What Constitutes A Season

Since Webseries are still very much like the Wild West, they don't necessarily follow the same models that are displayed by television shows. This brings up a very interesting question: How do you differentiate between seasons?




For In the Can, the answer is simple. We write each season - with a finite number of episodes in blocks. Because of this, we know what we want to happen in any given Season: there is a very clear through line. Since we have the hopes that In the Can will have a life as a half hour show, we break each season down and call it an episode. This "episode" is then made up of parts. When those parts are strung together you have a season. For instance - Season 1 (Episode One) is made up of 7 episodes (or parts). Got it? Wow, it seems much more confusing now that I've written it.

Watch it at: inthecan.ontheleesh.com

For The Sexually, we have a similar game plan. We know the outline of a season and then Jeff writes the episodes and we throw in a bunch of improved sketches. The sketches came out of need to create content while competing with busy schedules. Out of necessity, these created a great place for the boys to really stretch out their characters and provide us with a lot of backstory that we no longer need to jam into a three minute episode. Even though this was our master plan, our story lines have changed as the series has developed. We didn't conceive of the park episodes until we realized we needed a through line. Since we started filming the improved interviews, and the boys brought such intricicacies to their characters, Jeff needed to weave it all together. Thus the park scenes. So...breaking down the sexually so far has been a bit tougher. I look at Season 1 as the Lawyer office episodes and the Central Park episodes. Season 2 are the interviews. Moving forward we have a more clear cut idea of the next couple of seasons - Season 3 brings the boys to therapy. We will still feature both improv and scripted episodes, but they will have a central focus behind them.


Watch it at: www.thesexually.com

This brings us to The In-Betweens of Holly Malone. When we started Holly, we had a lot to learn. She was our flagship show, and we were still getting our feet wet on creating the language of a webseries. The first season of Holly - episodes 1 through 17 have a clear over arching story line. As we progressed, we realized that fast and funny was best and that our audience was willing to overlook certain expositional plot points in exchange for funny jokes. We also learned to keep the episodes current. Now we have jokes about the Oscars, politics and the economy. Right now we're still in Season 2 of Holly, but this season could go on indefinitely. Since we haven't delineated the idea of what marks a season in Holly, we're likely to just keep creating and not worrying about seasons.




Watch it here: hollymalone.ontheleesh.com

However, these theories could all go out the window as each series develops!


In other news, we've been tossing around ideas to combine all three series into an "On the Leesh Webseries Special." We don't have a plot line yet, but our idea is that all the characters would meet and interact. Imagine Holly up against Johnnie or Juice with Phillipa...

Stay Tuned!

Growing Pains: A Web Story

A few years ago we developed the website that you see when you visit www.ontheleesh.com. We were still small at that point - smaller than we are now. We had just one web series under our belt, and only a few episodes at that. We had only completed five short films, and we hadn't begun to span into the realm of instructional videos at all. As we've grown and continued to develop our products, we have pushed our website to the brink.

We are redesigning! We have hired a wonderful programmer, Noah Diamond. He has started to reformat the website piece by piece. Our first goal has been to create a web page for each of our web series that reflects the tone and feel of that show. Noah started with The In-Betweens of Holly Malone, and has since taken on In the Can.

Our next hurdle is our third web series, The Sexually, and then we need to create a more in-depth page for clients to look at for information about our corporate/instructional video services.

After this work is completed, our goal is to reformat the whole website. It's going to be about a six month process. So please check back periodically for new updates.

What You Can Do: How It All Got Started

OK, so here's the story:
One night a few years ago my husband, my sister and I were all watching a brilliant documentary called Why We Fight. The film was basically about The Military Industrial Complex in our country and how the American army is helping to fund the economy of much of the western world. The documentary was intelligent, illuminating, shocking, moving and basically made me want to kill myself dead. In fact, about an hour into this documentary I closed myself in my bedroom and started reading US magazine.

Somewhere into an article about Brangelina I realized that this is a problem. If you want help starting, stopping or ameliorating a global issue, I am basically your target audience. I genuinely want to help, to get involved, to be of use. But instead, I am hiding under my bed reading made up news about hyphenated celebrities.

