I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the creator, writer, and director of Pillars, a sci fi web series, Scott Ludden. The story: 36 are the number of people. They are human. They balance out the equilibrium of the earth — if all die within sunrise to sunset — then we die — the battle continues. They are Pillars. Read more about about this fascinating web series, watch the trailer, and learn more about the incredible people behind it below.
The Pillars Trailer
The Interview
1. What’s the story behind you and your team wanting to develop your PILLARS story into a web series?
The story behind Pillars goes back a few years when I was living in Beverlywood CA. For those who are not familiar with the area it is heavily populated with orthodox jewish people. I, not being orthodox jewish and able to use electricity on Saturday’s quickly became neighbors favorite person because I could open doors, close dish washers, everyday tasks that due to their beliefs couldn’t be performed. A neighbor who was studying to be a Rabbi told me about the mythology of the Lamed Vovnik’s. 36 people who balance out the equilibrium of the earth and carry round life’s burdens with them. If even one of them is missing, the world would come to an end. They carried the worse diseases around so other mankind wouldn’t have to. So I started researching the mythology and there was little information on the subject so I started coming up with my own ideas and expanding it further to fit into a story. For instance, each Pillar carries around with them a disease being physical or mental, but they also carry the cure for that specific disease. I really wanted to write a show about hope and why bad things happen to good people and what comes out of those sitautions. I find it interesting that a Indian doctor who is a spinal surgeon falls on a rock climbing trip, breaks his back, becomes paralyzed and then invents a exoskeleton walking system for paraplegics. What if you could peak behind the curtain for a moment and see the reason for these human tragedies. That’s what Pillars is.
I began heavily writing the summer before Heroes hit the air that fall. I was really diving into the story and thought I had some great ideas and was excited to finish. Then Heroes premiered and I fell in love with that show and quickly realized that Pillars had no place on TV while Heroes was such a huge hit. I want to make it clear that Pillars is nothing like Heroes. The 36 Pillars don’t have super powers but the people protecting them and looking for them have highly intelligent minds that can use them in ways we could only imagine. Then season 3 of Heroes came out and I didn’t like where the show was heading at all. During this time I moved my family back to St. Louis from LA and I started writing Pillars again because I knew Heroes wouldn’t be around for much longer. I wrote a two hour Pilot for Pillars plus an outline for a six season show. I don’t have a lot of TV contacts and since I was living in St. Louis, I knew I could make a web series for Pillars to hopefully gain interest. I wrote a forty page web series script that didn’t include the characters from the Pilot but did have the same context. I have always envisioned a web series as a separate show for Pillars anyways because we could introduce 36 main characters if we wanted to. After finishing the script I went out and raised some financing and we went out and shot for six days straight in St. Louis after months of pre production.
2. What have been your biggest production challenges and struggles to date? How did you overcome them?
My biggest production challenge was finding an airport that would let us film the third webisode in. We luckily found an existing airport in Illinois that is used mostly for military use but was built to offset all the traffic from the St. Louis airport. Once we finally got them to agree to letting us film there we then had to figure out a way to get people to fill in as travelers in this giant airport terminal. We decided to hold a raffle at the end of the shoot so they wouldn’t leave early and stay until the end. We offered up Blues and Rams tickets along with gift cards to various stores around the area. We fed everyone pizza for the day and everyone left happy and the shoot was a success.
My biggest struggle to date is getting the show out to people for them to find it online and hopefully become a fan. I am a one man show at this point posting, tweeting, and uploading the webisodes to sites. I have no marketing budget and I have no money left for marketing either. I did pay a street team to pass out missing poster flyers at this year’s SXSW but the company I hired who was out of Phoenix hired some people who were very dishonest and I am pretty sure they lied about their hours working and passing out my flyers. I was even down there myself passing out flyers and I think I was the only one. The flyers were for Tim’s brother who gets kidnapped in the beginning of the show and the missing posters looked legit and really fooled a lot of people. While I was passing them out some people would not want to take one but then seeing the words “MISSING” they felt bad and took one anyways. One woman was very upset with me and tried to make me feel bad but I said if you look at the flyer closer you will see its a web series and oh we are at an interactive and film festival.
