Web Series Archive

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Podcast Episode 27: The Page of Reviews/Limited Release Handsome-cast live at Ad Astra 2013

By
Adam Shaftoe
– April 12, 2013Posted in: Podcasts

Featuring the voices of Adam Shaftoe and Nick Montgomery

There’s a certain safety net to the way I record my podcasts. Even when I have a guest with me, we both know that if somebody says something stupid (usually me) there’s a chance to say it again and leave the gaffe on the floor of the digital cutting room. Last Sunday, Nick Montgomery and I tossed caution to the wind and recorded a podcast in front of a live audience, which actually grew by about 28% from start to finish.

The results were pretty good.

Granted, the fact that I had about 33 seconds to balance the audio levels shows up in the podcast, but I’ll call that a lesson learned for the next time I do something like this.

Upon review I also noticed that I didn’t really tell the important part of the Ben Bova story. Sufficed to say, Ben Bova was not the Asimov doppelganger. Dr. Bova, however, did inform me that the Asimov look was the natural appearance for the gentleman in question.

So on that note, I present you with the first ever live before an audience Page of Reviews / Limited Release cross over podcast.

Topics under discussion include:

-   Gamers 3

-   Versus Valerie

-   Community

-   Deadwood

-   The history of swearing

-   Kickstarter

-   Veronica Mars

-   The fine art of Directing

-   Shameless plugs for current projects

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Huge thanks to Nick Montgomery for coming out to record this experiment. Make sure to head over to the Limited Release Podcast to check out all of Nick and Candice’s fine work.

As well, thanks to everybody who came out on a Sunday to listen to our prattle, and to Ad Astra for letting us put on our show.


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First Impressions of Out of Time

By
Adam Shaftoe
– March 1, 2013Posted in: Web Media, Web Series Reviews

One week ago the director of Out of Time, Rodney V. Smith, offered me an insider’s glance at his upcoming web series. An experienced hand at online production, Smith’s past work includes the detective noir web series Dominion. Where Dominion explored a world of supernatural beings coexisting with humanity, Out of Time presents itself a story that marries contemporary corporate intrigue with time travel.

The series is also embarking upon a unique approach to funding its ten episode debut season. Anybody who backs Out of Time’s indiegogo campaign will gain immediate early access to the thirty minute prologue to the first season, The Accidental Time Traveller.

Considering the average runtime of a web series, thirty minutes dedicated to a pilot represents a substantial investment of time and labour. For comparison, the entirety of Felica Day’s Dragon Age web series ran approximately one hour in duration. This ambition is similarly reflected in the series’ plan to deliver individual episodes at a length of fifteen minutes. By the time the first season is done, Mr. Smith is going to have a feature length film on his hands.

Ambitious is similarly the word I would use to describe the scope of The Accidental Time Traveller. To watch this pilot is to see a self-contained short film which revels in asynchronous story telling. Therein, series protagonist Chris Allman (Steve Kasan) finds himself trapped within his own causality loop as he struggles to save the life of his murdered girlfriend Sara (Julia MacPherson). It is the sort of storytelling which makes Steven Moffat’s attempts to play the timey-wimey game on Doctor Who appear similar to a toddler splashing about in a wading pool. The sheer complexity of the time travel within The Accidental Time Traveler is best compared to 2004’s indie darling Primer.

The impressive visual effects within the pilot episode also merit some discussion. One thing of particular note is a scene when an actor walks through a digitally rendered computer readout. This may not sound impressive, but I expect the production of such a deceptively simple illusion required no shortage of work from the effects department. Moreover, it’s the sort of effect which makes me wonder what this series might be capable of producing once it secures greater funding.

Filming on location in Toronto over the spring of this year, the series is expected to release in March of 2014. For those interested in contributing to the production, there is an extensive breakdown of the project’s budget and production schedule on their Indiegogo page.

My thanks to Mr. Smith for offering me a preview of the series. Best of luck to the cast and crew in meeting their fundraising goal.

