Aislinn's blog

Dear Aislinn,

I wonder if I could make a rather unusual request of you. My name’s Joz Norris and I’m a writer, actor and comedian currently based in London. I started working in comedy during my time at the University of East Anglia and, upon graduating, started work on a webseries of short films documenting the life of Matt Fisher, a sort of fictional alter-ego obsessed with his own imagined fame, as he chronicles the various difficulties in his life (or rather, refuses to face up to the various difficulties in his life) as a recent graduate. The project went through a number of different stages, and I started filming it about three months ago, when I uploaded various short instalments onto Youtube, each ranging from about eight to fifteen minutes. Currently, there are nine instalments on Youtube and, at present, it has a rather modest viewership consisting principally of my friends and family. However, it has begun to be seen by other more diverse people, and has already been picked up to be adapted into a live stage show by Up in Arms Theatre Company in the autumn, to be directed by Sam Caird, son of the noted director John Caird. My main aim for the series, however, is for it to begin to reach a wider viewership online, and I wondered if you could help me. I think that the ideal target audience for the series would be students, dealing as it does with one person’s reaction to the fallout of having just graduated and suddenly be struck with the realisation that he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. I think students get really passionate about new comedy, and seeing as the internet is the only place where creativity is truly democratic – anybody can create whatever they want and reach whoever they want with it – I’m very keen to try and use the potential of the web to reach the student community. I think the series, dealing as it does with someone who was so in love with student life that he’s found it nearly impossible to let go of, is something the student community would really enjoy. Seeing as you run a rather excellent and popular student blog, I wondered if you might be interested in posting something about my webseries? I realise that, taken all in one go, the current length of material is a bit hefty, but I wouldn’t expect you to sit and watch the whole thing in one go and then just champion it to all your followers – I’d be very happy if you just posted episodic reviews as and when you could, or even just a brief mention about the series in general, if you enjoy it that is! I’m really passionate about the new show, and really do want it to do well, and if you were able to post something about it, be it a full review or even just a mention on your blog, I’d be immensely grateful. It really is through word of mouth and the support of others that new comedy reaches its audience and achieves its aims, so if you could help at all it would make my day! As I said, there are currently nine episodes and there will be more in the near future, but I’m putting it on a bit of a hiatus while I work on the stage show. The webseries itself has arrived at a nice point of near-conclusion which I don’t mind leaving it on for a while, which would also be a good opportunity to try and start marketing it to a new audience.

If you’ve made it this far through the email (and I apologise for just bombarding you with so much information out of the blue!), then perhaps I should share with you a bit of information about the series in case you’re interested:

Originally, there were going to be more characters, but, slightly taking my cue from Rob Brydon’s excellent series Marion & Geoff, I ultimately decided that this character’s rather tragic self-obsession and delusion was at its most obvious, and therefore at its funniest, when he had nobody else to restrict him and could just talk, self-indulgently and occasionally obnoxiously, about whatever he wanted to. Essentially, the series alternates between his own banal and pointless flights of fancy or imagined scenarios (ranging from walking into an imaginary nightclub in his bedroom, to planning in great detail every aspect of his future discography, having never even written a song) to stories about his best friends, Amy Sergeant and Greg Salmacis, whose suicide essentially acts as the backdrop to the entire situation. The basic idea I wanted to get across with Matt Fisher was that here was a man so shellshocked by finding himself in the “real world” with no idea of what he wants to do, and, indeed, by the loss of his best friend, that he just resolutely refuses to deal with it, and exists either in imagined fantasies or absurd predictions of future stardom, or he reminisces with painstaking attention to detail about old experiences between him and his friends, in an attempt to recreate the excitement of his days at uni in the face of his rather lonely life now. The focus, essentially, is storytelling. But, above all else, I hope that people find it funny, because we love to watch idiots embarrassing themselves. Matt Fisher is that rather tragic person who insists on sharing everything about themselves, to the awkward amusement of everyone watching. By turns, Matt reveals himself to be petty, deluded, prudish, irritating, self-obsessed, and a wittering fantasist but, I hope, he is at least partially redeemed by his utter adoration of his friends, who he is well aware are the things in his life that are ultimately more important than any imagined fantasy or hazy memory. Below is a link to a page on my website with all 9 webisodes embedded on it for you to watch if you’re interested:

http://joznorris.webs.com/film.htm

Thank you so much for reading this, I really do appreciate it. If there was anything you could do to help publicise the webseries and to help it reach its target audience, I’d be a very happy man. Whether it’s just a quick mention and a link on your blog, or a full review of the whole thing, anything you feel like posting would go a long way. I hope you enjoy the videos, and look forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers,

Joz Norris