into commissions and a result of the uncommon terms of Netflix deals. Nearly all of the early Netflix commissions had comparable budgets and are included among lists of the most expensive television series produced. A significant part of the high price results from the different terms Netflix demands. Where traditionally the rights of US television shows have reverted back to the company that produced them after a first airing on the commissioning network—so that the rights can be sold again and again in other markets and countries either immediately or within a few years—Netflix seeks global and perpetual rights. The financing of most television shows allowed for additional earnings by talent and producers if the show earned significant revenue after its first license window—and it is from these sales that the series that amassed perceived great riches achieved this revenue. There is likely no additional revenue to come for the producers or talent making shows for Netflix. One of the reasons the service spends such high sums is in order to build a stable, multiyear library of series. This is very different from the existing norms of television.

The high budgets of Netflix shows often covered long-term rights, but they also typically bought top-shelf talent. The budgets also made clear to a skeptical Hollywood talent pool that the service was serious about creating programming and could be the destination for those with stories that might not match the narrow confines of ad-supported television. Netflix followed HBO’s business model and likewise sought to create a reputation as a favored partner for creative talent.

Netflix’s goal in commissioning series was to have shows that people would watch, but early on, compelling subscriber growth was crucial. In the case of Sense8, the premium budget bought high-profile creators. The series spent minimally on acting talent, with few established actors, but, to put it in industry parlance, put the rest of the budget “on the screen.” Sense8 relied upon on-location shooting in multiple countries on multiple continents, all of which is very expensive and unusual. Moreover, episodes featuring climaxes in the storyline about BPO’s pursuit of the cluster featured expensive chase scenes and special effects. The cinematographic richness of the series’ sweeping landscapes and special effects also benefited Netflix. Of its other early commissions, only Marco Polo featured the visual excess that allowed Netflix to claim its offerings surpassed the visual conventions associated with nontheatrical audiovisual entertainment to be visually distinctive.

As this account suggests, it is not difficult to see why Netflix developed Sense8. It capitalized on several of the strategic features of the shows it commissioned during its f...