September 2007: I’m three months out of college with a degree in theater and philosophy (somehow the job offers weren’t exactly lining up with that piece of paper backing me).  Some may remember this specific day in early September of that year, as there was a blackout in Los Angeles.

With nothing to do myself and my roommates, all of us related to film/performing with our majors and degrees; do exactly what any sensible twenty something would do without Xbox 360 or internet.  We sat on our lawn and drank beer, and told ghost stories.

For nine hours.

Now, don’t be fooled–I am at heart a complete and utter nerd (and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one at KARMA Media Labs).

Anyway, the ghost stories led to debates over the veracity of these tales, which led to more beer, which lead to UFOs, which eventually led to—as all good conversations involving the supernatural do—ZOMBIES.  And I’ll throw this out there—I’ve got a great and true UFO story, and I’d be a dude you’d want to consult in the event of the living dead walking the earth.  Total package, ladies… Tangent, ok.

But eventually, we landed on the idea of a reality TV show, with a cast of humans, set in the zombie apocalypse.  For those not in the know, that means when the dead are walking and eating everybody who is still alive.  Long story short, this is not good.  Just go watch 28 Days Later, or imagine a nursing home run by the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The idea for what eventually became our webseries, I Am Not Infected, was simple:

Three idiots stuck in Los Angeles during an undead outbreak, on the set of a reality TV show called The Frat House of Representatives.  Imagine Night of the Living Dead meets The Office, sprinkled with a little Arrested Development.

The cast came down to the three co-creators as the actors—myself, Charlie Coutrakon, and Paul Brindley.  Eventually, Dean Mozian joined us as our executive producer.  All of us had attended Emerson College and were bored as hell during the writer’s strike—four points for being pro-active.

February of 2008: We started writing—and finally we started filming.  In May, we launched www.iamnotinfected.com, and lo and behold… drum roll please… nobody was watching.  Unless you count our mothers and Paul’s father.

Flash forward to the Fall of 2008 – for the most part, still nobody is watching.  And let me tell you, as much fun as it is to give up weekends, turn down work, stay up until five o’clock in the morning and (at times) want to murder your roommates—who happen to be your co-creators and entire production team—sometimes the small but fierce following for I Am Not Infected pales in comparison to the workload.

But in October of 2008, something happened.

My character, appropriately named Hartley (the zombie genre has never been heralded for its originality), has always donned a red t-shirt with a T-Rex graphic on it.  Chosen by Charlie for its juvenile appearance, it happens to be a piece of merchandise from web comic giant Dinosaur Comics.  This served us well when fans of Dino Comics started watching our show, and shouted out to DC creator Ryan North.  In turn, Ryan gave us a shout on his website… and immediately, traffic shot through the roof.  I mean, THROUGH. THE. ROOF.  At last, we had achieved the success we worked so hard for!

Long story short… nope.

It dropped again, soon after.  Fast forward again to April of 2009—where we incorporated another element of webcomics, Chainsawsuit by Kris Straub, into one of our episodes.  This yielded another large spike in traffic.  Since Chainsawsuit, viewership for www.iamnotinfected.com has been up considerably.  But we don’t exactly know why—we’re just happy to have it.  And now we need to keep it going.  Between jobs, attempts at social lives, and a variety of creative projects each of us are always working on, we simply don’t have the hours in the day or the energy to constantly be hammering away at building a buzz for www.iamnotinfected.com.

I’ve realized this: we can’t do everything at once.  With any creative or professional property, the “mothers” often have a certain feeling of purity about their work.  That is to say, the idea that no one else can possibly do anything to their work with the exception of screwing it up, or otherwise corrupting it.  We, as artists, become incredibly protective and skittish.

But, as a wise butler once said to a troubled superhero in a 2009 hit film, know your limits.

Our goal is to have fun making I Am Not Infected, and to get people to see it.  We know how to do one of those things.  KARMA Media Labs knows how to do the other.

Hartley Sawyer is Online Producer with KARMA Media Labs and co-creator/ actor in the web series I Am Not Infected.