Company Administrator Scott Lee, Photo by Roberto Ganoza
Pushing past the original release date on the Barton Police DVD , the Barton gang recently sat down at one of Scott Lee’s signature “Denny’s Midnight Raid” events and ended up having a lengthy discussion involving the future of the online comedy series. With personal issues going on with the cast and crew, it has been a challenge for both the staff and administrative team behind the show to continue pressing on. To begin with, Barton Police has been an incredibly ambitious project considering its budget to scope ratio - making an ongoing timeline for both production and post production exceedingly difficult.
Barton Ct. still plans to continue the show and to release the show’s first DVD with nine episodes before the end of March 2010 and hopes to have all filming completed by the end of February. While it has been a difficult challenge to put together and release the first four episodes, the company has begun to open itself up to increased help in recent time. Chris Worrell, who has worked with Scott Lee for years, has taken on the challenge of producing new music for the show while Scott takes on a massive workload of special effects shots for the show’s final scenes.
Chris Worrell originally worked with Scott Lee as a musician in their high school band starting in their freshman year. Chris Worrell was also involved in the production of the company’s very first online comedy series meant to establish a greater fanbase known as Kite Show. The show appeared on the local municipal access channel LCTV16, and the show’s creators also produced a film known as Daydreams which was released as a student production in the Clear Creek Independent School District under the title “One of Those Days.” Chris Worrell has worked as a special effects artist, cinematographer, and musical composer for both series now and appears to be producing work that allows the show to continue to be sustained. Chris Worrell has produced orchestral, techno, electronic, and hard rock compositions for the company and also released a digital album under his techno musical identity Kreese for a limited time in 2009.
In addition, new film enthusiast Will Sheffield has been welcomed onto the Barton Police team and will be helping them to get extra editing done for the duration of post production. While the crew for the very first episode of the series consisted primarily of Scott Lee and director Stephen Wolfe putting together all different aspects of the show, it became apparent as time went on and a heavy work load caught up to the duo that they would need to call upon some extra assistance. Will Sheffield could also possibly replace much of Scott’s creative contributions as he is trained to help the creative team at Barton Ct. and Scott Lee pursues a doctoral degree in psychology from the University of Houston, in line with much of his previous personal development related endeavors.
Barton Police Star Justin Herman with Xavier Flores in background, Photo by Roberto Ganoza
Essentially, the entire team of Barton Police is pushing the envelope with what some people thought was possible, and they are working on borrowed time. Mitchell Ganey, who plays character Bill O’Hara, recently moved nine hours away from Houston to attend college and Xavier Flores has announced he has new plans following mid-February. There is no money in the already minuscule budget for the show to transport cast members for weekend film shoots, so the team is not just nearing a “hoped for” release date but is instead working against time in a battle to prevent themselves from seeing the show’s death on a very real deadline.
“What’s interesting is that much of the content for the second half of the nine episodes we plan to complete is already finished. It is literally only a small selection of scenes that holds us back from total completion and only a matter of time before the few scenes we have left leave the editing room and are available for public viewing,” Producer Scott Lee explains in regards to working toward the release date. He has also stated that, if needs be, he will take money out of his own pocket to see that the show is complete should it need to be delayed any further. “We’re talking about a piece of intellectual property that can be built upon in a very powerful way. If we complete this show’s start then we have a chance to build a massive following on it.”
Some bloggers and stray YouTube viewers have already noticed the web series’ potential, commenting that it is “surprising so few people know about this.” While the team knows that it would be great for its viewers to do the work for them and spread the word, they also know that much of the show’s total success hinges on not just completion but total devotion of resources to directly reaching out to audiences. With little to no money for advertising, the show has relied on word of mouth and viewers embedding the show’s YouTube player onto their various websites, MySpace profiles, Facebook pages, and blogs. Should Barton Ct. be able to complete the comedy series and its planned nine episodes, it will have a full powered product that it can spread to thousands of viewers before 2010’s end.
“We’re talking about going from several hundred views right now to having dozens of thousands of views by 2010’s end. We’re also talking about different ways to increase distribution and spread the word. A censored version of the show as well as a shorter feature length movie cut that can be viewed in under two hours is already in the works to further help the series be more acceptable to the masses.”-Scott Lee