3. Who and how many people are behind the series?
I wrote and directed the web series and I am the creator of the show as well. I have a producing partner, Chris Miller, who helped develop the main story and helped with some financing as well. My crew for the shoot was only about ten of us. My cinematographer, Cale Finot, who shot all my short films that I directed, came from LA along with the two main actors Leizl Carstens and Mason McCulley. Cale recently shot “Hotel Noir” a crime drama written and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez starring an A List cast.
4. Are there future seasons in development?
I definitely have ideas of where the web series can go and have outlined them. I left a big hook at the end of the series to keep it going on purpose. Right now I am focusing on trying to get these webisodes out to many fans as possible. I am currently working on a three page cover art for a graphic novel as well. I have endless story ideas for Pillars. It’s not easy raising money and asking for a bunch of favors from people to come out and work on the show. If someone came with some financing to produce more webisodes I would be all for it.
5. Where do you see the web series industry in 5 years from now?
I think the gap is closing on Broadcast v. Broadband, but I don’t see it changing drastically until our broadband is fast enough for consumers to view shows as fast as Broadcast shows. You have to pay a lot to stream videos without interruption and I think it’s holding it back. It’s great to see major electronic companies scrambling to get Internet ready devices on the market as fast as possible. I think the studios are sitting back and waiting to see what’s going to happen. Obviously there are many success stories and they will continue to be successful web series that will grow into a broadcast show. It’s promising for sure and I have read some pessimists that are concerned the big Hollywood directors will start making web series of their own. I hope they do, because that will mean the web is getting to a place that is financially viable for companies to produce web shows and pay top talent top dollars. If you have a great story they will eventually come calling.
6. Do you have any tips for creating and producing a web series?
My first tip is make sure you have a great script. It’s all about the script. Script. Script. Script. I feel people are willing to watch anything with a good story in any format that it’s produced in. I understand they would like to see a good looking show, but if the script is fantastic, people will be engaged even if you shot the entire show on an iPhone. My second advice is hiring a great DP and a good Sound Man. I will say bad sound can ruin a show and if your sound is bad, then make sure you have written the best story ever.I think that the way technology is evolving so quickly for consumer and pro HD cameras that you can make a web series look just as good as what you see on TV. I hope my web series looks up to that quality and fans are impressed with not only the story, but the look of it as well. I take a lot of pride in all the details and I hope it comes out in the show.
Enjoy this insightful interview? Great! Then subscribe to our blog via email as we will be doing more of these fun interviews in the future with other amazingly talented video creators and producers.
And if you are a web series creator or producer and want your story featured here, then reach out to us and lets discuss.
My name is Darren Wonnacott and I’m a Film Composer from the United Kingdom.
How long have you been composing for?
I have been composing music for around 8 years now. I started off by playing electric guitar in bands.
How did you start working with Dave Bundtzen and Flix Digital?
I actually met Dave over at Spidvid, which is a social network for filmmakers. It’s a great place to meet new people with the same interests.
How does working with Dave Bundtzen differ from other productions?
Dave is very competent at what he does and is extremely organized. It is so great to work with a Director that shares the same interests musically too. This definitely helps when composing music for Dave’s projects as I know what he is looking for in the score. Dave also keeps me in the loop with everything that is happening, which makes things go so much smoother and things get completed so much quicker.
What do you like about working on online video shorts?
I love how quickly they can reach a worldwide audience within just a few days! It is amazing how you can get your product available worldwide with just a few clicks from your computer.
Has online video and social media changed what you do?
Totally, when used constructively it is an extremely useful tool! Without social media I would never of got to meet and work with Dave and it wouldn’t be possible to do what I do without it.
Here is the track Undercover Attack from Imperceptive. Have a listen below.
With every video I create and release I’m learning more about what the social web responds to, and what they ignore. While there’s no guarantee you will get a million views if you create a remarkably entertaining video, there are a few activities you can do each time to accumulate more views, love, and attention for your content.
Social Sites
Posting your video link on social sites is a good start. My favorites are: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Buzzfeed, and if you have a potential viral hit on your hands then submit to Devour. I’ve given up hope on the dying Digg. WTF titles, broad and niche tags, and eye-catching thumbnail images are key.