Find out more about the project at Out of Time’s webpage. Or head over to their indiegogo campaign to make a contribution.


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Podcast Episode 25: Q&A with Jonathan Robbins, creator of the web series Clutch

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 30, 2013Posted in: Podcasts, Web Media

Two new podcast releases in the same month? Wow, I must really feel guilty for the long months of silence in between episode twenty-three and twenty-four.

Topics under discussion include:

-   What is Clutch?

-   Clutch’s nature as a Hard-R rated web series.

-   A couple degrees of Craig Ferguson.

-   The relationship between art and violence.

-   Jonathan on directing.

-   The challenges of producing Clutch.

-   Web series and their awards.

-   The state and future of digital mediums.

Once again, congratulations to Jonathan and the entire cast and crew of Clutch on their Streamy nomination.

Head over to clutchtheseries.com to check out the entire first season and the first half of season two.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Feature track: Nerevar Rising as arranged by Blake Robinson from the album Video Game Orchestrations Volume 1.

Cold Intro Music: The Lady of Vastness by Dan-O at DanoSongs.com

Theme music:  Bionic Commando stage 4 (Dale vs Wray mix) (NecroPolo) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0


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Web Series Review: Clutch

By
Adam Shaftoe
– December 14, 2012Posted in: Web Series Reviews

On a whole, I think the web series can be a great medium for storytelling. In recent years it has done wonders for comedy, and in the process acted as a new voice for groups marginalized by mainstream media. As well, the web series has helped to demonstrate the viability of genre projects which might otherwise be deemed too risky for conventional television. Yet I’ve always thought there was something missing. Where is the web series that pulls no punches? In a medium without limits, mostly, where is the FX and HBO factor? Tuesday morning I woke up to an email from Jonathan Robbins, writer and director of Clutch; it turns out he and his series have the answer to my question.

Now in its second season, Clutch is a Canadian produced multiple award winning femme fatale crime thriller set in Toronto. The first season focuses on Kylie (Elitsa Bako), a pick pocket drawn into a deeper world of professional thievery and organized crime. After escaping an attempt on the part of her ex-boyfriend to sell her into the sex trade, Kylie meets a prostitute named Bridgette (Lea Lawrynowicz) and a thief named Mike (Jeff Sinasac), who presumes to take Kylie on as an apprentice. From there, the story is one of people forced into crime as a means of survival stealing from those who choose crime as a lifestyle.

Stylistically Clutch is a web series answer to Shawn Ryan and The Shield. Tight shots on characters create an almost intrusive sense of intimacy between the show and the audience. This closeness underpins the series’ graphic violence and frequent nudity, almost making the viewer feel like a voyeur into a world which is both fascinating and terrifying. While there are elements of Robert Rodriguez’s and Frank Miller’s screen adaptation of Sin City in the plot, Clutch’s visual focus is always on the inherent ugliness of crime. Absent are Sin City’s voice overs and stylistic trickery which would otherwise blunt the honesty of events as they unfold.

Which brings me to the series’ second episode. It’s not my style to overtly spoil things for the viewing audience, yet there is one particular scene which deserves some special attention. As a clue, I will say that Pete Travis shot a similar sort of scene with Lena Headey in Dredd; the rest you can either figure out on your own or just watch the series to see what I mean.

This scene casts aside any doubt that Clutch is anything but a hard “R” rated web series intent on cutting to the bone. At the same time, said scene is as alluring (in a narrative sense) as it is alienating. Viewers are either going to be drawn into Clutch in this moment, or they will walk away. Presenting this scene as a means of setting an overall tone, when it might be better used as a coup de gras toward the end of the season, is bold writing. This is before we get to the unflinching conviction to character that the cast, especially Elitsa Bako, demonstrate in this scene. Not to play psychologist, but there are no shortage of moments within Clutch’s first season which I imagine must have been challenging for the cast. Their fantastic execution demonstrates what I can only assume to be a remarkable trust in Mr. Robbins’ directing and overall vision for the series.

