… so hard for it, honey!
Portland author, screenwriter, actor, director and comic book creator Chris A. Bolton knows about being a wage slave. He tends to enjoys the jobs that pay his bills, but not as much as he enjoys the creative work that fills his resume: the comic book Smash he created with brother Kyle, the short story recently published in Portland Noir and the web series debuting this week called Wage Slaves.
The web series is a five-episode season telling the story of young, hip, coffee baristas living in Portland. Mitch (played by Morgan Lee) just got his MFA in Creative Writing, and joins the crew at Rose City Coffeehouse to very little fanfare. Conceived, written, produced, shot and edited in Portland, OR, Wage Slaves joins the growing ranks of ultra-indie web-based entertainment with episodes between ten and eighteen minutes long.
On the heavily promoted and big-name end of the spectrum, the web show quarterlife was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the guys behind “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething” as well as “Legends of the Fall” and “Blood Diamond.” On the ultra-indie end, you can find hundreds of video blogs with weekly content ranging from nonfiction lessons on how to mix cocktails or play Radiohead on guitar, to fiction series like Portland’s own Wage Slaves.
The Wage Slaves season one is five weeks long – a short episode is released every Tuesday until the season is complete, and it began with two episodes released on premiere day, July 21st. Since it didn’t have anything close to studio backing – and in fact, was shot for less than $600 – how will Wage Slaves find an audience?
Chris A. Bolton says, “I’m just the cautious, slightly superstitious type who thinks, ‘Wait until the season finale is online and then see what kind of audience we have.’” But. He also tells us that, “the number of hits for the first three days alone are about double what I’d expected for the first month. That’s due largely to the media exposure we’ve gotten, I’m quite sure. We set up a Facebook fan page and invited friends to join. Then I set up a Twitter page and followed every media outlet I could find — which paid off when Oregon Media Central got wind of us and put up a freakin’ fantastic post about the show.”
That prompted Portland NBC affiliate KGW to contact Bolton about having him on their “Live at 7″ show, which he says brought in another nice wave of viewers. Bolton laughs about being contacted by Oregonian columnist Margie Boule — because she couldn’t find him! She wrote to his brother, the co-creator of their comic book Smash, and he says, “Yup, that prompted us to add a ‘Contact Us’ page to the website! Boule watched the first two episodes and loved them, and then we had a fantastic phone interview that she turned into a great and supportive column. Initially I’d assumed Margie found me via Oregon Media Central, but it turns out the husband of one of her improv classmates is a filmmaker, and he’d mentioned it to his wife, who’d passed it on to Margie. Totally random and awesome.”
That’s the kind of “random and awesome” that here at iMarket we cheer for! Promotion, word of mouth, friends, business associates… all of it is becoming closer and closer. So, while the show is still going after an audience, and Twitter clearly paid off for getting his project to a mainstream media audience, how does Bolton find the everyday feedback?
“I haven’t gotten a real sense of “community” from either Twitter or Facebook. I feel more of the love for Smash, because people always leave supportive comments and get very excited about new episodes of the web-comic. Then again, it didn’t start out that way, and we’ve posted ten episodes of Smash at this point, so I should give it some time.” He laughs again. “Patience is not one of my virtues.”
“Aside from Oregon Media Central, the reactions to Wage Slaves from Twitter and Facebook have been muted. There are some emphatic FB comments from people we know, and a couple from strangers. Right now it seems like the fans find the show and then follow us on Twitter or join the Facebook page; I’m not convinced the door is swinging the other way.
“On the other hand, we’ve gotten a bunch of great and extremely supportive comments on the Wage Slaves website. Initially we’d wondered whether it was a good idea to allow comments on the episode pages — I mean, you don’t really want “this show sucks” to appear right under the episode you want people to watch — but we have approval over the comments, so the danger is minimal. I’m really cheered by the fact that – so far – we haven’t had to screen a single comment. They’ve all been wonderful and exciting to read.”
The crew here at iMarket is enjoying Wage Slaves, with one-third of season one now online. Both episodes have been about twelve minutes, so beyond being just right for our attention spans, it’s right for our busy schedules! We’re cheering on this project – not just ’cause it’s Portland, and not just ’cause they use social media, and no, not just ’cause iMarket Content Management Director Emily Barrett is pals with some of the crew, but because it’s a great story. It’s wage slaves making good – and we all like to see that.
Bolton will be back on our little blog here, when the season finale of Wage Slaves has aired, for a chat with us and star Morgan Lee. So as they said in the old days… stay tuned, and have a great weekend.
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