Mike Shaw contributed to the Lines webseries in several roles. He was in charge of casting and held auditions. He wrote the scripts for the three episodes of Lines and was the director for the third episode. While the project had some challenges with communication and disagreements, Mike feels the webseries was overall a success and he learned the importance of sticking to defined roles.

1. Lines
Mike Shaw

2. My Contributions
• To begin with, I was in charge of casting. This meant I had to hold audiences and
get in contact with the cast and make sure they knew when they were supposed to
be filming.
• When we split into the two groups, I became the writer of Lines and wrote the
scripts for the three episodes.
• For the third episode, I was also the director.

3. Shows
• To begin with, I researched into a number of different shows. The range
included: theatre/West End Shows, street performance, live gigs and standup
comedians.
I also researched into a range of different TV shows. This list ranged from the likes of
Doctor Who, Outnumbered, Skins and the Inbetweeners.
Most of these shows featured just standalone episodes, but also referred to the events
of previous episodes.
•

4. Webshows
• To get more of an insight into webshows, I
watched a number of them. Living With The
Infidels was one of the webshows I watched.
• I took note of their styles, which was
comedic. They mostly took place in
location and the runtime were
approximately three minutes long.

5. Blogging
• For this project, we worked on a blog where
we regularly updated to keep a track on all
the work we did on this project.
• The advantages for having a blog is that we
can keep a track with all our work without
losing any. We can also come back to a
blogpost and change anything that needed to
be updated in light of any feedback that we
received.

6. Teamwork Is Key
• The unit started out as us all working
collectively to create the one webseries. This was
called ‘The Detention Deficit’
• I was in charge of the casting. When
we were separated into the two
groups, I became the writer of what
turned into Lines.

7. Creating The Story
• The main setting for both of the groups’s webseries was in
detention.One of the main characters whom the group
wanted to appear into Lines was a character who believed
he was being chased by a secret agent.
• As all of the students in detention could be seen as
regulars, I decided we needed a character who would be
new to detention. This would give the audience a better
way to get settled in with the story. This character turned
into Jake, an actor and also the lead singer of a band. It
was his first day at school.
• The story was to focus on how all of the characters ended
up in detention.

8. The Characters
• 1) Jake - He is the lead singer of a semi-famous band and also an actor.
He is in detention because he casually insulted one of the teachers.
• 2) Zeke - His reasons for being in detention are because he always takes
the blame for his friend’s troublesome ways.
• 3) Taylor - He is the troublemaker of the group and is in detention
because of his unruly behaviour.
• 4) Megan - She is an upper-class student who leads a spoilt life and is not
happy when things do not go her way.
• 5) Seth - He is in detention because he believes he is being followed by a
spy.

9. Episode 1
• In terms of the first episode, I think the episode was planned
to much and because there was so many people on set for the
filming that people began to disagree with the ideas and the
whole shoot did not go very well.
• The first episode, even though it featured several continuity
errors, was the most successful episode of Lines. It received
904 views on Youtube.

10. Episode 2
• The second episode of Lines focused more on Seth and the
apparent spy who is constantly harrassing him.
• The original version of the script featured Zeke’s back story, but
as the episode runtime had to be shortened, we left out this story
arc.
• This episode was not as successful as the first episode,
receiving the first one. It had 363 views on youtube.

11. Episode 3
• I became the director for the third and final episode of Lines.
• I wrote the script to bring the story of why all the characters
are in detention together, but to also leave a cliffhangar with
all the students being locked in the school overnight.
• In terms of views on youtube, this was the least successful
episode of Lines

12. Final Reflections
• Looking back on the project as a whole, I feel that it was
a success. We managed to produce a moderately
successful webseries.
• The biggest problem we all had was that there was a
lack of communication between all the members of the
group, meaning that there was often a large number of
disagreements.
• I have also learnt to stick to just my own job role and
not get involved in someone else’s job role. This meant
that this would avoid two people working on the same
thing at the same time.