Timing is also key too, even though there’s no way to know when a digital influencer may see your content and when they won’t. Most of the time they won’t. I have had some modest success stories of getting over 290 saves on Delicious for various videos. My theories as to how I got so many are suspect, but I think what happens is some power user bookmarks my video link, and their thousands of followers see that and do the same. It’s rare but it can happen, and it leads to many more views and higher placement in Google. But the problem unfortunately is that there’s no guarantee, and there’s no secret formula. All you can do is put your best video links forward, and hope for the best.
Leverage the Trends
A good tip for Twitter is that when you are promoting your video link via tweets, be sure to look at what’s trending globally, and if your video is somewhat related to those words, phrases, or hashtags, then use them in your tweets. Never come off too salesy though. Also what I’ve found works is asking people a question, or shocking them with something they aren’t used to. For example: Have you ever ate so much food, that you felt like your stomach was going to explode? Yeah, this guy in pain can relate video link
Keep Your Fingers Crossed
Always be sure to seed your video’s earliest views by sharing your link with your friends, family, and co-workers. Chances are if they like what you’ve created, and are inspired to share your video, then you may be onto something. Produce content that’s emotionally engaging, short, and irresistible not to share, and your video could be joining the “million high club” soon. Easier said then done, in fact most video creators and producers who have hit it big likely never will again. In fact, your chances may be higher of getting struck by lightning then ever seeing one of your videos hit 100,000 views.
Invest as much passion, energy, creativeness, and fun into your videos that you can, and see what happens. Just don’t do what many individuals do which is create something, then spend no time marketing it. If you spend 10 hours creating a 2 minute video, then spend at least 1-3 hours promoting it across the social web and your social graph. Don’t just tweet out the link one time, always be looking to promote any of your videos when the timing is right. For example, if you create a Halloween video this October, then why not promote it again in October 2013, October 2014, etc. just as long as its story is evergreen.
And if you are creating quality entertaining videos but are having no luck on YouTube, or on other popular video sites then consider uploading via Spidvid to UnleashVideo where there’s much less noise, and spam trolls. If you’re intrigued, but have questions, then quickly contact us.
We are back with one of our best Spidcast episodes to date this month (listen in below and subscribe to “Spidcast” on iTunes) with a focus on filmmaking, web series, collaboration, acting, and other interesting sound bites! April’s Spidcast features the incredible individuals Victor Solis and Allie Olson. They are our amazingly sexy and talented guests for Spidcast 16, April 2012.
Our Guests
Victor Solis is a seemingly rare specimen, a Southern California filmmaker who was born and raised in Southern California. He first began collaborating with his long-time creative partner Steven Itano Wasserman in the late 1980s, a dark age of VHS cassettes and voodoo economics. The duo soon discovered they shared an appetite for the craft of storytelling, satire, photography, science fiction, and films of all genres.
Victor and Steven have formally studied film and literature at the university level. In the late 1990s, they began training themselves on various film industry projects for little to no wages. Victor eschewed selling his soul, adopted a journeyman approach instead, and has worked in virtually every film department including development, camera, and lighting.
Victor’s first foray into the webseries space is the superhero adventure “Generic Girl” starring Alexandra Olson in the title role. He co-created, co-wrote, and co-produced the 10-episode series with Steven in 2011-2012. The show premiered Feb. 14, 2012 exclusively on JTS.tv and will launch widely online beginning in May 2012.
Victor is currently producing “Trouble Is My Business,” an original feature film written by and starring Tom Konkle and Brittney Powell. He is also developing a slate of feature films with Steven Itano Wasserman.
Allie Olson is an actress from Pasadena, California. She discovered her love for acting while completing the Theater Arts program at Pasadena City College. She has since appeared in films, shorts, and commercials, including a Wii game ad with ‘The Hoff’ himself. In addition to pursuing acting in film and TV, she is presently member of Milestone Theater Company where she performs and volunteers. Also a songwriter and musician, Allie’s music has won placements with artists, as well as landed in many independent films and shows. With comedy as her first love, Allie’s dream career path would be to find her way into a “Seinfeld-esque” sitcom with a five-year run.
We thank Victor and Allie for being such fun and inspirational guests!
If you’re interested in sponsoring next month’s Spidcast show, then please get in touch. If you have something to say with regards to what Victor or Allie talked about, then please post a comment below to continue the conversation. Thanks for listening, and be sure to share this show with anyone in your network who can get value from it!
