Method is an Australian comedy about Emma and Ryan, best friends and struggling actors. The series follows the two as they work through their side jobs whilst using every opportunity to improve their acting to make their dreams come true by ‘making it’.
Inspired by real life events, co-creators and actors of Method, Jerome Velinsky and Tawni Bryant, chat about their experiences working on Method.
ROLL UP, ROLL UP! Here it is… The official METHOD season 1 trailer!!! We hope you enjoy it! Team Method xEdit by Clayton Smith composing by Elly Vex & Vanessa VeeSound design by ZigZag Lane Audio + Music ProductionScreen Australia Tawni Bryant Jerome Velinsky Kristin Skye Sargent Konrad McCarthy Jasper Bagg Kaarin Fairfax Petra Kalive
Posted by Method Series on Tuesday, 13 June 2017
What inspired your web series?
Sadly… Real life! It came to a point where Tawni and I would share so many stories of our own acting ‘disasters’ or our friends ‘tragic’ auditions, that we were like… “This series needs to be made!”
Why did you choose web series as your format?
A few reasons. Of course, budget is always going to influence your decisions in regards to what format you choose; so the idea of making a web series seemed so much more accessible and realistic when we began talking about Method. Also, we felt that a shorter format gave us the opportunity to give the world a powerful snapshot of who we are and what we’re about. It’s that ‘quality over quantity’ thing and knowing how saturated the market already is. The competition is fierce and so having a smaller, more concentrated series allowed us to work every beat and take no prisoners.
You say your series is based loosely on personal experience, how many of these different jobs did you actually do?
A lot of them! Many of them are yet to be featured in the current season, so there’s plenty more to come. We want to let the audience imagination decide what’s true and what’s not. Tawni and I have both lived very diverse and I guess you’d say… interesting lives.
How important are web series to the growing Melbourne entertainment industry?
So important! Melbourne has so much to offer. It is truly one of the coolest cities in the world and so much of what Melbourne has to offer isn’t represented on mainstream TV. Tawni and I both lived overseas for years and it was shocking to hear how little people actually knew about Melbourne. Creators in Melbourne have an opportunity to showcase a unique side of this amazing city through the work they create. That’s what we did with Method. We’re so proud to be a Melbourne based series… I guess you could say Method is like our ode to Melbourne in a way.
What are the challenges you came across when making your series and how did you overcome them?
There were so many challenges that come with making a series. Money, is most often one of them. We were essentially a very low budget series with dreams of grandeur, so that alone is going to add some push pull into the mix. Without getting too detailed, I think the best way we overcame the challenges we had was being resilient. Being open to change, disappointment, forks in the road and the setbacks that came with trying to get this series off the ground. There were many days during pre-production, production and post that were really tough and exhausting and ended with lying on the couch crying in nothing but your bra and undies… (And that was just Jerome). But seriously, I guess when you believe in something so much, (as wizard of oz as that sounds), the only thing you think of when faced with all of that resistance is… “What’s the plan b?” or “What’s the solution?”. You have to keep moving forward and not dwell on the hiccups along the road.
How did you fund your series?
Tawni and I self-funded our pilot episode in Jan 2016. We then decided to crowd fund via kickstarter for enough money to shoot the remaining 5 eps. Once we got into post, we applied for the Multi-platform fund and thankfully secured some funding support through Screen Australia.
What do you want your audience to take away from this series?
Rock hard abs from laughing too much?
We hope Emma and Ryan’s tragic stories make people feel better about where their own lives are at. We want them to feel like they know these characters and want to see more of them. Behind the humour, there is an important message in Method about following your dreams and doing anything to get closer toward them. So, I hope that Emma and Ryan are inspiring to people, in some warped sadistic way.
What did you learn from making this series? What would you do differently?
Umm… we could write a tone on this one! There’s so much to say on this and we didn’t learn one single thing but a plethora of things.
We created this series, produced it, directed it and starred in it. It was a huge learning curve and a baptism by fire. It was the hardest thing we’ve both ever done for so many different reasons; but 10 times more rewarding on the flip side. We saw this baby through being a seed of an idea, through to scripts, to pre, to shooting it and finally, to post. We’ve learnt what it takes to get a series off the ground. Throughout the whole process, Tawni and I lived in different cities which was incredibly taxing and one thing that we’d change if we had our time over. But honestly, we were so blessed with an incredible team of people who shared our vision and enthusiasm for this series and (although it’s aged us a good 10 years minimum!), it was such a joy and probably our favourite, creative experience EVER!
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