True brains make better content
In this guest post, Dylan Watson, co-producer of Movie Extra Webfest finalist project True Brains, talks about his experience working on a web series.
Movie Extra Webfest is the first competition of its kind in Australia. With the webseries being a fairly new format, we weren’t sure what to expect when we entered with our trailer True Brains. Now we’re in the final 15 out of around 100 original entries. Beyond that, we’re part of a competition urging Australians to put quality content online and see what happens. We’ve seen short films, trailers and teasers launch international careers thanks to viral media, YouTube links and Facebook. Any one of us could be the next big thing and all we need to do is indulge our little filmmaking fantasies (not just the clean ones) and hit “upload”.
True Brains began as a spoof of a particularly successful television show called Glee. But with no access to a high school or auto-tune programs, things had to change. Sorry, wait. It was another show we were spoofing. Anyway, the point is our concept evolved. Our core team of seven – The Cameralla – spent a great deal of time developing the concept as it moved from “Let’s mock something popular” to “Let’s create something we haven’t seen on Australian screens before”. Our end product is part horror, part mystery, part comedy. No cop show, no underdog/crime family story, no Aussie Battler – well actually, there’s probably a fair bit of that come to think of it. But you get the point.
True Brains is set in the fictional rural Queensland town of Bindaree Gulch. A mild zombie plague has struck Australia, and though these flesh-eating undead aren’t exactly superhuman killing machines, they’re not doing wonders for our tourism industry. A great deal of the afflicted seem to be finding their way to the once sleepy Gulch; but being a friendly local town, they are integrated into society as best they can – which really depends on how much grey matter they’ve got left in their skulls – and left to their own devices. With their hunger sated by Lecter’s True Brains™ (current flavours: Mild, Crunchy and Grape), they coexist with the locals. But something more sinister is happening in Bindaree Gulch, and it’s far beyond what a drooling mass of rotting deadbeats are capable of. There are whispers in the air: In the land of the dead, fear the living.
The webseries medium was an unexpected journey for us. Can we create a story people want to follow in three-minute bites? Or is this medium geared more towards non-linear episodic content a la Chad Vader or Dinosaur Office? It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the potential of this format; social media is such a huge part of our day-to-day lives, our audience is potentially global (Australian webseries OzGirl won awards and recognition at the Streamys and Webbys), and perhaps most importantly, it’s intensely cheap compared to film or television. But just because we can make content, doesn’t mean we should just go ahead do it – look at how well that worked for our film industry in the 80s. We wanted to make sure that we believed in our concept and that we would put just as much effort in its presentation as if it were a television pilot – which is, in the long run, what we see this webseries as. Linked bite-sized episodes that contributed to a grander story in a grander world, that hopefully audiences will want to see much more of at the series’ conclusion.
Response to True Brains during this competition has been incredibly positive. Being limited to a 60-second teaser trailer forces you to be very creative in what you choose to show; and as the competition allows for everyone to vote daily (spam, anyone?), it forces participants to be equally creative from a marketing and publicity perspective as well. That’s been a great challenge for us; looking at new and different ways to reach a target audience. Facebook has been a powerful tool too. The use of the new “Insights” tools on our fanpage tells us how many “likes” we’re getting each day, how many active users we have, the age brackets of people viewing our page and so on. This information has helped to guide our marketing strategies which have been primarily internet-based. I mean, if the Internet tells us that everyone is on the Internet and our show will be on the Internet and that we should advertise on the Internet, that’s what we should do, right?
Winners of the Movie Extra Webfest competition are announced on January 15. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the finalists after that date and how much content will end up being produced thanks to this competition. It’s great to see so many amazing concepts being developed in this country. With TV and Film being as difficult as they are to break into, I think this format could allow for people with brilliant ideas to get their work out there and show the world what they’re capable of.