I realized then that I had been taken over by a illness I like to refer to as Impending Sense of Doom. Perhaps you recognize this feeling? I also felt ISD while reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road and watching the polar bears in An Inconvenient Truth (On the iceberg?! The horror!). ISD comes on when you are presented with an insurmountable issue and you feel like there is nothing you can do about it. And when this happens, I just don't want to know anymore. If i hear about a genocide and there is nothing I can do about it, I don't want to know. If you tell me that thousands of elephants are being slaughtered in front of their families and now they all have post traumatic stress disorder and there is nothing I can do about it, I don't want to know. I realize that personal ignorance and denial is a very poor global policy, and yet when faced with my options I don't know what else to do.

What else do you do?

And then I got an idea. I have access to a production company! I have (albeit limited) producing skills! So maybe there is something I can do.

And that's where the idea came from.

What You Can Do is a web series that takes a pressing social issue (global warming, AIDS in Africa, hunger, etc.) and shows what an individual could DO about if they had a minute, an hour a week or a year. We have started pre-production on our inaugural episode and we hope to launch it in June.

I am not naive enough to believe that a single web series can cool down the planet or end global strife, but it is still an effort at an attempt to connect people to solutions. And who knows - maybe it will reach someone and inspire someone who really can make a difference. Someone with a larger skill set, and a more talented brain than I possess.

And that is something worth putting down US for.

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day

We’ve all been there. A person we’ve been around for quite some time, or at least long enough for some kind of familiarity, yet we don’t know their name. Well, more than ever, particularly in the week following Valentine’s Day, I’m suffering through with very little sensitivity to the parties opposite me in this quandary. You see, I know who you are, luv. I might even know your exact breast size, or the specific way I can please you, I just don’t know your name.

Thank god that this year the celebration of sex and romance fell on the weekend. It enabled me to have two early Valentine romps, one Thursday, one Friday (which quite annoyingly carried into Saturday). On the actual day of celebrating the Saint, I engage in sinning with two lovelies, who seemed very content to share in my prowess. After all, sharing love and sweaty affection is the essence of the day, right? Not leaving out Sunday, I was able to extend myself into yet another moment of debauchery, this one appropriately including loads of chocolate, though not much of it was eaten (well, at least in the way you one would traditionally do so). But I digress.

The following Friday, I was approached by a fantastic ginger, who seemed quite angry with me for not seeing/calling/sexing her on the aforementioned day of affection, which I found odd, because at first glance, I was certain I did not know her. At second glance, a quick peek at the flesh under her left hip bone, revealing a bite mark (mine, to be exact), I understood that I did know her. But, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I did not know her name. And you’d think I would say, that I did not REMEMEBER her name, but that would be a lie. I never knew her name from the start. I don’t find this to be shameful, per say, but I am a bit embarrassed by it. I mean, knowing a woman, in the biblical sense of the term, should preclude that I have a general idea of what to call her when engaged in public or non-sexual situations.

I do have a defense, if you care to hear it. When we met, she would not tell me her name. Soon after, when we engaged in skin-to-skin combat (the reason for the bite mark), she was adamant that I call her Pet.

She had enjoyed my compliance so much that she wanted to see me again, and again, and again. She was quite pissed that I did not call her. So there I was, standing at the bar, apologizing, and saying, Happy Belated Valentine’s Day…whatever your name is.

Juice

Working to Keep the Arts in Education

Over the past six months, On the Leesh has been working with Young
Audiences New York. YANY promotes creativity, essential life skills
and academic achievement through innovative and diverse multi-
disciplinary arts programming for public school children Pre-K through
12 and their families - all of which support the development of a well-
rounded individual.



YANY first asked us to create a promotional video for them last
summer. They asked us to film at a variety of schools where they have
a strong presence and pair that with interviews with YANY staff,
teaching artists, teachers and students. Throughout the last six
months we have grown to love this organization. Their tireless
devotion to take care of the whole child; in school, after school and
with their family.



I think that executive director, John Schulz said it best. "We believe
here at Young Audiences that learning does not stop at the last school
bell of the day. So we have started to go into afterschool programming
to continue the education process afterschool as well as working to
build on our family programs which we are very proud of. Because what
it does is it brings the parent into the school environment and allows
them to experience and create with their children, so that they can
then take it back into the home environment and therefore allowing the
process to continue long after Young Audiences NY isn’t in the picture."



