{"id":13539,"date":"2016-08-06T07:56:09","date_gmt":"2016-08-06T13:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13539"},"modified":"2016-08-07T07:36:48","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T13:36:48","slug":"high-hopes-for-locally-made-web-based-comedy-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/08\/high-hopes-for-locally-made-web-based-comedy-series\/","title":{"rendered":"High hopes for locally made, web-based comedy series"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Flag\"<\/a>

Ted Kim, right, director of “Welcome to Big Sky Adventures,” talks to actors Caitlin Hart and Troy Evans during filming in Roundup on the Fourth of July.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ted Kim thinks his web-based comedy series has two big things going for it.<\/p>\n

One is a strong concept, which he describes as \u201ca love story about two sisters who can never get in synch,\u201d and in fact are constantly at war.<\/p>\n

The other is that it is being filmed in Billings and Roundup, tapping into a national and even an international fascination with Montana.<\/p>\n

Kim, who manages Billings Open Studio and has worked in television and film in Los Angeles and New York City, has launched an Indiegogo fundraising campaign<\/a>, trying to corral the $15,000 he needs to film a half-hour pilot, which will be posted on YouTube and Vimeo.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d like to film the pilot this fall and then get two more episodes done before trying to pitch the series to on-demand streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you have three episodes in hand you can start knocking on doors,\u201d Kim said. \u201cIf you have even one episode in hand, you can start knocking on doors.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019ve already built a solid online audience before you go knocking, all the better, he said. His ultimate goal is to have the series picked up by a distributor so that it can continue indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Because of the changes sweeping the entertainment industry, Kim said, this is all uncharted territory. The one thing everyone wants, though, is original content.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is an ideal time to be a producer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Kim and other others involved in the series, \u201cWelcome to Big Sky Adventures,\u201d had a fundraiser at the downtown Art House Cinema and Pub last Monday, at which they showed a trailer, a scene from the pilot and a behind-the-scenes look at the actors and the series.<\/p>\n

None of those videos is available online yet, Kim said, but they will be soon, and he\u2019ll also be posting filmed vignettes as they\u2019re ready. They have already done some filming during a downtown Billings Farmers\u2019 Market, at a Fourth of July parade in Roundup and on the Hay Fox Ranch outside Roundup.<\/p>\n

Kim had been thinking about doing a comedy series for a long time and came up with this one after thinking about growing up with two sisters. He said sibling rivalries and family relationships are things everybody is familiar with, either in their own families or in those of their friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so universal,\u201d he said. \u201cIt can be tragic and funny. It\u2019s really a very fertile field for comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two main characters in \u201cWelcome to Big Sky Country\u201d are the Tuss sisters, Hildi, the older one, played by Caitlin Hart, and younger sister Sarah, played by Robin Denk. In the show, Hildi has spent most of her life in Montana but is living in Kansas when she and Sarah are called back to Montana by their mother, who is very ill\u2014or at least appears to be.<\/p>\n

Kim said the mother, whom he describes as \u201cquite the Machiavellian character,\u201d asks her daughters to revive the family\u2019s adventure tour business, as a way of luring them home and getting them back together.<\/p>\n

\"Musselshell\"<\/a>

Filming has also taken place along the Musselshell River near Roundup.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sarah, who has spent years in L.A. and is thoroughly citified, clashes immediately and repeatedly with her sister, who is a country girl at heart. The two leading men are Kyle, played by Troy Evans, Hildi\u2019s ex-husband, who is still in love with her, and Benny, played by Shane McClurg, who\u2019s madly in love with Sarah.<\/p>\n

Hildi and Kyle have plenty of conflicts of their own, to match the sisters\u2019 rivalry. Benny, meanwhile, was Sarah\u2019s good friend in high school, when he figured the only way to get close to a girl as popular and pretty as Sarah was to pretend he was gay.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s dying to profess his love to her, but since she has already shared her deepest secrets with him\u2014and allowed him to see her in her birthday suit\u2014he\u2019s afraid that copping to his true feelings might end their relationship.<\/p>\n

Kim said more than 300 people from around the country responded to a casting call. It was relatively easy to fill three of the main roles, with Billings natives Hart and McClurg, and Denk, who is from Chicago, but not so easy to fill the role of Kyle.<\/p>\n

\"Kim\"<\/a>

Ted Kim<\/p><\/div>\n

That finally happened when Kim was scouting Roundup-area locations with Evans, a fifth-generation Montanan who works as an artist and woodworker in Roundup.<\/p>\n

In the midst of that search, Kim said, he realized Evans was perfect for the part. \u201cI said, holy cow, I\u2019m being driven around by Kyle,\u201d and he asked Evens if he\u2019d like to give it a try.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never done any acting at all and so I was totally taken aback by it,\u201d Evans said. \u201cBut when he said it, I just thought of it as an opportunity and definitely wanted to go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hart, meanwhile, is thrilled to be able to work as an actor in her hometown. She graduated from the University of Montana with a BFA in acting and has performed with the Montana Repertory Theatre, NOVA and Billings Studio Theatre.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of my deepest passions,\u201d she said. \u201cI was super excited about this experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also loves how the series showcases Eastern Montana\u2014the landscapes and all the talented people in and around Billings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the idea of a story set in Montana being told,\u201d she said. \u201cEven if it\u2019s just popular in Montana, that\u2019d be cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if it does go big nationally, big enough to expand into more than one season, Evans is ready for that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew going into it that that would potentially be a possibility,\u201d he said. \u201cSo yeah, I\u2019m open to it. If this is a two- or three-year stint, that\u2019d be great.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Kim thinks his web-based comedy series has two big things going for it. One is a strong concept, which he describes as \u201ca love story about two sisters who can never get in synch,\u201d and in fact are constantly at war. The other is that it is being filmed in Billings and Roundup, tapping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[4638,2152,2190,4233,4795,4796,4794,713,4793,1475,3194],"class_list":["post-13539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-amazon","tag-billings-open-studio","tag-billings-studio-theatre","tag-caitlin-hart","tag-netflix","tag-nova","tag-robin-denk","tag-roundup","tag-shane-mcclurg","tag-ted-kim","tag-troy-evans","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}