Full Transcript Below
INTRO
Michael London: Hi, I’m Michael London and welcome to Spidcast, the Future of Collaborative Video Production brought to you by Indie Source Magazine where they believe free is better and I like the way they think. On this episode, we’re talking with Allie Olson, an up and coming actress that you’re going to see a lot of very soon, you mark my words on that. In fact, she stars in the web series and we’ll visit with her producer, Victor Solis of the web series as well. He’s not only a producer but he’s done just about every job on the set and got some great insight. So let’s just right in to today’s Spidcast.
First up is producer, Victor Solis. Victor, welcome to Spidcast.
Victor Solis: Thank you very much, Michael. It’s a pleasure to be speaking with you.
Michael London: So tell us a little bit about yourself; the Reader’s Digest version.
Victor Solis: Alright. The digest in a nutshell. I was born and raised in southern California so there are a few of us filmmakers out here in LA who are natively from LA and I started off really fascinated in all aspects of story-telling, and we’re talking old school as in when I was in elementary school, telling stories to my younger sister, reading mythology, Moby Dick, the classic literature that a lot of us have usually forgotten about. My first fascination was in photography.
I started working in the beach cities down here south of Los Angeles with primarily as a wedding and portrait photographer. You wouldn’t think that that would’ve been the utmost training for cinematography but the fact of shooting events and shooting weddings is that you’re always working for a client. Your primary service is not that of a photographer. It is not that of just you capturing images. Your first service to any client is really providing piece of mind.
I certainly learned how to walk the walk; how to treat people with respect; how to always serve the client’s needs; but technically speaking, you learn to work very fast and very efficiently and you’re literally very light on your feet. The sun could be going down in 15 minutes. The power could go out. You need to be able to go to your redundant batteries to your other backup lens. I learned on both medium formats which is a 2.25 inch negative. It’s much larger than even the size of a super 35mm. So learning on those cameras – it’s a much larger camera as opposed to a handheld SLR or now they say is DSLRs.
We came up also during the time that film was transitioning over the digital and I started learning about the DSLRs and how much you could do; without being limited by the cost of every time you press the trigger, every time you take a picture, that’s about a dollar worth of developing film cost, print cost. You learn to work fast but you also learn to be very economical and very judicious about how you shoot and what you shoot.
Michael London: Now you see, that’s a great story because it encourages us to find experience and develop it wherever we can. It developed your eye, your craft, so whatever, whenever and however, take that opportunity to get the experience where you can, right?
Victor Solis: Absolutely. It’s all about whatever and sometimes whenever. Anybody, if you’re in Anchorage, Alaska; if you’re in Peoria, you can find other people out there who do work in a creative field and ideally, something like photography is creative yet technical at the same time. You don’t have to be out here in Los Angeles. You don’t have to be in New York City but the first thing that I always was trained to do and they definitely owe it to my parents for that and to the photographer that I learned with was find other people, reach out to others who know more than you and definitely, it’s easy to find people who know more than you. I’ve found a lot of people who know more than me reach out, volunteer, maybe you’re sort of the intern but by demonstrating that you have the passion and that you have that work ethic, that to me is worth far more than anybody who has the natural talent. Natural talent is surely a great asset but if it’s with a wedding photographer, fantastic. Do whatever works for you but learn the basics. Learn the fundamentals of how to work with equipment, how to tell a story, train your eye as you said, and you can do that in any city.
Michael London: Exactly. Victor, you mentioned a moment ago about reading to your sister and enjoying the classics, I bet you enjoyed classic movies as well.
Victor Solis: Anybody who goes into film has to be literate is what I would recommend. If you’re going into an art form – you have to love story at its core. I’m not talking about specifically cinema or video or the technology itself, but as you said, it’s the basics of what makes a fantastic character when you open up the beginning of Moby Dick and the narrator says, “Call me Ishmael”. I’m in with him. I’m going to be rooting for him. He’s going to transport me into this world I’ve never been before. You could do that with shadow puppets. You could do that with sock puppets or you could do it with a red epic camera and put together a crew of people and shoot it on digital. Really, the format and your style, your medium of choice is less than becoming very literate in story at its core what his character, what our character beats, what our emotions, how can you harness all of those, and maybe it’s true that there was no there was reading a book to my sister or putting on a puppet show in my backyard for the neighborhood kids that I was slowly learning more and more about what are the things that actually make people laugh? What are the principles of comedy? What are the principles of drama? It certainly takes time but I’d rather be doing this than doing dentistry.
