Month: March 2013

Episode the Fifty-Sixth: Re-reviewing Heroes of the North and Secret Diary of an American Cheerleader

Welcome internet listeners to the Gilmore Girls show… at least for the first 5 minutes. Candice is re-watching the show since she’s been getting the smack down laid on her by H+ The Digital Series writer John Cabrera. With 7 seasons of the show to go through, there might be an update each episode for the next couple of months.

And on to what we really do, talk about webseries. We hear from the folks at Standard Action that there is a

Kickstarter campaign imminent to raise funds for season 3 of the show. In the meantime, you should catch up on season 2 which has been coming out pretty regularly every couple of weeks since the beginning of the year.

And then we tried to watch some shows to review them. Nick saw this on his phone while watching from the road, and Candice had so much trouble streaming the episodes clearly that one 5:41min episode took 12.5mins to get through! Ah Koldcast, god love ya!

Pilots and Trailers. Oh my!

You can be my co-pilot any day!

Every series starts the same way: with a pilot. Whether it be simply the first test scene you shoot, a trailer to show proof-of-concept, or a full on episode.

We’ve got our eyes on a few web series we’d like to share with you. Watch for them as they develop.

With Pretty In Geek having finished its release of all 8 episodes, show creator Elize Morgan has definitely not slowed down. She keeps her plate full at all times! The pilot episode for a series called The Society first popped up a few years ago and is now resurfacing in the next round of IPF applications. Young adolescents in a world of espionage and mystery.

End of the World, a strange combination of first-person gameplay and zombie horror, just released a trailer showing some behind-the-scenes interviews of the crew explaining their take on the genre. With the trailer release comes promise that more announcements will soon follow. Here’s to interesting web series genre experiments! With Joanna Jang involved (producer/filmmaker extraordinaire, founded Override Productions, director of the award-winning Hostage), you know it’s going to be exciting to watch. If you haven’t heard of Joanna, just look at everything that she’s up to right now.

We recently reviewed Out of Time in Episode the Forty-Fourth, and now their Kickstarter campaign appears to be coming to a close (6 days remaining with just over $1,000 of their $40,000 goal raised) so we may not see the series happen anytime soon. But who knows! In the meantime, you can see a 5-minute preview and other glimpses of the show they hope to create on the Out of Time channel. And if you want to show your support for this ballsy, time-travelling series then head over to their Kickstarter channel and look at the perks they’re offering…at least for the next week. Then who knows where it will be.

Finally, one of our favourite and most-talked-about folk on LR has been up to something…something goooood. Robb Padgett (recently scored The Inn, which we also happened to review last episode) is an actor/director/composer/ninja/Jedi Warrior. He does it all. Now he’s directed/written the quirky-looking, rom-com short Forcing Fate. For now you can watch the trailer but if you want to see the film you can attend the First Glance Film Festival ’13 (sounds like a military zone, don’t it?) where it will be premiering.

EDIT: And a last minute entry to this category, some of our Clutch friends have been developing another project in secret. The pilot for Asset has just been released in time for IPF season. Appears to be the story of an unlikely spy recruited by the government to infiltrate the seedy underbelly of international criminal organizations (kind of like the next “XXX 3: This Time With Jack Black”). Matthew Carvery and Jeff Sinasac from Clutch are recognizable. Yet I do have to admit that for those official government boardroom scenes in web series and low-budget films, they do tend to be rife with tired clichéd performances. Kind of like little children putting on their parents clothing and pretending they’re adults. Having said that, this has to be one of the rare times when I actually believed Jeff Sinasac and his co-stars in the boardroom were government officials. You be the judge.

That’s it for now. Check back later and will help you with your web series fix.

Episode Fifty-Five: Reviews of The Inn and Transolar Galactica

We open up this episode with comments from our listeners. Our reviews of H+ and House of Cards (not officially a review but we talked about it for a long time) in episode Fifty-Third brought in lots of comments. Our biggest fan (aka Robert Routledge) shared some thoughts about the medium of making shows for the internet and someone who should not be as gracious and well spoken as he was (John Cabrera, writer of H+) schools Candice on her pedestrian taste in story-telling.

The Norman! (image provided by CBC)

You too can leave a message and we might read it on the air.

We quickly move onto yet more awards show news, this time the Canadian Screen Awards (or their more commonly known name _________). Congrats to Guidestones for winning the only category we at Limited Release Podcast cares about, Best Original Program or Series produced for Digital Media – Fiction.

