The Shaw Brothers Set To Premier Web Series Fall 2013
The Shaw Brothers are a dynamic duo of film making brothers from Washington, DC. Selton & Langston Shaw are the founders of Changing The World Films and the creators of the upcoming web series, Famous Last Words. Jessica Ann Mitchell recently interviewed The Shaw Brothers about their upcoming comedic web series.
JAM: How you did you get into creating films?
Selton: My brother and I began this journey in 2006. We won a writing competition sponsored by Axe Body Spray.
Subsequently, we were able to get our first short film produced by Axe Body Spray. We went out to LA and we shot our first short. That premiered at the American Black Film Festival in Miami in 2006. That film subsequently went on a 10 city screening tour and that sort of burst us into this industry. After that, we made additional short films and feature films and we have been creating ever since.
JAM: What gave you all the idea to go into the world of making a web series?
Langston: There are a couple of reasons we wanted to do a web series, one being that it was a new challenge for us. We’ve done some shorts, a documentary, a full length feature film. We wanted the challenge of creating content on a consistent basis that followed a specific story line over many different episodes.
Also with that, we wanted to get more content out there so people could be knowledgeable about the Shaw brothers and Changing The World Films . Web series offered us those opportunities and challenges to stretch our limits and go beyond what we’ve already done.
JAM: Tell us a little bit about Famous Last Words. How did you come up with the idea for the show?
Selton: My brother and I, in our pursuit to try to bring our ideas to life, we came up with this idea of a computer program engineer. Essentially, he had a great job making 6 figures, had a condo downtown, had a beautiful girlfriend and then one day everything goes horribly wrong. He gets fired, he loses his job, his girlfriend breaks up with him and what happens is he has to move in with his cousin because he wasn’t saving. And he gets thrust into this underground world of online video games specifically playing John Madden football. Football being and American sport and John Madden video game being the highest grossing sports video game of all time; There are so many people that play this video game out there, in the millions.
So our title character Donald, essentially plays different people in all walks of life from lawyers to doctors and so forth. We tell this comedic journey of this one life that he had and this new life sort of being thrust into this new undertaking.
One thing to mention about Famous Last Words is that at the end of every episode, to play off the title, our main character has some parting famous quotes that he says which sort of culminates everything that happens on the episode. We do it in a very comedic and entertaining way.
JAM: Are you pre-taping the episodes or are you taping each episode as you go along in the series?
Selton: We’re going shoot it like how you would shoot a regular TV episode where you shoot a couple of episodes and release it weekly and continue to shoot until we complete the series.
It won’t be live, that’s too risky but we’re going to shoot a couple episodes at a time, 3-4 episodes at a time and release it once per week, like a regular show. That way we can give people an episode and let them salivate for the next one to come.
JAM: How many episodes do you expect for season one and will there be multiple seasons?
Selton: Right now we have scheduled a 12-episode season. Honestly, we haven’t fully discussed the potential for a season 2. I think as it stands right now, we’re going to shoot the first season and see the response of the online community. How they receive and embrace these episodes will sort of map out if we’re going to do a second season.
JAM: Are you going to release on the web series your previous YouTube channel or are you trying to build a new fan base?
Langston: We are trying to use our current fan base and have it posted on our YouTube channel. But we are also thinking of other ways to promote and reach communities or people that we may not have been in touch with.
We’re definitely going to have the people who have been supporting us and following us. But we’re still figuring out different methods of reaching out to the masses. We want to thank you guys for helping us promote it and reach a different community we may not have been in touch with.
JAM: Definitely that’s what we’re here for. Web series are becoming an emerging and leading force for entertainment and education on online, why do you think this is happening and what future do you see for web series?
Selton: I think there are no holds barred for the internet. Just the fact that independently you can release something on the web and potentially have millions of people viewing is a really powerful thing.
