The morning after the night before

Fragments of Friday is a new Aussie web series about three friends trying to figure out what they’d done on their Friday nights.

Created by writer and director Kacie Anning and writer and producer Courtney Wise, the series has two seasons – the first of which will be released Friday 14 August. The second to follow in late September.

Kacie has been working on the series since 2012. And Courtney came on board shortly thereafter. Having successfully crowdfunded the first season, in February this year the duo were awarded Screen Australia multiplatform funding, and they went straight into production on season two.

We chat to Kacie and Courtney about the series and how it came together.

Screen Australia: How did you come up with the idea for Fragments of Friday?

Kacie Anning: A friend had jokingly suggested that I make a reality show about her life and we laughed about how it would just be her getting wasted on Friday nights and then piecing the night together over the course of the weekend. My own autobiographical elements have later come into it. And while the reality angle never held much interest for me, there was something in that premise…

SA: Why a web series?

KA: I was out of film school and feeling like short films were tricky to get right. Web series were a relatively new idea when I was creating the concept, but I was looking for a short form comedy premise and the idea of ‘day after’ seemed doable, in terms of logistics and containment. The web series format was a good fit in terms of budget, or lack thereof, and the fluidity in the format meant I could play with characters and premise, and throw off some of the formality of film structures.

SA: Courtney, when did you get involved?

Courtney Wise: Kacie and I got introduced through the Foxtel Scholarship for Exceptional New Talent, which we’d both won previously. Kacie had crowdfunded and filmed episodes and I fell in love with what I saw. So I jumped in to help with the edit and post-production. Neither of us was ready to let the series stop at series one, so we started to throw ideas around for series two…

SA: What’s been your favourite part of creating the series?

KA: For me it’s been a three-year process and every stage has been different. Challenging, rewarding and full of learning curves … I always enjoy the development process but when you’re making comedy, it’s hard to go past the weeks on set. Through both seasons, I’ve worn about three hats on set – writer, director and performer – and the shoot can be incredibly draining when you’re multitasking like a greedy idiot, but we’ve worked with a team of comically-gifted people. And if you’re grinning on the drive home, thinking about what you’ve shot, you’re okay I think.

CW: In Fragments of Friday Kacie created a fun, quirky world with hilarious characters. Being a writer, I enjoy the plotting and script process the most. Kacie’s hilarious scripts attracted a wildly funny and extremely talented cast and crew, all of whom I’m honoured to have worked with too. We shot season two in April this year and we had a lot of locations, guest characters and extras. We wanted to create a broadcast quality series for online, which was ambitious, so there’s been a lot of multitasking from development through to distribution. There have been challenges, but that’s part of the fun and the journey’s not over yet.

From Friday 14 August, you can watch the complete first season of Fragments of Friday on YouTube