Tag: film

Five or So Questions on Loading Ready Run

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Brendan “Beej” Dery from Loading Ready Run about all of the amazing stuff Loading Ready Run does as a comedy troupe that touches on gaming and various geek media. Their community really impresses me, and I wanted to talk to someone in the leadership about the work they do and how they created the space. Check it out!

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An illustration of a man with dark hair in a purple collared shirt.
An illustration of Beej.

For the uninitiated, what is Loading Ready Run (LRR) to you and what is your role within the organization? What makes you excited about LRR?

I’m Brendan “Beej” Dery and I work as the Business Manager for LoadingReadyRun. LoadingReadyRun is a comedy troupe that does all of their work on the Internet, focussing on sketches, streaming, podcasts, and playing video games and tabletop games, including a lot of time playing Magic: the Gathering. Working for LRR is still work, but it’s a lot of fun too.

As Business Manager, I spend my time working on managing our merchandise and taking care of office admin whatnot, but I also get to spend time acting in sketches or streaming games, so there’s more variety to my job than just sitting at a desk. What gets me excited about LRR is meeting people who enjoy what we do and seeing them in Twitch chat or in our Discord (http://discord.gg/lrr/), talking about the stuff we make, but also just interacting with each other in general. The fact that we’ve built – and are still building – such a great, supportive community of people makes me really proud to be a part of something so positive to so many people.

You seem to have a caring focus, ethically. As a group that’s run their shows for so long, how do you work towards maintaining high quality and variety while not burning yourselves to dust?

I think we keep ourselves honest by listening to each other and to our fans. Integrity is one of those things that you can cultivate for a long time, but lose it immediately. So we try to train ourselves to be better people. It’s not about “acting” a certain way, either. It’s easier to write comedy that doesn’t punch down when you have the kind of mindset that doesn’t punch down. That’s not to say we haven’t messed up before, or that we won’t mess up in the future. But I do think we do our best to acknowledge mistakes, listen to each other, and try to learn to be better.

We’ve also been making a ton of content for over fifteen years, so it’s not as if some of us haven’t felt burned out every so often. As the group has gotten bigger and taken on more projects, we’ve also been having regular meetings to plan our production and streaming schedules, to plan editing, and to write upcoming sketches and pre-recorded bits. That’s helped a lot, but we’ve also adopted a new rule – “Get to 80%” – at our last annual “take-stock” meeting. “Getting to 80%” means to limit the amount of projects we do, so that we’re operating at 80% of our maximum capacity. That way, when special projects pop up throughout the year, we’ll be able to do them (as opposed to missing great opportunities to do something fun or lucrative).

Like, Road Quest was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work, a lot of time spent, and a lot of money. And with all of the other projects we’re still working on, it’s taken longer to finish Road Quest than I think we’d like, and that’s meant having to do things like temporarily putting me on CheckPoint+ or putting Watch + Play on hiatus. Getting to 80% has helped inform some of our production scheduling and I think it’s going to get better and better for us as time goes on.

Experience and specialization has also helped a lot. Graham and Paul have been doing this for a long time, and over the years, they’ve trained new people to do some of their tasks. And that’s let everyone learn new things in their specialties to improve how we make stuff and entertain people. And as we get more experience, I think we’re getting better – and faster – at our jobs.

For those that make such decisions at LRR, how do you determine who to have on which shows, and how do you handle any problems that you encounter with personality conflicts, ethical concerns, and so on?

A lot of content is driven by the people that are interested in making it in the first place. We don’t assign people to do shows – people volunteer. We’re trying to change up the ensemble shows more and more (like AFK, The Long Game, or Friday Night Paper Fight), because we think the variety helps keep things more entertaining. When it comes to pre-recorded content like Friday Nights or commodoreHustle, that’s driven by the needs of the script or by how simple we need to make the filming process.

Like, we don’t have time to film more than a six-minute commodoreHustle during a LoadingReadyLIVE filming day, so it’s usually solved during the writing meeting that happened weeks before. Who hasn’t had an episode focus on their character yet, how are they getting into trouble, who else should be involved, etc. As far as streaming or other pre-record content goes, it’s like I’ve said previously – if someone wants to do a thing, we see if we can support it. Not all stream ideas will ever make it to air, and not all pre-record ideas are going to get filmed. But if an idea has a champion, it’s going to get a lot further.

