 "Photo: Courtesy of Rag Tag Films")
Need a date this weekend? Seth Kirschner is up for grabs.
Many may remember Kirschner, university alum '05, from his four-year stint with the Rubber Chickens. However, Kirschner's got a different gig nowadays, and it's not just the commercial he recently taped for the New York lottery. He's working in New York City co-starring as Henry in "We Need Girlfriends," a new Web series produced by Ragtag Productions.
Kirschner graduated with a degree in English and moved to the city because "it felt right." Currently he's working for a cabaret company called Arsnova in New York.
He also says he's auditioning, professionally acting and doing shows with groups such as the Upright Citizens Brigade. It was at one of the UCB performances that the guys of Ragtag saw what they were looking for and asked Kirschner to audition for "We Need Girlfriends."
Brian Amyot, along with Angel Acevedo and Steven Tsapelas, founded Ragtag Productions after graduating in 2004 from Hofstra University with a degree in film production.
Amyot says his ultimate goal is to teach film someday because he loves the creative environment. As far as working in an office goes, Amyot says he's been there, done that.
"I can remember growing up and not really knowing what my dad did," he says. "All I knew was that he worked in an office. When people would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I only knew I didn't want to do what my dad did."
And so far, he's not.
Though he does have a full-time job as an equipment room manager at the Art Institute of New York City, Amyot says his heart and soul goes into Ragtag. Over the past year, the trio has been doing short films that play online and at film festivals.
"We Need Girlfriends" is based around three guys - Tom, Henry and Rod - who have just moved into an apartment in New York City after graduating college. Two have recently been dumped by their long-term girlfriends and the third is a soon-to-be-single.
According to Steven Tsapelas, the main script writer, all of the scenarios the characters face are based on experiences he, Amyot and Acevedo had during their time at Hofstra. While at the university, the trio started a film club with a budget of $150. Now, Tsapelas says the club is so popular the budget has rocketed to between $10,000 and 15,000.
"We Need Girlfriends," however, is the first on-going series they've produced.
"We'd love to do this and get paid for it," Tsapelas says.
For one weekend per month, Kirschner and the rest of the cast film two episodes of the show.
"We have the month to go over the script and then we bring the gold," he says. "We make magic happen those two days."
Amyot admits the production company does take up a lot of time and money, but the idea for an online Web series seemed like a logical solution. As one of the three producers, Amyot says he and his colleagues saw this new comedy as a chance to show a longer feature, broken up into shorter segments.
Kirschner says he doesn't mind that the actors aren't paid.
"We all love to perform," he says. "So it's all out of the goodness of our hearts."
Amyot agrees, stating they're lucky the actors and crew work for free.
"It's all out of pocket," he says. "It's for a greater good - we hope."
"We Need Girlfriends," which is available on MySpace, Weneedgirlfriends.tv and Ragtagfilms.net, runs in approximately five-minute segments and airs a new episode on the first of every month - the premier episode ran on Nov. 1.
"I think comedy is in brevity," Kirschner says of the five-minute time span of the show.
Amyot says they have more ideas than they have the time to write scripts.
"If someone called me today and said 'Can we turn this into a half-hour sitcom?' we could do it without even thinking," he says.
So why the Internet?
"The Internet is so much more accessible," Kirschner says. "I mean look at MySpace."
What's interesting about the show is the actors - Kirschner, Patrick Cohen and Evan Bass - seem to have a well-developed bond, although Kirschner admits the guys didn't know each other at all before the show.
"We all get along very well," he says.
The humor is dry and targeted toward a college audience, but age aside, it's not hard to leave the first five-minute episode feeling as though a bond has been developed between oneself and the actors.
Amyot says people tell him "I want more" after seeing the first episode, which he takes as a compliment. He says he feels as though the show only gets better as the plot continues and the characters are built further.
While Kirschner says he'd like to be somewhere in-between really and amazingly famous, he doesn't think the Internet is a bad place to start.
"It's like a disease," he says of the Web. "But like a good type of disease."
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