I think a lot of producers who are getting into web series and web content, they see that. They see that they can reach different audiences and demographics on the web and I think in the next five years you’re going to see even more of an explosion of original content on the web. It’s a wave of people who generally wouldn’t see your work, are able to view it free of charge and tell other people.
It’s one of those things that is really going to take off in a tremendous way.
Langston: Just to add on to that, I think what we see now with some of these major networks showing their TV shows online, after their premier, web series are having an impact on them. They’re changing their business model and how they’re showing their content. I think it comes from people’s ability to go on Youtube and watch a web series or go to a website and watch a web series.
They are trying to compete with this generation that all they do is go on the computer and look for interesting content to watch. And web series in the next few years are really going to be the way that people go to watch TV.
JAM: How do you go about creating a new episode and generating ideas without it getting stale or monotonous?
Selton: I think for us our strategy has always been originality and versatility. With this particular project, “Famous Last Words”, we wanted it to be original. So we usually flesh out the entire series before we’re going to shoot it.
That way you have a general direction of where you want to go and where you’re going to go. The exciting thing about “Famous Last Words” is that you’re really not going to know what to expect. In terms of having a web series, the doors are open to get as creative, as you want. For example if a network show is shooting something like Friends, you know what you’re going to get with Friends. They’re going to go on these little adventures across the hall with their roommates or whatever the case may be. But with a web series, us being the creators we really have the range to flex our creativity because we get to design and craft the series as we see fit. Also being it being two of us, we can sit down and flesh ideas out together.
We realize that if we really feel good about it, usually the masses gravitate towards it and we have seen that success in our past work.
Langston: Just to echo that, we’ll sit down and we will go out and essentially structure out the entire season. Selton’s the writer and he’ll write it episode by episode. We’ll just get together and go through each episode and say, “That’s not funny take it out,” or “That’s good we definitely need to keep it in.” We’ll go through line by line for every character until we think it is as funny as it can be, as entertaining as can be, as serious as it can be at that point to make sure we’re touching all those different emotions. We want to ensure that it’s consistent across the lines of what we’re trying to say.
JAM: The cast and crew are essential for any web series to be successful how did you form your team, besides working with your brother?
Selton: Ha! I was going to say, there’s never a doubt about who is going to star in the role. My brother is now a seasoned actor with a feature film under his belt and multiple short films and numerous films festival but there’s a small team that we have of in-house actors. Some of them are people we worked with in the past and we’re also trying to find new talent.
There is an extreme amount of talent in this area, so we try to tap into that and we try to write in such a way that we can bring out characters to their full potential. Just trying to tap into the incredible resource base of talent we have here in terms of actors and make sure that we get the right fit for the particular role that we’re going to portray on the series.
Langston: From the production side, we have a team of camera men, lighting guys, and sound guys that we’ve worked with on a few other projects. We’ll constantly work with them and add to it or maybe subtract depending on the size of the set that we have. But we have a core group on the production side as well.
Once we have a schedule defined, they’re willing and able to come help us do all the production work, all the shooting and some of the logistics as well.
JAM Do you have a date scheduled for when the web series is going to premiere?
Selton: As of right now we don’t have a hard date but it will be coming out in the fall.
JAM: Did you have any news or announcements?
Langston: We recently completed a feature film last summer. It premiered at the Urban Suburban Film festival in Philadelphia and it got a tremendous and great response. We’re actually going to have a premiere in DC this summer. The feature film is Dream Cash.
Selton: Dream Cash was the closing night film at the Urban Suburban film festival. The movie is about a reality TV show and the various contestants competing to win $100, 000 to start the business of their dreams. It’s a comedic take on reality TV, complete with a wide variety of reality TV cast members competing for this prize and manipulative producers. It just kind of shows what really goes on in reality TV.
It was definitely well received and like Langston said we’ll be screening it this summer. All of the information about the screening event in DC is going to be available on all of our various sites.
Learn more about Changing The World Films at ChangingWorldFilms.com.
Website http://www.changingworldfilms.com
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