We all like working with each other, but that also doesn’t mean there’s no conflict. It’s hard for me to address a question about personality conflicts, because I just straight-up don’t like having them. And I want to keep the focus of LRR on what we produce for people to enjoy. When it comes to solving conflicts between people, it’s down to Graham and Paul, largely, as they’re the co-presidents of the company. Same goes for ethical concerns – most of us in the office will become aware of a problem pretty fast and then we’ll end up talking about how we’re going to address it. We don’t always agree on how to handle things, but again, it’s a business and an organization and everyone wants our decision and our message to be unified, so that no one is confused about our position. We owe that to our audience.

The Loading Ready Run logo, which is three small dots on the left, one large circle on the right, and then an arrow on the right of the arrow with the words LoadingReadyRun in pixelated text.

What kind of content do you most enjoy bringing to streaming, whether it’s games or sketches or larger things like Road Quest, and how do you make the decision for what’s “good for TV,” so to speak?

I like making stuff that focuses on our strengths as entertainers – we’re funny, we’re positive, we’re doing our best. Road Quest was amazing but it’s not the kind of thing we can make all the time. Logistically, it requires a ton of planning and effort and funding just to get to Day 0, and then we have to start making the thing. And after that, there’s a lot of post-production, and that involves even more people. And the impact that a large project like Road Quest has on the rest of the production team is easy to see – reorganizing streams, allocating editing resources, etc. But I think it’s exactly the kind of content we want to bring to our fans. Road trip shows have been done before, but I think us doing the road trip show brings that kind of “surprise and delight” that we hope keeps everyone entertained.

Overall, I’m happy that we’ve been able to split our production into a wider variety of things. In the early days – when I was just an actor coming in on weekends – I wasn’t sure how all-year streaming was going to benefit us, but looking at it now, it’s clear that providing the variety has allowed us to attract more people to work with LRR and let us have a lot more immediate fun with our audience. And I think that’s what helps us decide what’s good for TV: is this going to be interesting or fun for us to make, and do we think that the majority of our fans are going to respond positively to it. And then after that, can we afford the money to make this, and can we afford the man-hours to make it. We’re still a business and we still want our employees to be able to make rent every month.

You may be best known for your charity event, Desert Bus for Hope, which is an annual playthrough of the Desert Bus video game for the Child’s Play charity. It seems like a real logistical challenge! What has kept you coming back to this event every year, and what does the planning entail for each of you? How do you keep safety in mind?

In order to answer this question properly, I’d have to go into a ton of detail about different departments and the number of planning meetings we have and managing a project that’s grown to involve fifty people on-site, as well as multiple people from around the world making contributions in other less visible ways.

So instead, forgive me for answering it purely from my perspective and involvement. I started doing Desert Bus for Hope during DBfH 5, and I showed up because I knew LRR and I wanted to be up there, performing for people and having fun. The charity aspect didn’t enter my mind. These days, I’m the de facto Zeta Shift producer, meaning that I take my job of getting Desert Bus from midnight to 06:00 very seriously – and I do that by trying to not to care too deeply about it. There’s a “screw-it-let’s-do-it-live” aspect to DBfH that I’ve always loved and if we ever lost that, I’d probably be done. So I try to bring that sense to the Zeta Shift by prepping only a few things, but mostly just seeing where it goes. It’s fun to come in at the start of the week and see “$0.00” and then see “$700,000” at the end of the week and just marvel that so many people came together to raise that money in exchange for a week of sleepless broadcasting. That’s pretty amazing.

Everyone else has different feelings about DBfH and I’m glad they do. It means that everyone found a piece of the show that they love and want to preserve, and I think it means that the bus is always going to keep running.

