Limited Release – Webseries Review

In May of this year the Zombie Orpheus team came to our part of the world to film a pair of companion pieces for the third season of their successful series Gamers, and they brought their friends and partners. Partners like Standard Action‘s Joanna Gaskell.

It was interesting timing for Joanna since she ended up being on set for the last couple of days of the Kickstarter campaign for season 3 of Standard Action. Maybe that helped her keep cool and relax and let nature take it’s course. Nature was already on her side anyhow since they had achieved their initial goal and were well into their stretch goals by then. And rejoice! The fans have demanded a musical episode.

We talk to her about the nature of crowdfunding, who should or shouldn’t be asking fans for money, and how to run a successful campaign. Spoiler alert, it ain’t easy!

Have you given a few dollars to a Kickstarter or Indie GoGo campaign for your favourite show? Let us know!

And if you want an outgoing voicemail message by Candice, send your $5 to her via Paypal

Check us out on  Twitter, Facebook, Google + (yes we’re there too), leave us a comment or send us an email at backtalk@limitedreleasepodcast.ca. And, at the request of one iTunes hater, you can subscribe to our RSS feed via Libsyn.

We start with a bang, or more rightly a shot, a shot of bourbon. Mix drinking with cooking and a need to be the internet’s cutest couple and we really peel back the layers and let you behind the scenes in our everyday relationship. And it gets ugly.

Perhaps we should have followed along with a recipe from at least one episode of either show we covered and brought some food with us to recording. But instead, we hungrily review two shows about cooking.

First up, a Limited Release Exclusive! Thanks to Sandy Nicholson, writer and creator of Comfort Food, for giving us access to all 6 episodes of the series before release. A very cute show about a couple who recently moved apart from each other trying to keep their relationship going by making desserts together over the phone.

Because Nick and I are strictly forbidden from cooking together it really drew us both in. And once you’ve watched all the episodes, particularly episode 5, you may ask me more about which character I took issue with, but for now we remain frustratingly spoiler free.

And regarding the gender of creator Sandy, I tried very hard to play the pronoun game since it’s a somewhat gender-less name. Interestingly the only two people I know named Sandy are both men. But in Nick’s defense, it is far more likely in North America for Sandy to be a woman’s name, so he went with it.

Listen closely around the 20 minute mark and place your bets on whether we can hold it together for 8 more minutes while we review Pairings.

Pairings is food pornography at it’s best, money shots with a story so it appeals to everyone! Do not watch this show hungry, or with an empty pantry. You will definitely want to cook after one episode, especially if you are a single man.

We’re not sure why this one took so long for us to review since it’s littered with some of our favourite creators, artists and actors from the LA scene, but we love it now, and we want to see Season Two so consider donating!

Did you place your bets? Did we hold it together? I don’t think I did.

So why don’t you get in touch with us via the Twitters, the Facebooks  or the Google+s and let us know if you like the shows, if you like us, or if you have your own show you want us to review. We also accept email at backtalk@limitedreleasepodcast.ca, and reviews on iTunes.

What happens when you bring out the microphone at hour four of a web series wrap party? We finally answered that age-old question in Bonusode #35.

Starring the voices of Scott C. Brown and Andy Dopieralski of the podcast Two Bards, One Mic, and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, as well as Trin Miller, actor and baker extraordinaire. Along with guest appearances by Robyn Cobham, actor and Cyber Girl, and Aidan Harris, child actor and the sober chaperone of all the adults.

Some editing probably should have been applied to this one, but we don’t do that, so you need to listen to a great opening, a muddled middle part, and a kind of great ending once the cookies arrived.

You are invited to a web series wrap party, the drinking, the bonding, the polite car-jacking and the delinquency of minors.

I was trying valiantly to come up with an appropriate and catchy headline like “Ruby in the Skye with Diamonds”, but will have to save that one for another day. Maybe when Madonna guest stars.

