Kelsey, slowly getting back into the dating game, has to learn how to be smooth via text. She's not extremely good at it and this time even her friends seem to struggle to help her.
www.kelseytheseries.com
Kelsey Ep2. "Don't Hit Send"
Christina's Script Wins Award at NY Screenplay Contest
My TV Pilot Script for "The Randoms" has won the Empire Award in the Sitcom division of the 2013 New York Screenplay Contest!
"The Randoms" Logline: Sally, a 37 year old single woman, with an intrusive family, soon realizes her life will never be the same after she becomes a House Mother to a group of international college girls.
The series is a dramedy I came up with & wrote the pilot for back in December of 2010 for a TV Writing Class (which is also where I became friends with Kelsey & Ryan). I've revised the pilot a few times since & I've written a bible mapping out what the whole first season could be (and even where it could go after that). It's a series I originally wanted to try to get in the hands of Netflix execs when they were first talking original programming. With all celebrity-driven series now being picked up, that prospect seems less realistic. But it's still the ideal platform for the show. So I'll keep submitting the pilot script around and hope to get it in the right hands one day. It also made Official Selection at the 2013 Las Vegas Comedy Fest and made the Semi-Finals of the 2012 NEXTV Festival!
If you're interested in reading it & helping get it optioned, feel free to send us a message.
-Christina
Kelsey: Episode 1
Just before 9pm Tuesday night, we premiered the very first episode of our new web series 'Kelsey' titled "Palette Cleanser"!
As I said in my last post, our promo trailer was released on August 20th and got a ton of views from our already existing fans anticipating the show as well as new ones that came from being featured on OneMoreLesbian & AfterEllen. We got over 3,000 full plays and the hits slowed down after the first 2 weeks. But then, on September 7th, we were featured in the BuzzFeed article 8 Lesbian Web Series You Should Have on Your Radar! The article & trailer were exposed to over 60,000 people and in less than a week we got over 5,000 full plays! We've now made it past 9,000! And we're still getting a lot of hits daily! Being on BuzzFeed is not only a huge deal because of the exposure but also because there are at least 5 other lesbian-oriented web series that have been out much longer & have a decent following that could've been on that list, but we made the cut! That's so awesome!
That momentum carried over to our premiere on September 10th and we instantly started getting hits. The amount of positive feedback we got was overwhelming. Comments on facebook, private messages (from some who discovered the series only through BuzzFeed), to even comments on sites that featured the episode, like AfterEllen, the PNT Tv Network & Autostraddle! People have been quoting the episode & reaching out to tell us how much they loved it. The response has been amazing and is only getting better! Kelsey & I, and the rest of our team, are so excited to see the series resonating & connecting with so many different people and it's only been 1 episode! We actually got our first bit of negative feedback on AfterEllen last night, and that's cool too because we know that the show wont be everyone's taste. We also know that the amount of people who like it and get it and want more will outweigh the ones who don't. And, most importantly, we know that a little criticism isn't a bad thing because it gets people talking & debating, which generates more traffic to the page! So if you really wanna help us out in reaching more people, comment! Share what you liked, what you want more of, what surprised you, and maybe even what disappointed you. We wanna hear it all because we're just so excited to be able to share this series with you!
Now the numbers you want to hear & the ones we're REALLY excited about. In the 38 hours that the 1st episode has been live, we've gotten a total of 1,313 full plays!
And the hits keep going up with every hour! Kelsey & I have turned into crazy people who just hit refresh constantly. I kinda feel like I'm back in spring of 2012 when I was running my Kickstarter for 'Summit'. But really, the support is amazing. So thank you to everyone who's watching & sharing the show! To our first fans who were anticipating the show while we were shooting all summer, to the new ones who found out through word of mouth or our recent press coverage, we're so grateful and cannot wait to give you more of Kelsey & her friends!