As for safety? There’s enough people on-site that safety is critical. We tape our cables to the floor, we leave as much room as we can to move around the equipment, we have food volunteers that do their best to adhere to FoodSafe guidelines. We also try to look for volunteers who have first aid training or better – we’ve even had off-duty paramedics on-staff before. While we mess around on camera, the audience doesn’t want to see any of us choke or break a bone. So it’s very important for us to be as safe as possible.

What are the tools and decision-making you consider essential as a streamer and a performing professional in games that you would recommend others ensure they have before starting streaming on their own?

The most important tools are also good life advice:

Grow a thicker skin.

Get a good emotional support system.

Breathe.

Your time may not be worth that e-mail in your inbox.

We lucked out when we started because we had already built a good community from our sketch comedy videos and from Desert Bus for Hope. So don’t tie your hopes and dreams of streaming fame to what we did – we had to make videos for over ten years and also engage with our audience in our forum and try to build things that would keep that relationship growing. Unless you have done some amazing stuff already, you are not going to step into an instant audience.

But when you are getting started, you will have to hustle. You’ll probably need a day job, or a partner with a day job. You’ll need to project integrity and confidence – and that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to change your mind about things, but you’ll need to show your audience that you’re trying to do the right thing and that you’ll willing to admit when you’re wrong. And that might also mean not taking every opportunity that comes into your inbox because it’s a quick $200. Or maybe it’ll mean that you need to take it to make rent, and you let your audience know what’s up about that.

Being a streamer or influencer or social media whatever is a rough gig these days. Not everyone can do it. And it’s not an easy ride. But whatever you do, be honest to yourself about what you want to do and why you want to do it. Play the games you want, host the streams you want, talk about the subjects you want. Don’t pander to your audience, but don’t ignore them either. Be willing to put in the work to push your career forward, but also – and this is really hard – be ready to recognize if it’s not working out. Maybe you can pivot to a different kind of stream. Maybe you’ll need to find partners to stream with. Maybe you’ll need to stop altogether.

The illustrated Loading Ready Run cast posing dramatically in front of the logo.

I believe firmly in leading in place and skills transfer, and it seems like LRR does too! How do you each act as leaders in your own roles at LRR, and how do you handle skills transfer with the team?

This is kind of a difficult question, actually. With hiring so many people, we’ve been trying to provide training and also write documentation so that we can have processes and procedures to refer back to, if employees have questions about e.g. running tech on a podcast, or what style guidelines we use for our videos.

This is new territory for us, because LoadingReadyRun hasn’t had to do this before. With the amount of work we’re already doing, finding time to document what we do is really hard. BUT! We have recognized that it’s important and we’re trying to find ways to do it.

We’ve also established more people in specific roles. Graham and Paul are both co-Presidents of Bionic Trousers Media Inc – our operating company. James acts as our scheduler and producer for the bulk of our shows. Kathleen is our Managing Editor and also performs the vast majority of our writing. And I’m the business manager, meaning my eye is on the bottom line (and also on merchandise development).

Everyone is trying to involve team members with more projects and teach them more skills, but given the nature of our office and how we do business, we don’t do things like seminars or group teaching. The most instruction you would get was by working on-the-job – here’s how you hold a boom correctly, here’s how you operate the camera, here’s how we use J-cuts when editing, etc. I’m hoping that developing some documentation will help make training easier for both the trainers and the employees.

We absolutely have a long way to go, but I’m optimistic that we’ll get there – especially if we can get to 80% first.

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Thanks so much to Beej for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out all that LoadingReadyRun has to offer!

Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings: They Are Not What You Think

Content Warning: I’m going to talk about trigger warnings here, so if you don’t like hearing about that, click away now.

Hey humans! 

I want to talk about what content and trigger warnings are, and why they are important. Let’s first establish what these things are:

Trigger Warnings:

Trigger warnings are related to psychological triggers, like those from abuse and trauma. Triggers are things like sights, scents, sounds, and sensations that can produce flashbacks, painful memories, or anxiety/panic reactions in people who have experienced abuse and/or trauma.

For example: I have been sexually assaulted. When I watch movies, play games, or read books that have sexual assault in them, I can become panicked, stressed, and uncomfortable. This feeling can last anywhere from a minute or so to days or weeks. Some people I know are triggered by scents like smoke, sounds like yelling, or sights like specific violence in media or even something like being on snowy roads in winter.

