Development has entered a second more tedious stage where I try to clean up a few rough spots on the Show Runner application while choosing which features I will introduce next. I’m using AI to create the site, and while this is faster than I am at programming (note: I am not a programmer), I’m finding that Base44 is not as consistent or intuitive as a human might be.

The goal with Show Runner was to create a platform which would make it easy to solicit video submissions from puppeteers for a project, i.e. a puppet slam, and for an audience to watch the completed results.

Typically, when you have a team of contributors which is distributed across a wide distance, you end up with a collection of videos which were posted to different channels, and sometimes different platforms. The challenge, then, is to bring them all together into one coherent presentation.

This could be achieved via a playlist on YouTube, assuming that every video is hosted on YouTube, or by downloading the videos and editing them together. You could even re-post them under one channel, but then you are dealing with questions of ownership.

This brings me back to Show Runner. This application brings all of the videos together under one self-contained presentation, which your viewers can enjoy in one sitting, or pause and then continue watching at their leisure. It is a little like Pinterest for videos.

Let’s say that you want to create a series of presentations. You can do that with Show Runner by first creating a Show, and then creating numerous episodes for that show. When you assemble a show, you review and insert a video which has been submitted to the site. Those videos live on the playlist for a given episode. You could look at the Shows as a list of playlists.

But, this weekend, I added a new layer which I called Stations. Producers on the site can create a station, and add shows to them. When a show is added to a station, any episodes which have gone live will play in that station. The site can support more than one station, and viewers can watch them on the homepage or switch stations.

As viewers are watching a show, they can also react to what they’re seeing by leaving a comment or communicate with other fans via the chat tab. This might be something I’ll be fine-tuning in the future, but its there. The original idea was that the episode of a show would be released at a specific time, and the audience who watches it during its premiere would participate in a chat, a little like a live stream only in this case it would be tape-delayed.

Viewers on the site can also follow a show by clicking on a heart. When they do that, the show will be listed in their library.

One final aspect that I wanted to share, is that commercials can be included in a given show. So, if a show has sponsors, those commercials can be set up to play at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of the episode at a set frequency, as ad breaks. This might not sound like such a great thing as someone who is watching an episode but it makes it easy to sell ads and raise funds for your production.

So, that’s Show Runner in a nutshell. Producers can build shows and plan out episodes, then recruit Contributors who are available to submit videos which can be included. Anybody who lands on the Show Runner site can watch the videos, but only users who were invited to join as contributors can submit videos, and only producers can review and approve those videos or manage stations/shows/episodes.