This has been a tough year for all not for profits, but arts programs
in NYC are taking a very hard hit after the budget cuts. Everyone at
OTL hopes that programs like YANY continue to thrive in this city. We
all have heard about the benefits that such programs have on children.
Test scores increase, attendance increases, self confidence increases;
all vital necessities in every child's life.

To learn more about this organization - please visit www.yany.org

Trevor's Big Break

I love many things, but one thing that is extremely high on the list is my love for craft beer.

One of my favorite breweries, “Dogfish Head,” sponsors their very own “Off-Centered Film Festival,” that is held at Alamo Draft House in Austin TX each year. The festival’s theme is the underdog so I decided that I would write a short film about a down-and-out chicken mascot who can’t get any work until he drinks Dogfish head.

On the Leesh was gracious enough to agree to help me produce this fine piece of work, as it would serve as a learning tool for me to become more adept at our process of making a film here at OTL. I would write, direct and be the executive producer, while Alicia and Julie would guide me along the way.




Since I decided to do things through On the Leesh there were steps that had to be taken that you wouldn’t normally do for a home movie. There were SAG waivers to fill out, budgets to make, Writer’s Guild papers to complete and a whole bunch of scheduling and planning.

Many thanks to Alicia, Julie, Matt, Jessie and especially my husband Greg for being in the film today and doing a fantastic job!!! Greg you’re the best Trevor Birdie out there.

what do you do when a drive dies?

okay so we've all been in that situation right, we're working on
something and then the computer starts to run slowly. maybe your
hands start to sweat at this point, or your heart rate gets elevated,
but you think - i've been here before. so we restart. we've been
taught since we started using computers - when all else fails,
restart. but what do you do when the restart doesn't speed anything
up? instead other applications begin to run more slowly. at this
point, i get tunnel vision - i feel like martin brody when he sees the
shark for the first time on land and at sea.

www.youtube.com/watch

regardless of which cinematic legend you associate with, you probably
start to freak the bleep out. i do. a lot. i start to verbalize all
sorts of words we're not supposed to verbalize, but then something
happens. a moment of calm comes over me, i hear the angels sing, and
i remember no sweat, i'm meticulous about backing up. so you plug in
your back up drive, but still things run slowly. now i contemplate
homicide (because, yes i believe that judgement day is real, and the
machines will rise up against me - so me killing my computer is a type
of homicide). however, i realize, this homicide is very expensive.
so i call my tech guy.

i use mac daddy with tim ransom. he's great - helps me through a
variety of pickles. first he stops me from crying, and then we get
down to business. nine times out of ten - my computer has just gone
rogue. how does this happen? how does your computer get corrupted.
i'm not a tech person at all, but i don't think it's too much to ask
that something that we've spent a lot of money on, can run smoothly.
okay so my yo-yo gets tangled, i get it. a $4,000 piece of equipment,
should cook me dinner. for real.

i'm in the middle of this predicament for the second time in three
months. why haste though forsaken me? i am the uber prepared,
covering all bases.

i hope that my mac daddy can fix my mac s*&%%y. just as i'm writing
this, another drive has gone rogue.

DAMN YOU!!!

Official Finalist: Las Vegas International Film Festival

We've just been notified that Denim has been chosen as an official finalist for the Las Vegas international Film Festival! Although it will not screen at the festival it is one of only 20 films chosen in each category to receive this honor!

We'd like to thank the Las Vegas Film Festival for this extraordinary honor!

Check them out at: www.lvfilmfest.com

New Short Film: Kung Pow Wow!

New to the festival circuit is On the Leesh Productions's short film Kung Pow Wow. To say it's a short film is not really letting on about just how short this film is... it comes in at just under 3 minutes. Our motto: get in, make 'em laugh, get out!

Here's the description:

Dating is difficult, especially when you order in. "Kung Pow Wow" is a comedic tale about an argument between a couple when the boyfriend isn't sensitive to the needs of his girlfriend's taste buds.

We Have Our Man

Yesterday's auditions for the short comedy, "Milestone" went fabulously well!

We saw some really great and talented actors. Ultimately though, a very friendly face won us over with an outstanding read of the role, Billy. We are happy to announce that Brian Patacca will be playing the role in the movie.



www.brianpatacca.com

More to come about who will be playing the female lead, Denise. Hopefully we'll have that news in just a couple of weeks.

We're halfway there though!