Life on Mars may not be what you expected.
Unless, of course, you expected a lounge singing space cowboy entertaining lonely wayfarers in a seedy bar. If so, kudos, you’re awesome.
In the universe of Stingray Sam, Mars is like a derelict Las Vagas. It once thrived as an entertainment and resort capital, but its casino-lined streets and bar room musical talent a-plenty has dried up, leaving only a few weary drinking holes to sustain fragile dreams with some leftover sticks and packing tape. The only visitors who continue to dally with the red planet are the reclusive, or those who fail to realise that all the opportunities shipped out with most of the population.
Cory McAbee’s latest flick is a curious musical space-western that involves intergalactic corporatisation, dance routines and tiny little robots. And remember that bar room musical talent I was talking about? Well it seems some of it stuck to the walls during the mop up.
The Billy Nayer Show, the band in residence at McAbee’s sound lab, is one of the coolest, hipest, swankiest, (phatest? or is that just like, so naughties?) acts on the market. You know, in case you wanted to buy them or something.
They provide the soundtrack for the cosmic showdown of redemptive missions, privatised prisons and many, many men. Many. Many. Men. Whole planets of men. Male offspring spawning male offspring. Chuck and Dick making Duck. Fred and Edward making Fredward. You get it.
Ex-convict Stingray Sam has been roped into journeying with his former cell-mate the Quasar Kid (played by band mate Crugie) to rescue a now-rare young girl (McAbee’s daughter, Willa Vy McAbee), in turn repaying his debt to society and guaranteeing his freedom. The film is shot in high-def black-and-white, with catchy song and dance sequences led by McAbee and effective graphics and still-collage work by John Borruso. The film is original in plot and design and is a marker of McAbee and band’s talent and creativity (much like McAbee’s feature debut, The American Astronaut).
Stingray Sam was not exclusively designed as a feature. McAbee was commissioned by Sundance to make a film for mobile phones, so it ended up being a web series that can be viewed on anything from an iPod to the big screen. There are six episodes, each about ten minutes in length.
Perhaps it’s because I’m so used to watching something straight through at the cinema, without breaks at ten minute intervals and the repetition of a twenty second theme song, that I found the format distracting. At some screenings people began singing along to the opening titles, but I just wanted to get them out of the way and get back to the story.
Watching it on the web was a completely different experience, with the right amount of information packed into each episode and plot hooks that had me pining for the next one. I don’t know why, but it seemed like the story was more expansive on the internets, perhaps because the limits on what you can do with a story in 5-10 minute episodes are (semi-)defined, whereas in a feature you expect more time to be given to the characters.
The serial format was inspired both by old cinematic serials that were screened right before features (episodes were released weekly, so you had to go back to the same cinema to see the next installment), but more so the contemporary trend in media consumption. People are increasingly consuming media and entertainment via the web, and episodic content is much more suitable to this kind of viewing. Even features have been serialised for viewing on the web.
Here is a nifty, but cheesy, web animation series created by Stan Lee (co-creator of Spider Man, X-Men and The Hulk, among other super hero type people) in the early 00s.
Sing her the song!
Stingray Sam is a super web series, but you can decide for yourself.