Check out this fantabulous interview with our all-star director and producer, Julien Stamboulieh and Benjamin Warner! It’s part of the “SILHOUETTES” series by A Bit Off The Top.

We were also mentioned on another German blog: Robots and Dragons.

Are you releasing all the episodes at the same time?

Ben Warner (Producer): Our release date is March 10^th. What that means is on March 10^th we’ll be releasing episodes 1 and 2, and starting on that day we’re going to be releasing new episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There are 10 episodes in the first season.  We didn’t want to release them all at once…but  it’s hard to release only 1 episode per week with only 5 or 6 minutes of content. So we figured to keep the audience interested we’re going to release them 3 times per week to give them time to reflect on each episode but not enough time that they get disinterested.

Are the characters based on anybody in particular?

Julian Stamboulieh (Director): They actually are designed after me and my two brothers and someone I was in a relationship with at the time, when I first created the characters. That’s how they were loosely based seven years ago. After I met with Jon we fleshed it out, we introduced a fifth character, so it kind of deviated slightly from that.

How much of the script was written and how much was improvised?

Jon Verrall (Writer/Actor-Evan): The entire script was written beforehand. However we’re all actors, we’ve all worked together so if somebody thought of something that might be better to say in a particular scene or a particular take then of course we put that in. But it’s a scripted series…We knew what we were doing from beginning to end.

How much did you get from Kickstarter?

Ben: We didn’t [do a Kickstarter]…The project was entirely privately funded by the company that Julian and myself started about a couple of years ago now. Our production company is called Beanduck Productions—you can check us out at Beanduck.com. We’ve been working mostly with commercials, web stuff, some tv for the past couple of years, saving up to do our own stuff.

Did you guys have any say in the roles that you got to play?

Scott Humphrey (Actor-Will): In terms of the audition process, there were a number of us that were invited to audition for the series, and we got the chance to look at the character descriptions beforehand. We were asked to read for some of the roles, but I think a couple of us asked to read for others as well. Speaking for myself, when I went in I asked to read for Arthur and Evan and Will.

Where did you shoot?

Charlotte Rogers (Actor-Brittany): All the outdoor scenes were shot a few hours North of Montreal, which was beautiful but a bit chilly in the mornings. And Ben and Julian got us up at about 5:30-6 o’clock in the morning. So we got to be outside nice and early when the cold, crisp morning was just upon us.

What are your opinions as to why LARPing is becoming more of a mainstream phenomenon?

Jonathan Silver (Actor-Arthur): I actually had a really interesting experience with this series and with LARPing in that I hadn’t  any experience with LARPing at all. But I found while shooting this, especially as we were getting towards the end of it, I was thinking “Oh, I’m not going to get to wear these awesome swords and this amazing costume when we’re done this.” And so I really began cherishing every moment of it and I can understand why people would want to do this, just feel more powerful, feel like something other than themselves, even for a short time. It’s kind of the same high that we get as actors, and we get to just play like we did as kids. I learned a lot on this shoot, I really did.

Do you guys ever have a hard time explaining the appeal of LARPing to non-LARPing folk?

Jonathan: There were a few instances…But that’s really part of our pitch when we talk about the series, to just explain what LARPing is. And people are fascinated and say “Wow, I’ve never heard about this before”, “Where can I see something like this?” Then we say “Well, this isn’t a bad place to start!”

[To the actors] Have you done any LARPing outside of the role? Did you do LARPing before, for research?

Charlotte: We did. Julian and Ben and Jon had actually organized a LARPing session before we started shooting…and we did it outside, in a park, in summertime. And it was definitely weird to just get in to character while all these people are watching you and to not feel self-conscious. I think a lot of us had that first impression but once we really got in to it and found the storyline we just started having fun with it.

Is it realistic to have 2 guys and 2 girls LARPing?

Jon: [From my experience] Yes, absolutely. Two of the games that I ran for the longest time I ran with a female GM alongside me. [LARPing] really appeals to all ages and genders. I’ve seen it be that there are more women than men, that there are more men than women, it kind of depends on the area and the game that’s being run.

Have you considered the possibility of longer episodes in the future?

Julian: We would love to do longer episodes.

Ben: Season 2, when it happens, will be longer episodes. If we happen to continue the series on the web only we’ll probably expand the length of the episodes at least to 10 or 12 minutes…But we’re looking to go to Netflix or television or something that would allow us to expand to 30 minute episodes.

If season 2 allowed for a special celebrity guest star, do you have someone in mind?

 <–My face when asked that question.

Elizabeth Neale (Actor-Shane): I have everybody in mind. I want all the people. Can I have all the people? Felicia Day, Nathan Fillion, Peter Dinklage, Alan Tudyk, Wil Wheaton… The entire cast of Firefly, that would be ideal…There’s always room for Bill Murray.

Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?

Everybody except Ben chose to battle the duck-sized horses. There were various reasons for this. Ben stated that he preferred the taste of duck to horse, hence his choice.

Here are some excerpts from our interview with CBC Daybreak Montreal. Many thanks to Jeanette Kelly and Mike Finnerty for helping us get the word out there!

Also, here is the link to the full two-hour interview on 1337LoungeLive (we start about 11 minutes in). I’ll be putting together a concise Q & A for those of you who are at work and therefore unable to stream the the video :). Should be up soon!

Finally, CBC’s Our Montreal gave us a wonderful preview today. Check out the segment here!

Last night’s interview with 1337LoungeLive was wonderful! We got some great questions for which I’ll type up the answers and post once we get the recording. Thanks again to our fabulous hosts and to everyone who tuned in. We’re so excited to share this project with you all and can’t wait to able to show more!

Stay tuned for our radio interview with CBC Daybreak! We’ve got the audio files and I’ll be putting them up here shortly.

• CBC News: New Montreal web series a lovesong to ‘LARPing’
• Imaginaria (in Russian)
• Siphen.O’s Blog on IGN.com: “With the following that the LARP community has, I do believe that if the series gains enough momentum and hype up to the first episode it could possibly end up to be the next thing like The Guild.”
• GN de Merde
• Kotaku says we’re “looking pretty good”!
• The Main: Missing the Tam-Tams? Here’s LARPs: The Series