Michael London: You got that right. You also talked about puppet shows a little bit ago in the backyard and such. Tell us about making that jump from your backyard in the Hollywood?
Victor Solis: The first production – I remember pretty vividly, it was out above the hills right as you would look up from Pacific Coast highway in Malibu and you see these rolling hills that are perfect for fog banks that always come in. Anybody who thinks that LA is sunny year-round, just come on down in May or June. I was still doing undergrad, studying English and film studies at UCLA and got a position on an AFI – American Film Institute – thesis film. They were shooting up in Malibu and I came one as the lower lead but very important to any production PA or production assistant. There was about three of us and everyday was totally different. It wasn’t just get the director a cup of coffee. It could’ve been on one particular evening where we had this pond – man-made ponds on the premises of this mansion that was up in the Malibu Hills. We’re shooting at night which is always interesting because you must light everything and the sound department calls one of us over and I had no experience with sound. I don’t know why the sound recorder wants one of us. So he calls us over and he says, look, guys, we need you to go out to that pond in the backyard and get a stick or get something, figure it out and we need you to keep those frogs quiet. Apparently, there is this nice community of frogs that were all ribbiting in sync much to the chagrin of the sound recorder and the director who was pulling out his hair.
One of my main jobs on that set was to run around the man-made ponds with another PA, shaking our hands and banging sticks together as long as it wasn’t too loud in order to get the frogs to shut up so we could get our takes in the can.
Michael London: So now you’ve gone from frog wrangler to wrangling the “Generic Girl”. Tell us about “Generic Girl”.
Victor Solis: Yes, fast forward several years, in fact, probably at least a decade, it was in late 2010 that I have been collaborating with my creative partner Steven Wasserman and his production company for a long, long time. We met actually in elementary school. When I was working on shoots like that AFI shoot, he was also working on shoots in northern California. That’s where he went to school. We’ve been in touch forever and we were painting his house. The doldrums of rolling pain on the wall will definitely get two men in a room to either drive each other nuts or come up with a concept for a 10 episodes super hero series.
We came up with the latter. We said if our next project is going to be something fun, why don’t we do something that amuses us? Hopefully, it amuses a few other people as well. as we’re painting his house, we conceived the story of a girl caught up in a world governed by comic book physics and inhabited by super heroes and villains and henchmen, but in our world, they have to follow union guidelines. You can’t become a hero until you have your three vouchers. A lot of it was winks to the labor unions in LA and to super hero and comic culture. That’s how we conceived the project and we shot it in 2011. Finally, we are still working on post-production and getting about to audiences. We have about five episodes remaining before all 10 episodes are online.
Michael London: Excellent. Where can we get a peak? Where can we see “Generic Girl”?
Victor Solis: Right now, you can watch it exclusively without ads on http://JTS.tv – Just The Story. Later in May, we’ll be going more widely online – YouTube and other platforms. Our website is www.gogenericgirl.com.
Michael London: Very good. Where can we learn more about you, Victor?
Victor Solis: My page is certainly up on IMDB and my info and more tidbits and behind the scenes about the making of “Generic Girl”, my bio is up on www.gogenericgirl.com.
Michael London: Shameless plug time. Talk if you will for a moment, Victor, about the value of www.spidvid.com.
Victor Solis: As a producer, you are all about collaboration. As a producer, you have to be always reaching out to others and it’s so much easier now that we have widespread internet access and people are online looking for like-minded people, looking for other collaborators, filmmaking, unlike something like photography, it’s fundamentally collaborative. You are always dependent upon everybody around you. For us, using technology, using the internet and using websites to reach other filmmakers, we work with a VFX artist who’s in northern California. I have stories of friend who have produced web content or other content and their different team members are in different parts of the US. You can do it. You don’t need to only have your same crew of five people always meeting at your house. You can do it online. It really teaches you how to juggle tasks, how to manage people, but it’s absolutely critical and that would be my recommendation. Reach out to other people and see who agrees with your mindset and who agrees with your vision and hang out with those people. Nurture those relationships.
