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In case you missed it…

we’re making a web series inspired by PERSUASION! 

We’ve got a great team of women from the U.S., Canada, & the UK, a nearly complete script, & we can’t wait for the next steps! 

 Got any burning Qs we can A about the project? 💌

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Tbh kinda glad I’m uncultured and don’t know the plot of Middlemarch because then when I’m watching MMTS I’m actually surprised by developments and plot twists

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One quirky but entertaining comedy-mystery web series set in Cambridge University, and put together by some awesome students? Check!

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North & South is one of my favourite stories and the only webseries version I’ve seen has been canceled, so I’m very happy to see that someone else ventured to adapt it to this format.

I already love Maggie and I can’t wait to see more of her (and Jade! and Beth!).

Maggie Hale’s Corner- A New Webseries

Maggie Hale is happy with her life as a journalist in D.C. But when her father makes a tough decision, she ends up following her parents to the industrial town of Milton. There she clashes with Jade Thornton, the uncompromising CEO of a local factory.

Maggie Hale’s Corner is a modern webseries based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘North and South’.  Follow the story through private videos, security footage, and vlogs. 

Make sure to subscribe to both YouTube channels, like and share this trailer,  and use #MHC to join in!

Subscribe to:

Maggie Hale’s Corner for Maggie’s official videos and main content

To Mary for Beth Higgins’ videos for her little sister Mary

Follow the series:

Official Site

Twitter

Facebook

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I blame this whole thing on Jane Austen.

Poe Party rewatch [99/-]

Chapter 11: The Tell-Tale Heart

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I feel angry at myself that I pay so much attention to the production side of webseries. Sometimes I will hesitate to watch something just because it doesn’t look nice enough. Don’t get me wrong, I know that in many cases the story is vlog-like with just talking heads and characters aren’t supposed to be professional filmmakers. I also know how much effort and money goes into making footage look good (I work in advertising & I’m constantly involved in the process of preproduction, shooting, postproduction and so on). I just wish I had a solution how to stop my brain from automatically judging the book by it’s cover. Also, webseries recommendations are welcome (no matter how un/professional the cinematography is). I've just finished Twelfth Grade (very funny and very well adapted), I’m currently watching Middlemarch (I love the dynamics between characters, it feels very natural) and I’m planning to finally watch Away From it All.

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Fred vs. Billie, arriving dramatically in the rain

requested by anonymous

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The Literary-Inspired Webseries Awards Have Some Issues

Now, I’ve been reviewing a lot of series that are up for the LIWAs this year, and I encourage everyone to go nominate and vote for all of these amazing and talented people, because they deserve credit for their work.

However, I have a lot of issues with the awards themselves, and I know that other people share them (often to the point of refusing to participate).

The main issue is the categories themselves. Costume and set design are combined into one award. There’s no music award, no directing award, no cinematography award. Then there’s the gender issue. The genre is progressive enough about gender these days that we should be able to have labels other than “actor” and “actress,” right? As it currently stands, it’s basically impossible to nominate nonbinary or genderfluid actors playing nonbinary or genderfluid characters in any category other than “best chemistry.”

Then there’s the issue of the voting. I like the idea of audience nominations, and even of audience voting, but there’s a clear bias in favor of series with larger fandoms. I don’t want to see one series win eighty percent of the awards again this year, and it’s hard to know how to prevent that and make the voting process fairer while still also keeping it democratic. 

To highlight the problems a little, let’s look at how many people are actually watching what:

Bright Summer Night was the most-viewed webseries of last year, with an average of 7-8,000 views per episode, sometimes many more (this is still way below The Candle Wasters other series, which is in itself an interesting phenomenon).

The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy Season Three, while not eligible for these LIWAs, is the other massive view winner, with similar numbers (so far nothing surpassing about 9,000 views, but it’s still happening in real time and it’s been a while since Season Two).

The Cate Morland Chronicles, one of the best series this year, appears to still have a viewership of fewer than 1500 people, despite being made by the creators of Lily Evans and the Eleventh hour. Nothing Like The Sun has very similar numbers.

The Adventures of Serena Berg, although the owner of a very active fandom, actually has very few viewers – about 200 individuals.

Project Green Gables, another fan favorite that deserves many awards, is currently averaging about 800 views per episode.