Ruby Skye P.I. has secured a deal with CBC for both broadcast and digital distribution on Kids’ CBC. We’ve said it many times before that the show has the production value and style of a show made for broadcast, and now does appear that it’s headed in that direction.

Read the press release from Ruby Skye P.I. below.

We would like to formally introduce you Mr. Soch (Music Producer/Audio Engineer/Sound Designer) who is Limited Release’s very own wizard. He keeps us sounding amazing, which is great since Candice and myself are technologically challenged in the audio department.

Continuing our Masters of the Web series of bonusodes, we wanted to get a pro’s perspective on what it takes to capture clean location sound and the steps to perfecting it in post-production. And we could think of no better choice than Soch; he’s worked on many different kinds of productions in the last several years, including feature films (Four Aces), web series (Mind’s Eye the Series) and a plethora of short films produced by Synndicus (formerly Synn Studios Inc.). Not to mention he’s helped us produce Limited Release since day 1.

Often times on set the audio department gets overlooked or ignored and there are a lot of web series that get released with not-so-great audio. Most of the time “audio” plays little brother to “visual”, even though many filmmakers stress its important role in drawing the audience into the story.

We speak with the expert on what it takes for a web series to get great audio, what to look for when hiring an audio technician for your production and a few tips to help save your audio in post-production.

Nobody ever said making web series was easy! Maybe we don’t give enough respect to these people who work for little to nothing, sometimes even giving thousands of dollars of their own money to make our entertainment, but we do appreciate it. We also appreciate that lots of times these creators are doing something for the first time because the technology makes it so damn easy nowadays. But of course, it’s rarely the technology that keeps series and films in production hell.

In this episode we chat about some of the shows that have had false starts, and changed paths over the long process from the idea to the release. First up, Causality the Series, a time travel show we’ve been waiting for since 2011.

We finally cover the long awaited Mila’s Fountain, unfortunately not delivering the news that Nick, or the other 999 followers of their Facebook page, want to hear. But we and the creators still hold hope.

Bach with a Vengeance!

That is what the perfect title for this bonusode would be if we had the balls to deliver that kind of humour.

Returning to the internet-waves, we called in the big guns in the form of music composers Adrian Ellis (Out with Dad) and Rob Gokee (Night of the Zombie King, SOLO the series) to talk about scoring web series and what to do when a director asks for “something that sounds awesome like Hans Zimmer” for lo-no budget.

It was great having both of them on LR to talk about this because we’ve seen a TON of series that stand out with the right score. There are many aspects of production that “make-or-break” it, and score is not one to be overlooked. We talked about how to argue for original score over purchasing stock tracks, how to communicate story through music and why Minnesota sucks so bad…poor Minnesota.

What killer score have you heard in web series lately? We mentioned our favourites, now it’s your turn.

We are all about mash-ups this week I guess! Not only did the webseries mash-up series from the creators of Super Knocked-Up and Clutch, come out yesterday, we have our own mash-up series to debut. Well, series might be an exaggeration… but we have a podcast mash-up right here between Limited Release Podcast and Page of Reviews.

That’s right, Nick and Adam recorded a podcast at Ad Astra a couple weekends ago, live in front of a studio audience. Sure, Adam’s been our show before, but those were guest host opportunities… this is different somehow.

So, listen away to this Frankenstein of a podcast with a bit of this and bit of that. We present Limited Reviews: Episode 1

A little webseries, a little tv, a little sci-fi, a little audience participation!

*Notes, my (Candice) blog post on Deadwood’s use of anacrhonistic cursing.

Gotta love people who can get things done! Especially when they seem like the busiest people on the internet. Another new series coming from Jeff Burns, the creator of Super Knocked-Up and the weekly Google Hangout Super Geeked-Up comes Super Mashed-Up.

What a great idea! We definitely love when actors cross-over from show to show… it builds that family feeling that I’m sure the people working in the industry of webseries love as well. So, of course we are going to enjoy it even more when not only the actors are moving from show to show, but their characters are too.

