archived-videos Spads: My new web-comedy!

NickClapper

NickClapper

Morning fine people of Indietalk!

Today we've launched the first episode of my new web-series Spads. The show is a comedy about British politics in the run-up to an imagined 2020 General Election. Hopefully there'll be stuff to enjoy for the American folks here, but most of the gags are quite specific to the UK political situation. Still, I hope you enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS6QMMjhg7I

We've had a great response to the show already. There was an article about us in the Evening Standard a few weeks ago, and this morning I was on national radio discussing the show on John Pienaar's politics show, which you can listen back to on iPlayer if you're in the right territory. I'll try and upload a clip of the interview for our American friends to enjoy!

So yeah, it's been a really exciting project. As with everything I do, there are a handful of Indietalkers involved: most notably our DoP Ollie Craig (aka the venerable moderator chilipie) and VFX artist Tom Coster (aka Jooble). I really appreciate anyone taking the time to check it out, subscribe and, if you're interested share.

Our Facebook is here and our Twitter is here and you can also check out our website here!
 
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Anyone who's ever been to a political society event on a UK university campus will recognise all those characters instantly :lol:

Excellent stuff, and well done on not just trying to ape The Thick of It, which must have been tempting.

Just out of interest, did you have to seek permission to use the official party logos?
 
gorillaonabike said:
Well done for getting it out there. The humour's not really my thing but then again, I find Trump pretty funny.
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I'd hope the two aren't mutually exclusive! ;)

maz said:
Anyone who's ever been to a political society event on a UK university campus will recognise all those characters instantly :lol:

Excellent stuff, and well done on not just trying to ape The Thick of It, which must have been tempting.

Just out of interest, did you have to seek permission to use the official party logos?
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I think it's really tricky to do political comedy in the UK because of The Thick of It – it's a classic and everything gets compared to it. I had someone message me the other day to say "The Thick of It is the benchmark" which is a bit like saying "The Godfather is the benchmark" to someone making a gangster film...

It the remaining 9 (!) episodes, we switch to a more classic sitcom style. The faux news stuff is just for the first episode, to introduce the characters and get some of the exposition out of the way. Hopefully it'll only get funnier from here!

(And no, we didn't seek or get their permission. Shhh.)

EDIT: Oh, and if you'd like to hear me interviewed about it on BBC radio, we've uploaded it for any interested parties here.
 
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Very nice, Nick. While I'm sure I didn't "get" some of the specifics
I found it quite funny. Good work.
 
NickClapper said:
I think it's really tricky to do political comedy in the UK because of The Thick of It – it's a classic and everything gets compared to it. I had someone message me the other day to say "The Thick of It is the benchmark" which is a bit like saying "The Godfather is the benchmark" to someone making a gangster film...

It the remaining 9 (!) episodes, we switch to a more classic sitcom style. The faux news stuff is just for the first episode, to introduce the characters and get some of the exposition out of the way. Hopefully it'll only get funnier from here!

(And no, we didn't seek or get their permission. Shhh.)

EDIT: Oh, and if you'd like to hear me interviewed about it on BBC radio, we've uploaded it for any interested parties here.
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Ah, I thought you might not have got that permission. The Thick of It managed to skirt around all these things by never actually mentioning party names even though we all knew what they were, but I guess it's essential here as you're dealing with the genuine party leaders (well, one party leader and one hideous clown...)

Did you catch Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's Ballot Monkeys last year? That covered similar kinds of ground perhaps?

I look forward to seeing more of it. And this reminded me that I need to catch up on episodes of The Magic Circle too :)
 
maz said:
Ah, I thought you might not have got that permission. The Thick of It managed to skirt around all these things by never actually mentioning party names even though we all knew what they were, but I guess it's essential here as you're dealing with the genuine party leaders (well, one party leader and one hideous clown...)

Did you catch Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's Ballot Monkeys last year? That covered similar kinds of ground perhaps?

I look forward to seeing more of it. And this reminded me that I need to catch up on episodes of The Magic Circle too :)
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My inclination, from what I can find on the internet, is that we're probably protected by fair use, so long as it's clearly satire. Ballot Monkeys, for example, used real parties and iconography. I suspect TTOI not naming parties was as much to do with the BBC's strict impartiality regulations as any legal issues.