Episode 2 will air in 2 weeks at 7:30pm on September 24th. We've decided to air the first 5 episodes bi-weekly and then the last 5 (of Season 1) weekly after that, in order to make sure we can have all the episodes as polished as we'd like. It'll always be Tuesday at 7:30pm. We're gonna try to keep the updates & inside info fresh & fun between episodes so that you don't forget how much you definitely want to come back for more! Speaking of which, here's an interview I did with 3 cast members, Daniel, Brennan & Lauren, with the weekly interview-based web series Cinema Couch. It was a kind of spur of the moment thing at an industry party. Also, we plan to go live with KelseyTheSeries.com before the 2nd episode; we'll be posting about that over the coming days on social media. But in the meantime, it will continue to redirect to our blip channel.
So be sure to tune in on the 24th & keep sharing the 1st episode! We've been reaching out to press recently and are crossing our fingers that we'll have more good news to share soon! Just please keep supporting us, the show wouldn't be anything without an audience to share it with!
Thanks again,
Christina
IndieWorks: September Series Recap
If you missed this past Wednesday's IndieWorks, it was a blast! This month we featured six webseries by six local NYC filmmakers and had the largest turnout for IndieWorks thus far, with over 100 guests throughout the night! Thanks to all who joined us for the fun!
The awards go to...
At the end of the evening, we announced our winning filmmakers for both Audience Choice Award & Silver Whiskers Award. The Audience Choice Award is voted upon by all those in attendance, and the Silver Whiskers is judged by the CongestedCat Team based on a system rating 8 categories of Story, Dialogue/Writing, Direction, Acting, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, and Production Value. It goes on to screen at our end of the year Best of Fest event.
For the September 2013 lineup, our winning filmmakers were:
Audience Choice Award: "Concrete Jungle" Animated/Directed by Steven Cartoccio.
Silver Whiskers Award: "Anthology" Directed by Ashley Denise.
Both filmmakers will be featured in our upcoming "IndieWorks: Insider Series", a video series we are featuring on our blog, in which we get to know each filmmaker and learn about their creative processes, insight on the industry, upcoming projects, and more! It's another way for us to further our commitment to getting local New York City filmmakers connected to their local community.
Next Month - 2 nights of films!
Next month at IndieWorks, we're hosting two nights of short films. The first will be October 2nd for another batch of local shorts, and the second night will be October 30th, specifically featuring films themed for Horror and the like in the spirit of Halloween!
'Kelsey, the webseries' Premiered!
At the end of the event, we premiered our upcoming webseries "Kelsey". It wasn't quite the finished product, since we're polishing the sound mix, but we were really happy to share what we've been working on this Summer with our friends (you all)! You'll notice some cast/crew members in the photos above being very much like their character counter-parts.
For the first episode of that love child of ours premiering online this upcoming week, check out www.kelseytheseries.com on Tuesday to be redirected t the blip channel!
-Chris
Pre-production Sneak Peek Video
in Summit
Hello wonderful backers,
Just updating to share a fun new behind the scenes video we put together that chronicles all our big moments in pre-production leading up to our first day of shooting. It includes some never before seen footage from table reads and auditions! We decided to wait to release it until reaching 2,000 Likes on Facebook, and today we reached that goal! Now we're pushing to hit 3,000. We hope you enjoy the video!
We're also putting together another behind the scenes video that includes footage from production! That's something we'll be sharing early next year after we release our teasers & trailer this Fall & Winter.
In other news, we don't have a final cut just yet because Matt, my editor, and I have been going back and forth making a lot of little tweaks. But I'm feeling confident that we should have picture lock (outside of a couple exterior inserts we're getting in January) by the end of this month! The sound mix has started scene by scene, my composer has sent some awesome score samples, and my graphic designer is working on a new title logo! Progress is definitely being made. We hope we'll have more visuals to show you before the end of the year.
Our first festival deadline is in April of next year. So we're working hard to make sure we can have a completely finished & polished cut a couple months in advance for a cast, crew & backer premiere and for at least 1 audience test screening! Needless to say, December-March will be super busy for the Summit team.
In the meantime though, I'll try to keep the updates and inside info fresh & interesting because I truly appreciate your continued support throughout the progress of this film. Thank you again for everything!
We aim to release our first teaser for the film on October 28th, so stay tuned for that!
Best,
Christina