Your mission, if you decide to accept it, is to take a budget the size of a weekly grocery shop and create a three season episodic web series about vampires and the supernatural using a single camera, minimal special effects, one set and only dialogue to tell the ENTIRE story and create a worldwide sensation into the bargain. Sounds daunting doesn't it? However that's exactly what happened with Carmilla.
I have to admit, until three days ago, I hadn't even heard about this series and only stumbled upon it when searching for an audiobook version of Sheridan Le Fanu's novella that I could download and listen to when I was working from home and what a fortuitous find it was.
It is Le Fanu's writing that this series is loosely based upon only updated to a modern day setting of a Canadian university in 2014 instead of 19th century Europe.
Laura Hollis is a senior year student of journalism who sets about investigating the mysterious disappearance of several fellow female students, one of whom includes her own dorm roommate.
After this disappearance, her roommate's place is taken by the mysterious Carmilla Karnstein, who in the course of Laura's investigation is revealed to be a vampire. However, Carmilla is not evil, although she had been in the past and now is content to drink animal blood and blood from the university hospital, rather than take the lives of innocent people and she joins forces with Laura and her friends to solve the mystery of the disappearances and to stop the evil and supernatural forces that are consuming everything and everybody on campus.
In each season everything is filmed in one room only, (with the exception of the last two or three episodes of the final season) and it is filmed essentially as a stage play using a one static camera set up.
With this in mind, all the 'action' takes place off screen and is explained retrospectively by the cast, therefore, each episode is extremely dialogue heavy to compensate for this, so in order to keep up with what is going on, the viewer has to do some serious listening and even I had to skip back a couple of times to keep on top of the plot.
The lesbian relationship between Laura and Carmilla, while only hinted at in Le Fanu's novella is central to the plot as true love blossoms between the two over the course of the three seasons. However, this is a very PG-13 relationship and only brief kissing between the two is ever seen and it is nothing gratuitous or even titillating and not surprisingly, the series has found an appreciative audience within the LGBTQ community as well as beyond and that is the beauty of this absolute gem of a show, because it's entertaining if you're gay, straight, binary, non binary or even someone, like me who actually despises such objectifying 'labels'.
All characters in this series, (understandably with the exception of the evil bad ones), are treated sympathetically, even Laura's over protective dad , whom the writers go to great lengths to show that overbearing as he may be, it's his job to care and do what he can to keep his daughter safe. In other productions, this character could have been written for ridicule or even disdain.
Credit HAS to go to the two main leads Elise Bauman as Laura and Natasha Negovanlis as the titular Carmilla. Their performances are believable, funny, emotional and provides everything else you should expect from the rollercoaster of emotions that such a story is designed to take you on and this is also replicated in the supporting cast too.
I was pleasantly surprised by Carmilla and found it even more entertaining than some of the multi million dollar productions that Hollywood churns out these days. Carmilla shows us that you can give people great artistic entertainment on a fraction of a budget as long as the writing is of a high quality and the acting is good.
Give this a go, you will be pleasantly surprised.
Enjoy!
I have to admit, until three days ago, I hadn't even heard about this series and only stumbled upon it when searching for an audiobook version of Sheridan Le Fanu's novella that I could download and listen to when I was working from home and what a fortuitous find it was.
It is Le Fanu's writing that this series is loosely based upon only updated to a modern day setting of a Canadian university in 2014 instead of 19th century Europe.
Laura Hollis is a senior year student of journalism who sets about investigating the mysterious disappearance of several fellow female students, one of whom includes her own dorm roommate.
After this disappearance, her roommate's place is taken by the mysterious Carmilla Karnstein, who in the course of Laura's investigation is revealed to be a vampire. However, Carmilla is not evil, although she had been in the past and now is content to drink animal blood and blood from the university hospital, rather than take the lives of innocent people and she joins forces with Laura and her friends to solve the mystery of the disappearances and to stop the evil and supernatural forces that are consuming everything and everybody on campus.
In each season everything is filmed in one room only, (with the exception of the last two or three episodes of the final season) and it is filmed essentially as a stage play using a one static camera set up.
With this in mind, all the 'action' takes place off screen and is explained retrospectively by the cast, therefore, each episode is extremely dialogue heavy to compensate for this, so in order to keep up with what is going on, the viewer has to do some serious listening and even I had to skip back a couple of times to keep on top of the plot.
The lesbian relationship between Laura and Carmilla, while only hinted at in Le Fanu's novella is central to the plot as true love blossoms between the two over the course of the three seasons. However, this is a very PG-13 relationship and only brief kissing between the two is ever seen and it is nothing gratuitous or even titillating and not surprisingly, the series has found an appreciative audience within the LGBTQ community as well as beyond and that is the beauty of this absolute gem of a show, because it's entertaining if you're gay, straight, binary, non binary or even someone, like me who actually despises such objectifying 'labels'.
All characters in this series, (understandably with the exception of the evil bad ones), are treated sympathetically, even Laura's over protective dad , whom the writers go to great lengths to show that overbearing as he may be, it's his job to care and do what he can to keep his daughter safe. In other productions, this character could have been written for ridicule or even disdain.
Credit HAS to go to the two main leads Elise Bauman as Laura and Natasha Negovanlis as the titular Carmilla. Their performances are believable, funny, emotional and provides everything else you should expect from the rollercoaster of emotions that such a story is designed to take you on and this is also replicated in the supporting cast too.
I was pleasantly surprised by Carmilla and found it even more entertaining than some of the multi million dollar productions that Hollywood churns out these days. Carmilla shows us that you can give people great artistic entertainment on a fraction of a budget as long as the writing is of a high quality and the acting is good.
Give this a go, you will be pleasantly surprised.
Enjoy!