Bernie Su is an American web series creator, writer, director and producer. He is best known for his work on the Emmy Award-winning web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries with Hank Green, a modern vlog-style adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice which won YouTube's first primetime Emmy Award. His five-platform interactive re-imagination of Austen's Emma, called Emma Approved, won the same Emmy two years later. Su also worked on Vanity, was Multi-channel network StyleHaul's first original online series, with Maybelline New York attached as the exclusive sponsor for its centennial celebration.
Su's most recent project, Artificial, follows a young AI named Sophie as she learns what it means to be a human. It is the first web series to debut on the streaming service Twitch and was awarded a Primetime Emmy and Peabody Award in 2019.
Career
Compulsions
Compulsions is an American drama
web series created by Su and directed by Nathan Atkinson.
It debuted on
Dailymotion on December 1, 2009 and was nominated for multiple
Streamy Awards at the 2nd Streamy Awards the next year, including Best Drama Web Series, Best Directing for a Drama Web Series (Nathan Atkinson), and Best Male Actor in a Drama Web Series (Craig Frank).
Su won the award for Best Writing for a Drama Web Series at the ceremony for writing the show.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Pemberley Digital
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is an American
web series adapted from
Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice. The story is conveyed in the form of
vlogs.
It was created by
Hank Green and Bernie Su,
produced by Jenni Powell
and stars
Ashley Clements, Mary Kate Wiles, Laura Spencer, Julia Cho and Daniel Vincent Gordh. It premiered on
YouTube on April 9, 2012
and concluded when the 100th episode was posted on March 28, 2013.
The story is told in
vlog-style by the
eponymous character, each episode being between two and eight minutes long.
[The shortest episode, The Charming Mr. Lee (episode 11), lasts 2 minutes and 41 seconds. The longest, An Understanding (episode 87), lasts 8 minutes and 12 seconds.]
In 2013, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries won YouTube’s first primetime Emmy Award.
A DVD set containing every episode of the series and its spinoffs was launched on Kickstarter on March 22, 2013; the initial pledge goal of $60,000 was met within six hours.
Sequels
Welcome to Sanditon
Taking place after the events of
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries,
follows Gigi Darcy as she spends her summer in Sanditon, CA to run a beta demo of the Pemberley Digital Domino application. The residents of Sanditon have all been invited to join in the test, and discover how this “life-revealing” app performs.
The mini-series is a modernized adaptation of Jane Austen's unfinished novel, Sanditon. One notable difference from the source material is Gigi replaces the unfinished novel's original heroine, Charlotte Heywood (as Sanditon is actually not connected to Pride and Prejudice in any way).
Emma Approved
Taking place after the events of
Welcome to Sanditon,
Emma Approved focuses on Emma Woodhouse, a confident and proud female entrepreneur who believes she is an excellent matchmaker.
The series is a modernized adaptation of Jane Austen's novel, Emma.
The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet
The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet is a book by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick which takes readers deep inside Lizzie’s world and well beyond the confines of her camera.
Artificial
Artificial, also referred to as
ArtificialNext, is the first ever scripted and interactive show distributed on Twitch.
Created by Bernie Su and
Evan Mandery, Artificial follows Dr. Matt Lin (
Tohoru Masamune) and his artificial intelligence creation/daughter Sophie (
Tiffany Chu). Dr. Lin socializes Sophie with the live and interactive Twitch audience in order to help her become human. Episodes are broken into recorded and live scenes. In the live scenes, the audience directly influences the story, and, through in-stream polls and comments, helps the characters make decisions. The first season ran weekly from August 12, 2018 through October 25, 2018 for a total of sixteen episodes and accrued more than two million views. The second season began on March 6, 2019, and will conclude on August 28.
In 2019, he series was awarded the
Peabody Award for Webisode.
The series additionally has a spinoff
podcast,
Artificial Uncovered, an in-universe transmedia video podcast that airs as two livestreams with one of the show's two hosts providing commentary and taking questions on a pre-recorded podcast with both hosts. The audio of the pre-recorded segments is also posted for download.
Awards and nominations
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| 2010 | 2nd Streamy Awards | Best Drama Web Series | |
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| 2013 | Best Writing: Comedy | |
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| 2014 | |
| Audience Choice | Emma Approved | |
| Cynopsis Digital Model D Awards | Web Series Comedy | |
| 3rd International Academy of Web Television Awards | Best Comedy Series | |
| 2015 | 67th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards | Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media - Original Interactive Program | |
| 2016 | 43rd Daytime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Digital Drama Series | Vanity | |
| 2019 | Peabody Award | Futures of Media Award: Webisode | Artificial | |
| 2019 | 71st Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media | Artificial | |