Michael London: Right. Relationships and networking and that’s what it’s all about. How about a parting shot, Victor? A nugget of advice?
Victor Solis: Whether you are wrangling frogs on a film set or whether you are wrangling actors in a super hero series, whatever you may be doing, be humble, learn, learn, and learn. There is no shortage of literature out there to learn whether its stories, whether its photography technique, lighting, sound, learn from others. Offer your services. Be on the shoot. Work with people and you may not necessarily be receiving the paycheck but you were going to receive the hands-on knowledge of filmmaking, creating video, this is all hands on. You will always learn from others. There are always going to teach you a little tidbit, a little tip that you may not have ever thought of. Be humble and get yourself out there that’s probably the best advice that I can provide.
Michael London: And wonderful advice it is. Victor Solis, thank you so much for joining us today on Spidcast.
Victor Solis: It’s been a real pleasure, Michael. Thank you.
Michael London: Spidcast is brought to you by Indie Source Magazine, the fastest growing independent filmmaker resource and the only free publication of its kind. Their mission is to bring you not only stories of the industry’s highly celebrated but also stories and insights from players in all areas of the media creation process. At Indie Source, they believe free is better. Visit them at www.indiesourcemag.com.
We’ll continue now with the Spidcast and joining us is the Generic Girl herself, Alexandra Olson. Allie, welcome to Spidcast.
Allie Olson: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.
Michael London: Tell us a bit about your story. Well, I’m Alexandra Olson, I’m an actress. I’m from Pasadena, California and I actually wasn’t always into acting. I started off pursuing music. I was all set to go to Cal Poly Pomona for college when I was kind of scouted by a Disney Record Label and I did the whole manager-producer thing for a while and it just ended up setting me on a completely different course than I had planned and made me want to pursue a career in the arts. I didn’t end up signing with that label but I did do music for a while. I did pretty well. I got some independent film placements, some really small artist cuts, but I just didn’t have the love or the passion to really do what it takes to make it in music and since I was more of a songwriter rather than a performer, I spend most of my time kind of alone in a studio or a marketing my stuff on the phone talking to like 50-year-old publishers and meanwhile, all my friends who are out of college and partying and having fun and I felt like I was missing out kind of on my youth so I decided to go to Pasadena City College where the goal was to do get credits and most important to have fun.
I was like okay, I’m here to have fun. Let’s go out for a play. I auditioned for the play and I got in and I ended up absolutely loving it and the teachers and the people in the theater department were just so funny and cool and all of a sudden like I had this great bunch of friends. I remember my dad actually called me one as I was heading home from rehearsal and he asked like hey, are you coming home for dinner? And I was like no, I can’t because I’m going out with my friends. I have friends again, Dad. I ended up just becoming really involved in the theater department there and going kind of from show to show. I discovered that I just really loved acting and loved the community of it and just working with really talented people to create great art together and to tone off the story. That’s what I want to do with my career.
Michael London: A moment ago, you mentioned music being your first love. Tell us a little bit about that.
Allie Olson: I tend to go more of the songwriting route. That’s actually my true passion and I think that’s my strength. I sing and I play guitar and keyboards but those are kind of tools for me to use to write my songs. I love to write and I love to listen to music and I think my style is really kind of sweet, pop, acoustic, organic feeling. But I love a good song in any genre.
Michael London: What was your very first production?
Allie Olson: The first production I did? I think the first real production, real part that I got – I was so excited about getting it. I played Eve in “The Apple Tree” directed by Whitney Rydbeck at Pasadena City College and I was just elated. I had never really had a lead role and I was terrified out of my mind but I worked really hard and the experience of just going out with the people after rehearsals and then forming a community as a cast was so much fun. Definitely one of my favorite plays that I’ve done.
Michael London: So from being on stage and live productions, you get a call about doing a web series. First thoughts?
