It’s been six months since we posted Episode Four, and we’re well aware that Episode Five is long overdue. Unfortunately, we’re not posting here to release a new episode, but rather to announce The West Side is on hiatus.

The story is this: after eight months spent writing the series, we realized it was unlikely we’d be able to self-produce all twelve scripted episodes. As the story grew in scope from episode to episode, so too would the budget and time requirements, to the point where we wouldn’t be able to produce it ourselves. We looked at the first act, saw it concluded with a challenging setpiece (the gun battle that ends Episode Four), and told ourselves we needed to get through the first four episodes on our own. After that — if we’d applied ourselves fully and had managed to realize a compelling urban western, as we’d set out to — some kind of door would open for us, hopefully enabling us to continue the series.

We were ecstatic when, upon the release of Episode Four, even more than we’d hoped for happened: we won the Webby Award for Best Drama Series, and then were featured as two of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

These recognitions garnered us representation in LA and although we didn’t inquire very intently into commercial possibilities for our series, it seems the market for plodding black-and-white internet urban westerns isn’t a lucrative one. Who knew? The West Side is slow, edgy, and advertiser-unfriendly, and as such, we can’t exactly outfit Qasim in J. Crew or give Magner a Pepsi to drink. And that’s exactly how we’d always wanted the show: to stand out from a crowd of more hastily-produced and paced internet videos. The West Side wasn’t supposed to be commercial, and it’s not.

Thus we arrive at our current dilemma. Self-production can be a costly venture and if we continue shooting on nights and weekends in the same guerrilla style as before, we won’t complete the remaining eight episodes for many, many months. Years, even. So we’ve officially gone on hiatus, to explore full-time options for The West Side as well as other film and internet projects. We would love to finish the series — to allow our character arcs to play out, to flesh out the themes just beginning to take root in the first four episodes, to tell the story we’d spent eight months writing and rewriting — but unfortunately it’s just not feasible for us to wrap the project under the present circumstances.

Now, if by some miracle someone out there feels like funding the remaining episodes, by all means contact us; you’ll be surprised by how cheap this production is. And despite the lack of product placement opportunities, there are still plenty of ways to monetize the content. For the rest of you, if you think you might know someone who’d be interested in independent internet film finance, by all means… tell a friend.

Ultimately, however, the making of The West Side is not a story that ends with a lack of financing — money is the one thing we never pursued in this whole endeavor (until we tainted it with the previous paragraph). Instead, The West Side was intended to launch a couple of film careers, and in that respect it’s been an unmitigated success. Not that we’re established in any way, but now we have our feet in a number of doors and that’s all we ever wanted.

Online video is still a nascent concept, and we’re sure in the future many internet filmmakers will launch careers more rapidly and to more fanfare than we have — but it’s been a pleasure driving blind, as it were, not knowing where this ride was going to take us. For all of you who’ve watched the show to date, our sincerest thanks. We built our own niche apart from the rest of the internet video world, and we really appreciate you coming on the journey with us. Here’s hoping it continues soon.

We’ll be speaking on a panel Monday, September 15th at 2:30pm entitled Case Study: Your Film Online. On the panel, we will be screening an episode and talking about our film … online.

The conference is part of this year’s Independent Film Week; check out the schedule of events and get tickets to whatever tickles your fancy. Hope to see you there.

We’re pleased to announce that Episode Four is now live, so check it out.

A lot has happened since Episode Three went live a couple of months ago, and truth be told it’s been a bit of a whirlwind for us. That said, we managed to turn around this episode faster than any prior entry; we first rolled camera for Episode Four on May 10th, and here we are posting it 28 days later… all the while still working our full-time jobs.

We had the opportunity to premiere a draft version of Episode Four on the big screen at a panel put on by Filmmaker Magazine and IndieGoGo Thursday at the IFC Center. It was great to see our work on the big screen, and as you’ll see, this is the episode to see in a theater. We’d like to thank Lance Weiler for looping us in and Scott Macaulay from Filmmaker Magazine for having us. If you’d like to read a bit more about the evening, it’s covered here.

As we’ve said before, making these episodes ain’t easy, and we couldn’t have made this episode happen without the continued support from our friends and fans. Thanks to everyone for keeping us going, and as always, tell a friend!

If you’re in New York City, come on down. Official details here, and note the start time is 8:30, not 8. The meat-and-potatoes:

Filmmaker Magazine, the IFC Center and IndieGoGo present “Where Internet and Film Collide,” a night of screenings and conversation centered around the convergence of filmmaking and web video, Thursday, June 5 at 8:30pm.

Held as part of Internet Week New York and hosted by the IFP, the night will consist of a number of exciting short form works that could only have been created for the web and then discussions with their makers about their creative and production processes.

It’s been awhile since we talked about the technical aspects of our production, and while most of our entries in the realm have been on the shortcomings of no-budget filmmaking, we’re happy this time around to report on a success.

