Pot Luck - webseries

Welcome to 'Pot Luck' - the webseries!

'Pot Luck' serves up contemporary lesbian life in three great flavours - Debs, Mel and Beth, as they negotiate friendship, family, and finding love at their weekly Pot Luck dinners. Fun, sexy, and occasionally ridiculous... look out world, New Zealand's first lesbian web series is coming soon!

Thanks to support from the good people at the Emerging Artists Trust, episode one has already been shot, we have some great footage in the can and our editor's on the job. Now we need your support to raise the funds to shoot the remaining five episodes of the first season.

We've got a talented bunch of people committed to bringing this series to life, and with almost an hour of content over six episodes we're ready for action!

The Funds
So, what do we plan to do with the money? Making a webseries takes a lot of people on both sides of the camera. There's a huge kit of equipment like lights, cameras, lenses, microphones, stands and all the little pieces of the technical puzzle. We need locations for the world of the series, and transportation to get our cast and crew around on set. We need props, costumes, makeup. And with long days we need to keep everyone well fed and watered! There's a million ways to spend money making a project like this, and we've had amazing support from cast, crew, businesses and organisations to help us out where possible, but for many things we need cash so we need...

You
Let's make Pot Luck together. Your donation will help make the series happen, so jump onboard and get a front row seat as we get this fun webseries out into the world!   

The Team:
Ness Simons, the writer and director, is a graduate of the NZ Film School and Whitireia's Creative Writing Programme. She's excited to explore characters seldom seen on screen, and looking forward to entertaining an audience with the universal storylines. Ness's short film 'Actually Alex' was recently accepted into the Chicago Pride Films and Plays 'Queer Bits Film Festival'.

Producer Robin Murphy has worked on crews in the film industry for over 30 years. She's produced seven short films and has several feature films in development too. 'Pot Luck' is her second web series with Ness Simons after they worked together on the documentary series "Active in Hell" in 2013. Robin is dedicated to telling authentic, original stories on screen, and championing the talents of emerging filmmakers.

With women in the roles of Writer, Director, Producer, DoP, 1stAD and Gaffer we're a little unique, we've kicked this off with an amazing vibe onset for our first shoot. Several of our crew have worked with Ness and Robin regularly, and every one of our team are excited to make 'Pot Luck' happen. Our crew is a winning combination of experience and raw talent, with some stepping up into new roles with the support of the more experienced crew members. They've kindly supported us with their time, enthusiasm and creativity in helping us make the pilot, now we want to give them the opportunity to come with us on the whole journey.

The Cast:
Playing 'Mel' onscreen is the multi-talented Nikki Si'ulepa. Nikki has a bunch of experience in front of the camera - you may have seen her in shows such as 'Super City' and 'Housebound' or remember her from her breakout role as Marty in 'The Whole of the Moon'? Nikki also works on the other side of the camera and is an award-winning writer and director with short films 'Snow in Paradise' and 'Ma' hitting festivals throughout the world. Nikki will bring style and confidence to the role of Mel, and we can't wait to see her in action!

'Debs' is played by Anji Kreft. Anji is a super talent with a range of screen credits in the UK, you might have heard her voice on 'Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit', in 'Postman Pat', or perhaps you caught her as the midwife delivering Dev and Sunita's twins in 'Coronation Street'! Anji is a singer and performer with great presence, she's also a voice actor and vocal coach and we're excited about the magic she brings to the character of Debs.

'Beth' is played by Tess Jamieson-Karaha. You may have seen Tess as Lisa in 'Strum, Strum' or recognise her as the 'swooping' waitress in 'How to Meet Girls From a Distance'! Tess is also busy behind the camera with the Cake Punchers Collective, including short film 'Coffee Group' which she has written, directed AND has a leading role in. Basically, she's awesome. As a graduate of Toi Whakaari Tess has had many roles on stage and screen and we're looking forward to seeing her bring this range of experience to her role as Beth.

There'll also be a range of other characters appearing throughout the series, including the fantastic Kate Ward who has a regular role as Beth's mother 'Eileen'.

Cheers for taking the time to check out our project, we appreciate any amount you can send our way, and if it's a little tight for you right now you could always share share share our campaign and help us reach our goal!

Kia ora,

Ness, Robin and the Pot Luck team