The business of this whole thing aside, it’s now time to figure out the big question that actually matters for viewers—is this thing any good? First, there’s the plot setup, which is horror flick ready with a spooky downtown LA loft building full of overly attractive twentysomething artists. There’s a new girl—(isn’t there always?)—a spunky young woman named Jessica (Austin Highsmith) who moves into The Dante as the impressively shot series begins.
DJ Qualls, the most recognizable of the cast from his Road Trip breakout, plays a nosy, handicam sporting neighbor working on a documentary on the place. (We can’t help but notice his similarity to another downtown LA loft set web series, Woke Up Dead, with Josh Gad as Jon Heder’s Zi8-obsessed roommate.) And internet references are a plenty, with another neighbor, India (Natashia Williams) having made a name as a web series star hosting “a political talk show in her panties.”
Thankfully, the interactivity wasn’t an afterthought on Circle of Ei8ht, with four different interactive clues per episode, each activated within the custom Adobe Flash player by rolling your mouse over the frame. From there, the Mountain Dew integration comes to into focus as viewers are taken to a Green Label Art bottle with hidden messages burned into the labels. The product integration doesn’t stop there though, as one of the characters in the series joins the Dew’s Green Label Art community where selected art-inclined fans create custom collectible Dews bottles.
Web to DVD
This is Paramount Digital’s first official foray into web series, having had some success with a web release of Jackass 2.5 movie, the first studio-backed film release online. Following Sony/Crackle’s model of an online release driving DVD sales (Angel of Death, Star-ving, Woke up Dead), PDE has scored Blockbuster as an exclusive distribution partner for the full-length DVD of Circle of Eight—which includes a “surprise alternate ending” for an extra incentive for fans. By December, the DVD will be available to rent and download-to-own through Blockbuster stores and On Demand.
Three episodes are released so far on an impressive custom MySpace page, with two more coming next week. The full release schedule of the ten five-minute episodes is as follows:
We want to know what you think of this series—Are you going to keep watching? Did you track down any of the clues? Is the product integration too much? Leave a comment below and we may use it in an upcoming review of the series.
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