The full news release is below, but in case you don’t want to read it all – Jeff Burns filmed 8 crossover episodes involving 7 different web series just last month when they all came together at the LA WebFest. The first episode was launched today and runs weekly for the next two months. Looking forward to the Clutch crossover episode.

For Immediate Release

Super Mashed Up! Seven Web Series Team Up for Super Crossover Series.
April 16, 2013. Los Angeles, CA – Seven web series. Eight episodes. One crossover
extravaganza.

The creators and stars of web series from around the globe have teamed up for a fun
mash-up of stories and characters from each of the series’ worlds. What would happen if
super-villain Darkstar from Super Knocked Up met geeky cook Alan from Pairings who
just happened to be a huge fan of hers? Or if the dysfunctional contract killers Matt and
Lex from Clutch met Abdabs the Grim Reaper from The Bloody Mary show?

Those are the questions the Super Mashed Up series has a lot of fun answering beginning
Tuesday, April 16. Jeff Burns, creator of action/comedy series Super Knocked Up,
conceived the idea when planning to go to LA Web Fest last month.

“I’m always trying to think of fun ways to not only promote Super Knocked Up but also
all the other amazing web series out there,” says Burns. “LA Web Fest was going to be
one of the few times we were all going to be together in one place, so I thought it was the
perfect time to team up and shoot videos incorporating characters from a bunch of
different series.”

So in the midst of going to screenings, panels, and networking events, the creators and
stars of seven web series ran around LA Web Fest shooting crossover videos.
“It was mad ninja fun!” says Darlene Sellers, co-creator of comedy series Chop Socky
Boom. “And it really made us feel like part of a web series family. Or dojo, as the case
may be.”

Darren Chadwick-Hussein, creator of The Bloody Mary Show pipes in, “The crossovers
were a phenomenal opportunity to unite likeminded people from both coasts, as well as
Canada and the UK. The Americans showed us a great time and we showed them what
universal healthcare looks like.”

Jonathan Robbins, creator of femme fatale action series Clutch, spearheaded the initiative
with Burns. Both creators contacted other web series to see who would be interested in
making crossover videos.

“I was thrilled to see everyone we contacted was totally down with the idea and really
excited about it,” says Burns. “But that doesn’t surprise me since the web series
community is by far the most supportive and collaborative community I’ve seen out of all
the different areas of filmmaking I’ve been a part of.”

Robbins adds, “Putting characters from popular web series together on screen is exactly
the kind of thing that separates what we’re doing on the web from what can be done on
television. It was great to see that web series creators and performers alike were not
afraid to just play.”

And playing is exactly what everyone did. While a couple of the crossover episodes were
scripted or storied out in advance, many were spur of the moment creations with the
creators and stars of the different series taking a few minutes to brainstorm ideas and then
shooting the episode.

As Vanessa Verduga, creator and star of Justice Woman, puts it: “I think it shows the
deep level of respect we have for each other’s creativity and work ethic.”

The seven series taking part in the crossover videos are: Super Knocked Up, Clutch,
Pairings, The Bloody Mary Show, Reality on Demand, Justice Woman, and Chop Socky
Boom.

Jodie Younse, director and producer of Parings, notes how enjoyable the mash-ups were:
“Not only did we enjoy collaborating with other content creators but being able to create
these crossover videos is a perfect example of how these shows are ideal for the web. We
were able to have two worlds intermix in short vignettes that will hopefully inspire fans
of one show to watch the other’s.”

“Fans of our show will find it fun,” adds Marx Hernandez Pyle, creator of Reality On
Demand, “and enjoy being introduced to other series with different genres and tones, but
the same creative heart.”

Burns hopes to “increase the fan base and views for all our series and for web series in
general. That would be awesome because web series rock!”

Verduga totally agrees: “I guess what truly distinguishes them is the camaraderie between
the people making these videos. It’s like working with a friend – there was nothing weird
about it – it just felt comfortable and it was a ton of fun.”

The Super Mashed Up series starts Tuesday, April 16 with new episodes coming every
Tuesday after that.