April 12, 2012

Marc Scott Zicree breaks down essential steps for creating your own projects. Uses Mark Gantt and The Bannen Way as an example of not waiting around for your career.

Patience, Persistence and Balance… Oh My!

patience
1. the quality of being patient,  as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.

2. an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay: to have patience with a slow learner.

3. quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence: to work with patience.

persist

1. to continue steadfastly or firmly in some state, purpose, course of action, or the like, especially in spite of opposition, remonstrance, etc.: to persist in working for world peace; to persist in unpopular political activities.

2. to last or endure tenaciously: The legend of King Arthur has persisted for nearly fifteen centuries.

3. to be insistent in a statement, request, question, etc.

balance

1. a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.

2. something used to produce equilibrium; counterpoise.

3. mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behavior, judgment, etc.

4. a state of bodily equilibrium: He lost his balance and fell down the stairs.

SPOILER ALERT: I don’t have the magic formula for this.

Brendan Bradley pairs with Youtube’s “Mystery Guitar Man” for new original series

THE BANNEN WAY

THE BANNEN WAY is a sexy crime series with elements of action, comedy and a bit of thriller thrown in for good measure. Most importantly the series has fun with itself, as it chronicles Neal Bannen (Mark Gantt), a con man attempting reform. He guides himself with a series of rules–“The Bannen Way”–which are weaved throughout the story when they apply to the often tumultuous situations he finds himself in. Neal is caught in a bit of a conundrum with a father who is a cop and an uncle who holds onto his grandfather’s mob legacy both pulling him in different paths. Neal is confident and always looks for the angle; the trick is to see him navigate an ever-increasingly complicated landscape where options disappear as quickly as they appear. The cast is amazing with Michael Ironside as the father and Robert Forrester as the uncle, and let’s not forget Vanessa Marcil as the sexy pickpocket with suspect motivations. Neal is set on a mission to procure an object that will clear his debts and allow him a way out of the life he leads.

My hat is off to Mark Gantt and Jesse Warren for creating something interesting and fun to watch. Like most people, I like to be surprised and I found this be well-written without the obvious “I saw that coming a mile away” moments that hamper so may stories today. Not surprisingly with something based on a con man seeking reform or more importantly a way out of the life, this series was full of twists and turns. I got a bit of a Guy Richie vibe with the rules he lives by and the way the story unfolds without all of the spastic editing that sends parts of the population into epileptic fits. The series was smart and very sexy, as Neal Bannen is a bit of a ladies’ man. Seeing what content creators can do with a bit of money always makes me wonder how Hollywood produces so much crap when this kind of talent is available.

The writing in the series was tight, as any good web content has to have; otherwise we’re bound to click on onto the next thing. The plot entwines the different pieces of Neal’s life nicely as the pressure is amplified episode to episode, making it ideal for the web. The cast ismarvelous and I found it a real treat to see actors I liked so much turn up in such good roles. The whole series is a real gem and I encourage anyone who likes this genre to tune in.

MY NAME’S MARK AND I’M AN… ACTOR

When I first started acting, I felt like I did when I first got sober, I was ashamed and embarrassed to say that I was an ac… act… actor. Like the Fonz in Happy Days trying to say he was wr… wr… WRONG. God forbid someone would ask me what I’d been in or why I wasn’t on TV like the other guy that looks just like me. Several years in acting class did not fix it. Doing plays, short films, even a scene in Ocean’s 11 opposite Brad Pitt didn’t fix it either. I still could not help but feel uncomfortable about saying I was an actor. What I’ve come to see now is, I’d been focusing on what I thought it meant to be an actor. I thought, to be able to say you’re an actor, you had to be a “Successful Actor” — meaning someone who made a living from their acting. My mentor, Milton Katselas, didn’t bother with the psychology of the whole  thing when I wanted to quit acting and just direct. He said to me, “You haven’t given the acting thing a hundred percent. What you’re not confronting in your acting will block you as a director. Do twenty scenes for me, I’ll pick them out, and then you decide if you’re done with acting.” (You can read more on this in a previous blog, TO ACT… OR TO DIRECT… THAT WAS THE QUESTION)   He knew that I couldn’t think my way into confidence as an actor, I had to actually push past my shit and build the confidence.

On The Comedy Rich Web, An Elite Group Of Dramas Break Through, These Are Their Stories

The creators of web series “Anyone But Me,” “The Bannen Way,” and “Robert Townsend’s Diary of a Single Mom”–and the web sites that host them–talk about the challenges facing online shows that aren’t all about laughs LOLCats.

Dina Kaplan, a co-founder of blip.tv, says she thinks it may take one to two years for drama to really make a splash online. She offered her perspective on four keys to making online drama click.

1. Economics

Unlike television, it’s hard to promise or predict the amount of eyeballs necessary to recoup production costs from shooting a drama. “It’s been harder for scripted dramas to succeed because their costs are higher making the margins for profit slimmer,” Kaplan says. “The successful series are riding the margins. We need a little more time for more money to flow into the market.”

Many original series post on sites like Kaplan’s blip.tv, which acts much like a television network and shares revenue made from online ads with producers. But there’s also the rare show that takes its content straight to the big boys for a deal. Take the creators of the hit Crackle.com action-packed crime drama The Bannen Way. They produced a high-quality pilot to shop around before landing a deal with Sony, which eventually led to 13 million streams of the show on Sony’s Crackle site.While it’s unclear whether or not there will be a second season, the first season is available on DVD and there are murmurs of developing it into a television series.