We have a new Emma Approved FAQ page here… but the burning question is where to the videos lie in world and out.

http://www.pemberleydigital.com/where-do-emmas-videos-exist-in-world/

This blog post was first updated last night and edited after Bernie jumped into a hangout to get more questions from fans. This post may continue to evolve.

Full copied post after the jump.

Hello, Bernie Su here to explain what is planned for Emma Approved’s in world/out of world experience. Who knows about the videos? Who doesn’t? Does Emma know there are thousands of people watching her? Do Knightley, Annie, Harriet, and everyone else know that there are videos of them on the internet?

This may be long but there is a quick bullet point summary at the end.

First let’s talk about in world vs. out of world. The world is the world of the characters. Lizzie, Emma, Gigi, Lydia, they all exist in one world. They all are aware that they are being filmed, which is why they’re always looking towards the camera.

With The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, its spinoffs, and Welcome to Sanditon the camera was a direct channel out into “our world.” Lizzie knew that she was uploading vlogs. She knew that she had hundreds and thousands of viewers weekly. The people around Lizzie also knew she had videos (or eventually discovered she did). The discovering of Lizzie’s videos, who knew about them and who didn’t know about them was a source of tension that we mined repeatedly with many of the characters.

There were at times it got really contrived. How could *blank* not know about the videos?! That’s ridiculous?! That makes them ignorant bordering on irresponsible!“ This was critique is especially prevalent during the final 1/3 of the story.

Now regarding Emma Approved we are required to make some changes. The way Emma Woodhouse is, especially with her unorthodox methods, there needs to be a shield between her and the other characters. A lot of things that she does, she would be called out upon immediately by her supporting colleagues.

For Emma to be effective she needs to be covert and secretive, thus Emma’s videos are not seen by anyone. Every character in the Emma Approved world doesn’t know that there are public videos of what she’s doing. They just know that they are being recorded.

So in the world of Emma Approved here’s how it works.

1. Emma is recording a documentary of herself, documenting her greatness.

2. Emma’s co-workers and friends (Knightley, Harriet, Annie, Ryan etc) do not know that there are public videos of them.

3. She is recording these moments for her life story and her lifetime achievement award.

For other examples of this in popular culture you can think of Modern Family or Parks and Recreation. These are shot documentary style with all the characters being very camera aware. Emma Approved is similar in the same vein. Emma wants to document everything.

Some more questions mined from a YouTube hangout.

Q: Why are there two channels then? Are they both out of world? Does Emma and Harriet know about them?

Everything that’s a video is out of world. Even the ones on EmmaApproved’s channel.

Q: So what exactly is Emma doing?

She is is filming this footage and archiving for herself for later.

Q: Are the videos occurring in real time like LBD? e.g. Fri-Sun for the Monday video and Tues-Wed for the Thursday video.

A: For now yes. But not all LBD videos were recorded and uploaded in real time. Notable examples are episode 97/98 - 13/14/15

Everything that’s not in a video or referencing a video is in world.

—- Summary or TL;DR