Twelfth Grade (or whatever) is a few months old now, so many episodes have massive numbers of views, but the number of individual viewers seems similar to those of The Cate Morland Chronicles and Nothing Like The Sun – around 1600.

Away From It All is being hailed as one of the best literary webseries ever, but it still only gets about 800 views per episode.

(Also, just realized I should mention Poe Party, which has about 40,000 views per episode but seems to belong to a different part of the internet despite clearly being an LIW and starring a lot of the cast of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.)

Why are the numbers so wildly different? Bright Summer Night and The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy have name recognition and budgets, which helps, and that’s where a lot of their views come from. The New Peter Wendy fandom is actually considerably less active than those for a lot of the smaller webseries because so many people from outside of the community are making up the viewers. 

The Candle Wasters still dominate LIW fandom world, but BSN hasn’t gotten much fan attention, and it’s really hard to know how to nominate the actors when there are so many point-of-view characters and when some characters and actors don’t conform to the gender binary.

A lot of people don’t enjoy watching in real time, and so they’ll wait until a whole series is finished and then binge it. This is likely happening with Project Green Gables right now. The views will likely go up massively after the end of the season, just as they did after Nothing Like The Sun finished. The Emma Agenda will likely have a similar viewer situation.

There’s also the question of simply getting caught up – I only discovered The Adventures of Serena Berg three weeks ago, and then I spent several days binging before I could be caught up. 

The third reason I think contributes to low viewership on good series is unfamiliarity with the source text. I haven’t watched Away From It All or Middlemarch, the Series yet because I haven’t read the books they’re based on, even though I know I’ll love both series when I do watch them. I suspect a lot of other people are doing the same thing with those two series, and possibly also with The Adventures of Serena Berg.

So what’s the solution? We can’t say that everyone who watches LIWs has to watch all of them, but perhaps voting in the LIWAs should be done by people who have seen all of the nominees, in order to ensure that voting happens on the basis of quality and not popularity. At this point in time, I’m not sure that’s possible – and I’m not sure it ever will be with the community as it stands now.

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Guess who got back to drawing those webseries inspired letters? (Actually, this sketch is super old, but I’m digitizing it right now.)

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Ooh and I forgot to share the trailer for the webseries I helped out for over the last couple of months! Check it out if you like Cambridge, mysteries, original stories, or comedy!

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I feel like owe you (at least some of you) an apology.

Some time ago I started a postcard project and I swear to God I’m intending to finish it. But some things happened in my life, mostly career-wise*, that make it impossible for the time being. Still, I WILL get back to drawing webseries inspired letters once the overall craziness is over.

* To be specific: first I got commissioned to do an illustrated book cover, then another one, then the whole book with full-spread lettering illustrations and then A PROP FOR A MOVIE (which, if you know me you realise, has been my dream for years) and now I’m stuck at my desk drawing 10 hours a day which makes me very happy but also very exhausted.

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me, I WILL be back SOON.

In the meantime I could use some nice background music recommendations. I already know all the chill playlists available on Spotify by heart.

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I love how much this short brought to the NMTD story: we’ve got some background for the Ode, some more awkward and insecure Claudio, general boys bonding and even a glimpse of Julia showing interest in Claud. In this light many character decisions and behaviours seem more justified or at least understandable. 

also this whole sequence really showed leo how bad claudio is at lying which kind of adds to his ‘justification’ for taking claudio’s side re: hero’s infidelity because he’s witnessed claudio’s anxiety when it comes to this shit and so he’d presume that claudio must be telling the truth 

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I’m so glad it’s here! My stomach hurts right now, because I was laughing so hard.

⭐⭐⭐ Tricking Ben is out now on YouTube! We hope you enjoy it - it’s been years in the making! ⭐⭐⭐

You can listen to the soundtrack by Maxwell Apse on SoundCloud or buy it on Bandcamp 🎵

Note: If you wanted to watch it as part of a NMTD rewatch we’d recommend you watch it between Ep.32 First World Coat-Hangers and Ep.33 TRUTH :D

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If TCW decided to make a third season in the NMTD-verse, which characters would you like them to focus on?

I’d love Meg to be the main vlogger and then Jaquie and Kit as the other two main characters because I feel like Jaquie seemed to enjoy filming +confrontation+ and she would’ve grown close to Meg over the last year, and Kit is Meg’s main tent buddy in Wellington and he’s pretty chill so I don’t actually think he’d be too worried about diving back into the youtube world unlike some other characters