 

 

Moving on to the reviews. First up is The Inn from Pretty the Series creator Steve Silverman. If you have watched Pretty you know it is a hilarious, absurd comedy. The Inn is not that. It is a mystery with a touch of supernatural to it. But does that come across when you are watching it? It’s up to you to decide if it is creepy enough to  give you chills.

As usual, Nick’s major complaint is that this show does not have it’s own home on the web, it is bundled up with Pretty the Series. However, you can check out their Facebook page to stay up to date on the webseries.

While The Inn might be the most recent show we’ve ever reviewed (the season finale having aired the day before we recorded) Transolar Galactica might be the longest we’ve ever gone before reviewing a show.

Not only has Transolar Galactica been around for eons (in internet years) but I believe both Rob Hunt and Mike Fly have been on our show and told us to watch it. As it turns out, they were right and we should not have saved every episode to hard-core through them all at once. And neither should you. Take your time, enjoy an episode a week and get ready because it sounds like Season 2 is on it’s way.

Download up! Yeah, I know that makes no sense.

 

Now comes the secret part

Don’t Share This Video – Versus Valerie

Tomorrow is the next stage in a large journey.

 

It was March 2011 and I was at a convention in Toronto pimping the webseries both me and Nick worked on, Mind’s Eye, as well as scoping out the dealer’s room for goodies, and talking about our podcast to whoever wanted to hear about it. It was a memorable weekend for so many reasons, but one was seeing a small camera crew and a reporter working the floor interviewing the stars. By the end of the weekend we had bumped into each other enough times to ask each other what we were all about.

Mike Fly, producer and co-director of the vlog series Sexy Nerd Girl, chatted with me about the concept of creating a first person narrative and transmedia project with the created character of Valerie Lapomme and how they were laying the groundwork of the character so they could create a third person narrative story in the future. It immediately sounded like the best idea ever to me.

Two years and 167 vlogs later we are on the cusp of Versus Valerie! The first episode will be released tomorrow.

A lot of people have gone into the making of Valerie Lapomme, Sexy Nerd Girl and Versus Valerie over the last few years. Including our own co-host extraordinaire, Nick. Which is why I’m going to need a co-host when it comes time to review this one. The line starts right here…

Episode the Fifty-Fourth: Reviews of Super Knock Up and Out of Time

It’s award season! We’ve been through the IAWTV awards, the Streamys and the

Indie Soap Awards. We’ve talked a bit about a them in the last few episodes and really spend some time talking about right off the top of this one. We celebrate Out With Dad and Husbands Indie Soap Award wins and also chat about whether the awards are being given to the most deserving, or the most popular. And does that really matter.

Read this Tumblr post defending The Streamys, while still being upset at their lack of representation.

What do you think? Should independent (i.e. non industry members) be judged against series with funding from major studios? Should webseries be given their own category in a larger awards ceremony like they are for the Canadian Screen Awards (being given out on Sunday BTW). Let us know your thoughts.

 

And, on to the reviews! First we watched Super Knocked Up, Nick’s favourite pick from the Make My Series competition from a few episodes ago. We watched the entire first season, reviewed their show and then watched the season 2 premiere the very next day. Did we time that perfectly, or just exactly wrongly?

They had to make a pretty big cast change between seasons 1 and 2, but have been doing lots of outreach with their new leading lady and they’ve won us over. And be sure to catch their weekly live Google+ Hangout show, Super Geeked Up on Wednesday nights.

Next up we review the pilot episode of Out Of Time.  We met lots of great people at the most recent Toronto Webseries Community Meetup, including Rodney V. Smith, the director/producer. He made a great case as to why we should watch and review his unavailable to the public series.

Sure, this one breaks a few of our rules as there are only 3 episodes currently, making up one 30 minute long pilot story, and it is not finished or released yet! But Rodney was pretty convincing. Especially their model for delivery of this show. Right now they are running an IndieGoGo campaign  to raise $40,000. And once they have that done they will be taking their 30 minute pilot episode on the road and do theatre showings in cities with the most interest, using Tugg.com

Go, watch some behind the scenes stuff from their production diaries, drop a few bucks on them and get some goodies.

And then go, listen to our episode, join us on the social medias – Twitter, Facebook, Google+, iTunes and write something to us at backtalk@limitedreleasepodcast.ca!

By the way, we had an amazing response from John Cabrera, writer of H+ The Digital Series on our Google+ page. You should go read it, especially if our review of the show turned you off watching their series.