Though magnificent in its cinematography and story telling, there is one area which stands out as less polished than the rest of the production, specifically the gun play. In a series which boasts great music and otherwise solid audio balancing, the guns sound wrong. Pistols and machine guns alike sound too artificial and are accompanied by what looked, to my untrained eyes, like too much post-production muzzle flash. Similarly, cuts from shooter to victim feel a little ill timed. However, I recognize it is hard to hide squib packs on naked people. Ultimately, if the handful of shooting sequences demonstrate anything, it’s that Clutch is at its best when its violence is visceral, psychological, and not subject to something as pedestrian as gunfire.

Both bold and daring, Clutch is a new and wholly welcome direction for the web series as a medium. Its characters are all flawed yet most, save for the mob boss, Marcel, remain accessible despite how the Hobbesian brutality of their lives has shaped them into morally questionable entities. Though nudity is a new thing for me in a web series, as is Clutch’s unabashed violence, the absence of either would have been askance given the nature of this story. Certainly the Ocean’s 11 meets The Shield approach will be off-putting for some, but those whose tastes lean toward gritty urban crime will likely not find themselves disappointed.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s the first episode of Clutch. It should go without saying this is NSFW.

 

Clutch stars Elitsa Bako, Lea Lawrynowicz, Matthew Carvery, Buzz Koffman, Jeff Sinasac, and Alexandra Elle. The series is written and directed by Jonathan Robbins.

Head over to clutchtheseries.com for more information on the series, cast, and crew.


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Doctor Horrible’s TV Debut: Interesting, but not a Game Changer.

By
Adam Shaftoe
– October 15, 2012Posted in: Television, The Daily Shaft, TV Reviews, Web Media

Last week Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog made its television debut on the CW Network. As I did indeed sing along to Captain Hammer’s (Nathan Fillion) character defining song A Man’s Gotta Do, musing on just how much money I’d spent on Horrible merch since 2008 (A Hammer shirt, an iTunes purchase of the series and soundtrack, and the DVD – you do the math) I began to wonder about the point of airing a quintessential web series on conventional television. I’ve since come to the conclusion that televising the unrequited love story of Billy (Neil Patrick Harris) and Penny (Felica Day) was in fact Joss Whedon blowing a raspberry in the face of the establishment.

Well, it’s either a raspberry or a way to get his name back on television as a warm-up to his upcoming S.H.I.E.L.D TV show. But if that’s the case then this blog post sort of falls apart. So for the moment, let us assume Dr. Horrible + TV = a very quiet middle finger to a dying medium.

As a cultural phenomenon, Dr. Horrible is old news. Unless you’re very new to the internet and its distinct culture (cat videos, Wil Wheaton, vlogs, memes, XKCD comics, web series, et cetera) the chances are good you already know the Hammer is not Nathan Fillion’s fists. This reality likely produced two sorts of people watching Dr. Horrible on TV: those who knew what the hammer is, and everybody else who was learning for the first time.

To the second group, the message is obvious; this is what you’ve been missing by not watching internet television. For the vast majority who were watching Horrible because they love it/because it was there/because Joss Whedon is their nerd lord and sovereign the message was different. To this particular in crowd, the subtext was more along the lines of “look how awful the viewing experience is on conventional television.”

And wow was it painful.

The roughly thirty minute runtime of Dr. Horrible was stretched out to fill a one hour block. Though I expected commercials at the end of each of the series’ three acts, the mid-act commercial breaks were jarring and unnatural. Remember, this is a series written for the internet. In-act scene transitions do not lend themselves to the act break commercial structure that goes with 42 to 44 minutes of narrative television.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the CW treated the Doc just like they would any other piece of programming. Every couple of minutes there was a dancing “VD” for Vampire Dairies in the bottom right corner of the screen (notice me staying classy here and not going for the obvious joke about venereal disease). Sometimes the CW network watermark would get shot with an arrow as a promotion for Smallville redux Arrow. Where the internet empowers viewers with the option to close annoying crap like that, TV trapped me with its now flagrant in-program advertising.

