Out With Dad S02E04 ”With Jacob and Vanessa” | A Web Series Review on The Watch List

A Family Drama Web Series

4 Swirlies

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“I heard you crying again last night.”

NOTE: How to watch with subtitles.

English subtitles
To watch Out With Dad with subtitles:
1. You must press play first, then the ‘CC’ button will appear.
2. Click ‘CC’, and choose your language.
Note: you may need to click ‘Full Screen’ to reveal all the language selections.

This is one of the Toronto web series Out With Dad’s mini-episodes. It’s about two and a half minutes, and instead of being a full on story – instead it is a bit of a slice of life glimpse into Vanessa’s struggles. Not everyone has a supportive parent like Rose – and it was hard for Rose.

This whole episode is two shots, almost all the dialogue in one. It lets the actors really carry the moment. What I like about this set up is how the family is already dealing with one child who isn’t speaking to them because of how he wants to live his life – he married a Muslim woman – which places extra strain and stakes on Vanessa not to put her family through that all over again.

While some of the dialogue spoken by Vanessa’s parents is quite on the nose, the real emotional anchor for this scene is Vanessa’s brother, Jacob. I got the sense that Vanessa is, more than anything, trying to protect Jacob, which leaves her torn. If she is true to who she is, she’ll make Jacob’s life worse. It is a struggle that many of us go through, I think. I think in everyone’s lives, there comes a time when they are forced to choose between their happiness and the values and choices of their family.

While Lindsey Middleton does all the heavy lifting – dialogue wise – and does a great job, Jacob Ahearn has, in some ways, the harder part. He has to listen and emote in character. Actors sometimes tend to focus on the dialogue, what they are saying, but a good actor knows what to do when the other guy is talking. Anyway, both performers do a remarkable job in an intense scene.

Man, these actors do a lot of crying, don’t they?

Lindsey Middleton as Vanessa
Jacob Ahearn as Jacob

From Out With Dad website:

A difficult time for the LeMay family. Vanessa and her younger brother, Jacob, sit upon the steps as they listen in on their parents fighting. Jacob fears he might loose another sibling to something he doesn’t understand, and Vanessa realizes what is truly important to her.

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Radiance Ep.11 | A Web Series Review on The Watch List

A Science Fiction Drama Web Series

4 Swirlies

“I’m going to say this slow. And I’m going to say this once.”

Wow. How much tension can you put in one minute and thirty nine seconds? Clearly a lot.

You can feel the panic spreading as they start to take drastic measures to protect themselves from something they don’t understand.

Radiance is one of those shows that breaks the rules and makes it work. It just goes to show you that everything anyone says to you about how things are supposed to be done is bullshit, even the stuff I say. It is all opinion, and what works for one show may not work for another show.

And then there’s the fact that just a great story - like Radiance - makes everything else null and void.

I saw a thread somewhere the other day where someone was struggling to figure out what sort of web series they wanted to make. Is there a formula? Something that works for the large audience of the internet? There was quite a bit of discussion, but here’s what I think - tell a story, and everything else springs from there. If you’re looking for a formula, or something else to tell you what story to tell, I think what you’re saying is that you’re making a web series for the wrong reasons. You’re making a web series to either make a bunch of money or get famous. Either way, you’ll probably be disappointed. Look at Radiance - a great little web series with a great story, and it is clear that the whole series has been seen by less than 350 people in a year of it being posted. (Part 17 only has 280 some views, at the time we’re going to press on this article.) That’s not great numbers, but it is about average for many, many web series as far as I can tell. And I would say even big web series fans haven’t heard of it. It certainly can’t have made much profit for those who made it. Would you call this show a failure?

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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Heather’s Vlog “Heather checks out getfanged.com and Grampires?” | A Web Series Review on The Watch List

A Vampire Comedy Web Series

4 Swirlies

“I got this new leather jacket. The guy who was wearing it was delicious.”

This is the second episode in a row from the web series Heather’s Vlog that is Heather and her Dad talking about internet stuff.

There’s about half or three quarters of a minute at the end that’s vintage Heather’s Vlog, and is hilarious. The first half, they’re checking out getfanged.com, which, it turns out, is a real thing. And it is more a chance to rehash jokes about Facebook than anything really fresh. Once they start getting rolling on confusing Tony Danza for Billy Crystal, it takes off into the types of laughs that this series is capable of.

I think both the previous video and this are designed to bring in new views by connecting with other popular stuff. It can be a smart of promoting yourself online, but I don’t think it makes the best fodder from story or comedy.

From YouTube Description:

Heather shows her dad some more stuff online. Should you friend your dad on Facebook?

Please, nothing too creepy. She is deadly

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Radiance Ep.10 | A Web Series Review on The Watch List

A Science Fiction Drama Web Series

5 Swirlies

“You’re dying, we’re not dying!”

Another suspenseful episode of the creepy “what if” web series, Radiance.

