Storyland is the umbrella for new series of commissioned web drama and is hosted on the RTÉ Player. The programme offers filmmakers the opportunity to develop a series of webisodes and for its fifth season, IFTN spoke with Drama Development Executive of RTÉ Drama David Crean and Louise Ryan from the Irish Film Board about Storyland 2014.
“What we’re trying to do at Storyland is to give people who maybe wouldn’t have a huge amount of experience, or even ones who do, a chance to get a drama series commissioned,” says David Crean, referring to the programme as a “launch pad for lots of writers, directors and producers who’ve gone on to work in dramas for us.”
Previous success stories include Paul Duane, Rob Cawley and Gary Duggan, the team behind Storyland series ‘Happy Slapper’ who went on to make ‘Amber’. ‘Jenny Was a Friend of Mine’ starred Charlie Murphy who is now Siobhan in ‘Love/Hate’, and it was written by Thomas Martin who went on to write for ‘RAW’.
Louise Ryan from the Irish Film Board cited ‘Hardy Bucks’ as an example of a Storyland series with great success having gone from a web series, to a fully commissioned series, to a feature film production supported by the IFB in the space of around two and a half years. She says, “We have a sequel of ‘Hardy Bucks’ in development at the moment, which we’re very excited about. The first film was a box office hit last year when it was released and I think ‘Hardy Bucks’ was a project that went the whole way because it had a very strong sense of who its audience was.”
The programme this year also hopes to discover new talent, and is affording more opportunities though its commissioning of five series of four episodes which are up to 6 minutes long. As Crean explains, “producers will have up to 24 minutes of drama as one commission, which is a great way for them to test proof of concept for a body of work. They could use it to feed a pilot series for TV for example, or it could be something they may want to make and turn into a movie. It’s entirely up to them.”
There have not been this many series commissioned before, and this year also sees the first time RTÉ will host the programme in combination with the Irish Film Board. Louise Ryan said, “As part of our ongoing relationship with RTE we thought the partnership on Storyland made sense.
“One of the key objectives of the Irish Film Board is to invest in Irish creative talent across film, animation and TV drama. We’ve a number of short film schemes which aim to provide opportunities for new talent and develop up and coming writers, directors and producers, and that’s what Storyland is all about but in a different format.”
Storyland 2014 is also different this year as the web series selected will have straight commissioning, whereas before it was run via knockout competition. David Crean indicates a desire for RTÉ to branch out this year, and encourages production teams of all backgrounds, including gaming and animation, to submit their ideas. Submissions should consider multi-platform opportunities.
As for advice to give those interested in Storyland, Crean suggests, “The best advice without a doubt is do not try to double guess what you think we would want to see. Don’t censor yourself because in drama, more than any other form or genre in TV, it’s complete bottom-up creativity. What we need to do is to find a writer, director, producer package who have an original idea or an imaginative take on the ordinary and we’ll help them to grow whatever their idea is.
“But also, the stories that get commissioned have to be relatable to the contemporary Irish experience. The entrants need to really sense what their story is, so it’s much more than just expressing an idea, it has to connect with audiences as well.”
An open day will be held on Wednesday 4th June with a second open day on Monday 9th June. More information can be found on www.rte.ie/storyland and queries can be sent to storyland2014@rte.ie.
