By Michael Torrice
Series7movie.com is the
web site for the movie Series 7: The Contenders. The movie
itself is a dark comedy parodying the current flood of reality-based
television shows in the last year. In this fake reality-based show,
six contenders must survive and outlast their opponents not through
immunity challenges or by forming coalitions to vote off undesired
competition, but by killing their opponents. Every season, five contestants
are picked by lottery, given their own trusty Glock 17 handgun, and
forced to compete against the raining champion. If they can successfully
kill all their opponents and survive through three seasons, the contestants
are given their freedom. The movie itself is filmed as if a station
was showing a marathon of shows from the seventh season and not once
does it break away from the parody. It is made in the hopes that you
think it is a real show possibly on a major network at this moment.
The web site itself continues with this theme of complete parody and
tries to parody the web sites of reality-based television shows. Features
on the site include quick biographies of the six contenders in Series
7, polls that ask viewers their opinions about the events occurring
on the show, and even a Flash game where you can work on your target
shooting skills. All of these are typical to the many genuine reality-based
shows' web sites. But the site goes further and adds content that
makes it even more realistic. Want to own the needle one of the contenders
uses to kill her opponents with? The site has set up a fake auction
for this item and advertises the winners of past auctions. Worried
that when your number is pulled you will not be ready to compete?
The site has created fake training sessions with Sgt. John Larouche
to go over basic skills necessary to survive in the competition. Finally,
you can sign up to be added to the lottery for the nest season (sorry,
those with military or law enforcement experience are not usually
let in due to the unfair advantage they would have over the "normal"
contenders).
Series7movie.com has created
a site that strives to parody the reality-based programming experience
to the last detail. Having seen the site a bit before viewing the
movie and then fully exploring it afterwards, I must say that it also
works well as a means of bringing people to the cinema and then back
again to the site. At first viewing, the site works to invoke some
curiosity about the movie. Since it does not break from the parody
to advertise the movie, it takes a while to understand what the movie's
premise is. But after viewing the movie, the site heightens the level
of parody. Although the idea of a show where contestants kill each
other is a bit disturbing, one can only chuckle at some aspects of
the movie and site. For instance, the auction for the different weapons
seems at first grotesque. But is it really that hard to imagine CBS
auctioning off memorabilia of the Survivor cast? The most interesting
feature of the site is the collection of training videos. The videos
show that the movie makers went out of their way to create a web environment
that could take the cinema experience onto the web by shooting these
extra scenes solely for the web. Something that could have also added
to this trans-media experience would have been an archive of scenes
from previous seasons. Such a feature would have given people who
had not seen the movie more background about the premise and those
who have just seen the movie more insight into the show and its main
character. But as it stands, Series7movie.com
is an excellent site connecting the web to the cinema in an original
way.