“The Typewriter” is the recent short film from Ashtun O’Rourke, in total, her thirdmost, Junior effort. It continues the story of “$pree”, her second film, and several other short films between that and this that have culminated in a web series, including “Shrink”, “Silence”, “b&w” (all helmed by Mike Barkhoff), and “TBD”, which was Josey Davis’ brainchild. The web series, “Chapters.” has emerged as a clear victory for the film production company, Barking Vans, with three of it’s entries hanging onto spots in the Top 15 Most Watched videos of their roster.
In “The Typewriter”, the web series comes to a finale of sorts, with the reveal that the web series’ title lent itself not just to the fact that every entry followed it’s on story, but that it’s last episode gave this to a plot thread on it’s own behalf. While “$pree”, released in February, may have been the stronger of the two, it is clear that O’Rourke gave both strong amounts of thought and effort, and it has even come to the forefront that “The Typewriter” was actually written prior to “$pree”, and that herself and Barkhoff, who act as the Executive Producing team behind the show, decided to throw more episodes into the mix to truly emphasize on the idea of this entries’ plot point.
“The Typewriter” came out on May 7th, 2018, and was promoted simply through the companies’ social media websites, unlike “$pree” or “TBD”, both of which contained trailers alongside them. “The Typewriter” has been promoted as the finale to “Chapters.”, but that’s it. There’s no “Season” written before hand, afterwards, or anything. So it appears the mini webseries was either planned as being just that, a mini webseries, or they are hiding any evidence of a Season 2, or, perhaps, on a more grand scheme, they simply just don’t know. Perhaps we will get some coverage from a Zach Attacks episode, but at this point, there’s no real answers being given. In fact, we don’t even know IF we WILL get a Zach Attacks episode based around the web series as a whole, The Typewriter, or any of it’s entries that haven’t been touched upon in an episode yet (which is all but “$pree”).
On “The Typewriter”, Executive Producer of the series and Cameraman of the entry, Barkhoff, held exclusively to a Barking Vans rep. who is writing this article had this to say: “Typewriter is all about the six episodes tying together. It’s basically our way of saying that no matter who you are or what you do, you have a subconscious desire within, and you can control what path you take in life. However, we express that by showing the exact opposite. If there was to be one takeaway of “Chapters.”, aside from the fact that Ashtun is very good as a Writer and Director and Actor, I would say that it was lined up and planned so delicately. If you go back and watch Chapter 1 ($pree), it’s all about greed, corruption, endless amounts of power that you didn’t know you consumed, ignorance, self destruction, so much – which is why I think it connects great with our audience, but anyways, if you watch all of the following Chapters, and you really pay attention, you’ll see that they all kinda tip toe on those same lines. The themes may not always be prevalent, sometimes they’re hidden in a dark room or corner. But they are there.”
It appears as if Chapters. took a lot of time and work to find footing and balance in the Writing stage before Filming began, and that the layers were very carefully peeled back. Barking Vans, known to be fairly recluse, makes updates regularly for all of their shows, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Chapters returned due to the amount of good reviews it has attracted. It should also be noted that other webseries’ handled by the company, such as Unscripted, which also has gotten very refreshing reviews, also have not gotten an official renewal. And, above that, when examining the production companies’ brother’s history, it appears that a lot of what they do faces a revival – some examples being “Timeline”, “Bond V Batman: Age of Vengeance”, which kicked off “Bond P Batman”, which has been going strong since 2015, even though it’s third episode just released this year (after a two year wait since Episode 2). Updates are sure to come!
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