A few month's back, Christina & Kelsey were invited to participate in a Panel tour for LGBT Web Series. Their first screening and panel were at the Cinema Q Film Festival in Colorado, which Kelsey recapped here. Our next is at the Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film Festival today at 1pm! Unfortunately, neither of us could attend to speak on behalf of the series, but episode 5 will screen and hopefully cause an increase in our series fans! We hope to be able to attend and participate in future panels/festivals as they come up. If you're in the area, you should definitely attend this one, not just to see "Kelsey," but the other funny and well-executed series, and to support the creators as they speak about their work.
Kelsey: The Webseries
Web Series are the New Black - Cinema Q Recap
Christina and I were invited to be a part of a panel tour on web series a couple of months ago. Kieran Turner, who writes and produces Wallflowers, had reached out to Christina because he had watched our show and thought we’d be a great addition to his panel.
We thought it was a great opportunity for us to expand our audience and meet other filmmakers.
Christina and I are planning on attending as many panels together as possible. This one, however, was scheduled on our original shooting dates for ‘Not Our Living Room’ and ‘We Had Plans’, so Christina encouraged me to go on my own to represent. And who would say no to that? That = Christina. No one says ‘no’ to Christina. Just kidding. I was thrilled to be able to go.
Cinema Q is a Denver based film festival in its sixth year. It is sponsored by The Center and Out Front Colorado, and the panel took place in the beautiful Denver Film Society building. Ernie Quiroz is the programming manager and he coordinated most, if not all, of our travel.
I flew in to Colorado on Friday, July 25th. I’d been patiently awaiting this day, because a) I’m always excited to meet other filmmakers, b) I love anything LGBTQ and c) I’d never been to Denver and I’d heard lovely things about it; I couldn’t wait to explore.
I was the first of my panel to get to Denver. The Film Festival organizers had a volunteer pick me up at the airport. His name was Matt and he was wonderful. I ended up taking the ride with two other filmmakers, Dan and Antonio, who shot Mala Mala, which opened at TriBeCa Film Festival and celebrates the trans community in Puerto Rico.
During the ride Matt gave us a bit of background information on all of the myths surrounding the Denver airport, which made the ride go by quickly.
After settling in at the hotel, two of the four other panelists arrived at the hotel.
Kieran, the organizer or our panel and creator of “Wallflowers” and Jason Cicci, who is the creator/writer/actor of “He’s with Me” arrived at the same time. I had watched both of their shows and was a fan. Both are relatable, down-to-earth comedies about life, love and daily tribulations with LGBT elements.
We all hit it off immediately. I wasn’t expecting such genuinely sweet and hilarious individuals (because Hollywood…), but we could not have had a better time. Kieran, Jason and I got a bite to eat and had a couple of drinks, shared filming stories and personal anecdotes.
Later, we all got a ride to the Film Society. At the building we met up with the final panelist Rick Copp, the writer/producer/actor of “Where the Bears Are”. He was the perfect addition to our team. He’s a super entertaining individual and he has a lovely loud laughter that fills a room.
The panel began on time at 7pm. There were between 20 and 35 people there. I forgot to count. Personally, I thought it was closer to 35, the others thought it was closer to 20… so I’m giving you the range.
Sebastian La Cause, from Hustling, had to cancel last minute, so he wasn’t there in person, but all of our shows got to air one episode.
I got very nervous as ‘Kelsey’ was about to go on. It was weird, because I only get that way when I have to speak in front of strangers, and that wasn’t the case. It is a very nerve wracking, but also humbling experience to see your work on the big screen. Luckily, Rick was sitting right next to me and was laughing throughout the screening, so that boosted my confidence enough to feel comfortable speaking about our show on the panel.
I did miss Christina, though. A lot.
The questions individuals asked were great. They really seemed interested in the medium and what the mechanics behind the scenes were. It did appear that all of us had self funded the first season, and every season the learning curve improved.
As for what the future of web TV is, I don’t think we came to a clear conclusion. More data is needed, more success stories and more outlets. We all had the consensus we’d stay with web, since it’s affordable and we can tell our stories the way we want to, but as far as how to fund projects, there are many ways to do it, but none of them are easy or consistent.
After the panel the four of us went out to drinks to the ‘Shag Lounge’. It was great. I was exhausted (jet lag from the 2 hour difference). We had a couple of good laughs and parted ways.
I can’t wait for the group to meet Christina and to do more panels. I’m also addicted to all the shows now (yay binge watching!). I will say Rick had the best tagline for his show: “Where the Bears Are, it’s like Golden Girls meets Murder She Wrote with big hairy gay men.” Who doesn’t want to watch that?
All in all, it was one of the greatest experiences I’ve had career-wise. And I can’t wait to do it all again. Next time with my partner in crime, Christina Raia.
We finished our thank yous & have some news!
