The Guild has shown year after year that if you create, finance and stream it the they will watch. Under the Geek & Sundry banner they’ve partnered with Youtube to bring out content that is refreshing to say the least. There have been other web series as well, Standard Action, Freddie W’s Rocketjump series of shorts that is essentially ten to fifteen minutes worth of an action movie. Halo’s Forward Unto Dawn was a web series on a big budget. And let’s not forget granddaddy Red Vs. Blue. While The Guild is focused on the massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) Video Game High School embraces console gaming. The cast of characters is occupied with different genres from first person shooters (FPS) to Racing to Music. Each episode had just enough drama and pixel violence thrown in to keep me occupied during SDCC. It’s great to see RPGs and cart racing will be covered in Season 2. It be nice to see RTS make an appearance. The length of the episodes has been expanded upon as well from under ten minutes to thirty so it’s more like a television show. Season 1 can be found here while Episode 1 of Season 2 just dropped this morning.
Sometime before 9pm last night the official Veronica Mars movie was funded on Kickstarter. And, it has 29 days to go. I guess Veronica in Space is a go then? I’ve funded a few things a Kickstarter, mostly books and even a H. P. Lovecraft con in Rhode Island. So, will this open the doors to more projects and do what The Guild did for independent web series? Excellent question. Firstshowing.net‘s post covers most of the bases including the elephant in the room that is Firefly. I think using Kickstarter to fund your project and Youtube to roll it you have a great one two punch just ask Geek & Sundary, Neridst and more. The tools have been here for a while but the only thing one would need to worry about is the execution. Good execution and you’ll blast it out of the park. If you stumble and fall then it’ll be a costly learning experience but a experience none the less. Wouldn’t mind seeing a Slingers Kickstarter project, the trailer looked fun.
Riese started as a Web Series and just as I tried to play catch up one day, found out SyFy had picked them up. SyFy recently started showing them and while I’m glad the station picked them up, I am a little weary about the voice over by Amanda Tapping. Weary not of Amanda Tapping, after playing Samantha “Black Widow*” Carter for nearly a decade her work on Sanctuary has been great. Weary, due to I cannot stand voice overs and scrolling text. Episode One:
Episode Two:
* Nicknamed since her character had gone through so many boyfriends in SG:1. On the upside most of them lived to see the end of the series. On the downside the one I enjoyed the most got Manchurian Candidated.
