Despite the blurring of lines between television and film over the last few years — with impressive talent, ideas and production values moving freely between them — few festivals have sprung up to take advantage of the trend.
Enter Denver’s SeriesFest. Calling itself an international TV and content festival, SeriesFest debuted in 2015 as a four-day event with 30 pilots in competition. Industry types and independent creators assembled to buy and sell, while the public had the chance to sit in on panels and screenings.
Returning June 27-July 2, SeriesFest: Season 3 is adding even more programming for its third year at the Sie FilmCenter — specifically around emerging forms of entertainment, with its new Digital Shorts and Late Night competitions amid the usual workshops, networking events and parties.
Embracing fast-evolving digital content allows SeriesFest to look nimble. But for its founders, the fact that an increasing number of people have even heard of SeriesFest is cause for celebration.
“We’ve struggled in the past two years as far as the branding and having to educate people what a television festival is,” said co-founder Kaily Smith Westbrook. “Which is why it’s nice to say it’s the ‘Sundance of TV.’ People immediately understand.”
Partnering with the Denver Film Society, which SeriesFest has done since the beginning, doesn’t hurt either, given the audience overlap and use of the Society’s venue (the Sie FilmCenter) for most of its screenings and panels.
Submissions are up 20 to 30 percent over last year, Westbrook said, noting that the festival is expecting anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000 attendees, compared with 2016’s 11,000.
“The first year we definitely had a lot more independent writers, creators and directors, and a few managers and agents,” Westbrook said. “Last year saw a rise in industry producers and agents, and this year we had a lot of meetings with all the major agencies about getting their clients involved.”
That’s apparent in the major networks and recognizable names attending SeriesFest 2017, including Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”), Alan Tudyk (“Rogue One,” “Firefly”), Tim Heidecker (Adult Swim), Gregg Turkington (a.k.a. Neil Hamburger), Wendy Haines (“Dexter”), Kevin Corrigan (“The Get Down”) and others. NBC will premiere its new show “The Brave” with stars Anne Heche, Mike Vogel and the rest of the cast in-person, while ABC’s “The Mayor” will also get an advance screening.
Besides all the festival multi-tasking, SeriesFest is also bringing back its opening bash in the form of an all-ages concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on June 27. Themed to the premiere of CNN’s throwback series “The Nineties,” it will feature live music from Ms. Lauryn Hill, Common and En Vogue.
But that’s not the core of the event. Parading new content — roughly 25 percent of it for all-digital platforms (i.e. non-broadcast or cable TV) — is the main function of SeriesFest. As the TV industry changes, embracing things like mobile streaming and social media-friendly shorts is a matter of practicality, not just innovation.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped organizers from touting the diversity of offerings at SeriesFest.
“As part of this year’s celebration, we are proud to showcase extraordinary voices in our independent pilot competition, invite viewers to experience eight incredible Virtual Reality installations, bring back our acclaimed International Spotlight section, as well as provide unparalleled access with sneak previews, major network premieres and discussions with top industry leaders,” wrote Randi Kleiner, co-founder and CEO of SeriesFest, in an email.
Many of these TV pilots are orphans at the moment. Former Denver Post reporter and The Cannabist editor Ricardo Baca (the subject of the 2015 documentary “Rolling Papers”) is shopping a new series called “Subculture” that dives into the cultural aspect of legal and illegal drugs around the world. It screens at 4:15 p.m. on June 30 and July 1.
Others, like cult comics Heidecker and Turkington, are building on their longtime foundation of underground fans and web cultivation to find bigger audiences for shows making the jump from online to broadcast networks.
“This is something I’m not used to doing, which is episodic, narrative storytelling with a twist,” Heidecker said of his Adult Swim comedy “Decker,” which screens its Season 5 finale at 5:45 p.m. on July 1. “We were very much early on the internet in our first incarnation as Tim and Eric (Wareheim, his longtime comedy partner), and as our budgets have gotten bigger things have gotten a little more comfortable and professional.”
SeriesFest has been responsive to not only the changing demands of the digital world but also the creative potential there, Westbrook said, which gives it a valuable perspective on TV’s unpredictable evolution.
“What I think is interesting is that an episode can now be any length you want,” she said. “On a traditional network 10 years ago, a show had to be a half hour or an hour. But you look at shows on Netflix like ‘Master of None’ or ‘The OA,’ they have episodes of that are all over the place (in length). They’re basically giving the creator the opportunity to say, ‘This is the story I want to tell and it can be anything.’ Every boundary and limitation is being broken.”
Full disclosure: Denver Post reporter John Wenzel will moderate a pair of SeriesFest panels and screenings at 12:30 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. on Wednesday, June 28.