Ahead of the inaugural Melbourne Web Series Festival on 20 July, we’re profiling all 30 series that made the Official Selection list. Next up is Super Knocked Up, created by Jeff Burns.
Imagine a kick-ass-super-villian female by the name of Jessica James. Now imagine a womanizing super hero. Put the two together and you have a knocked up super villian that has to raise the baby alongside her nemesis.
Creator Jeff Burns was inspired to create the unique story plot after completing an online screenwriting course. ” And one day going through the brainstorming techniques we learned in the course, the idea just came to me: what would happen if a superhero and super-villain had a baby together? I loved the idea as soon as I came up with it and knew I had to write it.”
Besides the superhero aspect of the series (and kick-ass visual effects), are two real characters that people can relate to. The series has the perfect ingredients of comedy, drama, action and romance to get you hooked.
What do you want people to take away from your series?
I hope they really relate to the characters and come away loving our super-villain Jessica (Darkstar) and superhero Michael (Captain Amazing) and root for them to get together. And I hope they say after watching it that we entertained them and they want to see more.
What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome in production?
The biggest challenge was probably figuring out how we were going to do the action/fight scenes and have superpower visual effects with basically no budget. Luckily, I happen to know ridiculously skilled stunt coordinators and visual effects artists who were able to pull off way beyond what I thought was possible. I think it really makes the series look awesome!
How do you reach your audience?
I go around knocking on people’s doors. Okay, not really. I use social media all the time to reach fans and potential fans. Facebook and Twitter have been amazing tools at doing this and I use them every day. I also go to a lot of Comic Cons to promote the series since I think most Comic Con fans will really enjoy Super Knocked Up.
I also do a lot of cross-promotional stuff with other web series. At LA WebFest we shot a series of cross-over videos called Super Mashed Up, where Darkstar, the super-villain protagonist from Super Knocked Up meets characters from other web series in comedic ways. These include some of the other series in Melbourne WebFest like Clutch, Pairings, and Out With Dad.
And my two lead actors and I do a live Google Hangout show on our YouTube Channel called Super Geeked Up. We interact with our fans, answer their questions, and discuss fun geeky topics with them. And have a guest from the web series world on each episode. So that’s another great way we cross-promote with other series.
Super Knocked Up on the web:
Website: www.superknockedup.com
YouTube: www.youtube.com/SKUWebSeries
Facebook: www.facebook.com/superknockedup
Twitter: www.twitter.com/superknockedup
Melbourne WebFest is on July 20, and tickets are on sale now. Keep up to date with the festival on Twitter: @MelbWebFest
La Trobe University is an official partner of Melbourne WebFest
