This week on #WebSeriesWednesday I met Chloe & Zoe, two talented filmmakers who act really bitchy when put in front of a camera and given lines to recite.
Sometimes we get a little ahead of ourselves. Sometimes we start thinking about the shows we want to make – the explosions, the stunts, the amazing vistas and the myriad of locations – and lost in that thought is the idea for the show we can make.
The Chloe And Zoe Show is everything a web series should be. It’s smart: it’s well written, it’s simple, and it is unique.
The first thing I noticed in episode one was the static camera angle. It kind of pissed me off actually – I like dynamic shows, but the scene was simply Chloe and Zoe lounging on lawn chairs debating how much money they would need to be paid in order to agree to do different types of porn. How much camera movement does that really need?
That question was answered the moment they moved the camera – all in the purpose of selling the big joke. You only need to move the camera when you actually need to. The joke worked specifically because the camera was static the whole time. Moving the camera anymore might not have improved the show, and maybe could have made it worse.Locking down the camera saves you time, and in part contributed to the small production team’s ability to pop out one episode every other week – start to finish.
Of course the camera is not always static, as the show goes on the production becomes a little bit more complex, zooming in to sell the episode “Stoned” and cutting between three cameras to evoke absurdity in a later episode.
The idea here is that the production felt insanely efficient, from setting up most of its plot lines in a two shot on the sofa, to limiting the number of major characters to four, to blowing the majority of its production budget on a Justin Beaver blow up doll.The reason this all works is because Chloe & Zoe are entertaining, the jokes are mostly funny, the characters interesting and perhaps most importantly they are different. C+Z are weird, and kinda mean, which means that they do a lot of kinda mean, weird things. That works GREAT on the web.
The web is a different – new – medium, and as such shows that resemble films or television probably don’t work as well as they could. C+Z is weird enough that I can’t picture it on tv and well made enough to stand out above most other online comedies.
Being different is the one thing that will work online – if there are enough people that actually like it. That I can’t really find another show like this one is evidence that I and others will return as fans in season two, and that some of us would miss the show if it went away.
That’s the only way to survive.
You can and should watch The Chloe and Zoe Show on their straight to the point web page http://chloeandzoeshow.com