Quarterlife follows the lives of six people in their early twenties trying to find their place in the world.
Characters
- Dylan - a writer working at a very corporate women's magazine and video blogging about her life making astute comments regarding the lives of her friends.
- Debra - Dylan's roomate and wants to find her place as a person on her own. She works for her father and is in love with:
- Danny - a meathead with a terrible voice and no sense of how to treat women. He is fresh out of film school and trying to make a living by making commercials with:
- Jed - the filmmaking artist who doesn't want his creative vision to be compromised for commercialism, but gives in when he realizes he needs to make money. He pretty much strikes out with every girl except for Dylan, who is secretly in love with him.
- Lisa - a bartender and struggling actress initially trying to get by on her looks until she takes a good look at herself and comes to grips with her own sexuality.
- Andy - Rivers Cuomo looking guy that dwells in Jed and Danny's basement. In the information age, he's their token nerd stereotype.
Show Origins
Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick created the show for the internet in the basic format for a traditional television series. The first six "webisodes" make up the pilot that NBC will begin to air on February 18th in their 9/8 central timeslot.
The show was first aired through MySpace. The first six episodes are now available on NBC.com and new episodes are now released every Sunday and Thursday on their official website Quarterlife.com and Monday and Friday on their YouTube page.
Narrative Style
This show differs substantially from KateModern in terms of style. Most of the camera work is from the perspective of a disembodied third person, in the vein of traditional TV (as opposed to KateModern where one of the characters is typically holding the camera). There are several scenes early in the series which are done more in the blogging style. Furthermore the episodes tend to be longer, again more in the tradition of television, with episodes frequently being over seven minutes long.
Cameras
Main-There are multiple main cameras that will cut to different viewpoints during conversations to get a more one on one feel with the characters. This lends more of a tv professional feel; on the contrary, because they are holding the camera and not using a tripod it confuses the viewer in a way. Also how often they cut between cameras when in an argument made me a little on the disoriented side.
Web Cam- The web cam seems to be the only still camera which makes logical sense because it is mounted on her mac laptop. However when it cuts from one of these main cameras to the web cam it is extremely noticeable, and reminds the viewer that they are watching something produced.
In Kate Modern because for the most part you have the same camera and the same freestyle it only adds meaning where as the camera use in QuarterLife is taken away because it is too distracting.
Quality
QuarterLife really is a high production quality, from the sound to the visual, there is alot more detail to indulge yourself into unlike KateModern. However when they are moving faster it blurrs the action pretty badly, which was distracting.
Also the room set up is highly more likely for 3 girls to be living together but I noticed that I was looking at the objects more than the people themselves. In one episode Debra and Jed are fighting about Mayo and Fish and instead of watching them I am looking more at the counter of assorted food. In that same episode Jed gets discouraged and sits down on the girls love seat. I distinctly remember a white love seat with a brown throw with fringe on it. Then right next to it they had a nice bright green couch!
Self Commenting
Dylan blogs about herself and her friends and she will make those blogs while the main camera is watching. Later the characters will watch her blog with the main camera watching again. Unlike KateModern I never find myself believing that this might be true. With it being self reflexive and Jed and Danny making commercials it is constantly reminding you that they too are fictitious.
Attitude
In general QuarterLife is very negative compared to KateModern. At least Charlie was trying to look on the bright side or change things. Mainly in QuarterLife you have the self loathing, I hate my job, and I cannot do anything to change my situation people. Even though the circumstances they go through are realistic normally they would not happen at all the same time to everyone in the group. The only character that seems remotely optimistic is Andy.
Product Placement
The Jed/Danny arc of the story for the first part of the series is for the most part just a big plug for Toyota and Scion as the characters are trying to make a "hip" commercial to reach the young demographic they think should be buying these cars.
- Even thought the guys eventually sold out and turned in a more "conventional" version of their commercial to their client, Jed posted the "real" version on his Quarterlife page.
- Throughout the entire show all of the characters have Macbooks and work on Mac workstations or at least Mac displays which are prominently shown.
- In Episode 8 "Compromise" Jed makes a reference to the movie "Beowulf" which may or may not have been a subtle plug for the movie. This is done in a much more subtle manner than the movie advertisements done in Kate Modern for Disturbia, or Stardust.
- As of Episode 22 Dell computers start to be featured.
It can be assumed that since the show was developed in the vein of traditional television shows and will start airing on television that product placement will not play the prominent role it does in Kate Modern.
(Dave: The prose here needs refining, that is, while the content is good, remove the first person and place it more in the style of academic prose. The attitude section should probably be changed to "tone" and discuss how the themes are different (mundane vs. conspiracy fiction) when compared to lonelygirl15 and Katemodern)