If there is one word that has become all too familiar in Hollywood it is strike. Currently the entertainment community is crossing its fingers hoping to avoid a possible actor's walkout. It seems like only yesterday that Hollywood's scribes exchanged their pens for placards and decamped to the streets of Burbank and Culver City picketing outside the Disney, Warner and Sony studios. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) walkout lasted 100 days and cost the Los Angeles economy roughly $3 billion ($772 million in lost wages for writers and production crew, $981 million from ancillary businesses that service Hollywood such as set caterers and rental companies, and $1.3 billion as a result of strike affected people tightening their wallets.) Loosing $3 billion over 100 days is peanuts when you consider that LA makes about $1.3 billion a day but it still hit the Hollywood community hard since the entertainment industry employs about 250,000 in the LA region alone, this includes self-employed and contract workers. Finally the Producers Alliance (AMPTP) and the Writers Guild brought the affair to an end by shaking hands on a new three-year contract that ensures writers a stake in the wealth generated when their creative works are distributed on the Internet. But some writers are taking a more proactive approach with regards to the web, not content with waiting for the producers to give them handouts. Get ready for strike is to take on a whole new meaning in Tinsel town.

Set to launch this summer Strike.TV, www.strike.tv, is an online video venture with social networking roots aiming to give writers more control over their copyrights. Any writer worth his salt in Hollywood will tell you that once you sell your pilot or script, chances are what finally makes it on screen bears little resemblance to what you wrote. Between first draft and opening credits the script or idea has undergone so many changes, having been "noted" to within an inch of its life by everyone from the director to studio suits, actors and producers. It sometimes seems that even the craft services person has put in their two cents about what needs to be changed. You need thick skin to work in this environment, trust me I know. Even though every production begins with a written page the writer is the most underappreciated player in Hollywood; you hand over your beloved script and then pray to the movie gods that they don't screw it up too badly.

A sad result of the WGA walkout is that available writing jobs have since shrunk as studios pared down their slate of projects, so the web with its cheap production costs, ubiquity and the chance to pioneer a new paradigm for filmmaking is too juicy a prospect to ignore. During a daylong January seminar at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills the Strike.TV founders challenged writers to come up with original material; their passion projects that ordinarily would have a hard time selling to traditional studio development execs. They received over 70 proposals and the pitches just kept coming. They quickly realized there was a business opportunity hidden in there somewhere and so, through their online social network Striketv.org, they shepherded them into development. Then the website built a video distribution platform that could support HD quality streaming and downloads of content. Viewers will be able to disseminate the free content via social networks like Facebook, blogs, iPods and other devices. A blog-like feature allows for visitors to post their opinions and criticisms of the content. The writers retain full ownership of their series and films. They also pay to develop, shoot and edit the material with Strike.TV playing the part of content distributor. Since the productions are shown on the web there is a significant savings in production cost; Hi-Def digital video is a fraction of the cost of 35 mm film and something any working Hollywood scribe can afford (an HD camera retails for about $3,500, and Final Cut Pro will set you back a mere $500).

According to CEO Peter Hyoguchi, the site's launch has nothing to do with the threat of a looming actors strike. The name has a double meaning, both honoring the spirit of the WGA strike and "striking out on your own". The 4th of July unveiling during the Independence Day celebration was for obvious metaphorical reasons. Strike.TV was financed with only $10.000, all from the participants’ own pockets and its current offices are on Hyoguchi's laptop (though they have programmers and other tech staff working on the site in London, New York and Chicago). What they lack in funding they more than make up in a surplus of talent and ideas. The programming slate that was announced comes from the minds of scribes with quite a pedigree in the business. Though the platform allows for long episodes most are expected to be short form, comedies and dramas with a game show thrown in for good measure; some will be serials while others are films. They include "Unknown Sender" written and directed by Steven E. de Souza who penned "Die Hard" and the sequels to both "Lara Croft Tomb Raider" and "Beverly Hills Cop". "Five Or Die" is a new horror flick from writer/director Tom Holland who did the "Child's Play" franchise and then there is "Confessional" written by Ken Lazebnik who wrote the Robert Altman movie "A Prairie Home Companion" and produced the TV show, "Star Trek: Enterprise". Director Chuck Sheets has created an animated pilot and he knows a thing or two about the medium seeing that he worked on "The Simpsons". There are some 40 completed, self financed shows announced for the launch all from working professionals (writers, directors, show runners as well as actors). Although they only accepts submissions from members of a Hollywood professional guild or union in future the website will expand to include a section where aspiring talent can post work and get feedback from the pros.

