Radiance Ep.4 | A Web Series Review on The Watch List

A Science Fiction Drama Web Series

4 Swirlies

“Fill up the sink! Now!”

A super short episode showing various people’s reactions to the crisis.

The more I watch this show, the more impressed I am with its nuances and complexity. It is not what I thought it was when I started watching. This episode deals with one person who has a hard time coping with what seems to be a dire situation. And everything, the acting, the camera, the editing, the sound, all work together to put the audience into the headspace of that character at that time. And it is weird because the look of the show screams ‘a bunch of friends had a camcorder and just started film one day’, goofing around. But clearly, writer and director Jim Hansen (not Henson, but Hansen) had a plan, because you can’t co-ordinate this many people to tell this story without a clear plan and a strong hand on the tiller.

I had a conversation the other day with friend of this blog and web series type person Elize Morgan, about what is and isn’t fan fiction. To me, fan fiction is less the desire to tell a story, but the desire to insert yourself into someone’s world, to dwell in that space. It’s selfish, while non-fan fiction is more about sharing a story or a point of view on the world, to the world.

Whether you agree with me or not (and I’m certainly used to people disagreeing with me) what I’m really getting at is this; some web series are essentially just people who want to dwell in that space of being movie makers. They have been sold on the glamourous thing that is making a movie, and want to make a movie - and what story they are telling and why are kinda secondary. (I blame Hollywood’s ingenious marketing, but that’s another rant.)

To be honest, at first - as much as I enjoyed it - that’s what I thought this web series was, a bunch of people got together with the idea that it’d be fun to be movie makers… now what? But this episode makes me doubt that. For all of the low budget atheistic of the show, I am beginning to feel like Mr. Hansen put some thought into what story he was going to tell and why.

Sure, they’re not braking any new ground by telling us that some people freeze up in a crisis, but they did an awesome job of portraying that moment to us.

I find this series so fascinating - often it’s not so hard to ‘read’ a web series (or at least to make assumptions about it); they spent money on this part but not that part, they had a big crew or just a director/camera person, they wrote it as a movie but shot it as a web series, this main actor is a pro but this supporting actor is doing it for the first time, it’s a showcase piece, it’s a vanity project… whatever. But I’m having a hard time figuring out Radiance. What I do know is that I’m glad I stumbled on it.

There are 19 episodes to go. I’ll be trying to post up two episodes every month, so that means we’ll be talking about this series for seven months! But looking ahead, this is actually one of the longest ones!

From YouTube Description:

Ten friends in Los Angeles experience an unusual event together- and try to survive.
Starring:
Brian Gattas
Jade Gordon
Tom Lenk
Chad Lindsey
Alisa Mcronald
Sam Pancake
Jack Plotnick
Christos Prevezanos
Chris Shea
Doug Stockstill
and
Rachel Stolte

Written and directed by Jim Hansen

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