Triggers are not something of cowardice. They are a psychological reaction to traumatic experiences of someone’s past. No one can define the severity of someone else’s trauma. Even when it comes to professionals, they can’t read someone’s mind. When someone is triggered, they can have complex and extreme reactions, or just some stress and a desire to remove themselves from the situation.

Content Warnings:

Content warnings have some things in common with trigger warnings, but they are not the same. We see content warnings all the time – at the movies (Rated R for language, violence, and sex!), on TV (This presentation may contain material that could upset viewers – just like Law and Order), and on video games (Rated M for content). They are not new, and anyone who is surprised by them may have been living under a rock.

Content warnings are not in regards to people’s mental health or put together to avoid panic attacks or flashbacks. Content warnings are there so people can prepare, or decide what they should let their kids see. They are not censorship, and they are not any restriction on media. They are there to guide consumers to media they want, or away from media they don’t want.

Common Objections:

“Trigger warnings and content warnings are for cowards/babies/wusses/immature people!”
Nope! Trigger warnings are there to prevent people with past trauma from experiencing further trauma. Believe it or not, a lot of people suffer from trauma, and it is not something that you can just “tough it out” most of the time. Soldiers who return from war with PTSD (diagnosed or not) can have trouble because of triggers. People who were abused as children can have triggers. Not just soldiers have PTSD, and people of all ages have experienced trauma in their life. This is why trigger warnings are valuable. When you expose someone to a trigger, it has a psychological impact. In some ways, it is like an allergy. If someone were allergic to peanuts, would you tell them to eat peanuts anyway, because their allergy is just “all in their head”?

“Trigger warnings and content warnings are censorship!”
Nope! Slapping a rating or a simplified list of the content of media on the package doesn’t censor anything. The media is still produced, and available for consumption. It might be limited by age, but parents can buy for their kids, so that isn’t a significant issue. People who are triggered by the content might be upset that the product exists – and that’s okay! They can talk to other people about it and say, “hey, if you don’t like this stuff, don’t buy this thing!” and maybe other people won’t buy it. Maybe they still will. People can make choices!

“If people see trigger or content warnings that have stuff they don’t like in them, they won’t buy it or consume it!”
Not necessarily true! While everyone, regardless of their issues with triggers, might decide not to consume a product, there are plenty of people who still will. People can, and often will, still consume media that has objectionable material in it, and that has triggers for them. Seeing a trigger warning isn’t always “That’s not for me!” It might be “I can watch this when I am having a good day” or “Maybe I will save this until when I am not in a depression” or “If I get a friend to watch this with me, I’ll be great” or even “Maybe if someone tells me what part to skip, I can enjoy the rest of the thing!” Also, we are not in the business of forcing people to buy things. No one has to buy what you are selling. It’s not like creators walk beside people in the store just putting things in their cart and telling them that it’s something they should watch, even if they don’t like it. That’s like forcing people who like action movies to watch Oscar bait.

“People will abuse them to get out of work/school/responsibilities!”
Totally! And you know what? That’s okay. It’s okay because those people will be few. It’s okay because people use excuses to get out of work/school/responsibilities already. It’s okay because the people who use trigger warnings and content warnings for their own wellbeing and awareness will, a lot of the time, still take the classes or go to work or fulfill their responsibilities. People abusing systems is nothing new, and we shouldn’t put other people through difficult and often dangerous situations just because some people are jerks.

ETA: “You can’t possibly list all of the triggers, how am I supposed to know what they are?”
Well, for one, you can’t list all of them. That’s okay. You don’t have to list them all, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t list any. Part of the point of trigger warnings is demonstrating that you are aware of your audience and willing to listen to them. You can try to focus on the common ones: graphic violence, sexual assault and abuse, domestic/child abuse, and rape. From that, most people can get an idea of whether it’s their kind of media. Trigger and content warnings are not an all or nothing tool. You can talk to your audiences or potential audiences, you can check around in forums and on social media to see what your potential audiences might have issues with. Even if you don’t do that, you can still be considerate even with limited information.