Hello all our wonderful supporters,
We hope you had a great week. We waited to update because we wanted to finish up all our thank you cat photos and personalized jingles for each of our public supporters, and were finally able to do that today! Hear our final jingle:
I think it's safe to say that I'll be taking quite the break from snapping pictures of my cats. I'm curious to see how long that lasts though. If you missed your thank you photo, you can find it amongst all 111 of them on our Facebook page. You can find yours or any other $50+ supporters' personalized jingle on our Facebook page as well. Kelsey got creative with each and every one, and I've definitely enjoyed listening to all 42 of them. I'm sure you will too!
Also, as promised in my last update, here's our group photo from our celebratory dinner last Friday night. We all had a blast.
Some more exciting news is that our web series 'Kelsey' has been invited to screen at the Cinema Q Festival in Denver next weekend and Kelsey is being flown there to speak in an LGBTQ Web Series Panel! This is the first of hopefully many screenings and Panels we'll have throughout the next year because we were invited to do a Panel tour of LGBTQ Film Festivals. We'll keep you updated on the progress!
Lastly, I was interviewed by FilmSyrup.com a couple weeks ago and the Q&A was released this week. Feel free to give it a read if you'd like to know a little more about CongestedCat Productions.
Thank you all again for your support. We're working hard to make you proud. More updates soon!
Christina
Our Interview on New York Cine Radio (Seed&Spark Update 8)
Kelsey & I were guests on New York Cine Radio last night. As I mentioned in my third update, I've been on the show twice before, but this was Kelsey's first appearance. We had a ton of fun and would love it if you listened to our interview. It's the first 40 minutes of the episode. We start off touching base on the progress of my feature Summit and talking about "Kelsey" (the webseries) a little. Then we focus on the 2 shorts we're crowdfunding for during the rest of the interview. We do jump around a bit to other topics though, notably about women in film and roles for women, and why I chose Seed&Spark over Kickstarter. Give it a listen if you'd like further insight into us and our work.
We do stick around for the rest of the show where we chime in with our opinions on "Community" and then witness the guys choose their Star Wars characters for a role playing game they'll be starting on the next episode, which I have to admit was quite entertaining and rather 'Community-esque' in its own right. Listen here & enjoy!
We also appeared in yesterday's episode of the Us vs Film Podcast. That one was just their 5 minute 'Meet the Filmmakers' segment. It was very brief and didn't offer much context for the films, but hopefully their listeners will take an interest in our campaign. We appreciate that they featured us regardless.
We're so close to 35% funded and are pushing to reach 40% today, so please keep spreading the word. We can't do it without more generous people like you behind us. Thank you again for supporting and believing in us!
Tweet of the Day: Hear @craia9 & @aspirethis discuss their @seedandspark campaign on @NewYorkCine http://ow.ly/yrgO9 . Then support: http://ow.ly/yrgVS
Have a great day,
Christina
'Kelsey' Press & Interview Wrap-Up
Now that "Kelsey" has officially come to a close, we thought we'd wrap up all the awesome interviews & press we got during the show's run.
In addition to having all our episodes featured on AfterEllen, One More Lesbian, and the PNT TV Network since our premiere, we started getting featured on SheWired about halfway through the season as well, with incredibly positive reviews & comments! We were the number 1 show on PNT TV for every single episode, and we were featured on a couple wonderful lists on AfterEllen with comparisons to SNL and other Primetime shows.
Our first big buzz was actually on BuzzFeed itself with the 8 Lesbian Web Series you should have on your radar, as mentioned in the pilot episode post. We were also on National Television, though it did not end up being as cool as it originally seemed. That experience can be read about in Christina's words here.
The biggest news to announce is that the series made the cut for Indiewire's Critic List: 2013's Best Comedy Web Series, and 18 More You Need to Watch Now! We then were featured on Indiewire again with their list 15 Women-Driven Web Series That Could Be the Next 'Broad City' (which was an exciting comparison because Broad City started as a no-budget web series until Amy Poehler took it to Comedy Central).
We got some amazingly positive reviews along the way:
Eli David of the WebVee Guide reviewed us after binge watching the series.
New York Cine Radio talked about the first episode in their 89th Podcast episode from 15:00 to 28:30 and gave the series 4.5 out of 5 'Sandwiches.'
And we did some fun interviews:
Christina & Kelsey answer some questions by Fetch of Fetch & Femme.
Christina & Kelsey video chat with PNT TV creator Tamara Spicer.
Kelsey did a Q&A with Kings River Life Magazine.
We only featured the highlights in this post. For a full list of our press, check out the Kelsey Facebook Page.
Although there will be no additional episodes of the series, we hope that audiences will continue to discover and enjoy the show. If we get any new press for the series, we'll be sure to keep you updated. (We may actually be doing a Panel tour at LGBT Film Festivals later this year to talk about the show & our upcoming work. So, we will definitely have news on that, and look forward to meeting some of our out-of-town fans!)
If you're unaware of the fact that we wont be continuing the series, feel free to read our last post for details; and be sure to check out our Seed&Spark campaign for our 2 new short films launching on June 10th. As said in the post, we'll be giving away our outlines for what would have been Seasons 2 & 3 of 'Kelsey,' including the Series Finale script to all fans who give at least $10!
Thank you again for supporting us and watching the show!
-Christina, Kelsey & the Team.