Profile: The West Side
Show: The West Side
Launched: July 2007
Distributed by: Self-distributed at thewestside.tv
Located: New York City
Updated: Infrequently
Talent:
Creators: Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman
Starring: Damian Washington
Original music by: Ben Campbell
Associate producers: Damian Washington, Catherine Corley, Felipe Colón
Latest Episode: Episode One
The Angle:
Their words:
The West Side is an urban western, created by Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman. Set in a unique, alternate universe, it melds together elements of two disparate film genres: the grit of an urban setting with the tradition of the American Western. The show is presented free on the internet as a contemporary version of the serial novel; new chapters in the dozen-episode storyline will be posted as quickly as they can be produced.
Our Thoughts:
The mixing of the two styles is intriguing. Sometimes it comes off as a little ham-fisted and obvious (a plastic grocery bag tumbling through the wind replaces the ubiquitous tumbleweed), but even this short, dialogue-light introductory episode makes a good case for “gangstas” being the modern-day equivalent of wild west gunslingers. I buy in to it.
It’s a little unusual to be profiling a serialized web video after just one episode has appeared, but there are a couple special things about The West Side that we felt were worth highlighting, even this early on. The first is that creators Bilsborrow-Koo and Lieberman seem to have taken the concept of episodic distribution to heart creatively, and aren’t just doing it to build hype, or to avoid undertaking a big production schedule right from the off. Instead, the distribution seems to be a wholly creative decision:
To us, visual storytelling on the web is not about posting a one-minute clip every day and pushing for max audience numbers and ad revenue—it’s about quality of storytelling, regardless of delivery medium.
The second reason to profile the show at this point is that it’s clear, after just one episode, that these guys have very real film chops. The lighting, the composition, even the sound mixing is on another level than nearly all of the video being put on the web today. That’s not to say it’s objectively better - it’s just overtly film-like, whereas much web video seems to almost pride itself on being as “unfilmlike” as possible.
Technical difficulties (hard drive failure - ouch) have delayed episode two, but we’ll be there whenever it finally does drop.
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