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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Stories of All Kinds: Web Series

It's sort of ironic that the first post on Le Book Blog is very vaguely about books. Regardless, it's story time!

So Web Series are like really short tellevision shows online. These three below are all found more specifically on Youtube. I'll provide links. Anyway, Web Series are often more heavily funded and more fine tuned than a vlog or just an average video, and they tell stories. Let us devulge into the world of Web Series.
Job Hunters is a web series with longer running episodes like in the twelve minute range. It's really high quality and really entertaining.
It focusses on this group of friends in a dystopian future where due to overpopulation and unemployment young adults enter MAEWIN, which stands for the Mandatory Arena Education Worldwide Initiative. These 'job hunters' stay in a safe house with other job hunters and have to act friendly with them despite conflicting goals and personalities, with breaks every few days or even weeks between where they are shipped off to an arena to demonstrate their skills and determination, while killing their friends. It's not a 'to the last man' sort of deal, it's a nine to five deal, a buzzer then goes off and they are to immediatly stop killing and return to the safe house to whatever remaining friends they still have.
More Job Hunters arrive but the likelyhood of being selected by an employer and removed from the arena is next to zilch.
Each person uses a different weapon that reflects their personality, like a nonconfrontational girl using grenades, and they're all vying for different careers, like doctor or pop singer.  
It sounds like it could come off like the Hunger Games , which it could, but it's a little less focussed on the government right now , and more on character development and the relationships between the Job Hunters. It's also a bit silly or more comical than the Hunger Games.
All in all you should check it out. You'd love it Sam and tell me what you think of it after you see it. Le link's beneath the picture. 
You're reading Pride and Prejudice right now, Sam, so depending on how far you're into the book don't watch this yet! 
These episodes are much shorter, like four minutes maximum but there's bound to be more of them. It's a twenty-first century retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet, or Lizzie is keeping a vlog with the help of her best friend Charlotte, who's running technical things.
Lizzie is a twenty four year old grad student majoring in mass communication with a sweet older sister named Jane, who is a fashion intern, a younger air-headed, party girl sister, Lydia, a quiet submissive father, and a mother who's entire goal in life is to marry off her three daughters to rich men.
A mysterious, wealthy, med student, Bing Lee moves into the neighborhood, buying the mansion Netherfield, nearby, and bringing with him his sister Caroline Lee, and an even wealthier, and ever so handsome, William Darcy.
At a local wedding Bing and Jane hit it off but as for the girl who catches the bouquet and the guy who begrudgingly caught the garter that hit him square in the chest... AKA: Lizzie and William... not so much.
It's really cute and such an interesting take on one of of my favorite books (that we will both need to review when you're finished reading it).
There's also a tumblr with Jane's looks in it, and twitter posts where you can read just what William, Caroline and Bing talk about.
Everyone might as well watch this one too, it's really spectacular and I'm a Pride and Prejudice-aholic so it works out well.
 
The girl who plays Lydia plays Zelda in Squaresville, a show about Zelda and Esther, two misfits living in a town of squares, where they don't think they belong.
Lydia and Zelda want nothing more than to get out of the town and go on adventures. The show follows them as they make new friends, in unlikely people, discover themselves, and even as they fall in love... also with unlikely people.
There's only a few four minute episodes up, but there's a guarenteed twelve coming up in the near future. This definatly looks promising. It's really relatable and cute, with good acting and pretty good characterization.  
It's definatly something to watch.

~Sara


Well, there you go Sam, our first post. I really want to do one on Gone with the Wind , when I finish and all sorts of other stories- of all kinds.