Limited Release – Webseries Review

Tally-ho!

This episode was actually recorded last week. Our audio engineer (and wizard extraordinaire) and his wife were both expecting a baby at any point, and so we prepared an episode in advance. And good thing! Just this past Wednesday they welcomed little Silvio Victor Soch into the world. Congratulations, you two! Way to spawn!

And now while Soch takes some time with his family, the show here must go on.

Limited Release is on the look-out for guest hosts, so if you’ve got a voice that you want to lend to us, that would be great. While Nick spends his off-time reviewing web series, he spends his on-time working on them. Lately he’s been working on visual effects for Versus Valerie, Standard Action and is now lending his editing skills to The Gate. So in order to offer reviews without bias, LR would like to find some folk to take his spot in the recording booth (or you can be lazy and call in). If you’re interested, get in touch with us.

Here’s a little sneak preview of our new episode being released tomorrow… It seems we aren’t the only ones who love Ruby Skye P.I! The second season of Candice’s favourite tween detective show has been awarded top honors from the LA WebFest and been chosen to feature at sister event Marseilles WebFest in France. They’ve won a number of achievement awards as well.

The LA WebFest has always been very friendly to Canadian series, including many of our favourites. See the complete list of winners (warning: this is not the prettiest formatting of a list of award winners)

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

April 4, 2012 [Toronto, ON] — Ruby Skye P.I., the award-winning web series for tweens and teens, took home a Grand Prize from the LAWebFest this week, along with four Outstanding Achievement Awards.  Chosen from more than 400 submissions, the Grand Prize includes an all expenses paid trip to Marseilles, France for the Marseilles WebFest  to be held in October 2013.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

News, news and more news! In fact we spend as much time talking news as we do talking series. Of course the news is that Netflix’s original series House of Cards was released. Considering how much we talked about it, we could really just say we reviewed it. But this really exemplifies what’s going on in this industry… Is House of Cards a webseries? Or is it a television show released online? Is that the same thing?

After having only watched one episode for Nick and three episodes for Candice, we have certainly watched enough to give it a bit of a review since the 55 minute running time of the pilot episode is as long as entire seasons of shows we’ve reviewed, if not longer.

Feel free to check out what some people are saying about the show’s distribution:

Writer and Producer Elize Morgan

Media blog Antenna

Film and TV blog /Film

Let us know if you’ve watched the show, how you’ve watched it and what you’d call it.

And from one big budget show to another, we move on to reviewing Bryan Singer’s well funded experiment in online story-telling, H+ The Digital Series. This one is one of YouTube’s official channels and is in partnership with Warner Digital Distribution. The fact that such big names are putting their money behind narrative, scripted series, available only online is a step in the right direction for all web creators, right? Or is it just another example of big bad Hollywood coming in and taking all the money, all the views and all the awards and leaving nothing for the little guys?

That’s not for us to decide, we are only here to tell you whether it’s worth your time to watch it. And on that, we are divided. The series is maybe too long, or maybe the episodes are too short, or maybe Candice has a really short attention span.

Either way, this series won Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects at the 2013 IAWTV awards along with Best Direction and Best Sci-Fi Series at the 3rd Annual Streamy Awards so you know it’s at least gonna look and sound good.

We get into a pretty meaty discussion about this show, Guidestones and House of Cards and the episode structure. We’d love to hear what you think about it. Is length of the episode still a guideline for webseries or should the short format be thrown out the window?

And, can you believe it, we cover one more thing in this jam packed episode… Steve Silverman’s new webseries The Inn has started. Watch the pilot episode and get hooked. It’s not Pretty the Series, that’s for sure!

Back in the saddle, and in control this time.  We manage to do some chit chat and yet still review two shows, a miracle!

We do a Toronto-centric episode today and review a couple of shows we’ve been chatting about for years.

Do you like pillows? Do you like pillow fighting? Do you like pretty girls pillow fighting in a ring?

Sadly, you won’t get any of that in this show… Spoiler!

But seriously, the first 5 episodes making up the first season of Sweet Fever, set the scene, introduce us to the characters and stir the pot so when the fight actually happens it’s more than just a fight.

The shows 5 episodes give you a mix of styles since each episode is a different experience for Sweet Fever on her way to her first fight in the Pillow Fighting Federation.

Nick and I while mostly agreeing on this show, still manage to find something to disagree about. Good thing, cause who wants to hear two people agreeing about everything.

Next up we review a webseries that we have had no less than four bonusodes about already. We finally get around to watching Pretty In Geek (though not all of it since there is still the finale to be released) and reviewing it.

Good news… after such a long waiting period it does deliver. Anticipation did not drive the expectations so high they could never match it. Wait, that makes it sound like we didn’t have high expectations.

Either way, we both agree that you should take the time to watch every episode of Pretty in Geek and see how dysfunctional a gaming group can get when they let their emotions carry them away.

What a whirlwind our live 50th episode was!

I won’t share too much here, because I know you were all watching live when we recorded, right? And you can watch it right here

Well, in case you weren’t we chatted, we drank, we brought in some guests. It was a party. We did manage to talk a little bit about webseries. We talked about the legitimacy of web content thanks to more mainstream awards including digital media. We talked about upcoming shows we are excited about, including season 2 of Clutch and Standard Action. And it wouldn’t be an episode of Limited Release if we didn’t talk about Out With Dad.

We had an amazing time recording. Thank you so much to everyone who joined us live as we recorded this episode. I can’t tell you how touched we were that people showed up and chatted with us. In fact, we continued live on YouTube a few minutes after we finished officially recorded.

Two years, 50 episodes, 30 bonusodes. So much fun!

We hope you still consider downloading our episode, even though you can watch it. But even if you don’t, please join us next time!