I actually quite liked Ballot Monkeys. It definitely had weaknesses, and some buses were better than others, but it could've been a lot worse given what they were trying to do. But that was broadcast at a very specific time, when public interest in politics was demonstrably sky high. I actually think that we're in that sort of period again, but no major broadcaster is taking it on.
 
How are you getting all these promotional gigs? Friends in high places? John Pienaar and the New Stateman are pretty impressive :P

EDIT: Just read the piece - don't really agree on Livingstone as the more I read, the more he seems to have been stitched up just like Corbyn repeatedly has, but a good read nonetheless :)
 
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maz said:
How are you getting all these promotional gigs? Friends in high places? John Pienaar and the New Stateman are pretty impressive :P
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The liberal metropolitan elite is real!

John Pienaar's radio show was a bit random, to be honest they just emailed me asking if I was up for doing it. I know several people from university who now work at the New Statesman, including my girlfriend, so, yeah, you could say friends in high places :rolleyes:
 
Nice!
I like it :)

I think I'll have to watch it again: it's hard to listen and read all the funny nonsense at the bottom of the screen at the same time (at least now, for me being tired and not raised in a country where nglish isn't the native language...)
(Btw, you should try to play it on a TV: the bottom text is not in the text safe area :-p )
 
WalterB said:
Nice!
I like it :)

I think I'll have to watch it again: it's hard to listen and read all the funny nonsense at the bottom of the screen at the same time (at least now, for me being tired and not raised in a country where nglish isn't the native language...)
(Btw, you should try to play it on a TV: the bottom text is not in the text safe area :-p )
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Interesting observation about the text-safe area... we did play it back on a TV and didn't notice that, but I'll definitely double check the remaining episodes. That's the only episode which is simulating a news broadcast, so hopefully won't be such an issue in future!

Cracker Funk said:
1,700 views in less than a week - NICE! As the series continues, I suspect that number to grow. Well done!
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Yeah, it's a solid start but a bit unspectacular. Still, we've got 9 episodes to go and we can definitely build an audience and keep increasing the view count on old episodes as we go along. As ever, IndieTalk has been a great source of traffic for the show :)
 
NickClapper said:
Interesting observation about the text-safe area... we did play it back on a TV and didn't notice that, but I'll definitely double check the remaining episodes. That's the only episode which is simulating a news broadcast, so hopefully won't be such an issue in future!
...........
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Underscan has become a far lesser problem in the past few years, but I still notice a lot/some TVs still have a little bit of underscan. On the top and bottom it often is a smaller portion than on the sides, because of the 16:9 ratio.
Most people will probably watch on a computer/smartphone/tablet, so that is no problem at all. Only a part of those using a smart TV might miss a few on the jokes in the text.
Don't worry :)

Looking forward to the rest!
 
New week, new episode!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE3IP51PSBc

I appreciate everyone who's taken the time to watch so far and hopefully you'll keep doing so. This episode is pretty different from Episode 1 (more indicative of the overall style) and is developing some of the important relationships in the series.
It's not the funniest of the episodes, in my opinion, but it lays some groundwork which will, hopefully, prove useful
. I think this is the episode that sort of establishes the show as a sitcom set in politics, rather than necessarily a political sitcom.
 
Can't let that productivity dip, here's Episode Three of Spads!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV8SNDawZZ0

I would reiterate that each episode is designed so that it can be watched as a standalone film (though watching all the episodes adds some context) so don't worry about dipping in here, rather than Episode 1!

Appreciate anyone watching it and double appreciate anyone sharing it. It's been pretty brutal trying to get significant views onto it but I've got to persevere cos there are 7 more episodes to go :/
 
Cracker Funk said:
Exactly. Maybe there'll be a season 2?
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Put simply, I can't afford to shoot more episodes. And I'm not willing to expend the energy of this project all over again for a few hundred views per episode. I set myself the pre-release target of 10,000 views per episode and we still have a long way to go to get anywhere near that.

That said, if views/subscriptions pick up as the series progresses then there are definitely a couple of options. Firstly, we might crowdfund £5k to do another 10-episode 5-minute series, or, secondly, we could try and work with an established ProdCo on different format opportunities. We shall see...

Next week's episode has a fairly famous British sitcom actor guest starring in it, so hopefully that'll springboard a bit more attention.
 
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