Web Series Wednesday: Brillig

This week’s show taught me the importance of finding team members that can cover my weaknesses – Also that Brillig is a word meaning ‘tea time.’

First thing’s first, Brillig is a sequel to Alice In Wonderland, of sorts. Written in the spirit of Lewis Carroll’s world and characters, yet completely original. My knowledge of Alice, rabbit’s, hats, and Carrollian mythology is limited, so I’ll focus of the web series aspect of the show.

Having officially watched a TON of web series at this point there is an interesting insight I feel I have. While not every show I’ve watched has been good, almost every show has displayed a lot of talent in at least one or two areas. There is typically at least someone involved in the production who has a real undiscovered skill. Where the problems come is in filling those other areas with little or no budget.

In the case of Brillig, creator Linda Goetz was born in the wrong time, as she says. Her dialogue is a consistently clever stream of Victorian era English that she must’ve found buried in a time capsule. And while her surrounding cast of theater veterans might have all delivered, perhaps their skills were stretched a little thin, particularly in the technical areas.

There are two areas I want to focus on that were deficient, and that was audio production, and what I’ll call ‘web production.’ Audio issues are very common in web series, and they are one of the biggest detractors of your shows quality. While I would always recommend hiring a professional sound guy I also understand the DIY nature of web series. The thing is most audio issues – in fact most issues in general – can be solved with just a few in depth conversations with the right people. While some of Brillig’s audio problems are irreversible the majority of them could still be fixed.

The ‘web production’ side is referring to a show’s presentation online. I had a little trouble figuring out the sequence of the videos. First I went to Brillig’s official web site, which had the 3rd episode on the front page, and no link to ‘episodes.’ After giving up on that I clicked the little ‘YouTube’ link on the embedded video to take me to the channel. Turns out Brillig is uploaded to Linda’s personal YouTube channel, which has a little non-Brillig clutter. It’s much better to create a separate account for your series, unless you have an account with a ton of subscribers.

The clutter could be a non-issue if the episodes were listed in a ‘Brillig’ playlist, instead the episodes were left to fend for themselves. The worst part was the decision to upload a few of the episodes over again, I think in the hopes of getting them additional views.

How your show is ultimately viewed on the web is a potentially easy area to overlook but as a web series it’s important to consider the entirety of the medium. How your show looks on YouTube, or how easy it is to navigate your site are all just as important as any film related area.

Brillig is a thoroughly well written and acted piece of theater produced for the web, but the translation is rough. The bottom line here is to consult with other people, don’t go it alone. The key to success might just lie not in your own talents, but in your ability to attach people more talented than you to your project. When you look at your weakest areas that might not be so difficult.