But the worst crime was the CW’s decision to reformat Doctor Horrible out of 16:9 into a conventional 4:3 aspect ratio. I make a lot of concessions to the ancien regime of media when I turn on the television, but catering Dr. Horrible toward people who own old CRT tube sets crosses the line.

Everything about watching Dr. Horrible on TV made me long for the low budget honesty of the web series. A world where a viewer can watch something in whatever format they want, at whichever resolution their net connection can support, and where commercials may intro and extro a video, but they don’t interrupt the flow of the story. Nowhere was I more acutely aware that I was watching television than when I was watching something not meant for television. And through it all I could hear Whedon blowing his raspberry, not at me, but at the network itself. For he had insinuated something meant for one medium into another and in doing so proved just how unsuited conventional media is for assimilating new media into its pantheon.

Therefore, our take away from having Dr. Horrible on the CW should not be a thesis on Whedon as the king of transmedia. When we stop to think about the limitations of television’s fixed narrative structure, Doctor Horrible has no business being on the air. So kudos to Whedon for sneaking one past The Man. Bravo for showcasing how the main stream can embody the indie spirit; Dr. Horrible was a product of the 2007 writer’s strike. But nobody should presume Dr. Horrible’s TV debut is indicative of a two-way street between web media and television.


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Web Series Review: First Impressions of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn

By
Adam Shaftoe
– October 5, 2012Posted in: Web Series Reviews

I’m not going to lie; I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the Halo franchise. When I was in grad school I would treat my brain to a study reprieve with one of the Halo novels. For the better part of a year my gaming group spent a few hours each Wednesday night playing Halo Reach. While Microsoft’s “everything that is old is new again” approach to reselling Halo and Halo 2 as HD remakes left a foul taste in my mouth, it wasn’t enough to sour me on the world of the Master Chief. And then I watched the first episode of 343 Industries’ pre-Halo 4 promotional web series, Forward Unto Dawn. Rarely has something, which on a conceptual level I know I should enjoy, moved me to disgust so quickly.

Believe it or not, the fundamental problem in Halo’s mythology has nothing to do with a slightly silly narrative of aliens fighting against humans. Thanks to Forward Unto Dawn, the now inescapable problem connects to the less than noble origins of the game’s hero. The United Nations Space Command’s “Spartan II” project was designed to create a Special Forces soldier who would be capable of covert operations against the political dissidents opposed to the UNSC’s dominion over colonized space. Had the Covenant, an alliance of alien races intent on evil for the sake of evil, not invaded UNSC space, the Chief would have earned his stripes crushing rebellions in the name of his hegemonic empire. Rather than skirting around this issue, Forward Unto Dawn celebrates it.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more moral ambiguity tossed into the Halo universe. Yet Forward Unto Dawn goes about it in the exact wrong way. Set at an elite UNSC military academy, the series follows a cadet squad and their resident malcontent Thomas Lasky (Tom Green – no not that Tom Green). Unlike most other Cadets, who believe the ‘Innies (short hand for Insurrectionist) are blood thirsty murderers intent on ruining civilization, Lasky dares to ask if there isn’t a smarter way to prosecute a war against what he sees as “a bunch of overly taxed farmers.”

I might be inclined to buy into the narrative Forward Unto Dawn is putting out there were it not for the fact that it presumes to have teenagers espousing tactical dogma. Moreover, the dialogue powering Lasky’s third-way philosophy and the other cadets’ devotion to policy sounds like it’s drawn from the big book of war movie clichés. If that wasn’t bad enough, the acting is about as forced and unnatural as can be. There’s no better example of this shameless scenery chewing than in Enisha Brewster as senior cadet April Orenski. I don’t know if we should blame the writer, director, or actor for Orenski’s laughably miserable attempt at channeling a gruff gunnery sergeant.

