With the release of Episode 5 - Internal Affairs, Barton Ct. Productions Inc. has managed to finally release its newest and arguably the most polished, hilarious episode yet of Barton Police: The Online Comedy Series. After the longest period of time for a subsequent episode release since the series’ premiere, Episode 5 aims to please fans with the longest running time yet of around 48 minutes. As with the previous four episodes that have already been released, episode 5 is available for free viewing on BartonPolice.com and YouTube. The goal now - to release Episode 6 within another 3 to 6 weeks after the release of the fifth episode.
The fifth episode accomplishes impressive technical feats never done before by the team - one special effects shot which shows a computer screen imposed onto a monitor in post production which appears almost 100% realistic - the vast majority of Barton Police viewers will likely not even notice the effect, which was the intended goal. Episode 5 also marks the first episode that musical composition was conducted by the duo of Scott Lee and Chris Worrell, working on music seriously together in the same room for the first time since high school. Their old high school band, named Erebus, disbanded long ago, but their dreams of creating a new album have been at least partially fulfilled by creating several new songs for Barton Police - several albums worth. Most viewers will likely agree that the two musical styles of Chris and Scott mesh together quite seamlessly.
Work has begun on the Barton Police DVD that is meant for release later this month or early April 2010 by creating an Episode 1-5 DVD that will be given to cast/crew exclusively. The design features of the DVD itself, under works by Scott Lee, build a basic framework for which the final release will be constructed. By creating the Episode 1-5 DVD, about half of the work for the late March release will already have been done. The main part of the work consists in creating brand new interactive motion menus for the DVD as well as finishing an elaborately more complex menu system than has yet been done by Barton Ct.
Fans for the show have been pouring in, with views on the first episode climbing by at least 20 views and as much as 50 views per day. Within weeks, hundreds of new fans have been added to the Barton Police MySpace with a target market of viewers locally watching in League City. Producer of Barton Police and Company Administrator of Barton Ct. Productions Scott Lee has thought of this as a sort of “micromarketing” method in which most promotional efforts are focused toward League City and the 77019 area code in Houston surrounding the River Oaks Theater, where a future episode 9 screening is being considered. The episode 9 screening would be a major premiere for the Barton Police team and would likely take place at the end of summer 2009 in pairing with commercials playing on local Houston cable television.
But TV ads and big screen premieres are not all the team is having talks about - Scott Lee is also toying with the idea of developing a Barton Police PC game which would be designed as action/adventure type game following the characters AJ Jenkins and/or Bill O’Hara. The idea hatched when, in the midst of troubleshooting technical problems while attempting to play multiplayer games, Scott Lee and Chris Worrell began talking about the exciting possibilities of designing different kinds of games. At some point, Scott hatched the idea of creating a Barton Police game.
“Imagine what it would be like to create that sort of an interactive experience. If you played as Preston Leebo, your primary starting weapon might be an iddy biddy pocket knife while AJ Jenkins would be an actual pistol,” Scott Lee played with possibilities as he talked to Worrell, long time friend and musical composer for the show. Greenlighting the game as an official project brings up a huge number of questions, however, and no solid or definite decisions have yet been made. The creation of the game would demand a considerable viewership base for the show itself before launching a game of any kind and that also means selling a huge number of DVD’s before designing a game.
It also raises the question of how the game would be designed and who would be on the design team. Where would the programmers come from? To what degree could the existing personnel working with Barton handle creating 3D models and animation? What other projects being done by Barton would have to be considered? Would the current cast agree to do voice acting for the game? The list goes on…
All in all, the only thing regarding a game that has definitely been decided is that Barton Ct. Productions would love to create one if only the viewer demand for the show were high enough. There is hope, however, as the primary advantage to creating an entire intellectual property (IP) universe such as Barton Police means that the more content you create for it the more of a chance you have to immerse new fans and viewers (or in the game’s case: players).
“One of the biggest problems we face right now, in addition to just completing the project, is that fans are not able to really catch a good glimpse ahead of what there is to look forward to in the show. So we’re wanting to kind of do an around-the-road approach to create a promotional video that will show off the entire series all at once - even content that we haven’t polished and released yet so that fans will say ‘oh I like that! I’d better watch until I get to see that part because that part looks interesting!’” Scott Lee explains Barton Ct. Productions’ marketing approach to getting viewers for the show.