Why are these things important?

A lot of reasons, actually! I have covered a lot of them already, but I’ll summarize.

  • Many people have been affected by trauma in their lives, and it is important to provide support for them to feel safe and still able to enjoy their lives in any way we can.
  • A lot of people prefer to consume different types of media for many different reasons. Some have kids, some like to compartmentalize their media, and some people just don’t enjoy all types of content.
  • We should respect psychological issues just like we do physical issues. They are valid, and denying people the ability to avoid things that hurt them is, honestly, just rude.
  • Everyone should have choices in their media! Everyone is different, and we shouldn’t force everyone to enjoy one thing just because the majority enjoys it, or because not liking it makes them seem judgmental. 

How can this be applied?

In school, it’s simple. Put a note on your syllabus about what kind of content will be discussed in class, what materials you’ll be using, and how to contact instructors to either change classes, consider alternate materials or assignments, or help to figure out a good way to go through the classes without putting students in a position where they don’t feel safe in class.

In media, it’s pretty easy. Create what you want, but put a note on it. It can be simple: “This film includes rape, sexual assault, and sexualized violence.” It can also be more complex: “This game has mechanics that allow for PC mind control, which are not optional and central to the game’s premise.” Either of these options are great, and importantly, they are way better than nothing. If you are planning a convention game, you can put notes in your description, or let the players know when they arrive at the table, and offer them the opportunity to step out.
What about in games where we aren’t using a script? What if something happens in game that wasn’t planned?
This is more difficult! The cool thing is that it’s not impossible! One of the first things you can do is establish boundaries with your players so that if there is something completely off the table, you know in advance and can avoid that material. Another thing is that you can provide tools like Script Change and the X Card. These tools give you either the option to skip content altogether, or to back up and go through a scene again with new content, fade to black, or pause for a moment to evaluate players’ comfort with moving forward. It gives players more control of the content, as well as helping them to feel comfortable. It is awesome because sometimes it makes players even more likely to try adventurous content they may not have otherwise tried.
I want to emphasize: You can still create whatever you want to create. The key is to allow those who aren’t interested in your content to safely avoid it, and give those who want to enjoy your content an easy way to navigate. People have more fun doing the things that they enjoy, and when they are stuck doing things they don’t want to, it drags everyone down. Trigger warnings and content warnings help people find content that they can enjoy, and can encourage them to try new things.
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In the end, trigger warnings and content warnings are a great way to support other people in trying new things, expanding their boundaries, and exploring, without leaving them with no safety net, and without ignoring the importance of their mental and emotional health. Some people might not care about this at all, and that’s okay. However, I think that kind of attitude definitely shines a light on who is likely to consume their media, and whether they are the kind of person those who have experienced trauma are willing to trust. For me, there’s no question: I want everyone to have fun – not just the people who don’t care.


This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Interview with Whitney Beltrán – Tinker Kickstarter

I interviewed Whitney Beltrán about her upcoming work on Tinker, a steampunk web series production currently Kickstarting with a few days left. 

Tell me a little about Tinker – what’s it about? 

Tinker is a steampunk adventure themed web series show. It is about a father-daughter duo, Sho and Kimi Tinker, who are savvy inventors in Victorian era alternate history San Fransico. Sho has built a reputation for himself as an incredibly clever engineer, and Kimi is a sort of genius tomboy. Together, they are swept up into a world of intrigue and turn of the century Machiavellian power struggles as old empire and emergent capitalistic entities fight over resources and technology.   
Their adventures range all over, from their native San Fransico to Hong Kong to the British mainland. There are air ships and giant robot fights and organized brothel gangs, spies, assassination attempts (and successes!), romance, action, and needless to say, a lot of danger. There is never a dull moment in Tinker.

What do you think is the most interesting part of Tinker?
I’m biased. I will always go gaga over the costuming on a project like this. Our costume designer is extremely talented and is currently putting the finishing touches on a hand tooled leather corset that is to die for. I basically want to run away with it. However, in reality, probably one of most interesting things about Tinker is its exploration of morality in the face of Western expansion and globalization. Tinker does not take itself too seriously. It’s more of a romp than a thinker, but the undertones are there. 