It’s as if the writers sought to combine the worst elements of Dawson’s Creek and Ender’s Game within the Halo mythos. Forward unto angst filled child soldiers revelling in their collective hubris. Clearly nobody informed Hastati Squad that within the Roman Legion, the Hastati were inexperienced and poorly equipped canon fodder; would that these characters die as quickly as their namesakes, I would be a happy critic.

Despite this, Forward Unto Dawn’s crucial failure remains the shameless subversion of the game’s “the UNSC are the good guys” conceit. Watching the unthinking cadet corps, who are a stone’s throw away from jack boots and Roman salutes, in action has made me finally accept the fact that I’ve spent countless hours in the service of an agency akin to the Galactic Empire of Star Wars, the Alliance of Firefly, or the Terran Federation of Blake’s 7.

Moreover, the episode’s emphasis on a cadre of cadets makes me think that 343i and Microsoft are abandoning the 20 and 30-something demographic that made Halo a pop-culture touchstone in favour of younger gamers. Granted it has only been one episode, but the “next time on Forward Unto Dawn” trailer strongly implies this will be a series for the kiddies. I still hold out some hope on the plot returning to old Lasky as he finds the Chief and Cortana drifting through space. Realistically, I’ll bet old Lasky pulls the Chief out of cryo as an epilogue to the series and a “hey kids, go buy Halo 4 to find out what happens next” gimmick.

As a web series, Forward Unto Dawn is tedious and derivative. I can think of at least half a dozen other web productions more worthy of audience attention. As a promotional piece for Halo 4, Forward Unto Dawn is just downright embarrassing. Any two minute segment from Halo 3’s “Believe in a Hero” or “Museum of Humanity” ad campaign would upstage all twenty minutes of Forward Unto Dawn’s maudlin claptrap. Were it possible, I would teabag this web series like a fallen foe in a Halo death match.


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The Unfinished Web Series Project

By
Adam Shaftoe
– July 5, 2012Posted in: Web Series Reviews

A wide shot of LA as seen in It Ends Today

Much like in the world of conventional television, not every web series makes it to the end of its first season. Some projects are so ambitious that they blow through their entire budget in the first few episodes. Others, particularly those that are produced piece meal, call it a day due to the cast and crew moving on to other projects. Some web series seem to quietly vanish into the ether of the internet, leaving stale youtube videos as the only proof of their unrealized potential. For your viewing pleasure, I give you four web series, two original and two fan series, that never quite, or have yet to, come to fruition.

It Ends Today


Written and directed by Aleem Hossain

Date of Release: September 2009

Number of episodes: 1

Status: Unknown, presumed dead.

Out of the four series mentioned in this post, It Ends Today is probably the one that scores the highest for unrealized excellence. In less than five minutes the story manages to frame the characters, a recovering drug addict and her boyfriend, establish a conflict, Zoë’s memory lapse which Eric interprets as her falling off the wagon, and hint at a supernatural power akin to the good parts of Lost. There’s a feeling of genuine history between the two characters, but it’s handled in a way that shows rather than tells. Though there’s some inconsistency in the sound levels, the visual quality of the production is excellent. It’s really quite a shame that It Ends Today was left as an unfinished production. I know that I would pay if it meant I could see a full season of this story.

Update: I managed to get in touch with Aleem Hossain and he informed me of a few interesting details about this series. The pilot episode’s positive critical reception led to serious talks with major financial backers for a complete first season. Unfortunately talks fell through, partly due to their timing with the meltdown of the global economy, and subsequent deals offered too little money to maintain the pilot’s production values. To quote Mr. Hossain, “I think I could have found a distributor if I had the whole series shot – but finding the money to make more?”

The only silver lining is that Aleem has not been idle since It Ends Today hit the internet – head over to his website and check out some of his other work.

Star Trek: Phoenix


Directed by Sam Akina, Gale Benning, and Leo Roberts

Number of episodes: 3

Status: Currently fundraising to make more.