Allie Olson: To be honest, when I auditioned for “Generic Girl”, I didn’t really think much about the fact that it was in that digital video format. I was just kind of like reading the breakdowns and saw what looked like a really cool project that I want to be a part of so I went out for it, but I just gotten more into promoting it. I really learned a lot about the merits of the web series format and how digital video has really sort of democratized filmmaking. I just think it’s so cool that independent filmmakers and actors like myself can realize the vision without needing this huge budget for like distribution and you can make your seven-minute episodes or your short film and upload them to all these platforms like Blip.tv, Dailymotion, or JTS.tv, which is “Generic Girl’s” network, et cetera.
Basically this worldwide distribution without the monstrous budget and it gets lead to lots of consumers really being able to discover a whole bunch of great content that may never have even gotten made but for this new digital way. I’m really glad to be a part of something like a cool web series in a format that’s sort of the apex of the whole wave. It’s really cool. I love doing independent stuff. I think a lot of great talent really exists in that medium.
Michael London: Before you’re on Spidcast today was Victor, who you mentioned a moment ago. Tell us about him.
Allie Olson: Oh, Victor is so cool. He is a person that has so many ideas and he’s one of those people that actually really works to put them into action. The work that he’s done promoting “Generic Girl” has been outstanding. He’s constantly out there doing everything from networking, getting us on this new JTS network to even going to Comic Con and handing out business cards. He’s like a really even a foot soldier and a general. He’s great.
Michael London: Traditionally, through the years, Hollywood has been the stage and then to the small screen and hopefully to the big screen at a theatre near you, but you seem to have fallen into that new, hip, cool place called the web.
Allie Olson: Definitely true. I think the web series – I think it would be cool if web series became the new episodic television. I think there’s always a place for sitting down in front of your television and waiting for that 10 o’clock slot to come on and waiting for it all week and being really excited and watching it with a big group of people, but that can also be done online. I think it kind of actually mirrors what’s going on in the music industry too which is what musicians and actors were able to act like our own production companies almost and promote ourselves and reach our audience without needing to go through like a network per se. I mean, it is a network, but it’s like a different kind of network. It would be awesome if web series just became accepted as a regular episodic TV format.
Michael London: And of course, there’s no man in the ivory tower telling you what you can and can’t do and what will be produced and won’t be produced. You make your own content and find your own audience.
Allie Olson: Exactly. That’s a beautiful thing because if it were the case that we’d have those network producers sitting in the ivory tower shutting down some potentially great project. Thos projects can be made anyway. They can find their own audience without needing to go through all these screening processes.
Michael London: Allie, what would be your advice to someone just getting to Hollywood today?
Allie Olson: I myself I’m definitely just starting out and still really trying to make it in the industry and I mean, I would say two things probably come to mind that are really important. One is really find that teacher or that director that you feel you can really learn from and then absorb everything you can to really get the confidence in yourself as an actor. For newcomers like myself, it’s really important that we know our brand and know our strength and really play them. I think working with a great mentor can really help with that.
Michael London: I’m going to bet that you’ve come from a performing family.
Allie Olson: Oh yes, my family is – we get called the von Trapp’s sometimes. When we call people to say happy birthday, we actually sing “Happy Birthday” in three-part harmony. My mom and dad actually met in a band so we’ve always had jam sessions with our friends every month and it’s so cool. Just the other night, we’re actually sitting around our living room playing with a couple of family friends. We’re playing Iz’s version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” and we had a fiddle, a saxophone, my mom was singing, my dad was playing guitar, and I was doing harmony. It was just ethereal, wonderful experience. I love it so much.
Michael London: That is so nice, so fun. Tell us a little bit about “Generic Girl”.
Allie Olson: Oh my gosh, working on “Generic Girl”, it was incredibly fun. Definitely the coolest thing I’ve yet gotten to be a part of. Everyone on set just has this awesome mixture of professionalism and pure silliness. There were a lot of times when we would actually have to improve and we have a lot of really experienced improv actors in our cast like Matthew Bohrer and Johnny Skourtis. I could barely keep a straight face. Oh, also Matthew Farhat. I could not keep a straight face of all the craziness that was going on and the great staff that the cast have come up with.
To be honest, I knew this was going to be a really cool project to do from the very first audition because of the way they auditioned us. Sometimes you go to auditions and they hand you like a sheet of paper that’s like okay, fill in your sizes, tell us about your relevant experience but this audition, Victor and Steven, the director and producer actually handed us a piece of paper that asks questions like what comic book do you like to read or if you could have any super power, what would it be and what would your super hero name be. Immediately, I was like, okay, this is going to be awesome.