Strike.TV also hopes to become an incubator for creative ideas, a testing ground where studios can seek out material that has built up an online audience and hopefully transfer it to the big screen or TV. This could potentially put an end to that oh too familiar scenario that plays out every TV season where low rated new shows are quickly replaced by ratings obsessed execs. This knee jerk reaction has led to some critically acclaimed shows being axed before they've had time to grow and prove themselves. Such was the case with cancelled animated sitcom "Family Guy" which turned out to be such a hot seller on DVD that Fox was forced to reinstall it. Having an outlet with content that is self financed by the creators also means that the studios and networks do not have to shoulder the risk and spend millions upfront on creating a pilot. The old model meant that familiar, safe material was more likely to be green-lit while edgier more original ideas were left behind, resulting in creative déjà vu. The low cost of online incubation would certainly be attractive to studios who are very concerned with their bottom line.

Unlike the WGA which frowns upon the product integration trend and the encroachment of advertising into storylines, Strike.TV welcomes them realizing that a strategically placed Budweiser or Ford Mustang could add significantly to their revenues. In this way it resembles TV since both are ad supported mediums. To this end they have hired New York ad agency Mother – the creative engine behind Dell and Target commercials – to help them find advertisers for the site. As yet the company principals have not identified which advertisers have jumped onto the venture, saying vaguely that they are in talks with some major names for site wide general sponsorships as well as program specific ads. Some other sources reveal that the site has already lined up Coke Zero and Disney-Pixar's new film, "Wall-E". But Strike.TV does not forget that it is the brainchild of a tumultuous and difficult time for the entertainment community nor that the original idea for the site came from writers who wanted to generate revenue for out-of-work colleagues. The 3 month WGA strike hit below the line crew members the hardest and so the startup is giving the first 3 months of advertising revenue to a charitable organization, the Entertainment Assistance Program of The Actors Fund, which assists film and television crew members affected by reduced work conditions. That said it wants to become a for-profit company down the line where participants retain their intellectual properties so after the 3 month period it's a 60-40 split with filmmakers reaping the greater portion.

The past WGA strike led to a migration of TV viewers to the net in search of alternative entertainment and now the writers are following suit, chasing down the potential millions of eyeballs that currently cruise YouTube and are quick to forward and link content they find compelling. Online distributers of film and TV are not unheard of, there is already Joost and Veoh and Hulu to name a few but all those basically took shows and movies that were made for theatres or TV and threw them onto the net. But another writer-driven venture born during the strike also wants to bring original content to the Web sans the expensive middlemen found in the traditional production system. Virtual Artists, www.virtualartists.tv, was supposed to launch a while ago but is still in start-up mode. According to its founder Aaron Mendelsohn, while Strike.TV is more of a network platform for original Web content, Virtual Artists is more of a studio that finances individual shows and locks in sponsorship before committing to creating a show. They currently have a number of A-list film and TV writers (15 stakeholder writers in all) with concepts for comedies, dramas, soaps and a daily mock news program a la "The Daily Show". They are also schmoozing with animators, documentary filmmakers and reality show gurus. Their goal is to be funded within the next 90 days, green-light a show within the next couple of weeks and have content posted and available for viewing within the next three months.

The enormous financial costs of producing film and TV means there is so much pressure to account for the millions of dollars spent that networks and studios bleed all the originality out of a writer's initial idea by trying to appeal to the broadest audiences with the least risky material in the hopes of getting a bigger return on investment. Add to that layer after layer of execs and producers and you have the same old productions year after year. So ventures like Strike.TV and Virtual Artists represent an exciting departure from the norm. Never before has so much scripted content been produced by major Hollywood players specifically for online distribution. It should be an interesting experiment in brand building. If there is an actor's strike (we certainly hope there isn't) it could mean a boost for the fledgling websites as advertisers look for other places to make media buys and talent looks for employment. Strike.TV may have been conceived on the picket lines and birthed in the aftermath but if nursed on enough creativity and smart deal brokering it could grow up to be one very powerful Hollywood player.