Date of Release: November 2010

Star Trek: Phoenix is a very ambitious project. Set after the destruction of the Romulus, as described in the recent Star Trek reboot, Phoenix attempts to tell a rather unique story within the Trek universe. Where the Federation has always been a model of efficiency, this series shows Star Fleet as a bureaucratic agency subject to the whims of politicians. Phoenix runs into trouble when it attempts to shape that framework to suit a visual effects heavy story more in line with traditional Trek. The cerebral elements of the story end up as little more than narrative info dumps meant to bring an average Trek fan up to speed on the events of this series.

While the acting and dialogue occasionally border on cheese, the costuming, location shots, and special effects are quite impressive. If the production team does manage to make more, I’ll certainly watch them. However, I fear that they will never manage huge crowd sourcing goals telling a Trek story that is so far removed from the established canon.

Dead Patrol


Director/Series Creator: Jason Tisch

Number of episodes: 3

Status: Either dead or shambling through a one episode per year production schedule

Date of release: Feb 2008

If this series teaches would-be producers anything, it’s that there is a difference between real darkness and television darkness. Television darkness is mood lighting paired with the strategic use of shadow. Actual darkness is what happens when a person turns off all the lights, and unfortunately too much of this series is shot in said condition.

The concept, however, is great: a zombie apocalypse story where the military isn’t out to rape and pillage at the expense of the survivors. It’s the execution that really does this series in. Well, that and the painful continuity mistakes. I suppose I was also a bit put off by the shameless attempt to convince the audience that the surviving soldiers are driving a Lamborghini, rather than a Ford Focus that has been (badly) CG’d to look like a Lamborghini.

Halo: Hell Jumper

Written and Directed by Dan Wang

Number of episodes: 2

Status: Recently failed to meet a $65,000 fundraising goal for future episodes. Future unknown.

Date of release: January 2012

The props are amazing. The special effects are impressive. The costumes appear to be made by professionals. The story is maudlin, bordering on silly.

Hell Jumper literally tells the tale of an Orbital Shock Drop Trooper from the Halo-verse. I say literally because Gage, the series’ protagonist, tells the events of the series as a sequence of flashbacks while he is bleeding out on the battlefield. I say maudlin bordering on silly because at one point during his narration, Gage says that he “…can’t remember what he’s fighting for.” Forgive me for being blunt, but it’s Halo. You’re fighting to save humanity from the aliens. The concepts that drive this franchise aren’t known for being subtle.

The series’ two episodes show why Gage joins the UNSC military, how he gets tapped for the elite ODST detail, and chronicle his first taste of action against the Covenant. Yet, there’s nothing that really made me care about this character or the story. Perhaps because Halo is ten years old and I’ve filled in game’s narrative gaps on my own.

Make no mistake, the mood is convincing enough to make me want to like the story. Similarly, I want to care about Gage and his cohorts. Instead I find myself paying more attention things like run-and-gun military tactics that even a video game warrior like myself would never use in combat. The lesson here: if you’re going to go to the trouble of making a FX heavy war story, get somebody who knows a little bit about infantry tactics to consult. Or at least watch a few classic war movies.


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Web Series Review: Job Hunters

By
Adam Shaftoe
– June 18, 2012Posted in: TV Reviews, Web Series Reviews

I was immediately sceptical when I first read the press release for Job Hunters. How often does a person see the words “dystopian roommate comedy” within the same sentence? By its very nature, the dystopia is not something that lends itself to comedy. Nonetheless, I watched the first episode on the day the series premiered on youtube. After eight minutes and forty-five seconds, Job Hunters had demonstrated two things: a brilliant taste for black humour and bang for the buck production values that put traditional television to shame.

For the record, I gave Job Hunters another four episodes before putting pen to paper on this review.

The premise of the series capitalizes on popular culture’s current fixation on young adult death matches while keeping a healthy distance from other established properties. The setup is straight forward: as a means of population control and social engineering, college graduates report for mandatory arena combat. Within the arena, the grads spend the work day battling each other to the death as a means of showing off their talent to potential recruiters. Their off hours are spent in a safe house where the majority of the series finds its focus. Therein newcomers Devon (Forest Gibson), Avery (Kristina Horner), and Paige (Meagan Naser) form a co-existence pact with arena veterans Max (Joe Homes) and Tiffany (Tara Theoharis). But with an 80% mortality rate, the arena is a dangerous place to make friends.

