Local producer enters web series in online challenge
Sarah Fodey was at a dinner party when she started to bemoan the content in Canadian film and TV.
There was nothing she wanted to watch.
A friend was quick to challenge her. “He said, ‘You work in this industry, why don’t you make what you want to watch?’ It was such a simple challenge,” Fodey recalls.
With that, the Ottawa-based writer, producer and founder of Sandbay Pictures, set about creating content that she was excited about. The result is a web series called Sam, which is now in the running to win funding from the Independent Production Fund’s Web Drama Series Program. The fund is a private foundation that aims to provide independent Canadian TV producers with financial support to create dramatic series for Canadian broadcasters. In 2010 they expanded this definition to include web content.
Fodey is a veteran of the local film and TV industry, her career spanning almost 20 years now. She has worked on feature films, documentaries, and even done work for corporations. She has produced for networks like Global, CBC, Bravo!, and City. As such, Fodey is well versed in production for all types of film and TV, but producing for the web is a new venture for her.
Though Fodey initially had to get over the stigma of producing a web series she is ultimately excited about what it means for the show and the contest with IPF. “Part of the bad rap that the web has is that anybody can produce content for it,” Fodey says.
Fodey hopes that people will notice the professionalism and quality of the series in comparison with the standard YouTube fare.
In fact, advancing from the first round of the IPF contest relies entirely on audience. The candidates selected to move onto Round 2 will be chosen based on the views, likes, shares and comments their YouTube trailer accumulates before March 31.
“In essence it’s a popularity contest,” Fodey says. “But I champion the approach. I really hope that the content will be king and will decide who gets the support to make it happen.”
Fodey is hoping that the content she was missing back at that dinner party is also what Canadian audiences are missing and want to watch.
The web series follows the title character, Sam, as she goes through her “Jesus Year.” Jesus is said to have been 33 years old at crucifixion. The year is thought to be one when people make several significant changes in the hopes of being reborn and finding new meaning.
Fodey says that many of her girlfriends have been through a Jesus Year of sorts.
Though it may not hit at precisely 33 for everyone, the symptoms are the same.
Fodey had one herself.
“I was setting fires all over my life. And I was doing it. It wasn’t like anything was happening to me. I was the one in charge of doing it and yet I couldn’t stop,” she says.
In the series, the stories of these women are reflected in Sam, who quits her job, leaves her boyfriend, and ultimately rediscovers her sexual curiosity.
“When you start breaking down the walls in your life you may realize that they don’t really exist other than in your mind. Sexual experience included,” says Celine Filion, the actor who plays Sam in the series.
“At this point it’s an act of choice. It’s not happening to Sam, she’s looking for these experiences, which is so much more empowering.”
It’s this question of agency that seems to tie the varying experiences of the Jesus Year together. Agency over female sexual experience specifically is what makes Sam an exciting series for the cast and crew. Fodey is adamant about presenting Sam’s sexual experience as authentically as possible.
For Fodey, part of presenting female sexuality in a realistic way was to have women in front of and behind the camera.
There is definitely some tension for her between wanting to tell a woman’s story with women storytellers, and not wanting to make it political.
“The second it becomes political then it becomes a lot less about storytelling, which is really what we’re doing. But I don’t want to ever be the kind of storyteller who blatantly ignores those kind of side realities, either,” says Fodey referring to the gender imbalance in key jobs in film and TV, such as directors, producers, and writers.
Ultimately though, female professionals seem to be a natural fit for Sam and serve to tell the story Fodey has been missing. TO SEE THE TRAILER FOR SAM AND GET MORE INFORMATION, VISIT YOUTUBE.COM/SAM.