Blood and Bone China Ep.1 “The Man in Black”

Chapter 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I3sEaaV8xI

http://www.bloodandbonechina.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bloodandbonechina
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bloodbonechina

Theme music by Birthrite: http://www.birthrite.eu

3 Swirlies

Can’t see the video? Click here to watch!

Here at The Watch List, we try not to poach web series from other web series blogs. But we also like to keep an eye on what they’re up to. So when I saw that Slebisodes posted this new web series, the description of it hooked me so much that I had to check it out. So, thanks Slebisodes!

First of all, it looks great. The period elements are well done, the costumed and props are great. I love a good Victorian horror piece, so I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, the best I can say about the actual episode is that… it’s fine.

The episode suffers from a bit of pilot-itis, which refers to a first episode that spends more time telling you stuff instead of letting the characters be characters, but they mostly get around that by making the first half of the episode a (slightly overlong) life and death chase scene and making sure that episode two is posted at almost the same time as this first one. Smart, that last bit.

While the creators obviously put a lot of effort into the period elements, and the lighting and camera, the final effort feels technically competent (except the sound, one of my pet peeves is lack of polished sound recording and editing) but somewhat flat. The writing feels like an after-thought, as in “We’re gonna do this cool period vampire show! Okay… er… what happens in it?” And the dramatic reveal at the end isn’t much of a surprise to the audience.

It has the tone and feel of an afternoon soap opera. Like I said, it’s not bad. Just… fine. As we always try to do with new series, we’ll make sure to check out at least the second episode before we make up our minds whether we like it or not.