Indie Spotlight: ‘Pen Pals’ Ruminate On Human Nature

We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.

The web series featured in this week’s Indie Spotlight is a quiet one, but it has a lot to say. Michael Manziello and Nick Nelson are the creators and stars of Pen Pals, which plays out across a series of letters.

Manziello and Nelson play characters named Mike and Nick who correspond via a back-and-forth exchange of heartfelt notes. Each episode follows one of the two characters as he reads the body of his latest letter and connects it to a situation in his life. Pen Pals consistently aims for heavy themes, such as loneliness, existentialism, and the fragility of human emotion, and the degree to which these themes resonate varies by episode. When it’s at its best, though, Pen Pals can be a poignant, introspective little series.

Even if a series like this isn’t your cup of tea, you can at least admire the degree to which it strives to be different. Without any dialogue, there is added pressure on Pen Pals to deliver top-notch camerawork, editing, and nonverbal acting. The series succeeds in all three of those categories, and at the most basic level, that’s why it works.

You can check out all seven episodes (so far) of Pen Pals on its YouTube channel.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT

• Labeled. A group of frazzled young PR people do their best to work with a trendy fashion line.
• Straight Marriage. The representation of gay couples in media is satirized by applying the same representation to a straight couple.
• Tennis Tips with Freddy Love. An overweight, deadbeat tennis coach delivers not-so-stellar tips.
• Your Best Besties. In a topical episode of this series, Mrs. Claus gets turned up.

Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.