First question: if this is what happens to college grads, what’s life like for the people who don’t get into a university? Do high school drop outs become Soylent Green?

Initially, I thought that the series might be trying too hard to be all things to all people. Upon further consideration, I’m content to chalk this feeling up to a side effect of pairing something as mainstream as comedy with a sub-genre as specific as near-future dystopia. What emerges, despite the “roommate comedy” branding is a comedic sensibility that is often very dry and very black. Think along the lines of Episodes with a dash of Community’s paint ball oeuvre thrown into the mix. The comedy can often be subtle, but so are the dystopian elements.

There’s also a soft spoken, but decidedly intense, dedication to professionalism within the production of Job Hunters. The post production effects are subtle but add a Mass Effect inspired aesthetic to the gadgets of this near future. The interior of the safe house, as well as the location shots for the arena, are stunning. In addition to the primary cast, there is a venerable army of extras adding to the “this isn’t your average web series” vibe that permeates the production. The music which accompanies key scenes could be mistaken for the work of Bear McCreary or Clint Mansell. And did I mention that each episode is nearly ten minutes long? With the first season funded entirely via kickstarter, and probably no shortage of sweat equity, I can only imagine what wonders the producers would be capable of with a grander budget.

Granted, there is the odd bit of acting ends up chewing the scenery rather than conveying an expected emotion. The character of Doctor Monroe stands out in my mind on that point; the actor in question could have made an at-his-prime Paul Darrow blush. Yet these minor imperfections never amount to much. Instead, the story has kept my focus on the complicated relationship between a group of characters who, in all but one case, refuse to acknowledge that they are going to likely end up killing each other…for a job offer.

And that sense of polite yet high stakes competition speaks to where I think is Job Hunters is going to find its core audience. Consider the series as a metaphor for anybody who graduated university within the last ten years only to find the job market saying “Nah, we’re going to go with somebody older/more experienced/better connected.” Friends quickly turn into rivals when competing for work in a shifting economy. Cognitive dissonance is often the only thing that keeps those relationships from devolving into outright hostility. If I set aside everything else that makes this web series work, the fact that it is using humour rather than a soap box to channel a generation’s anxiety about finding meaningful employment is enough make me sign up for the rest of the season and any others that follow.

Bravo to the entire Job Hunters team. I know I’ll be contributing to the kickstarter for season 2 when it comes around.

You can watch the first episode of the series below and head over to http://watchjobhunters.com/ for updates on the show and behind the scenes video.


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Web Series Review: The Newlymovedins

By
Adam Shaftoe
– March 13, 2012Posted in: Reviews, TV Reviews

Scott and Kat explore meditation

Summary Judgement: A web series that finds comedy in the honest, if common, details of a recently moved in couple.

Created by and starring: Kat Foster and Scott Rodgers

I think I said this when I reviewed Jane Espenson and Brad Bell’s Husbands, but I’ll say it again now; comedy, and especially relationship comedy, is a tough thing to produce. In my estimation it is a question of originality. For as long as there has been television, there has been the relationship based situation comedy. Thus the challenge is to be innovative without descending into the sort of painful frivolity which emerges out of something like NBC’s Whitney. The Newlymovedins finds its unique voice in the seemingly mundane details that emerge out of two people deciding to move in together.

Like the show’s theme song says, Kat (Kat Foster) and Scott (Scott Rogers) have decided to take their relationship to the next level. In this, they are like so many real life couples who want to be together but for one reason or another aren’t yet married. Despite occupying a new-ish relationship niche, a sense of ubiquity emerges from these characters. Granted they are a straight Caucasian couple, but the lack of stereotypical character traits, save for Scott’s penchant for the “idiot’s guide” series of books, shifts the focus toward their roles within the relationship and the relationship itself. What emerges are a series of vignettes that invite the audience to draw parallels to their own experiences, regardless of who they are or the specific details of their own relationship.

