Inspiration first struck Amy Taylor when she was figuring out her thesis film for her Masters in Fine Arts at Ohio University.
Drawing inspiration from Veronica Mars and Edgar Wright films, Taylor wondered how she could “combine the two somehow,” and the result was her first “non-student” directorial debut with the original short film: Jess Archer vs. The Ex.
Five years after the short film was produced, Taylor began to think about revisiting the characters she wrote and where she could go with them, so she decided a web series would be the ideal place, she said.
Jess Archer Versus follows the adventures of Jess Archer, a “detective-for-hire” and her best friend as they tackle the case of the school’s star athlete, who has been accused of selling the answers to the midterm exams, according to the series’ 2014 Kickstarter campaign.
Taylor, the writer and director of Jess Archer Versus and alumna of OU’s MFA program in 2011, describes the idea behind the series as “a mismatch of pop culture that I really like.”
“We tried to do something a little bit unexpected with the typical high school characters that you see in a lot of high school-based shows or movies,” she said.
Tropes such as “peppy but dumb” cheerleaders or “dumb jocks” were among some of the themes that were inverted, Taylor said. Both groups were instead portrayed as “intelligent,” Taylor said.
Benjamin Guenther, the producer of Jess Archer described the series as “quirky.”
“Jess is a bit of a character,” Guenther, who is an alumnus of OU’s MFA film program, said. “She’s wise beyond her years as a high school student (and) she’s smarter than her nemesis, Officer Turner … so she’s interesting in that regard.”
In the web series, Emily Williams reprises her role as the lead Jess Archer, along with Stefan Kumor as Chase Pollard and Joel Stigliano as Officer Turner.
Despite describing Jess’s personality as a “very angry female” who is also “very geektastic,”, Williams, who graduated from OU’s BFA theater program in 2012 said she didn’t find it difficult to portray her and praised Taylor’s scriptwriting.
“(Jess is) definitely living in a man’s world but she doesn’t let that stop her,” Williams said. “She’s a super nerd but she’s also really smart.”
The web series is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime and on YouTube
Guenther encourages viewers to watch Jess Archer on both mediums, as two 21-minute episodes or as multiple short episodes, because “it’s a very different experience.”
“(The series is small scale) but it feels bigger than it actually was, we created this world, within a short amount of time with very limited resource but (Taylor) wrote to the budget (and) was able to pull it off,” he said.
For aspiring filmmakers and producers, Guenther recommends writing to a specific budget.
“If you don’t have the money for car chases and explosions then don’t write them,” he said.
Producing the series back in Athens “was like being back at school,” Taylor said.
“It was just really nostalgic, we went back to all the places where we used to hang out all the time,” she said. “We saw people who we haven’t seen in a couple of years … so it was really amazing.”