How did you get involved in Tinker?

Well, I tend to have my fingers in a lot of cookie jars. I was NPCing for a LARP that was going on as part of a fundraiser benefit that an education non-profit, Seekers Unlimited, was putting on in L.A. I made friends with one of the other NPCs, who happened to have a role onTinker. At the time they were looking to fill a number of roles, so she arranged for me to visit the studio. I read some sides for the producer, and I landed the role of Elmira Perkins, who happens to be one of the nefarious spies!  

Do you enjoy working on indie productions? If so, why?
Absolutely. I do a lot of script work and setting development as well as acting, and big Hollywood is awful about crushing creative sovereignty. At the major production houses pretty much everything is decided by a committee of business school graduates. It’s very frustrating. Working with smaller studios is more like working with a family, and negotiating with creative ideas becomes a lot more enriching.    

Do you think the diversity of Tinker is important? Do you think it was a conscious choice?
The racial diversity of the cast of Tinker is off the charts. It’s one of the things that makes me most proud of being a part of this production. I am of biracial Mexican-American heritage. I often struggle to find roles. It is common that the roles I am suited for call for white women. I constantly have to think to myself, “Am I white enough to get away with this?” Sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m not. Being on the set ofTinker is a breath of fresh air. I don’t have to worry about the color of my skin and whether or not I stand out.
It’s also really significant to me that the main characters are Asian and not white. It is the norm in Hollywood that racial minorities are relegated to supporting roles. This is especially significant because this is a steampunk production, which necessarily carries strong elements of imperialism and colonialism. It would have been really easy to stick with a homogenous cast. Instead, our executive producer, Micheal Taglianetti, insisted on a racially diverse cast. So yes, it was a conscious choice. 

What are you looking forward to most in the project?


I don’t know if I should tell you this! There is going to be an episode that involves live zebras. I am really looking forward to hanging out with zebras. I’ve never gotten closer than being at the zoo before. I just hope they don’t bite. 


Thanks, Whitney, for your interview and time! Go check out Tinker’s Kickstarter if you want to learn more!




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Systir Productions and 616


Today I have an interview with Systir Productions, a production team based in London. Amy and Victoria Howell are sisters and multi-award winning creators of ‘The Syndicate’ and ‘616’, the latter of which is currently crowdfunding.


What led you to the film industry?

Vicky has worked in film and theatre for the past 15 years. In fact she trained originally as an actor, then got sidetracked into writing and later to directing, but we’ve both grown up on films of all types – watching horror from probably a much too early age(!) and had often gone over various ideas for stories, but there was a eureka moment whilst back at our mum’s house for xmas 2008 when we just said ‘we should do this!’ Vicky had the industry knowledge and writing experience, Amy had the business experience and the ideas so it was an obvious next step.


What made you choose to work on a webseries?

We started with the intention of making films, to be honest, and the first project we wrote together was actually a feature version of the ‘616’ concept. However, during the course of that script’s development we became sidetracked into the story behind what became our first webseries, ‘The Syndicate’, which again we initially developed as a feature idea. When we wrote ‘The Syndicate’ back in 2009, there were very few webseries about, especially in the UK, but we did stumble across one which was made by the production team behind ‘Torchwood’ called ‘Girl Number Nine’ and this is what introduced us to the concept of webseries. The aspect that appealed to us initially was the ease of distribution and this is what gave us the idea of turning ‘The Syndicate’ into a webseries. Rather than being at the mercy of a distribution company to get your work seen, you just post it online and control the distribution yourself. And we’re really glad we did that, as, if we had tried to release ‘The Syndicate’ as a traditional feature film we could still be sitting around now waiting for a distributor, while, by releasing as a webseries, it has now been seen by almost a million people, travelled to festivals around the world, won awards and put us in touch with Frostbite Pictures who we are now working with on producing ‘616’. So webseries have definitely been lucky for us!


What would you say is your favorite project you worked on, and why?