Michael London: Allie, what super power would you have and who would you be?
Allie Olson: I think I put that my super power was to be able to shoot purple sparkles from my hands but they weren’t just any purple sparkles, they were purple sparkles of death. I had named myself – I think I named myself Sparkle Super Nova, which sounds like a different kind of name, but it was favorite hero name.
Michael London: Hey, where can folks see “Generic Girl”?
Allie Olson: You can see it on a networked called – it’s an online network called http://JTS.tv. It stand for Just The Story. It’s an ad-free subscription network. New episodes go up every Wednesday. There’s actually a lot of really cool shows on there like “Continuum”, and I think it’s called the “Jeff Lewis Comedy Hour”. Those are the cool ones. There’s a lot of good content.
Michael London: And where can we read all about Alexandra Olson?
Allie Olson: You can go to my website which is http://allieolson.com.
Michael London: Perfect and for those listening, Allie, how about a great nugget of advice, the great take home message from you.
Allie Olson: The great nugget of advice from Allie Olson – I would say just make sure to always care about telling the story. That’s what I’ve learned as my biggest piece of wisdom of training that I’ve gotten from my mentor, Duke Stroud. I will just say tell the story, always be honest when you’re acting and love what you do.
Michael London: Love what you do. Excellent advice. Allie, thank you so much for being with us today on Spidcast.
Allie Olson: Thank you so much for having me, Michael. I had to say, you have the coolest voice that I have ever heard. You sound like on those movie trailer guys that could voice overs.
Michael London: That’s very kind. Thank you very much. I will tell my agent to start booking some of those jobs.
Thanks for listening to our Spidcast show. We appreciate your time and attention. You can now join the conversation at Spidvid.com or on our Spidvid blog and you can join our collaborative filmmaking community at Spidvid.com. Tune in next month for another entertaining and informative episode of Spidcast.
With each passing month, online videos are getting more creative, more fun to watch, and less expensive to produce which bodes well for our Spidvid community. Below are 5 remarkable viral videos and production tips from March. There are dozens of others likely just as deserving as these, so if you have a favorite please include the link in the comments below. And here are the last viral videos and production tips I featured if you missed them.
1. KONY 2012 – A 30 minute film about atrocities by an African warlord to children, Joseph Kony, has ignited an online fury by being watched almost 87 million times since March 5th. This is a powerful and touching story which has been shared by top celebrities such as Justin Bieber, P. Diddy, Will Smith, and other influential people across the world. Video production tip: Tell an emotional story that people can’t help but to share.
2. DollarShaveClub.com – Our Blades Are F***ing Great – Do you forget to change your razor blades, or hate paying a ton of money for them? Then perhaps the Dollar Shave Club is for you where you pay a low monthly membership fee and blades are shipped to you directly. This well thought out video has almost 4 million views since March 5th. Video production tip: Product videos really need to stand out to get noticed. I can just imagine that competitor’s to this company have a boring video of people shaving to feature their service. Make your product come alive, appear fun, and show the humanity behind your brand.
3. Elephant Plays with a Galaxy Note! – Peter the elephant plays with a Samsung Galaxy Note. This is all real, no film trickery, post-production or hidden cuts, he’s just a very clever elephant. This video has over 2 million views since its release on March 26th of last week! Video production tip: Using animals are always a popular idea for videos, if you can find one that’s trained like Peter the elephant is then you may have a viral hit on your hands.
4. Liar, Liar – When Pinocchio lied his nose got longer. When this boys lies delicious Skittles come out of his ears. Quite possibly the “sweetest” kid on planet earth! This video has just under 500,000 views to date since March 22nd, but feel will attract millions over the course of its lifespan. Video production tip: Take an existing frame of reference and put a creative spin on it.
5. The Browser You Loved To Hate – Have you ever told your parents they had to stop using Internet Explorer? Well, with a better browser and a cute cat, maybe it is time to reconsider. Video production tip: Bashing something that people hate can really rack up the views as people look for fun ways to deal with their frustrations and pain points.
Create better quality video entertainment by collaborating with our talented community, be sure to get a Spidvid profile and if you need any help at all just ask us!