As the body count rises, We are finally left with few enough characters that I can tell who is who while only watching a single minute a week.

You know, I was talking to someone recently about one minute long web series, and I mentioned this one as a great example of what you can do in short episodes. But then I remembered Prom Queen. Remember Prom Queen? It wasn’t a show that we covered, I think it was just before we first started The Watch List many moons and lifetimes ago. Prom Queen was Michael Eisner, of Disney fame. He started a giant company, Vuguru, and this was his attempt to make a big web series splash. A series told in one minute episodes.

I try not to be cruel or reductive when I write these reviews, but in so many words, Prom Queen sucked. It’s been a while since I have seen it, so I won’t get into it’s many shortcomings here, but essentially it didn’t tell stories in one minute intervals, it showed a minute of a scene, and then the next episode was another minute. It wasn’t engaging and it was annoying because everything had the same rhythm, every minute, exactly, the episode ended.

Radiance succeeds where Prom Queen failed, in my opinion, in having most of the episodes feel like they had some sort of narrative arc for them, and by letting each episode find its own length in order to break up the rhythm of the short episodes.

Prom Queen cost a lot to make, maybe even a million or more. Radiance, it would appear, was done for fun. Neither made a profit. But I hope that you would agree with me that Radiance is the better show, and a role model for those looking to make very short episodes.

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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Moolt “Computer Love” | A Web Series on The Watch List

A Cartoon Comedy Web Series

3 Swirlies

“Who says laziness is a bad thing? It keeps families together.”

If you follow my reviews as The Watcher, you may have figured out that I tend to cheer for the little guys. Case in point: the cartoon web series Moolt.

I really like this series. I think the writing, voice work and animation is really great - especially for what I assume is some guy working alone in his room. This episode has 25,000 views at the time of this writing; hardly a complete unknown. Space Hospital, on the other hand, still has most of its episodes under a thousand. But still, Moolt’s the underdog compared to Happy Tree Friends. Everyone talks about Happy Tree Friends, despite Moolt being, in my opinion, the much funnier, fresher show.

Well, except maybe this episode. There’s some funny bits in there, but the main joke is the wife cleans up things and the husband doesn’t know where they are, and blames her when his computer goes missing. Not exactly breaking new comedic ground. Their other episodes are much funnier, and much more original. At least, to me.

From YouTube Description:

My facebook
http://www.facebook.com/Haykmanukyan

An Armenian man named Harut, has lost his computer and is out to find it. His number one suspect? His wife Sophik.

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Naomi The Show Ep.6 | A Web Series Review on The Watch List

A Comedy Web Series

4 Swirlies

“It’s a magic book.”

This episode of the always reliably funny Vancouver web series Naomi The Show is a tiny bit of a departure from the normal format of the series - maybe not intentionally - by having the funniest bits be in the body of the episode and the button by less of a punch line than normal. At least, that’s how I found it.

Despite the somewhat cartoony character of the guy Naomi meets, this episode may not be THE funniest of the series, but it has the most funny moments through out. Noami Dayneswood has some particularly subtlety funny lines. Not that she doesn’t in other episodes, but here she seems less like she’s doing less of the straight set up work than she does in other scenes. She plays her lines to politely annoyed perfection.

From YouTube Description:

In Episode 6, Naomi meets a fellow book lover.

Created by Naomi Dayneswood & Jennica Harper
Director: Nicholas Humphries
Writer: Jennica Harper
Producers: Robert Woolsey & Naomi Dayneswood
Starring: Naomi Dayneswood & Stephen LeBail
Director of Photography: Christopher Charles Kempinski
Editor: Chad Galloway
Sound Design: Michael Scott Schrum
Makeup Design: Alyssa Satow & Katie Satow
Title Credit Design: Christopher Preksta
Music Composer: Chris King

Proudly Supported by Vancouver Film School - http://www.vfs.com

See full crew listings at http://www.naomitheshow.com/cast-crew

Find out more about Naomi: The Show at http://www.naomitheshow.com

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Heather’s Vlog “Heather and Her Dad Watch Rebecca Black Video” | A Web Series Review on The Watch List

A Vampire Comedy Web Series

3 Swirlies

“Back in the day, you had to work to be famous. Like Aretha Franklin and Pee Wee Herman.”

We’ve been so focused on keeping on top of the current shows that we are following, that I forgot to keep an eye on one of my favourite series, Heather the Vampire! I see there’s been a few posts since Heather’s return, and here’s the first one.

I gotta say, maybe I’m in a bad mood today, because I wasn’t blown away, despite how excited I was to see it. There’s some funny bits, but really they’re just making fund of Rebecca Black and not doing their usual shtick. I think maybe that was the point, I get the feeling this is a micro-episode, not a full on episode. It is kinda of my fault – I’m sure when the video was first posted was much closer to the debut of Rebecca Black’s video than it is today.

