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Creating controversy

The following is a Team Billy post.

Being bored as I currently am, I've decided to stir the pot a little. I've been discussing production difficulties with Bj lately (actors' schedules, finding a proper set, whether or not to buy one of those "Hang In There" posters of a kitten on a tree branch, etc.), which has led me to think about what part of making this series is the most difficult.

On first glance it would seem clear that Team Bj faces many more obstacles. He has all of these problems to work out before he even starts recording, then an all new set of issues once that little red light on the camera lights up. My role - on the surface - appeared to involve little more than sitting on the couch trying to get my wife to laugh at dirty jokes.

But let's go a little deeper. Bj has to work a schedule around the actors' availability, but the actors exist. Bj has to find an office in which to film, but that office exists (somewhere). Bj will have to edit the footage from the shoots and piece it together into some logical order, but that footage will exist at that point. When I started writing, there was nothing. We're talking Old Testament darkness, people. I had to create these characters and squeeze words out of them. I had to create their lives and their work and their hopes and dreams and still somehow work in Wilford Brimley.

Of course Team Bj would argue that I had it much easier. He'll say stuff like "Billy's so smart and funny and people like him a lot. It wasn't hard for him to write this at all because he's incapable of NOT being funny. He can read the phonebook and have people peeing in their pants. I'm jealous of his awesomeness." Team Bj would say that the burden of putting such perfection on film is all but impossible, but do not be swayed. He's getting to live in my fantasy land, which is reward enough for all the sleepless nights filming and then the other sleepless nights editing and producing these shows that no one but our respective mothers are going to watch anyway.

Team Bj Update-ery

Yes I am not embarrassed about my un-like for Italian Spiderman. I just don’t get it. Billy has been trying to sell me on that for months and I am just not buying into it. I guess I should be more open to viewing stuff that is out there and see what the popular shorts are doing, but….gah…just can’t do I-Spiderman.

So we have all 15 episodes of Insourcing done which is great and the scripts are funny as hell. I’d like to start shooting the first one Saturday, well not start shooting I aim to get it done. I’d like to see how we do, how we portray our characters and some other little things before we launch into shooting blocks of episodes. The block shooting will be important as Mason attends school at UT in Austin. My bad for assuming he went to UNT and would be easily accessible anytime I needed him. But it can still work and he is more than happy to come up here on the shooting weekends.

We were going to use one office set, and still might I am keeping my eyes open for another though. Of course finding it in 48 hrs may be tough. I have enlisted some local people here to help me in my search so hopefully it will turn up something so we can get going, both Robert and Mason are eager to go, as am I....

Stuff you should be checking out

The following post is brought to you by Team Billy

Since we don't have anything of our own for you to watch yet, I thought I'd pass along a few of my favorite web series.

Anarchy for Breakfast - Not only is this really funny, but the actress playing Desdemona is one of my friends from high school. Truly great stuff.

The Guild - A very popular web series and one of the best, hands down. If you're not watching it, you should. That goes double for any gamers out there.

Italian Spiderman - Bj will respectfully disagree with my opinions of the ultimate awesomeness of this series, but Italian Spiderman is what made me want to start writing web serials. It proves how smart dumb humor can be.

You've got your assignments, now get to work.

What is Insourcing?

Insourcing is the web series currently in production by your friends at Taurian Films. How's that for a simple answer?

The series was born out of our need to do something that 1) could be done for next to no money and 2) require as small a cast as possible. The first thing that I (a.k.a Team Billy) wrote for Team Bj was a partial script based on our awesomely un-awesome kickball team back in Victoria. We were going to shoot this with our coworkers and teammates, but my mojo fizzled out about halfway through the script (finishing it is still on my to-do list.) After that, I set out writing my first web series script, Sand in My Cubicle - something of a mashup of Lost, Lord of the Flies and The Office. I wrote 14 episodes of that, but we couldn't get production moving on it because it involved a large cast and a beach setting. Team Bj relocated to Denton (i.e. real freaking far from a beach) and SiMC was shelved.

I fled Victoria shortly after Bj, settling in College Station. Bj was getting the itch to film something, but we didn't exactly have anything filmable under current circumstances. This inspired me to come up with a workable idea. I thought about what we should be able to pull off, and all I came up with was two or three guys in a room not really doing anything. And so Insourcing was born.

Insourcing follows two customer complaint operators, Travis and James, through their days. James is a hard enough working fellow trying to do his job with as little distraction and drama as possible. Travis is not so much concerned with his job and tries to keep himself entertained by creating as much distraction and drama as possible. They are led by their stalwart manager Mr. Dicklan (pronounced D'Klan), who strives to be their lighthouse in the storm and never passes up a training opportunity.

This merry trio works at United Family Products, a company that produces many of the products seen in infomercials such as the Spin Daddy pottery wheel, Shoe-in-a-Tube, Liquid Seamstress and the Sprechen Sie Spanish foreign language system. Bobby G. is the face of the company and one of the most popular pitchmen on late night TV.

How does all of this fit together? I've written out the entire 15-episode series and I'm still not sure myself. We're shooting for a late-fall release of the first episode and we hope you'll get a chuckle or two out of it. Until then, we'll keep you posted.

--Team Billy