Radiance Ep.3 | A Web Series on the Watch List

Ten friends in Los Angeles experience an unusual event together- and try to survive.

More info from YouTube after the review…

4 Swirlies

“This isn’t an earthquake!”

Weirder and weirder.

Short, tantalizing snippets of an unknown event, along with very human reactions. This episode doesn’t have the same funny moments as the first two in this web series, but it is intriguing. And that last image is surprising and impressive for a series that looks pretty handmade.

Another web series that only gets better as it goes along. To think I almost gave up on it early into the first episode, where all I thought it was going to be was a hand-held amateur mess. I’m glad I didn’t give up, and the production quality seems to be improving.

More info…
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

Vampire Zombie Werewolf: Ep. 3 “Vampwardly Mobile”

Tad has a plan to win friends and influence Vampires.

Watch Vampire Zombie Werewolf at http://www.vampirezombiewerewolf.com/

Twitter: @VZWshow

Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/KATR-Pi…

VZW is a new Webseries from KATR Pictures.

3 Swirlies

“If you exist… does God?

The episode begins with a quirky, intentionally-lame Vampire Zombie Werewolf theme song that Tad pitches to the frightened producer as the opening to their web series.  In very meta fashion, his wife worries about it being too long (Tad has looped it to last 5 minutes).

I have to hand it to the series creators for making fun of web series clichés.  Though, it begs the question: If you know enough to hang a lantern on the problem (draw attention to it), does that excuse you from making that same mistake?

As Tad tells the producer: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned watching web shows is that if you have an episode without much dramatic action, the key is to keep it short.”

And that’s exactly what this episode doesn’t do.  Tad spends the entire five minute episode talking and building up this Vampire “coming out” party for him and his wife.  But where’s the action?

The “funny” innuendo about the couple and guests eating the producer gets repetitive fast.  After that, there really are no more jokes.

At the end of the episode, there is a nice hook as we hard cut into the title card: “The Vampires are coming.”  Then, there is a trailer snippet—a quick shot of bats flying towards the house.  Nice suspense there.  Still, wished we got to this moment sooner.

But a web series needs to be more than just a sum of its cliff-hanger hooks.  I really hope this one can get to the story faster, because the production values really are out of this world, and the actors are trying hard to make us laugh with what they’ve got.

But at the end of the day, all the audience is going to care about is: Where is this all going?

I’m still not sure… but hey, a vampire party sounds like it might be fun.  Let’s see how next week’s episode fares.

With the Angels Ep.4 “Welcome Wagon”

I have a new neighbor!

4 Swirlies

“I’m gonna bake her some cookies.”

Taffy tries to meet her new neighbour, but has a hard time when her neighbour goes all new agey. “Have you heard about The Secret?”

What I think is interesting is that the commentators on YouTube really take this fictional character to task for her clinging to her Christian beliefs, not not being open minded to her neighbour’s ideas. I think that’s interesting for two reasons.

This is fiction. You can see in the way the actress plays the moment that she’s not entirely comfortable with the hard line she takes, but it is the only point of view that she knows. To me, that’s the point of the episode, that Taffy is having a hard time getting rid of her old self and learning to thrive in her new, more cosmopolitan environment. But angry people on YouTube just slam her for the surface of her dialogue without taking a moment to consider the subtext – the “author’s” intent. (In the case of scripted content, I like the think of the author as the collective collaboration of all involved, but especially the writer, director and actor.)

And second, this is fiction. Clearly, this series, while sticking close to a first person mockumentary style, is a fictional story. I don’t think all the commentators on YouTube miss that. So why are they addressing the fictional character with a sense of personal betrayal?

As script writers and content producers, we used to live in a bit of a glass bubble where the people we engaged with directly when creating all spoke the same language – all of them were behind the scenes in some fashion. (Unless you were doing plays, but even then how many audience members speak directly to the playwrite if they have never met them before?) There existed a sort of mutual understanding about certain stuff – like how characters were understood by the audience.

But now with the web, and more and more as series move from a TV base to a online video base, your audience can reach you more directly, and I think many of us won’t like what we find. I think we’ll find that creators and audiences – even successful creators and die hard fan audiences – don’t really speak the same language, and have very different expectations of how the other is engaged with the work. I think there will be some shocks on both sides.

What? Oh, right – the episode. Watch it for the subtitles that the actress brings to the last confessional piece. And read some of the comments and let me know if you agree with me.

Black Dawn Ep. 3

Unable to contact anyone else, Adam and some of the others venture into the darkness to find out if his family is still alive.

Next episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-RKz4…

Download season pass: http://www.webserials.com/blackdawn/c…

“The Black Dawn” is a groundbreaking online experience, combining a web series with video blogs, short films, and an online comic. Visit http://www.webserials.com to see more.

2 Swirlies

“It’s 11 AM, and it’s still pitch black out.”

It’s been awhile since I checked in with this 2009 web series about a mysterious dark cloud over Los Angeles… looking for it’s long lost brother. No, just kidding. Just about everyone’s dead and no one knows why.

In this third episode, they go driving around L.A. looking for other survivors – and his family.

I’m not too sure where they were going. First there was the stuff immediately after the cloud and everyone died, and now I’m not sure what the character’s goals are. I know, some might say I’m only on episode 3, and it’s been a long time since I saw the first two, but I don’t really know anything except that people are dead. What’s the story here?

What saves this episode is the impressive acting and pathos towards the end. I felt myself getting a little bit wattery eyed myself.

Black Dawn – Ep 2.

Adam finds other survivors, but as they gather together it is clear that no one knows what has happened.

2 Swirlies

“We don’t know what tonight is going to bring. Or tomorrow.”

In true movie fashion, the beautiful girl in distress is the second character we meet. Will they get together?

This is the second episode of the series, and we see that there are, indeed, some survivors from whatever it is that killed almost everyone in L.A. The survivors huddle in a basement and get what surely must be the worst pep talk ever – a real downer followed by, “Everything’s going to be okay.”

I’m still waiting for this series to get going. I’m a sucker for science fiction, so I guess we’ll see what picks up next…