Monday, April 30, 2012

Held Up

Last weekend, I watched Marvel's The Avengers at the cinema and it got me into a superhero mood. That's why I would like to present to you Held Up today.

It's a 16-part comedy web series starring It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Kaitlin Olson, The Wire's Cyrus Farmer, Jon Dore from The Jon Dore Show and writer-producers Randy and Jason Sklar.

Set in a bank branch, the outlandish series centers around a bored teller named Ray (Dore) whose life changes dramatically after his bank is held up by two teams of dim-witted robbers dressed as Rocky I (Farmer), Rocky II (Olson) and Batman and Robin (the Sklar brothers). Over the course of the series, the hostages fall victim to a comedic version of the Stockholm Syndrome and begin sympathizing with their captors.

Here is the trailer:

It’s a character piece, and one of things the Sklar brothers are most proud of is the love story that develops between Ray and Rocky II. You can watch Held Up on http://www.crackle.com/c/Held_Up

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

350 South - an American journey

Most of the web series I write about are scripted, but of course there are also unscripted web series out there. One I find particularly interesting and inspirational is called 350 South: an American journey. It's produced by international production company beActive Entertainment and is described as a “fully participatory documentary experience” following Irish and American environmentalists on their year-long journey from Alaska to Argentina.

How did they come up with this idea? On their website http://350south.org/ you can read that Irish guy Ian Lacey moved to Denver, Colorado in 2010 to work for an environmental non-profit organisation called The Wilderness Society. There, he was recommended a book by Swedish adventurer Goran Kropp – a man who cycled from Stockholm to Mt. Everest in Nepal, climbed it without the aid of bottled oxygen, came back down and cycled home again. Ian just knew he had to take on a similar human powered journey.  And within minutes, after looking at the National Geographic map on his bedroom wall, it seemed that cycling down the Americas could be a pretty nice way to spend a year. Ian had recently met Lee, a friend who worked in a coffee shop during the week and went rock climbing and snowboarding in the Rocky Mountains on the weekends. After chatting about the idea, they both realised it was about time they did something that matched their adventurous spirits. There and then, they decided to cycle the length of the Americas in 350 days.

They will cycle through 15 countries in total – USA, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. And you can follow Ian and Lee on Facebook, Twitter and watch their video diaries on YouTube or their website. Extended versions of the diaries are now also showing on Setanta Sports Ireland.

Here is Episode 1 of their video diary:  

 

And of couse, they are not doing it just for fun. They want to raise €100,000 for the Carer's Association of Ireland. So, if you wanna support them, please donate here http://www.mycharity.ie/event/350south