Who hasn’t been in a situation where something as simple as the other person’s breathing has been cause to get up and leave the room? I’ve witnessed, and participated in, scenarios where one half of a relationship finds something hilarious while the other half is cringing. And I dare you to find a cohabitating couple who has never played a round or two of, “Does this smell okay to you?”

How then does this web series take the mundane and make it funny? Mostly, it is in the timing. Foster, Rodgers, and director Jess Brickman have a fantastic formula for delivering punch lines at the exact right moment. Moreover, there’s always some twist on the expected result. For example, episode four sees Kat overwhelmed by the couple’s lack of a plan for life, the universe, and everything. After initial attempts to console Kat fail, Scott inquires about female hormones. The expected “How could you say that?” from Kat never happens. Instead the gag shifts to Scott mishearing a word. What began as man being a man turns into a comedy of errors. Oh and there’s also a near catatonic dog named Loafie who, through some ingenious camera shots, ends up as the series’ straight man.

Factor in the polished production values and there’s really not much this series does wrong. Yet, if there is one aspect of being newly moved in that I think the show missed, it’s the question of going out. Yes, I understand the series is called The Newlymovedins. However, every couple gets to a point where going out becomes a chore rather than something to look forward to. I can only imagine the sort of conversation that would emerge from Kat and Scott trying to decide what they should do on a given night.

At approximately three minutes per episode, the first season has a total run time of just under half an hour. For that reason, it is pretty easy to go start to finish on The Newlymovedins in one sitting. So long as you’ve lived with another person, you’ll be hard pressed not to find something to laugh about within this series. Here’s hoping for a second season.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s episode one. Click here to head over to The Newlymovedins youtube channel.


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Television Review: First Impressions of Assassidate

By
Adam Shaftoe
– January 23, 2012Posted in: Reviews, TV Reviews

It seems like today is a big day for the siblings Hewlett.  David and Kate Hewlett, who played on-screen brother and sister Rodney McKay and Jeannie Miller in Stargate Atlantis, are pitching their co-created web series, Assassidate, to a third party. Hopefully everything goes well for them. Because after watching the first episode, I have to see what comes next.

David Hewlett plays Iain, a LARPing, MMORPGing, tech guru who inadvertently pushes his wife Pam into the arms of another man.  As if that weren’t humiliation enough, the very tool of Pam’s infidelity is Iain’s innovative dating web site, assassidate.com, which pairs people based on shared gaming habits. Now Iain stands to make a mint off his project only to potentially lose it all in an ugly divorce. Enter Kate Hewlett’s character Emily, the well adjusted and seemingly “normal” sister to Iain.  Emily’s solution to Iain’s conundrum is quite simple: forget about the fact that the duo’s childhood lemonade stand got Iain arrested for serving alcohol to minors and sign the company over to her control.

Though only three minutes long, this pilot episode abounds with potential for a winning series. The writing is sharp, timed to perfection, and absolutely charming to gamers and non-gamers alike. David Hewlett’s character is a vision of what happens when hard core nerds get older without necessarily growing up. Sufficed to say he’s a bit clueless while being intensely devoted to his passions. At the same time, there’s an almost innocence in his incredulity, perhaps because he’s wearing blue face paint and pulling it off, that Pam would use his website against him in a divorce. Kate Hewlett’s alter ego is framed as the consummate outsider to nerd culture. Yet her fast wit and easy snark suggests a person who at some point attempted to relate to her brother on his own plane, but inevitably became frustrated with the process. The result is a relationship that seems fully realized and rich with back story. As was the case on Stargate, the brilliant rapport between the two actors implies that on some level art is mirroring real life.

During various tweets, the Hewletts stated a goal of 20,000 views for today.  At the time of this post the count stood at 19,760. Why not invest three minutes of your life in comedy sans laugh track to put Assassidate over the top.


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