Anyway, the world still hasn’t gotten over Rebecca Black, so do yourself a favour and watch Heather and her dad’s take on it. Like I say, there’s some funny bits.

And I look forward to Heather’s next video.

From YouTube Description:

Heather decides to show her dad what all the fuss is about with Rebecca Black’s Friday video. Do you think they’ll like it?

get Heather’s “Bite Me” T-shirt at http://liamshow.com

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Radiance Ep.9 | A Webseries Review on The Watch List

A Science Fiction Drama Web Series

5 Swirlies

“Guys, I saw something.”

Oh no! After the discovery of yet another pair of bodies, the housemates get a clue about what they’re dealing with… and what might happen next.

A nice, tense little episode. The web series Radiance has very short episodes in a serialized format, and it is one of the few series that manages to keep the atmosphere tense in just about every one. There’s a total of 19 parts, which means we’re only at the halfway point.

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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Radiance Ep.8 | A Webseries Review on The Watch List

A Science Fiction Drama Web Series

5 Swirlies

“I wanna die on a full stomach.”

Whoa. Suddenly, a lot happens in this minute and a half episode.

More mystery. More deaths. A new character. Probably if you have been following this show, you’ve been intrigued enough to finish watch the rest on your own. If this is your first time coming across this series, this isn’t a bad entry point.

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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More from the web series Radiance

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Out With Dad S02E02 ”Asking Out Alicia” | A Web Series Review on The Watch List

A Family Drama Web Series

4 Swirlies

“I have to puke. Hold my bag. Watch my board!”

Every now and then we like to have one of the creators behind a series do a sort of guest review of their own show. Actually, we only did it once before, with Tyranny, but I thought it worked out nicely. I asked the creator of Our With Dad, Jason Leaver, if he’d like to do one for the first episode of his second season. He said no. But he did agree to do it for his second episode! And we’re glad he did, because there’s a lot of interesting behind the scenes stuff in here…

The Watch List asked me to post a review of my own episode two weeks ago. A filmmaker reviewing his own work? An interesting concept! I declined however, because felt it would be too presumptuous of myself for 2×01 “Out with Dad”. It’s a different for 2×02 “Asking Out Alicia”, with this one I can sit back and enjoy just like any other audience member. This was true when we were filming and while I was editing. So ya, I can review this episode.

First a bit of background, this one was written after production began for season two. I’d already filmed scenes with Laura Jabalee, which you’ll see later. Often when working with actors I find I’m inspired to write more for them; this was no exception. Plus, I wanted to write more scenes for Corey Lof – this guy is hilarious. I’ve come to know Corey and Kate very well, and I know they understand comedy.

However, our three leads were faced with a challenge: our location.

We filmed this episode entirely in front of The 519 Community Centre on Church Street, who allowed us to use their facility to stand in as our high school. Church Street is the centre of LGBT life, vibrance and pride in Toronto. It’s the friendliest street. There is a fantastic energy. There also happens to be a lot of traffic with heavy trucks! There must have been a construction site nearby. Each time one of those trucks drove by we had to stop recording. It was LOUD. The actors quickly caught on to what audio level was acceptable. Instinctively they would pause their performance when a truck approached, when they got the nod from me they’d continue with the scene. What astounds me is their performances never suffered. They kept their energy up, they stayed in the moment. This is especially remarkable for Corey, whose character is the driving force of this episode. In comedy timing is everything. Yet some how his timing was unaffected! The pauses and restarts by the cast were no challenge for me as the editor to work with. Which reminds me, I was sitting on a train editing this episode, laughing out loud most of the time. I hope my fellow passengers didn’t mind!

You also have to pay attention to “Alicia’s pack of girlfriends”, played by Shailene Garnett, Carolyn Nettleton and Lizzie Stuart-Morris. I love them in every frame they’re on screen, they’re hilarious! I never offered them any direction, which I probably shouldn’t admit… but I didn’t need to! Each of them took it upon themselves to have a different reaction to the conversation unfolding before them. Watch for more of them in Out With Dad.

Next up, is the Adrian Ellis’s score. He went with a highly percussive, almost jungle-inspired track, as if saying Kenny is “on the hunt”. The first draft of the score suggested a 1970’s swagger. It fun, but given that our characters were born in the 90’s, it didn’t fit right. In the version you hear, all Adrian did was modify his bass track making it feel a little more modern – it kind of has a reggae vibe to it. I pushed him to have fun with the score. He included some hilarious hits to certain story beats, my favourite: the ding as the metaphorical light bulb turns on for Kenny at 3:05, and the way the music practically says “ooooh…” as Rose learns Alicia asked about her at 2:46.

I had fun making this episode, I can sit back as part of the audience and I enjoy what the cast and composer give us. I’m sure you will too!

P.S. I love the music! Thanks, Jason!

From Blip.tv Description:

Kenny finally finds the courage to ask out Alicia Van Harren, well, eventually.

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