To our surprise, we didn’t receive a single comment on the hanging of the henchman Saul, as played by Omar Gonzalez. Omar was an incredibly good sport at our shoots—dealing with fake blood on his face and clothes, being repeatedly dragged across the floor, and doing his own stunt falls when shot in the back take after take—but despite what you see on-screen, we did not hoist him up by his neck and hang him from a street lamp. In fact, we didn’t hoist him up at all.

What you see on screen (or more pointedly, what you don’t see) is one of the many low-profile digital tricks we’ve pulled in The West Side to date. The street corner is real, the lamppost is real, but the rope and Omar are not there. In fact, we filmed him weeks later on my roof.

After filming the street corner scene with our actors Brendan Donnelly and James Sampson, who looked up at a body-less streetlight during the shoot, we needed to insert a hanging, swaying Omar into the shot. Not wanting to actually hang him from the streetlight due to obvious safety issues, we were left with a background plate in hand and a need to film a swinging body somehow, somewhere. To approximate the low angle of the camera, we needed to get the camera below Omar; the elevator shed on my apartment roof offered one such opportunity. But because there was no structure above the shed, we wouldn’t be able to hang Omar from a harness, which we wanted to do in order to give us realistic swinging action. Instead, Omar stood on the edge of the roof and swayed in place slightly while we looped the noose over his head; Zack held the rope as if he were the lamppost. Then, in a separate shot, Omar sat on the ladder and swung his feet. In a third shot, Zack held a length of rope taut, with which we’d virtually string up Omar. The sky behind Zack and Omar served as our no-budget blue screen.

We brought a laptop to the roof to quickly superimpose Omar on the background plate and eyeball the angle of the body to ensure it would work. Then later in After Effects we composited in Omar, attached his swaying feet to his body, stretched the rope over the lamp and to the ground, and voilà. It ain’t perfect, but for zero bucks it’s a pretty good trick. As for the fact that no one commented on either instance of the effect—it closes Episode Two and has an encore in the opening scene of Three—we will take that as a compliment!

Two emails of note recently found their way to our inbox. First was an advance notice reminding us to renew our web domain, thewestside.tv, as its two-year registration expires this July. We registered the domain very early in the scripting process—as soon as we’d come up with the show’s title—and upon receiving the email, we wondered if it’d really been two years. While the site didn’t go live until a year after the initial registration—with us writing the full-length script, casting the whole show, and producing Episode One during that time—the email did prompt us to reflect on what, exactly, we had to show for our two year’s worth of sporadically-surrendered nights and weekends.

The answer, of course, was a lot: a story where there was once none, an actual online film, innumerable learning experiences. But then the second email arrived, giving us something more tangible to show for our efforts: the 2008 Webby Award for Best Drama Series.

Even after being nominated, we still didn’t know if we had a chance to win the actual award with only three episodes up and very little outside recognition, especially going up against the probable forerunner for the award: Lonelygirl15, recipient of a truckload of publicity, exponentially more web traffic, and a Wired cover story. But then the awards were announced today, and there we are, Webby Award Winner (we’ve issued a press release here). Predictably, Lonelygirl took home the People’s Voice award (congrats, LG15), but we’d like to thank the judges for recognizing The West Side’s merit in the film/video criteria: concept and writing, quality of craft, integration, and overall experience.

Here we are, two twentysomethings with a camera and a few friends, shooting with zero budget on New York City sidewalks over the past year, not fully knowing where it was headed, when “the web’s highest honor” (so says The New York Times) is bestowed upon us. We can’t help but feel like we’re part of a larger movement, thanks to the Internet: the actual democratization of film distribution.

For all of you who have watched and commented on our episodes, for the bloggers and filmmakers who have written about us over the past year, our sincerest thanks. This recognition gives us a much brighter outlook on a future as full-time producers in film, video, and online media, and despite this being our first production, we expect you’ll see many more from us in the years ahead.

You might have noticed this logo at the end of Episode Three (or in the footer of the site) and wondered what it was. Exit Strategy is our freshly-minted production company, under the auspices of which we will be producing future episodes and projects. Hopefully there will be scads of both.

In case you missed the diminutive graphic above, we’re proud to announce The West Side is one of five nominees for the 2008 Webby Award for Best Drama Series. The Webby Awards have been called “the Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, and we beat out many higher-profile, better-funded online shows for a nomination. With only two episodes up (as the third just went live this week) and far less resources at our disposal than most of the competitors, we’re grateful the nomination committee recognized our efforts.

Head on over to the Webby site and check out the other nominees, or, far more importantly, register and vote for the People’s Voice award. There are two different awards: the Webby (as judged by a panel of experts) and the People’s Voice (as voted for online by the likes of you). Winning the People’s Voice award is a long shot, due to having a much smaller fanbase than, say, Lonelygirl15, but it’s up to you to prove us wrong!

We’ll be making a PR push associated with this nomination, and we hope you’ll take the chance to tell everyone you know to vote as well! Hopefully this nomination will give us more momentum as we head into episode four. Winners are announced May 6, and voting ends May 1, so don’t delay! Thanks for all your support.