Your first baby is always special, so ‘The Syndicate’ does hold a unique place in our hearts. It has also brought us a lot of opportunities so we’re also really grateful to it and to everyone who worked on it. We learnt a lot through making ‘The Syndicate’ as well – a baptism of fire in a lot of ways! – and ‘616’ is definitely benefitting from that.


What is ‘616’ about? What makes it worth backing?

‘616’ is a character driven, fantasy/horror webseries in the tradition of Buffy/Angel/Supernatural etc, albeit less glossy as we’re British…! Although it follows in some very established traditions, with ancient evils, magic and end of the world stakes, the concept behind the story, the way this evil manifests, is, so far as we can tell, entirely unique. We’ve watched many a horror film in our time and we’ve certainly never come across it before, so that alone makes it worth backing! Like all the best ideas it’s incredibly simple and you’ll kick yourself when you find out what it is…!


How has your experience been as women in the industry? Do you find any impact on your success?

So far, we’ve been very lucky and haven’t really experienced any overt prejudice or discrimination as a result of being female filmmakers beyond the odd “boys’ club” mentality of the occasional crew member. For the most part our gender has been completely irrelevant and that’s as it should be! We have been known to surprise festival programmers though as, with the nature of our writing, they assume we’re male…

What do you think is the biggest contributor to your success?

We don’t give in. Making low and no budget projects can be like fighting bears uphill through treacle – it’s hard work, it can be slow and frustrating and there is always something trying to stop you, from the weather to needing to pay the rent, but the trick is to just put your head down and keep going.

Thank you so much to Amy and Victoria! Good luck to them on the crowdfunding for ‘616’!

About Systir Productions

Systir Productions is an award winning production team, based in London, and consisting of sisters Amy and Victoria Howell. Amy is a writer/producer with a ten year background in project management and Victoria is a writer/director of over fifteen years experience. They began Systir in 2008 and their first project was a multi-award winning webseries, ‘The Syndicate’, which, due to interest from producers they have now developed into a feature script. The script placed in the finals of the Cascade Pictures Writers’ Couch Initiative in December 2012; semi-finals of the Bluecat Screenplay Competition 2013 and was a finalist for the Bluecat Cordelia Prize for best British script. Systir have also produced three short films, two of which, ‘616’ and ‘Drawn Together’ are live action/animation mix and still in post production – these are due to be finished by early 2014 to be submitted to festivals. The third, ‘6 Shooter’, was made as a competition entry for the Frightfest/Shortcuts to Hell competition 2013.

As a result of taking ‘The Syndicate’ to webseries festivals in 2012, Amy and Vicky met up with Canadian webseries creator Ivan Hayden, who, with co-creators Jason Fischer and Kirk Jacques, was aiming to establish a webseries studio, Frostbite Pictures, to produce high end webseries content. Systir agreed to become the UK arm of Frostbite and are now working on their second webseries, ‘616’, developed from their feature concept/short film of the same name. However, where the original concept was a B movie, effects laden gorefest, the webseries has been developed as a more mainstream, character driven fantasy/horror series in the tradition of Buffy/Supernatural/Grimm etc. ‘616’ is a completely original horror concept, which has never been done – so far as we can tell! – and Systir are very excited to bring the concept to the webseries world. They are shooting just the first three episodes at present as pilot episodes with which they hope to generate production funding for a full series.

As well as writing, directing and producing their own original content, Systir also collaborate with other webseries creators and filmmakers. Most recently, they directed and helped production manage short film ‘Leads and Follows’, a love story set in the world of swing dancing, and award winning comedy horror webseries ‘The Bloody Mary Show’, as well as assistant producing short horror film ‘Anna’.

Systir are currently crowdfunding for ‘616’ and would love it if you could help them out! There are some great perks to be had, so please do follow the link and check it out.

For more information on Systir and their past projects please see their website where you can also watch their first webseries, ‘The Syndicate’. You can also check out the trailers for their short films on the website or on their YouTube channel. If you’re into social media – and who isn’t these days! – follow them on Twitter –systiria and 616series – or Facebook – SystirProductions, TheSyndicateWebseries and 616series, or link up with them on LinkedIn.


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