Videoland director Jessica Smith and producer Scarlett Corne reflect on queer representation and ’90s nostalgia in the series that won the Series Mania comedy competition.
Jessica Smith and Scarlett Corne for Pikelet Pictures and Emmanuel Mattana for Videoland
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When the creative team at Pikelet Pictures, Jessica Smith and Scarlett Corne, was developing a release strategy for their short-form series Videoland, they had two criteria in mind. International world premiere and release on accessible platforms for maximum reach.
Having its world premiere at the prestigious teleconference “Festival Series Mania” was not a bad start. The world’s largest series-focused festival and forum, Series Mania has earned acclaim for launching award-winning premium television such as Succession, Hux and Fisk Australia.
“Getting into festivals and going around the festival circuit was very tactical, and[Smith]did a lot of research,” Koehne said. “Be selective when you go to film festivals, because if you want a world premiere, you want to save it for someone who can give you street cred.”
Smith agrees, saying that because of the high quality of screenings, the talent in attendance, and the concurrent industry forums and marketplaces, “If we can engage series mania at the show, we can also leverage our participation in the forums.” said.
And their strategic and selective approach to submissions paid off. Videoland was invited to the world premiere at the 2024 festival in Lille, France this March, and was ultimately selected for the coveted comedy competition. There have only been a handful of Australian titles in this category and only one series has been won so far, with Fisk taking the honor in 2021. Videoland will be the second title.
“As a short-form series, we didn’t know how many chances we had of getting into these really top-level festivals,” Koehne says. Comedy contest category, (…) I thought that was a mistake. ”
Smith continued, “At the time we thought, “Are we going to be up against a long-form show, a real comedy?” and Videoland felt a little more like a drama to us, and there were jokes. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t work in our favor if we were judged on the quality of the comedy and not on the quality of the show. But that was a mistake!”
In the latest episode of the Screen Australia podcast, we spoke to Smith and Corne about their festival strategy and experience premiering in overseas markets following their win at Series Mania. They also reflect on creating the bizarre drama and the challenges of (literally) renovating a video rental store.
In Videoland, when Haley (played by Emmanuel Mattana), a recently outed 17-year-old video store clerk, meets the girl of her dreams at work, she enlists her support to learn more about queer relationships as a crash course. Turn to the movies. Tanya, her overly supportive best friend, Daniel, her colleague, and Mel, her confused boss. But this was 1998, and nuanced queer representation is hard to find.
Exploring identity, queer expression, and full of ’90s nostalgia, Smith said the series is partially autobiographical, but was inspired by her own experiences working at a video store and looking for queer role models. He claims to have received a ration.
“Even if you could find lesbian characters or queer characters, most of the time they were evil or vampires. They were the bad guys. They were the monsters. So this experience… I think it was very important for me to tell that story at the time to really help the audience who weren’t doing it because (…) my wonderful story of working at a video store and trying to find representation. I thought it was a unique little story, but every queer person I talk to who came of age in the ’90s said they had to go through the exact same thing. Telling this story to those who didn’t have it, to those who could see themselves on TV and who couldn’t see us on TV or in the movies, shows how important representation is and always will be. I think it will really help you understand.”
And the team is excited to hit the second point of our release goal, with the series premiering on Netflix in September. Speaking to the team upon release, Smith said:
“Being able to make my debut as a creator on a Netflix series was incredibly surreal and I never thought it would happen. But the real win was that we wanted to make our show about queer representation, It’s such a huge audience on such an accessible platform. It’s always been very important for us to reach a wide and wide audience, so with the arrival of Netflix, we’re able to do that. It put me in a position to accomplish that in ways I never could have imagined.”
Watch Videoland on Netflix now.
Subscribe to the Screen Australia podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Pocket Casts
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